Chapter Sixteen
In the morning, filled with a bit of dread, Avery dressed slowly, braided her hair over one shoulder, and tried not to think.
At all, or about anything, certainly not about the hundreds of people she should now expect to be outside her door.
Forgoing Morggán’s plaid, she secured her own worn cloak under her chin, gathered the two wooden buckets beside the door, and finally stepped outside into the cold damp morning.
Her yard and the forest were transformed yet again, not showing anything different, just more of what already occupied the space. She felt eyes turn toward her, and she might have just gotten used to that—though not entirely—but now she felt so many more eyes.
The grass beyond the doorway lay flattened in wide muddy paths from so many boots and horses crossing the clearing and she knew a flash of irritation for the mess, for the evidence of them when she’d always been so careful to leave no mark.
A tether line had been strung between two young ash trees west of the house, and half a dozen unfamiliar horses lifted their heads as Charlie trotted past in front of them, in search of attention or stolen food.
The forest was still immense but certainly felt smaller, and for certain her little corner of it no longer felt private.
Men seemed to be everywhere. A pair of soldiers crossed toward the stream carrying cookpots while another emerged from behind the house fastening his sword belt with the distracted look of someone not fully awake yet.
Several glanced toward Avery as she moved from the doorway, though none stared long. One man gave a brief nod of greeting around a mouthful of oatcake. Another stepped aside automatically to clear room for her path with the buckets.
Charlie bounded happily into the morning chaos with scandalous enthusiasm for army life, which had her briefly wondering if his life with her, their solitary existence, wasn’t enough.
Avery adjusted her grip on the wooden handles as she turned the corner round the side of the house and noticed a cluster of mounted riders near the remains of last night’s supper fire.
Mud streaked these horses nearly to the knee.
One rider leaned forward over the pommel speaking to Morggán and several men, some unknown, gathered around him.
Scouts returning, Avery guessed immediately.
Morggán stood with his back partly toward her, broad shoulders and dark hair unmistakable even among the others, Tormod and Donnchadh included.
Beside him stood a man she did not recognize—larger even than Morggán, also dark-haired and stern-faced as he listened to the scouts with his hands on his hips.
“...haven’t moved at all since yesterday, lairds,” the exhausted rider was saying in their Scots’ language. “Encamped they are, waiting on someone, mayhap.”
Morggán chewed the inside of his cheek, considering this. He exchanged a look with the big man at his side.
“Another English force?” Morggán suggested grimly.
The big man offered, “Or waiting on orders.”
Avery tried to continue toward the stream without appearing to listen. Unfortunately, at that exact moment Charlie bounded directly toward the gathered officers and inserted himself enthusiastically into the middle of military strategy.
One of the men startled as the dog nosed between them. Another laughed.
Morggán turned immediately at Charlie’s approach, his eyes finding Avery at once with their usual steady intensity.
She had only just begun growing accustomed to the weight of that look.
Beside him, however, the larger dark-haired man looked up as well, and the force of his attention proved sharper somehow, colder and more searching.
There was nothing improper in the look exactly, yet something about the intensity of it unsettled her immediately.
“Mornin’, lass,” Alasdair called casually in English from amongst the group.
“Good morning,” Avery answered cautiously.
By then Charlie had sniffed out something to his liking and had begun enthusiastically licking the boot of a man she did not know. The man frowned and attempted unsuccessfully to shake him off.
Avery gave a sharp whistle that accomplished absolutely nothing.
“Charlie, come,” she called, already feeling heat rise into her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was to march directly into the middle of a war council to drag her dog away by the collar like an unruly child.
Morggán spared her the humiliation. He clicked his tongue once and gave a low curt command that Charlie obeyed immediately, abandoning the boot and trotting to his side with expectant pleasure.
“Sorry about that,” Avery said quietly to the group in general. “Come on, Charlie.”
She meant to continue toward the stream then, but the larger man’s attention remained fixed upon her.
“We owe ye the apology, lass,” he said at last, his voice deep. “Three hundred men make poor neighbors.”
Before Avery could answer, Morggán gestured lightly between them. “This is Avery.” He then motioned toward the man beside him. “?Tis Lucas Thain.”
“Hi. Nice to meet you,” she said, her voice small.
Lucas Thain continued regarding her with a now growing intensity.
The look did not feel hostile, which somehow made it stranger.
He stared as though something about her genuinely puzzled him.
Beside him, another man—older even than Tormod, his beard heavily streaked with gray—glanced at Avery sharply as well, seeming to question something about her very existence.
“Aye, likewise,” Lucas Thain said at last, his gaze remaining fixed upon her. His brows drew together slightly. “’Tis an unusual way of speaking ye have. Ye are nae from this district?”
“Avery is nae from Scotland,” Morggán supplied before she could answer.
There was a distinct edge beneath the calmness of his voice, and the look he turned upon Lucas carried unmistakable warning, as though quietly questioning why the man’s interest had settled so intently upon her in the first place.
“I’m from the States,” she said and then clarified, “America.” She was not entirely certain why she clarified it.
Perhaps because there remained something faintly unreal about all of this—about Morggán and his men, and now Lucas Thain and this second army, all of whom seemed to belong to some older harsher version of the world she no longer fully understood herself.
Lucas nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving her face. Something almost like recognition passed briefly across his expression before settling again into that same unnerving intensity.
“Aye,” he said quietly. “I thought perhaps ye might be.”
The answer wrinkled her brow, but she wasn’t sure why. The pointed look he exchanged with the gray-haired man older than Tormod didn’t give her any relief but raised her awareness.
“Good day,” she murmured at last.
Then, with Charlie finally trotting obediently at her side again, she continued toward the stream feeling Lucas Thain’s strange attention lingering upon her.
Moisture clung to the grass and low pine branches, soaking the soft leather of her old boots as she walked, while beneath the sharper scents of horses and lingering woodsmoke she could still detect the familiar smells that had belonged to this place long before armies arrived: cold stream water, damp moss, crushed fern.
And yet, the path no longer belonged solely to her.
Fresh tracks crossed everywhere now: deep boot prints pressed into softened ground, churned places where horses had passed, snapped fern stems and bent grasses marking where armed men had moved through the woods during the night.
Even the streambank itself showed signs of heavy use already.
Mud had been trampled into the shallows, and one entire section of reeds near the bend had been flattened completely.
Then, to her horror, she saw that two young ash trees had been felled on the far side of the burn, their trunks stripped of bark and limbs.
Avery frowned. She knew every fallen tree within easy walking distance of the house, every wind-thrown trunk that had long since dried enough for firewood.
There was no need to cut down living trees.
She found herself absurdly annoyed by it.
Every time she made eye contact with someone inside the trees, she felt their regard upon her was heavy; every time she looked quickly away, another set of eyes found her and lingered, waiting for her to meet their gaze or acknowledge their interest. She felt less like a person than like an object of curiosity.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the ripple of her passing moving through the crowd, one man nudging the next with a muttered aside, a laugh, a pointed finger—look there, who’s that?
She wasn’t afraid, but she wasn’t comfortable either.
By the time she climbed back toward the clearing with the handles of the heavy buckets biting into her fingers, she was more than only a little upset.
Voices carried more clearly from the men gathered near the remains of the supper fire.
She slowed instinctively while still inside the trees, taking a moment to unclench her teeth and relax her expression.
“...wasteful to force a direct engagement whilst they outnumber us three to one or more,” Lucas Thain was saying. “Better we bleed them a little each day.”
“Aye,” Tormod agreed. “Strike hard and fast and disappear. Night raids. A wee bit of harrying to reduce them.”
“And keep them guessing,” Morggán added. “They’ll ken we’re nae too large a troop—or we’d have come heavy and hard at them, all at once.”
Lucas crouched again beside the rough map scratched into the dirt. “We can stage the entire operation from here,” he said decisively. “Ride light. Small numbers. Fast strikes.”
Avery stood very still, listening.
Relief came first, swift and undeniable enough that she almost hated herself for it.
We can stage the entire operation from here.