Chapter One The Convoy and the Hollow #2
She held out the bundle. Inside were strips of cloth, a small tin of salve, and two packets of dried leaves wrapped in paper.
“Willow and yarrow,” she said. “If you are hurt, you will not have time to send for me.”
Caelan felt a sudden tightness in his throat that annoyed him. Concern did not belong in a transaction. It made the math messy.
“I am not planning to be hurt,” he said.
Mairi’s eyes narrowed. “Plans are not shields.”
He took the bundle anyway and tucked it inside his satchel. “Thank you.”
Mairi’s gaze softened a fraction. “Bring my men back.”
They were not her men, not by blood, but she had healed them often enough that ownership felt earned.
“I will,” Caelan said, and meant it, even though promises were always made before a road proved whether it could be kept.
As he turned, he caught sight of movement near the outer wall.
A woman stood half in shadow, half in light, as if unwilling to step into the yard. She wore no clan colors that Caelan recognized. Her hair was braided and tucked beneath a hood. She held a small basket at her side, the kind used for herbs, not for coin.
She was not one of Mairi’s.
Caelan’s mind filed the detail automatically. Stranger in the keep yard. Neutral, perhaps. Traveling healer, perhaps. An unnecessary variable.
He watched her for one breath longer than he intended, then forced his attention back to the convoy. If she mattered, she would intersect with his work again.
If she did not, she would be a forgotten note in the margin of a day already too full.
***
Morna kept to the edge of other people’s wars.
It was a habit built by necessity and sharpened by loss.
Neutral clans survived by being useful, by being unnoticed, by not giving great lairds a reason to call their names in council.
Morna had grown up learning which roads were safe, which were watched, which belonged to men who demanded tolls for the privilege of walking on land that had once been open.
This season, no road was safe.
She knelt at the base of a birch stand a short distance from Kincaid land, fingers sifting through leaf mold, searching for the pale shoots that marked the plant she needed.
The soil was damp and cold. It clung to her nails.
She did not mind the discomfort. Discomfort was honest. It did not lie the way promises did.
The plant did not appear.
Morna leaned back on her heels and exhaled slowly, letting frustration drain out with the breath.
She had come this far because the birch stand grew in a sheltered hollow, and sheltered hollows kept certain roots alive past the first hard frosts.
Her clan’s stores were thin. Illness would come as it always did, with winter closing in and bodies weakening.
She had learned long ago that a healer who waited for sickness to arrive was a healer who buried more than she saved.
The memory of her sister rose, sharp and unwanted, as it always did when she searched for rare things.
If I had had it then, she thought, the root, the right bark, the right measure, would it have mattered? Or would the world have found another way to take her?
She pushed the thought down and reached into her basket for a strip of cloth, wiping her hands. No good came from dwelling. Dwelling did not change what had been done.
A low rumble of sound drifted through the trees.
Morna froze, not from fear but from calculation. Hooves, distant. Wheels on packed earth. A convoy, then, not a lone rider. She shifted her weight and rose, moving to the line of brush that bordered the hollow.
From there she could see the road, and beyond it, the rise that led toward Kincaid’s gate.
Six wagons, she counted at once. Guards at their sides. Not a celebratory procession. A supply run.
And at the head of it, a man riding with a posture too controlled to belong to a warrior eager for glory.
Even at this distance, Morna could tell the difference between men who lived by instinct and men who lived by order.
Warriors moved with a looseness, ready to spring.
This man sat his horse like he had measured the height of the saddle and decided it was acceptable.
He held his reins with economy. He did not let his horse drift.
A quartermaster, Morna thought. Or someone who believed rules could stop blades.
She watched as the convoy approached the gate and slowed. The keep’s iron bar lifted. Men filed in. The wagons disappeared into stone shadow.
Morna’s first instinct was to turn away, to return to her hollow and her search. Kincaid dealings were Kincaid concerns. Neutrality meant not being curious.
Curiosity, however, was a habit that had saved her more than once. It let her see trouble before it reached her.
She shifted along the brush line until she had a clearer view of the yard through a gap in the wall’s angle. She could not see much, only movement and the suggestion of order. Men unloading, checking straps, shifting weights.
Then she saw him again, the man who rode at the head.
He had dismounted and was moving among the wagons with the air of someone inspecting his own heartbeat. He touched wood, checked ropes, leaned in close to speak to a driver. He did not gesture wildly. His authority was quiet.
It was, Morna admitted, effective.
That made her uneasy.
Effective men were often dangerous, not because they enjoyed harm, but because they believed they were justified in whatever they did to keep order intact. She had seen lairds burn cottages for the sake of discipline. She had seen priests deny remedies because mercy did not fit their doctrine.
She did not know this man, and she did not intend to, but she watched him anyway.
A healer learned to read people the way she read wounds. The shape of a man’s choices showed in the way he held himself when he thought no one important was looking.
He paused near the last wagon where an older woman stood, likely a keep healer. They spoke briefly. The older woman handed him something, and he took it with a solemnness that suggested respect.
Then his gaze lifted, and for a moment, it landed in Morna’s direction.
She could not be certain he saw her. She was half hidden by stone and shadow. Still, his eyes narrowed slightly, like a man noticing an irregularity in his count.
Morna felt a flicker of irritation. She had not come here to be cataloged.
She shifted back, deeper into the trees, and pulled her hood forward. Let him count his sacks, she thought. Let him count his arrows. He could not count the things that mattered, like how quickly a war could swallow a neutral clan that had done nothing but survive.
The rumble of the yard faded as the gate closed again.
Morna turned back to her hollow and her birches.
She found the plant only after another half hour, tucked beneath a fallen branch as if hiding from the world. She dug carefully, lifting the root intact, and wrapped it in damp cloth.
As she worked, the sound of voices drifted from the road.
Not Kincaid voices. Not the rough banter of men who lived beside one another. These voices were clipped, controlled, and they carried an edge of impatience that did not belong to labor.
Morna froze, root in her hand.
She listened again.
Boots on packed earth. Not many. Two, perhaps three. Men moving with purpose. Men who did not fear being found on this road.
Her stomach tightened.
If the convoy was leaving today, others would know. Supplies meant patterns, and patterns meant opportunity.
Morna eased to the brush and peered through.