21 THE STRANGER ON THE ROAD
“STAY BACK … LET me check her first.”
Darach swung down from Rùn’s back, his gaze already sweeping the trees. He needed to take charge again, to re-establish his boundaries with Ailsa. “Draw your knife,” he added, without looking at her. “And don’t take your eyes off the woods.”
Ailsa didn’t argue. Iron whispered free of leather as she obeyed.
No, she wouldn’t fight him over this, not when they might be in danger. At least her readiness for action hadn’t changed, although everything else between them had.
After last night, he wasn’t sure what to say to her.
Or what she expected him to say either.
Pulling his own dagger from its sheath on his thigh, he approached the prone figure.
And as he moved, he glanced left and right.
Shadowy woodland of ash and beech surrounded them now, with a thick undergrowth of bramble, nettles, and ferns.
An excellent place for outlaws to hide while using the woman as a decoy.
Or worse—another delay. Another chance for Kayla to slip farther beyond reach.
He approached the fallen figure slowly, every muscle tight, expecting arrows to whistle from the trees.
Nothing came.
The woman lay on her side in the dirt, one arm twisted beneath her. Leather clung dark and wet to her flank where blood had soaked through. Her skin was worryingly pale.
Darach studied her face. She was beautiful, although in an almost eerie way. Chiseled features and unusually sharp cheekbones. His gaze slid to her weapons then, the long-bladed dagger sheathed in embossed leather and the fine ash longbow and yew arrows. Who was she?
Glancing up, he waved to his companion. “It’s safe to approach.”
The clip-clop of Rùn’s hooves followed, and a short while later, the thud of boots hitting the hard-packed earth warned Darach that Ailsa had joined him. Meanwhile, he’d carefully rolled the woman onto her back and was checking for other injuries.
There were none, although that cut to her flank was bad enough.
“Is she dead?” Ailsa asked.
He reached out and pressed his fingers under the woman’s jaw. A pulse fluttered against his fingertips. Her chest rose and fell, shallowly. “No.”
“We need to help her.”
Darach exhaled slowly through his nose. Aye. Of course, they did. “We’ve already lost too much time,” he said flatly. Every moment they lingered, the gap between them and Kayla widened. He could feel it like a rope slipping through his fingers.
Ailsa stepped closer. “If we leave her, she’ll die.”
There was an edge to her voice now; the same one that surfaced whenever she thought he was wrong.
He straightened slowly, turning to face her at last.
The stubborn light in her eyes made his patience fray further still.
“Maybe,” he replied. “Or maybe she’s bait.”
Ailsa’s grip tightened on her knife. “Then we stay alert.”
Darach scowled. He could drag her away. He should.
He should yank back control before things spiraled again. He was losing focus, and he couldn’t afford that.
Instead, he let her have her way.
“Fine,” he muttered, regretting this already. “But be quick.”
Ailsa inspected the wound. She had expected worse, but the gash on the woman’s side wasn’t as deep as she’d first thought. It had pierced the skin and even a little of the muscle beneath. But no deeper. The Gods had been watching over her.
Sitting back on her heels, she frowned. Or they might not be, not if the wound festered. Glancing up, her gaze settled upon where Dale was boiling some water in a small iron pot he carried with him in his saddlebag.
He moved efficiently, yet she could feel the tension in him from here. Like a bowstring pulled too tight. He’d been ready to walk away earlier, and that troubled her more than she liked to admit.
More than last night?
She shoved the thought aside.
Getting to her feet, she brushed off her skirts. “I’ll fetch some woundwort.”
He cast her a sidelong look, eyebrows rising. “So, the tattooist’s apprentice is a healer too?”
There was an edge to his comment. Not mockery, but not approval either.
“No … but Kayla taught me which herbs heal … and which harm. Woundwort is easy enough to learn about.”
Without waiting for him to answer, she picked up her skirts and moved away. The afternoon was drawing out now, the light filtering between the trees golden. She nearly tripped over a root in her haste.
She bit down, swallowing a curse. Gods damn it. Dale did have a point. They couldn’t afford this delay.
And yet, he was wrong too.
They couldn’t leave a woman to bleed out on the road.
Dale might not have a conscience, but she wouldn’t forgive herself if she walked away without at least trying to help.
Her movements were hurried now as she searched the undergrowth nearby for the herb. The day was racing by, and Kayla still lay ahead. Every heartbeat mattered.
Aye, she knew it, but still she searched.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before she discovered a growth of woundwort, picked it, and hurried back to where Dale knelt next to the unconscious stranger.
Ailsa surveyed her for a moment. She was an unusual beauty and tall for a Marav woman, easily Ailsa’s height, if not taller. Crouching next to her, she peeled away the woman’s hunting leathers and the thick woolen tunic she wore underneath to reveal the pale arch of her ribcage and smooth flank.
Dale didn’t rush her. Yet every few moments, she caught him looking toward the trees. He was marking every moment lost.
Curse him, she was too.
Ailsa poured the cooled water over the wound then. The woman groaned, lashes fluttering.
Thank the Gods.
“I’m going to scout,” Dale announced then, getting to his feet. “Back soon.”
Without another word, he disappeared into the trees, while Ailsa got to work.
She crushed the woundwort with a stick and packed the bitter paste into the gash, her hands moving deftly. By the time she was binding the wound tight with a strip torn from her tunic, her bodyguard reemerged from the woods.
“There.” She sat back on her heels. “That should hold.”
“Then we go,” he replied. “I’ve found tracks … east of here. It’s them.”
Ailsa rose swiftly to her feet. At last. Their quarry had indeed left the road. “How long ago did they pass this way?”
“Half a day … maybe less.”
Her pulse jumped. They were closer than they’d been since before Gateway. Close enough to fix this, to make up for lost time.
Her gaze then flicked to the woman, still unconscious. “She’s coming with us.”
“Absolutely not.”
Ailsa turned to him, marking his deep scowl. Undaunted, she held his eye. “We can’t leave her … not like this.”
“If we take her, we lose more ground.”
Ailsa lifted her chin. “Then we ride faster.”
He barked a humorless laugh. “With a dead weight on the saddle?”
“She’s not dead.”
“Not yet.”
“We can’t abandon her, Dale. It’s wrong, and you know it.”
He stared back at her, eyes narrowed, before muttering, “The Mother’s tits … you’re too soft-hearted.”
“Maybe … but you’re not as callous as you like others to think, are you?”
Right now, she wasn’t sure about that, yet she had to appeal to his better nature.
Their gazes locked. Neither looked away. And as the moments passed, Ailsa’s breathing slowed.
Damn him, he was going to dig his heels in.
But then, Dale surprised her by stooping and hooking his hands under the woman’s armpits. “Help me get her up on Rùn’s back,” he growled.
They rode hard, or as hard as they could in the circumstances.
Dale held the unconscious woman in front of him, one arm locked around her to keep her upright. It slowed them.
Perched behind her bodyguard, Ailsa could feel it in every stride Rùn took. The stallion’s pace faltered under the extra weight. And as they traveled east, she could feel the silent weight of Dale’s disapproval too. He barely spoke, and if she asked him anything, his answers were clipped.
Ailsa compressed her lips. Let him brood. It changed nothing.
The tracks led them east for a spell and then northeast, following the course of a burn until the trees opened into a small clearing.
A crumbling broch rose from the undergrowth, its stones blackened, half its roof fallen in. Ivy choked its walls. Dark shadows partially obscured the ruin. The day was waning; the sun was on the verge of dipping behind the western treetops.
Dale deliberately skirted it.
At first glance, a ruin looked like the perfect spot to shelter overnight, but he clearly knew better. And so did Ailsa. She’d heard enough fireside tales about the ruins that slept in Albia’s shadowy corners.
“We’ll give this place a miss,” he muttered. “Don’t feel like dealing with powries tonight.”
They made camp farther upstream, in a clearing surrounded by a tangle of twisted oaks.
Dale didn’t say a word as he dismounted and carried the unconscious woman over to a grassy patch. Ailsa didn’t fight the silence either; they both needed to cool their tempers, to focus on their mission.
Retrieving his slingshot from a saddle bag, Dale went hunting, leaving Ailsa to collect wood and start a fire.
Once the flames were dancing, she cast a glance at where the stranger lay on her uninjured side, a few feet back from the hearth. Moving over to the woman, she gingerly unwrapped the bandage she’d secured earlier. Time to see how that laceration was faring.
However, when the bandage fell away, her breathing caught.
Eyes widening, she gazed down at what had previously been a bloody gash. But in the space of one afternoon, it appeared to have shrunk considerably. The edges were less red too. It was healing fast.
Too fast.
Ailsa stared. Flesh wasn’t supposed to knit together so swiftly.
Her pulse lurched then. Over the past days, she’d come across far too many things that ‘shouldn’t’ be—most of them concerning herself.
The woman stirred then. She groaned, and her eyes fluttered open.
And when their gazes met, Ailsa froze.
She stared into a pair of iron-grey eyes. They had long pupils, slitted horizontally, that drank in the firelight.
Ailsa’s heart slammed against her ribs.
Cursing under her breath, she shuffled back and whipped out the iron blade in her boot.
Iron. It was an effective weapon against all faerie kind.
“Put that damn thing away,” the Shee muttered, her voice raspy and weak. “I mean you no harm.”
Ailsa didn’t believe her.
Moments slid by, and then the stranger’s nostrils flared, as if she was scenting her.
Ailsa fought the urge to shift farther back, to put some distance between her and this unnerving female.
She couldn’t believe she’d been so easily fooled. She’d heard how the Shee could glamor themselves, using their own magic to adopt the appearance of animals, or Marav. But this individual had been too injured to employ such a trick.
“My name’s Fern, by the way.” The female said finally. “Yours?”
A brittle silence followed before she answered, “Ailsa.”
Pushing herself gingerly up onto one elbow, Fern cast a glance at the wound on her side. She then pulled a face.
“It looked far worse earlier,” Ailsa said softly.
Fern’s goatlike eyes flicked up to meet hers, and her full lips twisted into a grimace. “I’m sure it did. Iron has a nasty bite.”
“You heal fast … the woundwort helped.”
One finely arched black eyebrow lifted. “Whin flowers are even better. I don’t suppose you have any?”
Ailsa’s brow furrowed as she shook her head.
Fern huffed. “Moss will do then.”
Ailsa’s moon flow had ceased a couple of days earlier, yet she still had some moss left over in her satchel. Still eyeing the Shee and keeping a firm grip on her blade with one hand, she edged over to it and dug out the moss. She then handed it over.
The snapping of twigs underfoot intruded then. Fern went rigid, while Ailsa whipped around, knife raised.
Dale emerged from the trees, a fat pheasant slung over one shoulder. However, when his gaze settled upon Fern’s face, he stopped dead.