"And then?" Miach asked, against his better judgment.
"He came to and opened his mouth."
Miach laughed in spite of himself. "I understand, believe me."
Morgan made herself more comfortable on the hay and began to examine one of her daggers. "Have you ever found yourself in those straits? Seeing something you know you shouldn't want and cannot have, but yet you are powerless to resist it?"
"Oh, aye," Miach said, with feeling. And that something was sitting not two paces from him.
"It was a most unsettling bit of weakness on my part," she said, sticking her dagger into the hay. "I may have to fight three at a time tomorrow. If the lads can bear it."
"You could help me if you'd rather," he said, listening to the words come out of his mouth and wondering what in the hell he was thinking. Oh, aye, that was what he wanted?to be close to this woman during the day as well. Was the nighttime not torture enough?
She looked at him pityingly. "Trouble?"
"The well is a difficult case."
Her look of pity turned to one of faint alarm. "Will you manage it, or do you lack the skill?"
"Ah?"
"We can find other horses," she said, though it sounded as if that might be a last resort in her mind. "We must have steeds, I daresay, but perhaps these are too far above us."
Miach wanted to tell her that he could have sweetened every spring within a hundred leagues of Angesand with a single spell, sweetened them so that everyone would look for bitter greens to soak in their cups before they dared sip the water. All it would have taken was one spell.
But it would have been a mighty spell and anyone with any magic in their veins would have felt tremors from it and known he was responsible for it.
It also might have put him in bed for a week.
And that would have meant he couldn't drag out those days that led to nights sleeping?and generally not sleeping?next to a woman whom he couldn't seem to stop looking at even when the light was so poor it was painful to attempt.
"I'll manage it," he said roughly.
"You're fretting overmuch," she said, peering at him. "Your eyes are quite red. Are you not sleeping? "
"I'm sleeping." And he was. After he had spent most of each night filling in the breeching of his spells.
"Stop worrying," she said. "Do your best. I'll expend more effort in the lists and woo Hearn with the improvement in his garrison."
"If you expend more effort in the lists," Miach said faintly, "you'll kill his garrison and then he most certainly will not give us any horses. "
She looked at him in shock, then a faint smile crossed her features.
"Is that a compliment?"
"It might be."
She frowned. "Your brother is not so free with them. Did your mother teach him nothing?"
"My brother is not a good learner," Miach said, still struggling with the sight of Morgan's smile.
She yawned. "Perhaps you can advise him."
To what? Fall upon his sword? Return home by the swiftest route? Hold his breath while Miach turned him into a mushroom? The possibilities were so endless and so appealing to contemplate that he hadn't finished examining but the beginning of them before he realized that Morgan had put her head down on her cloak as her pillow and fallen asleep.
A clear conscience aided one in that endeavor, obviously.
Miach spread his cloak over her, then sat and watched her in the faintness of the light from below. He wondered why in the world he was bothering to work for a horse for himself. He had no intention of remaining with the company. There was no reason to do so, certainly no reason that might include a fierce shieldmaiden with eyes as green as Lake Camanaë and a smile as rare and lovely as thekílawho sang only in the bows of the rowans that encircled the elven palace of Ainneamh.
