So perilous was love.
He could not doubt that she loved him, this woman made up of half beauty and half courage. No doubt that he loved her. Whatever bound them one to the other had been strengthened when they made love last night. Bound to one another tight.
He understood full well why she’d been unable to go to another man.
The world—their world—would not understand it. Nor why he’d slain that man for her sake.
As they started off, their two ponies with Wen alongside heading for the wooded slope above the settlement, he wondered if there was anything he would not do for her sake.
Back there facing Earrach, he’d been willing to die for her. He must now live for her. Was bending his honor any more difficult?
Still, he did not like it, and he glanced back toward the settlement as they climbed the slope of the land, all laid out behind him. He could see his own small boat hauled up on the shore, and hoped Nolan and Flynn would follow his instructions and leave.
In front of the hall the wedding guests still gathered, looking like so many dark blots—perhaps insects. Even as he watched, the blots broke apart and began to spread out.
Discussion over. Would pursuit be far behind?
“As soon as we are safe awa’,” Bradana said, “we will stop and look at your shoulder. I have bandages in my pack. Is it bleeding much?”
It was. The right side of his tunic was heavy with wet. He could smell his own blood. “I do not know.”
“We will camp a couple nights and then, once tempers ha’ cooled and perhaps Mican has left, we will go back, if ye want.”
He did want. He’d been taught to stand on his feet and face his actions.
Yet he could hear the terror still in her voice, and when she glanced at him, he could see it in her eyes.
Spending a few nights out on the land was no great matter. He had done so often enough with friends, back home in Erin.
But this was not Erin, the land he knew and loved. It was Alba, deep and dark, dangerous at its heart. A place where the trees whispered and deer gave a man his direction. Where he might lose himself.
Would this place that was not his own accept him? Reject him?
Bradana led the way, her cream-colored pony eager enough to be away. His own mount followed hers, and Wen gamboled alongside. The trees closed around them, and all too soon, just as when Toren and Kerr had taken him hunting, he could no longer glimpse the sea. So fully did Alba swallow them up.
For some distance, they rode in silence. It felt strange and isolated, not knowing what happened behind them. When they came to a small stream, Bradana halted her pony and swung down.
“Here is a good place. Sit there.” She pointed to a flat rock. “Let me look at ye.”
Adair dismounted, his every muscle screaming in protest. A score of scrapes and bruises had he collected during that battle. Only the one at the shoulder worried him. The steady pain there had passed into numbness. He could barely feel his right arm.
Bradana went down on her knees beside him, bringing her face close. He watched her as she pulled the sodden cloth away from his skin to expose the wound, and he traced the movement of emotions across her face.
Distress. Worry. Terror.
Her eyes came up, wide, blue, and bottomless, to meet his. “’Tis bad, this.”
“Aye.” He knew it.
“Ye have lost much blood.”
Dispassionately, he looked down at himself. Earrach’s blade—the tip of it—had caught him as he turned. His own movement had torn the flesh, removed a chunk of skin and muscle the size of his fist. If that blade had caught a vital blood vessel, he could well bleed to death.
But…
“’Tis slowing now,” he told her.
“Ye think so?”
