“So dire as this?”
Mayhap not. The skirmishes in which he’d engaged had resulted in slashes and glancing blows only.
But he did not want her to worry.
He tipped up her chin with a finger and gazed into her eyes. “I will be well,alanna.”
The breath hitched in her throat. “I canna lose ye. I do not know how I could go on.”
“Ye will not lose me. Am I not right here?”
He kissed her because he could do nothing else, and felt some of her fear and tension drain away.
“Do not fret over it,” he told her when the kiss ended. “Am I not already better than I was?” More likely, he thought, to worry about what would become of them out here in the wild.
This land, so unlike the one he loved back home, that wanted to whisper to him.
“Aye,” she sighed. “Ye be young and strong. Nay need to think the worst.”
“Which direction do we head today?”
“East,” she said without hesitation.
That gave him a qualm. “Farther away from the coast?” Into Alba’s dark heart.
“Aye, for we canna go home yet. And northward lie Mican’s lands. We dare not intrude upon him. I thought if we travel inland and circle back toward the south—the chief who holds lands there is neither friendly nor hostile to Kendrick. We might be able to go home that way. But no’ yet.”
He must leave this in her hands. He must trust her even as he trusted these bonds that united them.
They divided their meal into three strictly equal portions and moved out after making sure the fire was covered with dirt. The mist cloaked them as they skirted the bulk of the mountain and crossed the rill. It swallowed them as they picked their way steadily eastward.
A magnificent sight met them when the sun rose and set the mist aflame. They rode into a great, white-gold sea of light. To Adair, it felt like moving through a magical doorway into another realm.
Another world.
Someone should make a song about it, he thought as his pony followed Bradana’s. She should, and play it upon her harp. Though no listener in any hall would believe such a tale of travelers transported from one world to the next, no matter how skilled the bard’s words and fingers.
The mist rose before the sun, trailing streamers upward, revealing a scene of such beauty that it made the breath catch in Adair’s throat. Below them, far below, lay a glen. The green, shaggy shoulders of the mountains stretched away, following the path of a long, silvery loch that seemed to beckon into infinity. A thousand colors of green there were, all light and darkness, and wild to the heart.
Would this foreign land be kind of them? Already it had guided Adair to the greatest gift a man might receive. And a load of trouble.
He let his gaze rest on the hair, honey fair in the new light, of the girl who rode ahead of him. What he felt for her both sustained and terrified him.
Pray, be good to her, he beseeched the wild, eternal land,if not to me.
*
For three daysthey traveled east and then northward, their way south being blocked by a series of long glens. Wen kept them fed. Sometimes the food proved barely palatable, a mangled bird caught by a wing or a limp-necked rodent. Sometimes they dared not have a fire and Bradana nearly choked on the raw game. She remained grateful for every bite.
Adair had placed his life and safety in her hands. She could not fail him. This, despite the fact that she knew not precisely where they were, nor how far they had gone from home. Nor could she tell if they were being followed, though she doubted it.
Who would come after them? Kendrick? Would he send her brothers?
More likely Mican would pursue them out of a desire for revenge. He had been very angry. Not the sort of man to let the death of a son go unanswered.
She thought much on that as they rode into a land big and wild enough to engulf them. It had been a fair fight, that in which Adair had felled Earrach. Everyone there had seen so.
Would that matter to Mican? Quite likely not. She might eventually be able to argue it to Kendrick when they went back.
