“I do no’ want to go that way,” she breathed. “Father north.”
“We cannot go south.” He indicated the steep drop.
“And we canna continue east.” She bit her lip.
“Surely we are far past Mican’s lands.”
Clear worry showed in her eyes. “We should be. The last thing I want to do is lead ye into trouble.”
“Let us circle north a distance and ye can correct again.”
“Aye.”
She remounted and they rode on, choosing a stony route up and over the flank of the mountain. It eventually offered them a splendid view of what lay to the east in a pocket on the side of the hill—a large settlement with a round tower at its head, cook fires emitting lazy smoke into the clear air.
A narrow escape.
Bradana seemed more vigilant after that. She led him cautiously and sent Wen ahead to scout often.
Not till that night, when they lay together in their blanket, did she speak of it.
“I nearly blundered back there today.” They lay as close to one another as they could get, holding hands, and she spoke in his ear. It grew chilly out on the open land at night, though it did not become truly dark at this time of year. They dared not have a fire. “What if I’d led us right up onto that settlement? If one of their scouts had seen us?”
“What d’ye think they would do to us, these blue men?”
“I hate to think.” She moved uneasily and squeezed his fingers. “Kendrick and the other Dalriadan chiefs have been fighting them as long as I can remember. They would know us by our clothing, our ponies. Our weapons. They hate our kind. I fear…”
He did not press her on it. He could feel her apprehension as if it transferred from her body to his.
He said, “We must have passed beyond the bounds of Dalriada.”
“Dalriada has no proper bounds. The Erin chiefs, like Kendrick, push it ever eastward. The blue men push back. Once, all this land was theirs.”
“Ye cannot blame them.”
“Nay. I was born in the north—the granddaughter of another such chief. My mother’s sire. He held—holds—territory some distance beyond Mican’s.”
“Ye have people there still?”
“I do. My mother was already a widow when she met Kendrick at a gathering o’ the Dalriadan chiefs. They discussed means o’ uniting to fight the blue men through alliances and such. Even then, the wise men among them preached o’ marriage alliances.
“But that was no’ why Kendrick and Mother married. He was besotted from the moment he saw her.”
“Aye,” Adair said softly. At one time, he might have scoffed at such a notion. Now he understood what could draw two people together. “Ye must ha’ been very small.”
“I was. Even then, I did no’ want to leave home. I loved that land where the sea—the far sea, I used to call it—came up to woo the rocks, and the hills towered over. Giving dreams, I thought they did.”
“Giving dreams?”
She turned to him in the cocoon of the blanket, so close they might have kissed. “Ye will think me mad.”
“Never.”
“I used to dream o’ ye. Well, no’ o’ ye so much. I did no’ see your face.” She touched his cheek where the beard had now grown in, for he had no razor. “’Twas more thefeelo’ ye I felt in the dreams. I imagined ye were there somewhere up in the dark hills. But ’twas fancy only and I did no’ truly believe in it. Nor that one day ye would come for me bringing… Well, I ha’ no words for it.”
“Nay.” There were no words for what they felt, the one for the other.
“’Twas as if,” she whispered, “I had a memory o’ ye, even though I did no’ know ye yet.”
