“Get Wen away. Quick as ye can.” Because he knew she would not agree to go without him, even for the hound’s sake, he added, “I will delay them and catch up wi’ ye.” Five men, for he’d now had time to count them. Six horses. Could he take them all? He was, aye, good with a sword, but the odds predicted doom.
The decision was taken out of Bradana’s hands when Mican shouted, “Get them!”
The party rushed Adair in a group, the man who led the pony dropping its traces. He heard Bradana wheel behind him and Wen leaping into the fray, snarling and snapping at the MacGillean horses. The men had drawn their knives—long hunting knives—but Adair went in whirling his sword around his head.
This was no battle pony he rode, but one who’d existed too long on short rations. It balked at moving in close upon its fellows, which probably saved Mican from losing his head. Adair got a good look at the man’s face, twisted with hate and wearing an ugly grimace.
“Bradana, go! Call off Wen!” For Adair had a premonition that the hound was about to die, either beneath the hooves of the ponies or by arrow, as the men had fallen back from Adair’s fury and lifted their bows.
“Wen,” she called. And with stark terror, “Adair!”
One of the young men in the party had pressed forward past Mican and lunged at Adair with his long knife. Adair laid the man’s arm open and glanced over his shoulder at Bradana.
She did not flee. She would not go without him.
He fell back and turned his mount, the poor beast stamping in confusion. He told Wen, “Come.”
They fled into the forest, back the way they had come, and Mican’s hunting party came after. Adair could hear them all too well, shouting and crashing through the undergrowth, Mican yelling at his men, “Shoot fire upon them!” Arrows darted through the trees and Adair veered away from Bradana, off to one side. If the hunters meant to take anyone down, it would be him.
It might have been the trees that saved them. Their mounts were in poor condition and soon spent, but no one could move quickly through such thick cover, and the three of them began to gain ground. Adair could just glimpse Bradana to his right, with Wen, a gray shadow, at her side.
Then came a yelp. From the edge of his vision, Adair saw the hound falter and go down.
“Wen!” Bradana howled.
Och, by all the gods, nay.
Adair drew his pony up and leaped down. Bradana had stopped also, staring at Wen—who lay stretched on the ground—in horror. The shaft of an arrow protruded from the hound’s right rear haunch.
A shout from behind proved their pursuers had seen them. “Down,” Adair told Bradana. “Get down.” His own pony was not near enough, and they had not a moment to waste.
She obeyed, her eyes fixed on her hound, even as Adair stretched his ears behind them. He heaved Wen up in his arms and draped him over the back of Bradana’s pony, which stood like a rock, too tired to do differently.
“Come,” he told her. “Quick.” His own mount even now picked its way to him. He seized the lead and told Bradana again, “Come—there, where the trees are thickest.”
They went at a dead run, Bradana ahead of Adair with one hand on her hound’s hide. She heeded not Adair’s muffled grunt when a second arrow, as well aimed as the one that had found Wen, took him in the back of his shoulder, the pain so hot and strong that for a moment he saw only light. He dared not make another sound and delay Bradana. Because ahead, to their left, Alba offered dense cover that seemed to part ahead of them and close behind, like sheltering arms.
Too late, for the damage was done.
They stopped perforce when Wen began to slide from Bradana’s pony.
Somehow, before he could reach them, Bradana got the hound down, though he must weigh near as much as she. Tears streamed down her face unheeded as she fell to her knees beside the animal. She did no more than glance at Adair.
“My fault,” she was sobbing. “All my—”
“Bradana, it is not.”
“I must have led us too far west. We are too close to the ocean. We are on Mican’s lands.”
“’Tis not a fatal wound.” Though whether the hound would be able to run…
Adair fell to his knees beside Bradana. Sometime during the last part of their flight, the shaft of the arrow in his shoulder had broken off against an overhanging limb. He remembered that pain as bright as the first. When she glanced at him now through her tears, she did not mark the injury.
Yet something in his face must have alerted her, for she stopped weeping abruptly, and her gaze moved to the patch of red spreading across his tunic.
“Adair! By the gods!”
“Hush,” he told her. “Silent as a hare. They are still out there, looking.”
