Deryn smiled. “Easy, lass. I dinna want to have to carry ye.”
“No,” she agreed with a wry smile. “I wouldn’t want to subject you to that.”
“Mama, look! Mara likes to fetch!” Rory cried from across the glade. He and Mara were engaged in a busy game of find the stick, although that wasn’t particularly difficult for the sheepdog as Rory could only throw the stick a few feet. She seemed to be enjoying the game immensely though as she went down on her front paws, wagging her tail furiously until Rory threw the stick again.
“That’s nice, sweetie,” Maddy replied, forcing a smile. Jeez, she was exhausted. She felt like she could sleep for a week.
“Told ye she would like ye, Rory lad!” Deryn called. “Ye’ve obviously got a way with animals.”
Rory beamed at the compliment, his little face lighting with delight.
“And you’ve obviously got a way with children,” Maddy replied, giving him a lop-sided smile.
To her surprise, a flash of pain crossed Deryn’s face and he climbed hurriedly to his feet. “We canna linger here,” he said gruffly. “That guard might have recognized me. When he comes around, he’ll tell Rodric and then they’ll be after us. We have to be away from here before that happens.”
His words sent a tremor of dread through Maddy. She scrambled up and peered back the way they’d come. The tops of the castle battlements were still visible through the screen of trees, and it lay perhaps only a mile distant. Not far enough from Rodric for Maddy’s liking. She knew him. She knew howhe would react when he found her and Rory gone. He would be coming.
“You said you had somewhere safe you could take us?” she said to Deryn, hating the desperation in her voice.
He studied her a moment. “Aye, I will take ye to my farm.”
She found herself staring into those clear blue eyes. He stared right back, unblinking, and a strange sensation unwound in Maddy’s stomach. It was warm, and pleasant and wholly unexpected.
Irene MacAskill’s words suddenly rang in her head.Courage and faith and a willingness to take a leap into the unknown.
She huffed a breath and then nodded. “Thank you. I’ll figure out how to get home from there.”
Deryn called Mara to his side, Maddy took Rory’s hand, and they set off, heading uphill through the tangle of tightly packed pine-trees. Deryn set a brisk pace and they had not gone far before Rory began to struggle. Maddy picked him up and held him propped on one hip whilst she used the other to steady herself on tree branches and trunks as they scrambled uphill, keeping beneath the cover of the trees. My, he was heavy.
As they climbed, Maddy couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder. Each time she did, she expected to see Rodric’s men behind, weapons drawn and angry expressions on their faces, but the way behind remained clear and each step she took away from the castle and away fromhimlessened the anxiety just a little.
By the time they reached the top of the hill she was puffing like a bellows. Back home she went to the gym regularly and played tennis twice a week, so she considered herself reasonably fit but fighting her way uphill through a dense woodland filled with roots and uneven ground whilst carrying a four-year-old boy was a whole new level.
Deryn called a halt. Maddy put Rory down and leaned against a tree, gasping for breath.
“Do ye need to rest, lass?” Deryn asked.
She leaned over, hands on her knees, and waved away his concern. “I’m...fine...just...need...a....minute.”
They set off again, Maddy carrying Rory, Deryn and Mara striding ahead. The ground had leveled out—for which Maddy was grateful—and the pines gave way to a blanket of deciduous trees. Huge beeches, majestic oaks and ash towered over her, just beginning to come into leaf. The trail Deryn followed led through the densest part of the woods where huge, moss-covered boulders sat between the trees as though carried here eons ago by some long-vanished glacier.
It wasn’t long before Maddy was struggling again and beginning to fall behind. Deryn stopped to wait for her, Mara sitting at his heels.
“Shall I take the boy?” he asked.
Maddy opened her mouth to refuse then hesitated. Having raised him alone for the last four years, she was unused to accepting help. But she was utterly exhausted.
She nodded. “Thank you.”
The sleepy boy made no complaint as Deryn lifted him from Maddy’s arms and perched him on his shoulders, holding onto his legs to keep him steady.
After this, they made better time, and Maddy was able to walk by Deryn’s side as they wove their way through the springtime forest. It was alive with sunlight and birdsong although the ground underfoot was still boggy from yesterday’s rain.
This too soon retreated, and they entered the uplands where Maddy had first encountered Deryn yesterday. It was wild and desolate out here, with towering hills carpeted in green on either side and only the odd wind-blown tree clinging precariously tothe stones that poked through the green carpet like the bones of the Highlands.
There was not another living creature in sight except for the eagles that soared the thermals high above. How could anyone live out here? It was miles from anywhere and about as lonely a place as she could imagine.
“Where’s your farm?” she asked Deryn.
