Except now he knew. The future. London. Brian. The fire brigade. The brooch. The impossible distance between the year I had left and the year where he stood. And somehow, he believed me. That thought had kept me awake for most of the night.
“Darcy?”
I jumped, sloshing pottage over my hand.
Gilda smiled. “Very graceful.”
Her smile widened, but before she could make whatever filthy observation about Wulfric that was clearly preparing to leave her mouth, a shout came from beyond the western edge of camp.
“Fire!”
Every part of me changed. One moment I was standing beside a pot, irritated with Gilda and trying not to watch Wulfricfrom across the clearing, and the next the world narrowed into wind, fuel, distance, and people.
I dropped the ladle.
“Where?”
A boy came running between the shelters, face white. “The western wood. Smoke beyond the ridge.”
Wulfric was already moving. Whatever lay between us could wait, the fire couldn’t. We climbed the western ridge at a run, Godwin and six others following with axes, hooks, blankets, and leather buckets. Frost cracked beneath our boots where the ground remained shaded, but the air changed before we reached the top, losing the clean bite of morning as smoke settled against my tongue and I stopped.
Wulfric turned sharply. “What is it?”
I lifted one hand. “Wait.”
The wind came from behind us, cold against my damp hair, while beyond the ridge a gray-brown column of smoke rose above the trees and flattened eastward.
Toward camp.
My stomach dropped.
“How far?” Wulfric asked.
“Not far enough.”
We reached the crest, and the forest below us came into view. Flames crawled through bracken and dead leaves, not high yet, except where they caught fallen branches and climbed in sudden bright bursts. Men moved beyond the smoke, small figures among the trees, running toward the north.
“Soldiers,” Godwin said.
“Normans?” one of the men asked.
“Mayhap,” Wulfric said. “Mayhap Saxons fleeing them.”
The ground had been wet for days, but the wind was rising, and beneath the living trees lay weeks of fallen leaves, dry twigssheltered from the rain, dead bracken, and branches that would burn once enough heat reached them.
Fire didn’t care who won England, it only cared what would feed it.
“We need everyone moving,” I said. “Now.”
Wulfric looked down the slope, reading the land.
“The stream bends south of camp.”
“Good.”
“There is another beyond the eastern ridge, deeper and wider.”
“How far?”
