Page 28 of The Shape of Silence

This twisted his expression further. “Left? Where would I go?” he snapped. “I struggled to retrace our steps from yesterday. Jesu,” he cursed, blowing out a slow breath, “and again could scarcely manage that.”

And Avery understood then that he was not angry with her so much as he was annoyed with himself and his limitations, shaped by a slower than hoped-for recovery. She recalled that about the man, on the few occasions when he’d been injured—he, too, had allowed himself no grace at all, no time for his body to heal, had pushed himself unnecessarily.

Morggán shifted his weight, and this time the effort showed, in a faint tightening at the corner of his mouth. His hand pressed briefly—almost absently—against his side where his ribs had been struck.

“But why did you walk where we had gone yesterday?” she asked.

His answer was preceded by a sigh. “I wanted to see from the ridge again, to know if those same fires were lit,” he said. “Or if they’d moved.”

“Did they?”

“Nae, they remain.”

“What does that mean?”

He glanced around then, seeming to take in his surroundings now for the first time, the loch itself, her dirty waiting laundry at the shore, and the clean drying items just behind Avery.

“Could mean several things,” he informed her, settling his hands on his hips. “Waiting on units or an entire army—might be a staging area. Holding while the wounded are tended and mended. Might be waiting on communication.”

“But...they won’t come here? Into the forest,” she clarified. Her own frown evolved. “Are they looking for you?”

He shook his head before he answered. “Nae. I canna imagine it’s the same force we clashed with days ago.”

He stepped closer and lifted his hand toward her, the motion almost casual.

Avery stiffened at once, her shoulders drawing back though her feet remained planted.

He paused, meeting her gaze. Then, without a word, he reached a little farther and plucked a leaf from her hair, holding it up briefly so she might see that he meant no threat, but only had removed the small evidence of her passage through the trees.

He tossed the leaf aside. Avery watched it flutter and dance toward the ground, seemingly in no hurry to get there, before she swallowed and left him, returning to her laundry. She stepped back into the loch and sank to her knees with her back to him, another pair of pants in hand, aware of him still standing there, possibly watching her again with that piercing, studious regard of his.

“Ye kent I left,” he said from behind her. “And did that please ye or nae?”

Avery considered her response for a long moment, her cheeks pinkening, fighting with actual truth versus what she’d told herself in the last hour, until finally she turned her head over her shoulder. “I guess it...” she began, only to stop when she realized he’d gone, was limping through the trees away from her, little more than a shadow now.

She acknowledged the relief, for his departure now, knowing it saved her having to pretend that it made no difference that he’d stayed.

Chapter Eight

He was awakened by a firm shake of his shoulder, his mind clearing of sleep in an instant, the way years of marching had trained it to do. There was no fog, no confusion—only the immediate awareness of another presence in the room and the tension in the air that did not belong to ordinary night.

Avery stood over him, half-lost in the gray shadows, and said softly, “We have to go. Now.”

As he pushed himself upright—too quickly, paying for it with a stab of pain—she held out his sword to him. The gesture was so matter-of-fact that it struck him more than any small urgency in her voice. He took it without a word and laid it across his lap, then reached for his boots and shoved his feet into them, his movements efficient even as his side protested.

She crossed the room and tipped the bucket over the hearth. Water spilled across the banked coals, and the fire answered with a brief hiss and a curl of pale smoke before dying. Only then did Morggán become aware of the hound, standing rigid near the door, the fur along his spine lifted, a low sound working in his chest as he stared at the door as if he could see through and know what threat had roused Avery.

When Morggán rose, he recognized the saddlebag slung over Avery’s shoulder as his own as she went to the window and drew back the edge of the oil cloth, just enough to peer out. It was a small thing, the bag already attached to her person, but it told him she had not come to wake him and then would decide what to do—she had already been moving. He noticed as well that she’d attached a lead and collar to Charlie, something he’d known she possessed, but hadn’t seen her use before.

“Let’s go,” she said when she turned back to him.

Morggán adjusted the belt on his hip and moved to stand behind her. She lifted the latch without a sound, and the hound was through first, though the leash kept him from melting into the trees.

They didn’t speak as they moved, and neither did they rush. Avery set a pace that was swift without being reckless, choosing ground that would not betray them easily, moving as silently as she normally did. She didn’t cut in a straight line from the house, and Morggán understood that choice at once; straight lines invited pursuit, being easier to follow. Instead, she angled through thicker growth, stepping where old needles softened the forest floor and where stone interrupted the soil. He followed close enough to keep sight of her slight figure in the midnight forest, all the while aware of the steady pull along his ribs with each longer stride, but unwilling to let the injury slow him down or separate him from her.

The small sounds that typically filled the dark—the light stir of brush beneath critters, the fluster of things disturbed from sleep—was thinned, as their passing through pressed the life lower to the ground.

“What did ye hear?” he asked quietly, when they were far enough away from her hut and no sound of immediate pursuit chased them.