Page 67 of The Shape of Silence

Morggán let silence reclaim the space between them after that, though unease lingered unpleasantly within him.

Lost. The word settled poorly. In fact, at first he resisted it instinctively, perhaps because it implied weakness or helplessness where he had come instead to admire her resilience. Avery had survived alone in those woods for years. She trapped and gathered and stitched wounds and weathered winters in a collapsing hut deep inside a forest most folk avoided entirely. She was most certainly not helpless.

Yet the longer he rode, the less easily he dismissed Lucas’s assessment.

Morggán found his thoughts returning unwillingly to small things he had noticed these past days: the way she measured safety always by how quickly she could regain the trees; the odd caution with which she approached open ground; the startling wonder upon her face in the meadow as though she had forgotten the world extended beyond forest shadows altogether. And there were other things besides—the strange words and references that slipped from her without thought, her manner of speaking, the unsettling certainty with which she sometimes described places and objects no one he knew had ever seen.

Aye, and then there were moments she seemed almost like a traveler from some distant shore attempting unsuccessfully to imitate the world around her. Possibly, Lucas had named the feeling beneath it correctly.

Lost—though not merely in the forest, or separated from her kin, but lost in a deeper fashion Morggán could neither properly define nor wholly understand. However, if Avery truly was lost, then some increasingly possessive part of him wondered if he shouldn’t be the person to find her.

Ahead, the forest thickened once more around the riders while morning mist still clung low amongst the roots and brush. Somewhere farther north Finlay and the trackers waited with news of the English column. Somewhere beyond them five hundred enemy soldiers dragged wagons slowly through hostile country believing perhaps that secrecy still protected them.

Yet despite the danger ahead, Morggán found his thoughts straying once more toward the clearing behind them. Toward a small rough house hidden beside the trees and the woman standing there watching him ride away. And he realized with unnerving clarity that the relief he felt this morning hadn’t been about strategy at all.

It had been relief that he did not yet need to leave her.

***

They found Finlay and the trackers shortly before midday, concealed as they were along a rocky rise overlooking a narrow stretch of forest below. The English encampment lay partially visible through the trees beyond. There was muted movement amongst dark trunks, scattered horses tethered beneath drooping pine boughs, and only wisps of smoke rising thinly enough from shielded cookfires that less experienced eyes might have passed right atop the ridge, not noticing the danger below.

Morggán slid from the saddle and crouched beside Finlay without a word. Lucas joined him a moment later while the remaining riders stayed farther back amongst the trees holding the horses quiet.

Finlay pointed downslope. “Rear company.” His voice barely carried above the wind moving through the branches overhead. “Near a hundred men mayhap. Mostly infantry guarding the last supply wagons. Main force stretches another quarter mile northward.”

Morggán studied the position carefully. The English had chosen poorly, clustering too tightly amongst the trees where narrow ground and heavy wagons restricted movement. Horses crowded together beside the lower slope. Several supply carts remained half sunk in softened earth from earlier efforts to drag them through the boglands northward.

And while they watched in silence for several long minutes to understand completely, and miss nothing, it seemed to Morggán that discipline had loosened. Some men rested while others supped. A handful had removed helmets entirely. One wagon stood open while a pair of soldiers argued over sacks of grain nearby. There didn’t seem to be anyone watching for the approach of others.

Lucas saw it too. “I always appreciate a disorganized enemy,” he murmured.

“Aye.” Morggán’s gaze moved through the trees and the camp once more. “They must imagine the forest hides them.”

Lucas glanced past Finlay to Morggán, suggesting, “Strike fast enough, and the front will nae be able to assemble before we’re gone.”

Morggán nodded. No grand strategy was required here. Only speed and violence.

“And the wagons?” Airril asked quietly behind them.

“Set them ablaze,” Morggán decided. “They’d only slow us down.”

Lucas concurred with a nod, examining the trees below.

Orders spread swiftly, still quietly, through the mounted Scots waiting amongst the trees above. Men loosened swords, checked bowstrings, shifted shields from saddle to arm.

Morggán mounted again and drew his sword slowly free. The familiar weight settled comfortably into his hand. Beneath him the gelding tossed its head once, sensing what approached.

Then Lucas lifted one hand sharply.

The riders descended through the trees almost soundlessly at first.

The English below scarcely understood what was happening until the first arrows struck. One man pitched sideways immediately from beside the wagons with a shaft buried through his throat while another screamed as a horse collapsed atop him in the mud. Then the Scots were amongst them fully.

Chaos erupted.

Morggán’s horse crashed through the outer edge of the encampment just behind Lucas’s own mount. English soldiers lunged for weapons too late while frightened horses screamed and strained against their tether lines. Morggán cut the first man across the face before the fellow had fully risen from beside a cookfire, wheeled sharply between two wagons, then drove his sword into another soldier attempting to rally men near the rear supply carts.

The fighting never properly formed into battle, but then, that was the point.