“Now, now, is Wen not better? He is near back to walking on his own.”
“And ye?”
“I am not beat yet.”
“Ye are weak fro’ hunger, as am I.”
“Whisht, Bradana. Trust Alba.” Which seemed an odd thing for him to say when he’d just been longing for Erin. “She will provide. Now.” He held her away from him a short distance. They had camped in a stony depression in the side of a glen, shelter that, aye, Alba had provided. “Will ye play for me? On your harp. The song ye made for me.”
“Someone may hear.”
“The music will be trapped here in the stone.”
She mopped her cheeks, rose and fetched the small harp, then sat back down beside him and began to play softly.
He fell into her song and, in so doing, knew it for the answer to all his longing.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The next daythey found a patch of wild currants, precious gems of red fruit. It appeared along the side of the hill they crossed, like the answer to a prayer.
The fruit was not at peak ripeness, but they ate all they could and picked the last of the fruits to take with them.
It was a gray day with a lowering, restless sky, promising rain. Wet weather had been their enemy, as they had no shelter, and Adair hoped the clouds would blow on past as they sometimes did. Alba’s weather moods proved changeable as the tides.
Not long after they found the currants, Bradana spotted another plant growing and insisted on stopping again.
“’Tis yarrow,” she told Adair. “Aye, so, the healer back home uses this for wounds and sometimes for fever. I ha’ seen him coming back to the settlement wi’ armloads o’ it. ’Twill be good for your wound.”
Alba was providing, though Adair did not point that out. He let Bradana gather the herb, uneasy at being so long out in the open on the side of the hill. They needed to move on and get beneath the cover of the trees.
No sooner had the thought come to him than a great flock of birds rose up at the near distance, taking flight and flapping directly over their heads. Adair watched them through narrowed eyes, and the urgency prodding at him sharpened.
“’Tis enough. Come,” he told Bradana.
She questioned him with her eyes but did not argue it. Not until they entered the next patch of forest did his anxiety ease, and even then he felt sure they were being followed. He could not put his finger to a sighting or a sound of pursuers, but instinct told him so. Something had caused that flock of birds to rise behind them. A disturbance of the very air.
A warning from Alba?
When Bradana began casting about, locating a place to camp for the night, he protested. “I think we should keep moving.”
“But we are weary. The ponies are weary.”
So they were. Wen had walked a short distance on his own, as had Adair, offering Bradana his place, but they all needed rest.
She seemed to spy something in his expression, and took alarm from it. “Is someone after us?”
“I’ve seen or heard no one. ’Tis but a feeling.”
“Aye.” She drew herself up. “’Tis dangerous traveling at night. There are steep drops, ravines.”
Indeed, he was coming to learn the folds in the skin of this land they crossed. Softly he said, “It may be dangerous to stop.”
She drew herself up and nodded. “Let us pause just long enough for me to clean and pack your wound, and Wen’s. I want ye to have the benefit of the yarrow.”
“Aye, but do it quickly.”
She did, mashing the plants into paste and cleaning the wounds carefully. Adair pretended he could not see her hands shaking as she packed his wound as carefully as the hound’s.
