“Byshe, do ye mean the horse or Senga?” Brendan countered with a grin.
Noah snorted, shaking his head. “Both, I suppose.”
He darted forward, slicing his wooden sword in a low sweep. In a real battle, such a move could disembowel an opponent. In practice, however, Brendan neatly parried it and jumped back to safety.
“I imagine ye know this already,” Brendan added, “but I know that ye and Senga were once close. Freya told me. It’s a messy business by the sounds of it.”
Noah’s ears rang. He misstepped and received a glancing blow to his knee from Brendan. He darted back, cursing. In a real battle, that blow might have severed his leg or at least taken a bite out of his thigh.
Sloppy, lad, sloppy.
“I don’t blame Senga for what happened,” Noah responded tightly. “Not anymore, at least. She was young and impressionable. But that’s not to say I have to forgive her for betraying me.”
“Betraying ye?” Brendon echoed, tilting his head. “What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter what happened. The old Noah is long dead.”
Brendon scoffed. He wasn’t a lover of metaphorical talking.
“Dead? Ye don’t look dead to me.”
Noah was rapidly tiring of this conversation. He took a step back and let his sword point drop. That was a sign that the fight should stop, at least between him and his friend.
Brendan paused, eyes narrowing, as if he suspected a trick. Well, maybe he did. They’d sparred for years, for longer than Noah could remember, and over those years they’d lost and won battles in equal measure.
In fact, Noah could remember when they had first begun to spar as a way of practicing their newfound skills, inching around each other nervously, always thinking about their footwork.
Now, they flew around like avenging angels, quick as lightning and twice as vicious.
Not today, though. Noah tossed aside his wooden practice sword, and a moment later, Brendan did the same.
“Forgive me,” Noah mumbled. “I’m not myself today.”
Brendan slapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. “Never mind, lad. Never mind.”
Noah wished he hadn’t done that. He had slapped his bad arm, the one bandaged and still bleeding at times, and pain shot through his whole shoulder. He was forced to grit his teeth against the pain. If Freya had been here, she would have noticed. There was little she did not seem to notice.
But Freya wasn’t there, and Brendan didn’t seem to notice Noah’s flinch.
“My advice is to make up with wee Senga,” Brendan said with a sigh. “Freya wants Senga to stay, to manage our infirmary, so she could be around for a while.”
Noah smiled weakly. He didn’t have the strength to tell Brendan the whole, awful story. It would make him think poorly of Senga. He guessed that she hadn’t told Freya the truth, or at least, not all of it.
He didn’twantSenga to be ostracized. It was all so long ago.
I wish I could turn off my heart around her, though.
“I taught her how to ride a horse, ye know,” Noah said aloud.
Brendan glanced at him, lifting his eyebrows inquisitively. “Oh, aye?”
“Aye. Her father was a fool. He wanted a son but only ever managed to produce one daughter. He had several Lady Murrays, I think, and since he only had one child, I’d guess that the problem was with him and not with his wives. Like most men, he couldn’t believe it, though, and kept convincing himself that he’d produce a bouncing baby boy at any moment.
He seemed to try to forget about Senga altogether. When she turned sixteen, it was as if he suddenly remembered that she’d been taught nothing about the world around her and decided that she should learn to ride. Of course, he just plonked her on a saddle one day, slapped the horse’s rump, and watched her go.”
Brendan winced. “That’s not the way to do it.”
“Nay, it’s not. My father was a horse breeder. I was employed by Murray in the stables because of that and trained with the guards after he died. I was out, attending to the horses and I saw this horse trotting frantically through the courtyard, with poor Senga on its back, hanging on for dear life. Well, they’d not even put her feet into the stirrups. She was bouncing up and down, eyes full of panic, and I saw at once that she was going to fall. I rushed forward and caught her in my arms before she could hit the cobbles.”
