She had few choices. Beauly was only an option if she could reach Ruari without being seen. How would Fergus make the ride there? With an arrow deeply imbedded in him and riding with the pounding of Skye’s hooves would jar his body and perhaps kill him.
Above the shabby roof, the wind howled like hungry wolves and the air growing cold. She shivered, glanced around her, warmed her hands over the fire, and when a branch broke in the wind and fell to the roof above her, she wrapped her arms around herself. There was also another problem: she had no idea what had transpired once she left the priory…or how Montrose had left things.
His image came into her mind and she felt something deep and sorrowful. She closed her eyes and willed his image away, while in her heart she wanted him there at her side, knowing with a surety that he would save Fergus…that he would save her. For the first time in her life, she understood the value of a man’s protection.
Had she grown so used to looking out for herself that she was blind to what other choices she might be given? To have the refuge and safe shelter of someone whose duty was only watch and guard her was a gift she had never known she desired, and something she had run from.
Now, as she sat alone in the shed, she regretted some part of running away from him. From her earliest memory she had been her own keeper, since her brothers doted on her, and she usuallymanaged to get them to do what she wanted…even steal. Her brothers were just that, not a father really, but her brothers, and their adventures together were larks and exciting and somehow more like children’s play than the reality of the laws they had been breaking, the risks they took, and the consequences they could face.
Hidey ho! They were a pack of thieves…even Fergus she thought miserably.
She glanced down at him. Poachers were hung for stealing less than a chicken, for snaring a scrawny wild hare in the distant woods. Would the guards let it be, or even in the wind and darkness would they search them out? She had no answers and watched the rise and fall of her hound’s chest.
For him could she sneak back into the priory and trust the monks? How could she help him here, inside this shed? For how long would they be safe here?
She would ask herself these questions again and again, chew on her guilt and more while she fed Fergus small bits of roasted chicken, which he ate slowly with large sad eyes. He lapped up some of the willow bark tea and soon he was breathing quietly and looked to be asleep.
After eating some of the chicken, she sat alone by the small fire, knees hugged to her chest as the huge trees outside creaked ominously in the wild winds, while she felt even more alone and frightened and miserable. Glenna cried so hard her eyes burned like fire and finally, when her chest stopped hiccupping, when her eyes could hardly produce anymore tears, she pulled her cloak more tightly around her and tied her hat down so it covered her cold ears, and she lay down, her hand on Fergus’ neck to feel his reassuring heartbeat.
Soon she closed her burning eyes and tried to forget for a moment how terrified she was, and exhausted, she fell fast asleep.
The dream was back--therook flying in the blue skies. Feathers black as night shone and caught the sunlight, glistening, beautiful and free above moors that were the bruised and purple color of a sunrise at dawn, and she flew higher and higher, aloft in the warm summer air, wheeling to the sweet sound of a minstrel’s song, singing the tale of a great and magical love, of a brave and valiant king and his beautiful Norse queen.
With a suddenness of the blink of an eye, the sky turned gray and the winds blew in winter, clouds rimed in ice and with almost black edges, wind that cut like ice made flying through the air more strained and difficult. Snow fell like downy feathers and the black rook could feel the flakes begin to coat and weigh down her wings.
She flew lower and lower, gliding down into the thick forest trees, past the tall larches and firs to where flames in a clearing suddenly shot high and sent her soaring up and up, far and away from the smoke and the flames, back into the icy storm, back to where her wings again caught the snowflakes even though the sun still shone.
Summer was blue and golden and just ahead of her…if only she could fly faster. If only the ice would melt. If only she could keep flying away.
She soared above the high nests of other birds, above where grass as green as spring covered the ground and could silence the footsteps of anything smaller than a great war horse.
From above her came the call, “Kee-oo, kee-oo!” A hawk bore down upon her, determined, brown and black and white, feathers wide and striped like enemy banners, flying faster than her smaller wings would allow, and she dove and wove and spun in and around the sky, yet the hawk flew back, kept coming, almost at her tail, and he lunged at her.
She spun downwards, flying straight down…down… towards the silvery lake below, surrounded by thick, green bushes lined with deep red roses and where a beautiful white swan wearing a golden collar cut languorously across the peaceful waters.
The rook called out and the hawk shrieked his deadly call, diving closer, and the swan looked into the deep blue skies above her, and seeing the poor and frantic rook, she drew her long neck up and opened her wings wide and grandly, almost standing on the water, and the rook swooped down under the swan’s wing, taking shelter as the swan lowered her grand wings, one cradling the black rook next to her downy body and safe from the claws of the deadly hawk.
Heart beating hard and frighteningly, Glenna’s eyes shot open, unseeing, her breath still caught in her chest, her blood racing, sweat beading on her brow. The dream had come back, the same dream….
She moaned slightly and blinked.
Before her eyes, in the dim light of the coals, a large pair of dark boots stood planted firmly apart and were cast in red from the glow of the fire. A shining, deadly sword tip lowered into her line of vision, stopping barely a palm’s breadth away from her nose.
18
Fergus gave a low growl, tried to rise on his weak legs, but yelped pitiably and sagged back on the ground, still emitting a long, feral growl. She was too frightened to move and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Overhead the wind began to howl and the trees creaked and rocked. Red coals from the dying fire cast the sword tip before her eyes as deep a red as the fires of hell, and Glenna looked up slowly along the length of the sword’s blood gutter.
Above her, his teeth shone white in the dark and the sudden flare of a torch limned him from behind. He moved the sword tip to her neck and pressed hard enough that she dared not move and barely breathed.
“I could kill you here and now,” he said, and she felt the tip cut slightly.
She stifled a cry.
Someone waved another torch and a pair of bats shrieked and flew down from the roof, drifted menacingly over the heads of the men then out the wide open door. Torchlight hit his face. Above her stood the devil himself, the one man she never wanted to see again. Looking down at her was the deadly, cruel face of Munro the Horrible.
“You are a fool, poaching from the manor of the sheriff?” he said.
She was frozen in terror, but desperately tried not to show it.
