She raised her chin and scowled at him.
He scowled back. “Your dog is gone,” he said sharply, almost shouting before he turned around and rode harder than before.
“Fergus!” she called out, urging Skye forward. “He is notDog!” She would keep up with him if it killed her. He could not ever accuse her of holding them back. And she raised her voice as loud as she could and shouted, “His name isFergus!”
Her words echoed back, sounding hollow and distant and dying.
Night was chasing them, turning the skies a deep purple as the stars began to shine in the clear sky, and the moon rose huge and bright from the east. They dodged hart and hare that came out in the dusk and soon they neared a wide rushing river. When he finally reined in, they had ridden inside yet another forest flanking the river and to a small spot where darkness was beginning to fall through the leaves. There had not been another civil word between them, and she was fine with the heavy silence. She would be fine if the oaf never spoke to her again. At least that was what she told herself.
The night was calm and the air still; it tasted clean, of pine and moss and rushing water. The trees were tall and she spotted flat rock ledges between the openings in the trees. He reined in when they came to a glade, where moonlight lit the grasses on the ground and the sound of the river was loud. She could see its lush and rocky banks were barely a fathom away.
He dismounted and began to remove his satchel and bags so she swung down from the saddle as if her legs were not jelly and her body not numb. She was determined he would not see any weakness from her. No more tears.
Montrose turned and casually tossed the water skins at her feet.
She stared at them. Surely he did not just throw them at her? She opened her mouth intending to voice a series of cutting words for him, but she snapped it close. She would bite his head off and what good would that do? And she was weary of arguing, weary of crying, weary of the loud, shrewish voice that sounded as if it belonged to someone else—someone she didn’t know and someone unlikable--and she was weary of hiding her tiredness and feelings…she was just plain weary.
“You can fill those skins at the river,” he said matter-of-factly and without a single glance in her direction.
Over the river, the moon shone as bright as a lantern, thewater gleaming silver and rippling with a swift current flowing away and down a slight rise to rush over rocks and grow wider before it disappeared into the dark, sawtooth outline of tall trees. It was the kind of river filled with fish and ran clear and down in falls from the high granite cliffs. That he had happened to stop here was sheer blind luck, she told herself.
“The water is easier to reach down the lower bank, over there by the big tree.”
What was it about men that made them think they knew the lay of every thin plot of land, even a strange river bank in unfamiliar woods?
Once, when Alastair had sold three prime horses to the son of a Norse earl with holdings in the northern borders, she had spent a miserable half a day in the pouring rain and hail following Elgin in circles because he said he knew where he was going. Had she not found a road and stopped a passing carter to ask the way of things, they might still, two years later, be riding in useless, cold and muddy circles.
Ignoring Montrose, she silently tossed her saddle bag and blanket on the grassy ground, then removed her woolen cloak and made absolutely no attempt to bend down and pick up the skins.
Throw water skins at me and blurt out commands as if I am his lackey.
When she turned, she found him looking pointedly at the skins and back to her. She gave him what she felt was a scathing look of disdain.
She did not like the smile that teased his mouth; it showed a dimple in his right cheek. She did not believe ogres had dimples when they smiled.
He was shaking his head. “You might not feel or think of yourself as being born of royal blood, Glenna, but that look down you just gave me, down your noble little nose, is more proof than any decree or document or witness. Trust me, you are your father’s daughter.”
She did not know whether she should feel happy or angry, so she kicked one of the skins with the toe of her boot.
“Do not take your foolish anger out---“
But before he could finish reprimanding her, she kicked the skin up in the air like the finest of jugglers—she’d learned the trick from one--caught it, then turned her back and with her heel kicked the other skin backwards into the air and spun around and caught it, too. Tucking the skins under her arms with a smug smile, she walked past him, her head held regally high.
Lyall walkedtoward the fire pit he’d dug and dropped an armful of wood into its center, and dusted off his vest and tunic. Odd how he had realized for the first time that his walk was different here, on this ground of his childhood, his step lighter, natural and less careful than when he walked upon land elsewhere, where a man had to watch his step because he knew not what he would face next, and because his heart held no bond to those soils, no familiar scent or comfort, no knowledge of those places, just instinct to protect him from the unknown.
Outside of Dunkeldon, he felt forever like a stranger in a foreign land.
But here, for a time, his youth had been idyllic, growing up in the warm, lactescent breast of Dunkeldon, where the castle had sat upon its motte like a giant game piece, facing the road that led to its gates, surrounded by a velvet green robe of a forest with trees so tall and full of majesty they became the giant warriors he fought in his child’s mind—the enemy he vanquished in his youthful dreams toward greatness. He was shaped by this plot of land, the forest and the ever-changing river, where trout sought him out and salmon leapt into his hands, where a tree cradled him as he dreamt the dreams of young lads who believed in the existence of honor in men.
High in the treetops, the wind sang it’s languid, plaintivesong and overhead the stars were beginning to shine as the sky grew into the deepest purple. If he were a lad, he might still believe in the magic of this place.
The night was unusually bright. A misty ring hung around the full moon; it would be cold tonight. Odd, he thought, the things that stick with one long after they should be forgotten.
His mind went back in time to when his father told him about moon rings and the weather—and how much more he had learned that single night. They had been standing together on the roof watch of Dunkelden, his father’s hands secure on his shoulders, making him feel safe even when the drop was dizzying and the ground looking far, far below. Lyall never liked heights. When Malcolm would dance over the walks along the guard walls, Lyall seldom followed. He preferred his feet to be flat on the hard ground.
That singular night, his father had shown Lyall each of the distant borders of their land. The misty ring legend originated from Ewan’s father, who first told it to his son on a cool, autumn night long ago and Ewan passed it on to Malcolm, and then to Lyall, those stories handed down through the male line.
His grandfather Robert had been a mariner who traversed the seas and rode with other men into Outremer, and who came home to lands that were dowered to him when he married the youngest daughter of one of the old Celtic earls. Lyall never knew his grandfather, who died before he was born. He had only his father’s stories and Malcolm’s thin memories of a large man with golden hair and a laugh that echoed in the rafters of the greatest halls.
