Again he assessed his situation. He wore a pack, though its contents rattled every time he moved, a fact that caused him a measure of grief he did not comprehend. The dead men surrounding him all bore weapons. He put his sword into its scabbard and without real intention searched the dead men. One had a pack with a few coins, which he took. Another a small store of food, which he also took, along with a good knife. Two knives—one for his belt and one for his boot.
Not very honorable, stealing from dead men, but he needed the means to get home. Had he not promised to return to her? In the confusion of his mind, only that promise remained.
When he bent to search the dead men, he grew so dizzy he thought he’d fall. His searching fingers found a great, bloody lump atthe back of his head—surely he’d struck it on a rock when the big brute knocked him down.
That was why he could not remember. It would come back to him.
He had to take great gulps of air in order to stay on his feet. Men still streamed past him. He supposed he should take the same route, since it was away.
He set out for home, though he did not at once know where that lay.
*
He slept beneatha tangle of gorse that night, if sleeping it could be called. He seemed rather to slip in and out of consciousness, shivering in the cold, for he was soaking wet. When morning came, he ate some of the slain man’s food—not a lot, for his stomach rebelled over it—and drank from a stream. Moved off with the rising sun at his back.
Why west? He did not know and merely followed instinct.
When he heard hoofbeats coming from behind, he ducked into the dying heather and lay flat like a hare before the hawk, though he did not know quite why he did that either. Knights came pounding through, cutting men down. He saw two fall at some distance from him. Three. Four.
He lay in the turf until the earth stopped shaking, and wondered how he was ever going to get home.
After that, he walked. And walked.He walked.
He hid when the pursuers thundered by, but that became less and less necessary as he gained some distance from the battle. He rested when he had to and consumed the dead Englishman’s food. He slept. He dreamed.
The dreams, deep and sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrible, added to his confusion when he woke from them. He dreamed of hiswife, Liadan—aye, he knew it was she—but most distressingly, she wore a number of differing faces. That of a lass standing beside him in the sunshine, a proud woman with a deerhound at her side. A princess with silver eyes. A Norse warrior sailing out in a boat with a prow like a dragon, determined to battle for his sake.
For his sake.
He woke shaking, not always with cold but with a welter of emotions. Fear on her behalf. Longing. Love.
How could she be all those women, and yet one? How was he to return to her if he did not know where she was?
He discovered that the pack on his back held the pieces of a harp, now shattered, its spine snapped in two. For a long time he held those pieces in his hands and pondered as to why he possessed such a thing, and why, if it was ruined, he had not discarded it. Why he did not discard it now.
For he wore a sword also, and he was a warrior. Was he not? He had slain five men back there at the place where he’d awakened.
How could he be a harper as well?
Chapter Forty-One
The season woreon as Katrin and her band traveled, each day blending into the next, borne on the necessity of continuing to put one foot in front of the other. The farther they moved from the borders, the more they relied on the generosity of their countrymen and women. Householders continued to gladly lend them a roof for the night in exchange for no more than an account of the distant-to-them battle, and provided what food they could.
Once, at the cottage of a widow, they stayed three days while helping the woman prepare for winter, but Katrin dared not linger longer. Da yet clung to life, but no more than that. His fever raged, and sometimes he was out of his head.
Twice, he asked for Geordie. “My son—I want to see my son before I die. I maun leave Murtray in good hands.”
“Da, ye are no’ dyin’.” But Katrin knew she lied to him, as did everyone in their stalwart little group.
He had no hands in which to leave the clan, but hers. Which at the moment were battered, and burdened, and filthy. She need only get him home.
Offsetting the hospitality they received, the way grew more difficult. They covered less ground per day, and on a few mornings, while sleeping out, snow fell. Katrin slept curled around her da in an effort to keep him warm, the clansmen on either side of them. Sometimes she dreamed of Finlay standing before her in his fine green cloak, his gaze compelling on hers. Sometimes she did not dream at all, her heart tooweary.
At Oban, they met the sea. Da was seen by another physician there, it being a sizeable town, and the man bent to charity.
He merely shook his head over Da’s condition.
“The wound is filthy.”
