Her husband’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I will be more than glad, Hulda, to let Airlee lead the fight. But”—his eyes hardened to granite—“I will be there. I will stand for this place I love.”
Her stomach tightened into a knot of pure pain. Not this. Please, by any god who listens. Not this again.She could not bear it.
“Husband”—she reached for him, put her hands to either side of his face—“I have a bad feeling for this. What if I asked you keep from going out?”
“Wha’ if I asked ye the same?”
“Then I would hold back.”
“Would ye?” Clearly he did not believe her, thought she would lie to him if she must.
She pressed her body up against his. “I fear—”
“Stop wi’ fearing, wife. Ha’ ye learned naught? We always return to one another, aye? No matter wha’ comes between.”
“Ja, but thebetweenhurts. It hurts so.”
“Hulda, ye ken I would do anything for ye. Aught but lay aside my sword.”
“Quarrie, if we are to be parted now, if we do manage against the tide of time and fate to meet together in another life—will you promise me one thing?”
“What more to promise than that I will return to ye? I will find ye, Hulda. Always.”
“And when you do, in the next life, let it not be as a warrior. Because I cannot endure this fear upon fear of losing you in battle. Even after all this time, I cannot.”
“And wha’ else should I be, than wha’ I ha’ been?”
“I do not care. A smith, a trainer of horses, a builder of boats, a carver of stone—any man who does not march out to die.”
“A harper?” He said it lightly, as if in jest, but his eyes were serious, holding her gaze, holding her soul.
“Aye, that. A harper to play sweet songs for me and tell all the old tales. Give me those ancient songs and I promise to fall right back into your arms.”
“Ah, Hulda.” A glimmer of a smile touched his face. “Ye would fall into my arms anyway.”
She would. But she said, “It is a promise, then. You will return to me as nay warrior but a bonny harper instead.”
And she kissed him, kissed him to seal the pledge, and so he could not say what she suspected he must—that a man was who he was, whatever time and fate made of him.
When the searing kiss ended, she whispered against his lips, “For love of me, husband. Keep this vow for love of me.”
Katrin woke from that dream shuddering with cold and shivering in the dawn, a hollow place opened up inside her. She—she had been Hulda, aye. Finlay had also been an habitant of the tale, one Quarrie MacMurtray. And—
He had done as she had asked.
He had done as she had asked.
And it had not mattered, for she’d lost him anyway.
Chapter Forty-Two
Katrin and herparty reached home on a cold, clear day with snow in the wind and the ground iron-hard beneath their feet. She brought her da back alive, but so weak she feared every breath might be his last. Those breaths came with a hard rasp. She was no longer sure what kept him clinging to his life. Stubbornness, perhaps, for he had run out of any other strength.
As, in truth, had Katrin and her companions, Rabbie and Davey. They were so tired and spent, so starved and chilled, they moved by rote more than by will. Their makeshift litter fashioned from Brada’s wrappings had long since fallen to pieces and been replaced by one they fashioned from spruce boughs. The three of them rotated toting their chief, to provide some respite. Da was not as heavy as he had been, for the weight just melted from him.
Since parting with the physician’s client with the cart some distance north of Oban, they had covered most the rest of the distance on foot. Katrin’s hands were a mess, the palms blistered over other blisters, those of her companions in like condition. None of them spoke to one another, being too weary for words.
A stop at the fortress of a friendly neighbor to the south broke the journey, and when the chief could not persuade Katrin to leave her father for the time in his care and travel on without him, he provided a pony and litter for the rest of the distance.
