“I’m nothing of the sort.”
He chuckled, shaking his head.
“Ye breathe heavily when ye’re nervous, lass,” he told her bluntly. “It’s written all over yer face. All through yer body. Ye cannae hide it from me.”
“And what if I am?” she replied defensively. “Ye’ve ridden me out to the middle of nowhere like this.”
“Distraction equals death,” he replied as he brushed past her, making his way to the edge of the clearing and crouching down. “Here, look.”
Though irritated, she did as she was told, reluctantly crouching down beside him. Now that she was closer, she could see a few odd details that looked out of place; a disturbednest knocked loose from a tree, a few leaves and grass strands flattened where someone had made their way through.
“Ye see? Ye can tell that someone has been here,” he remarked. “Tracking tells ye who’s near. Who’s watching…”
Suddenly, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She’d had quite enough of being watched for the time being, she thought to herself, and she wanted nothing more than to tell him so. But if she was to continue her training, then she needed to make sure that she convinced him she was capable of keeping up with him.
“I see it now,” she murmured, and he, still on his haunches, glanced over at her, eyeing her for a moment.
“Seeing won’t help ye much, lass,” he remarked. “Ye must take action when ye ken that someone is near.”
She didn’t reply. Was he talking down to her, trying to make her feel like a fool for not seeing this in the first place? She might have known her way around these parts as well as any local, but tracking skills were new to her.
“I have a challenge for ye,” he continued, as he straightened up.
Her eyes widened as she looked up at him. “What now?”
“I’ll go into the woods, and ye’ll have to find me,” he wagered. “Follow my tracks, the signals of where I’ve been, see if ye can track me down before I find ye.”
She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment.
“And what exactly do I get if I find ye first?” she demanded.
If he was going to make this a challenge, then she wanted to get something out of it.
He smirked.
“The satisfaction of knowing that ye have outsmarted me,” he replied. “I ken ye’d like that, eh, lass?”
She pressed her lips together to contain her grin at the thought of it. Yes, she did like the sound of that. She wantednothing more than to be able to prove to him, once and for all, that she was capable in all the ways that he seemed to think she wasn’t, and this might have been just the chance she was looking for to do that.
“And if ye find me first?”
She knew he would not offer such a thing without making sure that there was plenty in it for him, too, which was what worried her. He was the far more experienced tracker of the two, and she didn’t know what she would be putting herself at risk of if she agreed.
A flicker crossed his gaze, hard to read, but somehow leaving no room for confusion.
He lowered his voice, though there was nobody there to hear them but the horse.
“Then I’ll take what’s mine.”
She did not break his gaze, knowing all too well that he was trying to throw her off and refusing to let him.
“Fine,” she replied. “I’ll find ye. Go?—”
But before she could so much as finish what she was saying, a devilish smile had licked up his lips, and he had taken off into the woods, leaving her standing there in silence.
She followed him at once, doubting that he would have been able to make it far. By the time she emerged into the clearing, though, he had vanished, leaving her with little to track where he had gone in the process.
For a moment, it felt like he had disappeared into thin air. But she cast her mind back to what he had pointed out to her when they had stepped off the horse; the flattened grass, the disturbed nest. There had to be some of that around here, otherwise he wouldn’t have been playing fair.
