She was right. Siward likely wanted to send a message to me or to any of the other trackers who came across Dugga.
“Back to the horses,” I commanded, already moving, my eyes never ceasing their scan of the darkening woods. “We ride hard until we reach the next village.”
“We can nae leave him here like this,” Katreine said, her voice soft yet unyielding. The gathering darkness pooled in her golden eyes as she stared down at Dugga’s twisted corpse. “We can nae leave him for the ravens. He deserves better.”
I fixed her with a hard stare. “Aye, he does, but whoever killed him could return.” My words came out sharper than I’dmeant, but fear for her safety had my heart hammering against my ribs.
Katreine crossed her arms over her chest. “’Tis nae verra honorable, nae to do the right thing by this man simply because ye fear for yer safety.”
“I am nae fearful for my safety,” I growled. “I’m fearful for yers. A man who would snap a man’s neck would nae hesitate to ravish a woman.”
She paled at my words. Good. She had more courage than sense.
“I have ye to protect me. We must bury him. We nae give him a proper warrior’s journey to aid him in reaching Valhalla, but we can at least save his eyes from the ravens so he can see in the afterlife and find his way.”
I glanced at Dugga’s unseeing eyes, then back at the darkening forest. Every instinct screamed at me to mount up and ride hard, yet I admired her courage and believed as she apparently did. “I did nae think travelers believed in Valhalla,” I said, remembering how I’d thought she sounded like a proper lady earlier.
“This one does,” she replied, lifting her chin in defiance. “I’m nae leaving him like this.”
My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack. “Ye stubborn, foolhardy woman,” I hissed. “I’m trying to keep ye alive.”
“And I’m trying to keep my soul intact,” she countered. “What good is living if ye abandon everything ye believe in to do it?”
Her words struck like an arrow at my guilt for deceiving her. Before this, I’d never lied to a woman. I didn’t like the taste of it at all. The forest had grown darker around us as we argued, shadows lengthening between the trees. Soon, we’d be unable to see clearly, making travel treacherous even without the threat ofSiward or Conn finding us. I glanced again at Dugga’s corpse, then at the determined set of Katreine’s mouth, and knew I’d lost this battle before it began. I could toss her onto her horse, but that certainly wouldn’t keep her trust. “We do it quick,” I conceded with a growl. “And shallow. He’ll nae mind if the worms reach him a wee bit sooner.”
Relief softened her features, though her shoulders stayed tense. “Thank ye.”
“Do nae thank me yet,” I muttered, drawing my dirk from my belt. “We may both join him before the night is through.”
I began digging in the soft earth beside the path, my strokes quick and efficient. The ground was mercifully damp from recent rain, yielding easily to my blade. Still, sweat soon beaded on my brow, trickling down my temples as I worked.
Every few moments, I paused to scan our surroundings, my ears straining for sounds that did nae belong to the forest’s natural rhythm. The creak of a bowstring. The whisper of a blade being drawn. The snap of a twig beneath a boot.
Katreine knelt beside Dugga’s body, her hands moving in what I realized was prayer. As I listened, I recognized the prayer. “Ye have odd ways for a traveler. Did ye come from a great stronghold?” I asked as I dug.
“Nay,” she said, too quick and too sharp to be the truth. So Katreine was hiding secrets. That was fine. I was, too. As long as they weren’t secrets that could cost me the stronghold and lairdship, she could keep them. But I needed to know if they were secrets with poisonous thorns.
“Ye’ve nae always lived with the travelers,” I said. It was my turn to speak.
“Nay,” she said after a long pause.
I didn’t stop digging. I wanted her to answer as truthfully as she was willing, and my staring at her wouldn’t help. “Are there people, mayhap, looking for ye from where ye came from?” Thequestion was slightly ironic to me, since I’d been looking for her and knew the other trackers were searching for her, but our purpose was to take her to the king, and that should not have involved filling each other in, though it now did. What I wanted to know was whether anyone else had a reason to want her and would kill for it.
“I have been gone for a long time,” she replied. “So nae. I’m certain they think me dead.”
There it was again. A depth of emotion, this time sorrow, that seemed far too vast for someone so young. It stirred questions I had no right to ask. Who was this woman, truly? What sorrows had carved those shadows beneath her golden eyes?
A distant owl’s call pulled me sharply back to our danger. “The grave is deep enough,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow with my sleeve. “Help me move him.”
Together, we lifted Dugga’s body. He was heavy with death’s weight, his limbs already stiffening. I tried not to look at his face as we lowered him into the shallow pit I’d dug, but my eyes kept drifting to it. In death, with fear etched into his features, he looked far younger than I remembered. “Did ye ken him well?” Katreine asked softly as we began covering him with earth.
“Nay,” I said, the lie coming easier now. “As I told ye—by reputation only.”
“Ye seem troubled by his death, for a stranger.”
I paused, choosing my words carefully. “Any violent death troubles me, especially one meant as a warning.”
“A warning to whom?” Her eyes were fixed on mine.
