Assuming Torquil’s men hadn’t thought to do just as he was doing. His hope was that they didn’t know the back country as well as he did. There were some advantages to all his years spent serving Thor.
He knew of only a few places where Mathew could easily cross over the narrows of Loch Alsh to reach the island of clouds. There was an old man who made his living ferrying people back and forth across the waters. Likely everyone making this journey knew of the man.
As Hall saw things, he had two choices going forward. He could head for the old man and wait, hoping his luck would hold, or he could travel as he had for one more day and then cut over to the established trails, hoping to intercept Mathew.
Either way, hope was all he had to go on.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, drawing his fingers down into his beard for a good scratch. Lo, but he’d let himself become a ragged, scraggly mess over the past few years.
What was it Bridget had called him?A great bristly-faced ogre.He could almost hear her voice shouting the epithet at him like a curse. Not that her name-calling bothered him. It didn’t. What she or any other woman thought of him was of no consequence.
His beard, on the other hand, had begun to bother him considerably.
With a resigned sigh, he sat up and reached for one of his bags. Since it didn’t appear as though he was destined to get any sleep tonight, he might as well make good use of the time.
After filling a small wooden bowl with water, he pulled out a silver razor and set to work on the arduous task of removing his beard. Once he was done, he ran his fingers over his irritated skin, satisfied with his accomplishment.
He only hoped his current discomfort would be worth the look on Bridget’s face when next they met. Not that he’d shaved for her. Absolutely not. He wouldn’t do such a thing for any woman. No, it was standing next to that filthy stable keeper in Inverness that had convinced him to remove his whiskers. Odin himself only knew what vermin might have crawled off the old man and onto him. Without a decent bathhouse to be found for miles, it was little wonder his beard had itched.
Though he wasn’t at all sure the constant itching hadn’t been preferable to the raw burn stinging his freshly shaven skin.
What he wouldn’t give for a strong tisane of marigold and Jupiter’s Beard to sooth the sting. But out here, in the dead of winter, he might as well wish for a pot of fresh, warm lard to slather over his face. The only thing he could do was try again to rest and put the pain out of his mind.
This time when he lay down and closed his eyes, sleep quickly encroached on the boundaries of consciousness, freeing his thoughts to drift like leaves caught in a blustery current.
Scenes flittered through his mind as he balanced on the razor-thin line separating the waking world from the sleeping one, changing so quickly he had no time to consider whether they were memories or fantasies. A setting sun painted the sky a blistering red. The sea’s angry waves crashed up onto the shore. And Bridget MacCulloch, feet bare, twirled in time to the beat of an ancient drum, her body lithely twisting as if in some magnificent battle dance.
Hall toppled over the edge into sleep, a smile drifting through his mind, confident that the next time his path crossed that of the lovely Pictish Shield Maiden, she’d have to find a new epithet to hurl after him.
Eight
WE’D REACH THEferryman much sooner if you’d but agree to travel off the main trail.” Dobbie flashed an encouraging smile and directed his steps toward the trees. “It’s a much shorter distance this way.”
“No.” Mathew kept his gaze fastened on the path ahead. “We’ll stay our course along these roads.”
“Yer choice, of course,” Dobbie murmured, returning to Mathew’s side. Though he said the proper words, he bowed his head as if to hide his true feelings about the decision.
Mathew didn’t need to see the boy’s eyes. He’d witnessed the cunning expression on Dobbie’s face often enough over the past two days they’d traveled together. And the premonition that overtook him each time his thoughts drifted to his traveling companion was ample warning to keep him on his guard.
Though he couldn’t put a name to it, he knew Dobbie Caskie was not quite what he seemed.
Mathew couldn’t always depend upon those odd warnings coming to him, but when they did, they’d rarely been wrong. He’d had one the night his father had been killed, and again when he’d entered Tordenet Castle with Hugo.
And Hugo had ended up torn to pieces.
It was one of those feelings today that kept him on the road. An odd twitching of the skin on the back of his neck. A tingling in his feet, as if his body desperately wanted to take flight. An emptiness in the pit of his stomach that no amount of food could drive away. Either something waited for them out there in the woods, or...
Mathew huffed out a breath of annoyance. It was likely nothing more than the horrible dreams that had plagued him. They shattered his rest, leaving him as exhausted when he awoke as he’d been when he’d closed his eyes the night before. They’d haunted him since the day he’d walked into the MacDowylt’s solar and found the body of his older brother Hugo with his head ripped from his shoulders.
With a shudder, Mathew forced the vision from his thoughts, willing himself to forget the grisly scene. He didn’t ever want to see such as that again, not even in his memories. Perhaps when he rid himself of the scrolls, the dreams would be gone as well.
Mathew fingered the hilt of the weapon he wore slung across his chest. His dreams might be plagued by vicious threats from invisible foes, but as long as he kept Dream Guardian close, the hideous red eyes at least kept their distance.
“Wonder whathe’sup to?” Dobbie craned his neck, peering off into the distance, bringing Mathew back to the here and now.
Ahead of them, a horse and rider blocked the trail.
“He’s new to these parts,” Dobbie murmured. “I dinna think I’ve ever seen him before.”
