Page 33 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

T hey spent the night there in the thorny thicket. Bradana did not stir even to lead the ponies to the stream, though they must want water.

Wen fell into a deep sleep, and Adair into a restless one. Bradana, on guard, did not sleep at all, busy listening or checking her patients one after the other for signs of renewed bleeding or fever.

Wen’s bandage felt hot to her touch and the hound refused to move much. He did not try to stand. If he could not, she feared he would grow weaker and weaker.

She laid her hand across Adair’s forehead often. Clammy and sweaty, but no heat there. Not yet. She could not tell, after a time, whether he slept or had fallen unconscious. Whichever, he stirred often and mumbled words she could not catch.

When dim light began to turn the air from black to gray, she went out again for more water. They could not stay here indefinitely. The ponies would need to graze. Adair and Wen would need food. They had none.

Wen had been their provider.

It occurred to her over again, how deep in trouble they were. They stood, without doubt, on Mican’s land. Within trees that obscured their view even as they offered cover. She could only guess at their direction.

Mican would be searching. Would he send out bands of armed men?

She could not get home, to Kendrick’s territory.

What to do?

She stumbled back into the copse to find Adair sitting up and Wen whining. She liked the look of neither. Adair had gone pale and sweaty, and she had never before seen her hound, usually so full of vitality, unable to rise.

She gave them both water, cupping some in her hands for the hound.

Crouched beside Adair, she asked, “How d’ye feel? How bad is the pain?”

“Not bad. I will be able to travel if we must.”

He lied. No need to challenge him on it.

“Mayhap,” she suggested softly, “a day of rest.”

His gaze met hers. “Bradana, we cannot stay here.”

Mican could be coming. With a band of men.

“Aye,” she said miserably. “Aye. But if Wen canna stand—”

“We will load him on one of the ponies.”

It took Adair two tries to stand. Getting him into his tunic was out of the question, so Bradana tied her own cloak around him, wrapped her harp in what was left of the blanket, and tied it to his mount.

Together they heaved Wen up and onto Bradana’s pony. They fought their way out of the copse.

Sunlight now slanted down through the boles of the trees like shafts of beneficence.

Adair, sweating heavily, stood with one hand on his pony’s shoulder and eyed the shafts of light.

“The sun rises far north at this time o’ year and to the east. I suggest we ride into it.”

She nodded. “Ye mount up.”

“But—”

“We will tak’ turns at riding.” With her pony in such poor condition, Bradana dared not load him double with Wen’s weight. “Ye for now.”

She pretended she did not notice how Adair struggled to mount up. She led the ponies first to the stream for water, and then away through the trees.

Following the light.

Throughout that day, she worried. First she worried they would be followed or that an army of men would leap out upon them from concealment in the forest. Neither happened. Then she worried for the condition of her two patients. Wen tended to slide down the pony’s back with the beast’s motion. She had to struggle and reposition him at regular intervals.

Adair…

Ah, but Adair worried her. He rode with his head bent, and she could not tell if he slept. Far too quiet, though they had an excuse for keeping quiet.

He needed food. They all did. Her own stomach had gone from sick, to aching, to sick again, and rumbled within her.

Grow used to it , she ordered herself, and kept walking. She had no intention of trading places with Adair and letting him walk, but as it was, she set a woefully slow pace. Terrifyingly, she had no idea where she was. The forest just went on and on. Still on Mican’s lands? Quite possibly.

When the sun was high overhead, they reached a stream, and Bradana paused. It took both of them to get Wen down, but when they did, he was able to stand on his feet and even wobble a step or two.

So great was Bradana’s relief, she felt as if the hard fist clutching her heart had released its grip.

“Let me look at your wound before we move on,” she told Adair.

He had bled through the bandaging, which she removed and washed out carefully. The wound looked pink and angry. More blanketing was sacrificed.

He insisted the pain was bearable.

But she could feel his agony when they hoisted Wen back onto the pony. And she ordered him to ride.

“You tak’ a turn,” he suggested. “I can walk.”

She fixed him with a flinty eye. “No’ yet.”

They moved on, Bradana with her hound on the lead pony, growing dizzy and tired. Long before nightfall, and moving by sheer will alone, she began looking for a place to spend the night. She found it in an outcropping of rock that pierced the trees.

No fit place to lay one’s head. It would have to serve.

*

Adair dreamed. A good and happy dream it started out to be, for he was back in Erin, land of his birth. Home.

He took comfort in the sweet roll of the hills, the sweeps of green, and the way the light spilled over it all. He stood high upon the breast of the brae and watched the stretch of river below him, a winding track of beaten silver. Relief flooded his heart. Some terrible ordeal had ended. He was back where he belonged.

And yet another emotion came, stealing up through him persistently. Here in this beautiful land that supplied all his wants and was all he’d ever asked…

He was missing something. Someone. As vital and fundamental to him as his own heartbeat.

“Adair? My love.”

The voice came curling softly through his dream like a hint of song. Aye, and there was a song he could hear in the distance, very nearly out of his ears’ reach.

“Adair?” Lips touched his forehead. “Ye be dreaming.”

He opened his eyes. Saw that for which he’d been longing while asleep.

Her face hung just above his, lined by fatigue, blue eyes shadowed by worry. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Bradana.”

“Ye were having a nightmare, I think.”

“Nay, ’twas a good dream. I was back in Erin. Looking for ye.”

“I am no’ in Erin.”

He knew that. At least, when he was in his right mind he did.

Was he in his right mind? Had he been, since his father tore him from his life and sent him to this land? Since first he’d set eyes on this woman?

“Maybe,” he told her, “this is all a dream. Mayhap I’ve fallen asleep in the warm sun back home and I will soon go back to the hall for supper.”

She frowned with concern. “Nay, but ye feel awfully warm. I fear ye may be starting with fever.” Disconcertingly, tears flooded her eyes. “I ha’ naught to give ye. Nay medicine. Nay food. We are starving.”

“Hush. Hush.” Her misery pulled him out of himself and snapped the last threads of dreaming. He drew her down into his arms, held her tight and tighter.

She wailed, “’Tis all my fault. If I am punished by losing the two I love most in all the world…”

She loved him.

“Now, now, is Wen not better? He is near back to walking on his own.”

“And ye?”

“I am not beat yet.”

“Ye are weak fro’ hunger, as am I.”

“Whisht, Bradana. Trust Alba.” Which seemed an odd thing for him to say when he’d just been longing for Erin. “She will provide. Now.” He held her away from him a short distance. They had camped in a stony depression in the side of a glen, shelter that, aye, Alba had provided. “Will ye play for me? On your harp. The song ye made for me.”

“Someone may hear.”

“The music will be trapped here in the stone.”

She mopped her cheeks, rose and fetched the small harp, then sat back down beside him and began to play softly.

He fell into her song and, in so doing, knew it for the answer to all his longing.