Panic welled in her. Dogface and her brothers, all here. The walls closed in on her and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. But she could. She must. Tayg was hurt, and they were trapped unless they left immediately. Catriona looked back at the packed sacks she had carried down with her. She had all she needed, but she couldn’t leave Tayg here to take more abuse from her brothers nor from Dogface.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
“If I must.”
“Let us go now, while we can.”
“There’s a storm on out there, Cat. I don’t know how far I can walk.”
“I’ll not go without you,” Catriona said, her voice sharp.
Tayg tried to smile, but he winced when his lip began to bleed again.
Catriona grabbed her sacks. “Where is your drum?”
“In the hall with my belongings. I had to leave everything there as I could not appear to be leaving.”
“We’ll have to leave it then. We dare not go back to the hall to fetch it. Perhaps I can find another cloak for you.”
Catriona pressed her side to his and hooked an arm around him. He hissed as her hand brushed his tender ribs, but she said nothing. Her mouth was set in a grim line.
“If you’re determined to go out in that storm, you’d best leave me here, lass.”
“I said I’ll not leave you. Broc will kill you the next chance he gets, and you’re in no shape to defend yourself. I’ll not have your death on my conscience,” she said, striving for a teasing tone.
She pushed away from the door, pulling him with her. A floorboard creaked over their heads, sending panic spiraling through her. Desperate to protect him should Dogface or her brothers come looking for him again, she rapidly searched her mind for options. They could not chance being seen by whoever walked overhead, yet they could not leave until she had at least the rudiments of travel clothing for Tayg.
She spied a small door under the stair. That would do. Whether ’twas a storage room or a stair leading downward mattered not. Catriona dragged Tayg to it, awkwardly pushing it open while balancing him against her. She shouldn’t have noticed the warmth of his body pressed up against hers. She shouldn’t have noticed how she just fit under his arm nor how her skin tingled where his heat mingled with her own, easing the irritating trembling that still plagued her.
She shouldn’t have, but she did.
He stifled a groan when he had to bend slightly to pass through the door, bringing her attention away from her own sensations and back to his injuries. Catriona looked around the dark, cramped storage room, unable to see far past the doorway. With difficulty she dropped her sacks, unfastened her cloak, then lowered Tayg onto it.
“We’ve got to bind your ribs, tend to your face, and find you a cloak,” she said, more to herself than to him. Remembering the linen toweling she had used for her bath, she bade him be silent until she returned. Moving quickly but quietly, she raced up the twisting stairs, ducking into the shadows twice as men tramped through the corridor toward the far tower where the soldiers were housed.
When at last she made it to Isobel’s chamber, she paused and looked to each end of the torch-lit hall. No one. She shoved open the thick oaken door only to have it hit something and stop abruptly. A groan came from within the chamber followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.
Catriona pushed the door open far enough to peek around it and into the chamber. Crumpled in a heap on the other side was Dogface. Fear twisted in her gut until she realized he was unconscious. She must have knocked him cold with the door, but what was he doing in Isobel’s chamber in the first place? She pushed the door a bit harder. Despite Dogface’s crumpled form, she needed items from the chamber and she had no time to search elsewhere.
She squeezed into the chamber, avoiding Dogface as much as possible. What if he woke to find her there? Terror gripped her, but she forced herself to move. Quickly she grabbed the linen toweling, now dry from the fire. She could rip it into long strips for binding Tayg’s ribs. She lifted the blanket from the bed, then snatched a candle from the unlit candle stand, squeezed back out the door, and swiftly returned to the stairs. Just as she reached the bottom step the outer door opened. Cat froze, sure she would now face her brothers. What would happen to Tayg if they took her?
A golden head looked around the door, and Cat released her breath. Isobel looked concerned as she pushed the door closed behind her.
“Cat!”
“Wheesht!” Catriona moved quickly to her side, a finger to her lips lest they draw attention to themselves.
“Did you see the bard?” Isobel whispered. “These awful men attacked him, but he seemed so sure they had mistaken him for someone else…I took them to the hall.”
Catriona stood mute. Isobel didn’t know. Somehow she had not figured out they were Catriona’s brothers, that they were after her, nor did she seem to know that Dogface also sought her. She really was still safe as long as she and Tayg could get out of here before her brothers or Dogface found her—or found him again.
Impulsively Cat decided to trust Isobel, not with the whole secret…but with a part of it.
“I do not know who those louts search for, but there is another in your hall I wish never to see again.”
Isobel’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “There is?”
“Aye. Come. Help me tend Tayg’s hurts, and perhaps you can help us before that one realizes he knows me or the others pummel Tayg again.”
Isobel nodded immediately. Catriona lit the taper from a nearby smoky torch and led the girl into the storage room.
THE THREE MADE hasty plans while Catriona bound Tayg’s ribs. Soon Isobel left them to await her return in their cramped space below the stair. Tayg dozed off and on, but Catriona kept her vigil, alert to even the smallest sound lest they be discovered. Deep into the night Isobel finally returned with Tayg’s cloak and news that Dogface had stumbled back into the hall shortly after she had returned, a great lump upon his head and a scowl upon his face, but he had said naught to anyone about what had happened.
All the visitors were now snoring in the great hall. Tayg’s horse and his belongings awaited them by the postern gate. It took both Catriona and Isobel to get Tayg on his feet and out to the horse. It was only with his clearly painful help that they were able to push him up into the saddle. Isobel opened the gate, which thankfully swung free without so much as a scrape or a squeal of hinges. Catriona gave the lass a quick, fierce hug.
“I will see you again,” she said.
“I would like to dance at your wedding,” Isobel said with a sly cutting of her eyes to Tayg.
“It’s not…”
“Wheesht. Go now. The storm is strengthening, and you need to get to shelter quickly. Remember, stay close to the river, then follow the first burn uphill. The traveler’s hut is not far, but ’twill be far enough for tonight. The storm will cover your tracks, and I will keep your absence hidden as long as I may.”
“I do not know how to thank you.” Catriona gave her another hug.
“’Tisn’t necessary. We are friends. I do not like having my friend’s…brother…attacked in my own home.” Isobel handed her a screened lantern, the flickering candle just visible through the cracks in the shield. “Do not show the light until you are well away from the castle. Follow the line of trees to the river, then go left, downstream. Now go!”
Isobel put the horse’s reins in Catriona’s hand and pushed her through the gate. As soon as the horse followed her through, she heard the muffled sound of the door closing and the bolt being thrown. There was no turning back.
She turned into the wind and followed the snow-covered trail down to the riverside, mumbling Isobel’s final instructions all the way.
CATRIONA TRUDGED THROUGH the increasingly deep snow. If it weren’t for the occasional snorts of the horse behind her and the times she had to stop and force the beast to follow her through deep drifts, she would have felt completely alone in the snow-filled darkness. Tayg
was silent. He had been hurt badly, and she wasn’t even sure he was conscious. Every so often she would stop and reach up to make sure he was still slumped in the saddle. She did so now, eliciting a moan when she missed his leg and touched his side.
“Tayg?” She nudged his leg. “Tayg, you must awaken.” She held the lantern Isobel had given her high to cast its weak circle of light on his battered face.
Slowly he opened his eyes. “Are we there?” he asked, though he did not sit up.
“Nay. I have not found it, though we have not reached the burn yet…at least, I don’t think we have.”
Tayg closed his eyes again, abandoning Catriona once more.
She sighed and turned back in the direction she thought they should journey in, back into the face of the wind-driven snow. The river ran somewhere to her right, and sooner or later they would encounter the burn. Isobel had said not to cross it, but to travel up it, looking for a giant boulder that sat at the foot of a huge, ancient pine tree, not far from where the burn met the river. She said if you looked just so at the tree’s limbs they pointed up the embankment directly to a traveler’s hut. Unfortunately, in the middle of the long winter night, with the wind blowing the heavy snow into her face, Catriona didn’t think she’d see the burn until she fell into it, never mind the tree.
But she had to keep going. If they stopped they would freeze. Tayg might anyway, though the horse should help to warm him a little. Catriona shook her shoulders, loosening the snow that clung to her cloak. They needed shelter, a fire, and something warm to drink soon. She wiggled her toes, grateful that she could still feel them.
They moved slowly forward, Catriona breaking the trail, the horse moving behind her, balking occasionally. Tayg’s continued silence scared her more than anything. He was completely dependent on her to see them safely to the traveler’s hut. She bit her lip, ducked her head down to keep the driving snow out of her face, and forced her feet to move. She would not let him die. Her breath hitched. She owed Tayg too much. He was her bard. She’d see him to safety, then tend his hurts. How could she do anything less?
Her foot slipped and she heard the crunch of brittle ice, then felt the sharp slice of cold water seeping into her boot. The burn. She backed up, shaking the water from her foot. Her mind flitted around the knowledge that she was in serious trouble if her boot turned to ice or her skin froze. She lifted her lantern and tried to make out shapes in the darkness.
The snow was swirling about her, causing moments where all she could see in the feeble light was a heavy curtain of white shifting and dancing against the night’s black blanket. She bent, lowering the lantern through the whiteness until she could make out the edge of the burn.
Uphill.
The single word formed in her thick brain like a beacon in the night.
Uphill.
She turned and picked her way up the steep, slippery slope. Each step squeaked in the icy snow, and she realized that she could no longer feel the foot that had gotten wet. Wind whistled down the hill sending biting snow into her face, then shifted suddenly and gusted from behind as if it quarreled with itself over whether it should be coming or going.
A vicious gust caught her by surprise, shoving her to her knees and knocking the lantern from her hand. She watched as is rolled into the whiteness and disappeared.
“Nay!”
“Cat?” Tayg’s voice came from the complete blackness around her. He was depending on her. She had to get him to safety.
She struggled upright and trudged back to the horse. Cat leaned for a moment against Tayg’s leg, needing the reassuring warmth of him to know she wasn’t all alone in this. She rested her head against him and fought the tears of frustration, anger, and fear that threatened to overwhelm her.
“You can do this, lass.” Tayg’s voice drifted down to her, quiet and weak enough to scare her. “I know you can do this, Cat.”
“The lantern is lost,” she said, hating the sound of defeat in her voice. “I do not know how I can find the shelter in the darkness.”
“You can. Clear your mind. Concentrate on Isobel’s words. She’s our friend. She would not lead us astray.”
Tayg’s confidence warmed her. The memory of her first friend gave her resolve. She would do this. She must. Tayg was depending on her. And she would not let Isobel blame herself for sending them out into the storm. She reached up to place her hand gently on Tayg’s back. He lay still upon the horse’s neck again, but she could feel him breathing, shallow and quick. He had not left her.
Near.
The word was another beacon in her muddled thoughts. Isobel had said the shelter was near where the burn met the river. They must be near the shelter.
She moved forward, glad she had remembered Tayg’s trick of looping the reins around her wrist so she did not have to worry about frozen fingers losing their grip. She tugged and got the horse moving again. Almost immediately she stumbled over the lantern. She reached down and retrieved it. The precious flame was gone, but the lantern was sound and the candle only half burned. Once they found the hut, she could kindle a new flame.
The horse snorted, and she tugged on the reins, forcing the unhappy animal to follow her up the steep slope. Three steps, four…
All she could see was deepest black. All she could feel was the bite of snow driven into her raw skin by the never-ending wind. Another step and another. ’Twas all she could think of until suddenly she realized the wind had all but stopped, as if she had stepped out of a fast stream and into a pool where the current eddied and paused.
Cat reached forward, her hands outstretched, and took another step. Nothing. Another step. Nothing. Another, and her mittened hands bashed into something hard that stood directly in her path. She felt around until she was sure this was a wall made by man. Relief surged through her. She’d done it! She’d found the shelter. She turned to Tayg, grinning, but he just groaned. She had to get him out of this storm. She had to get herself out of it too. As quickly as her frozen mind could work, she began to feel to her left and her right, searching for a door.
She led the horse along the edge of the shelter, searching for the door on the first wall and around the corner to the second. Finally she found it on the far side of the small hut. She took the reins from her wrist and looped them around the latch then pushed open the door.
“Tayg, we made it!” she said as she moved inside and looked around. Water sloshed in her boot, and she realized that they were not safe yet. It was as cold inside the hut as it was out, though at least the wind was stopped. She needed to get Tayg off the horse and into the shelter. The horse would have to come in too, both to keep it safe and to help warm the space. She needed a fire. She needed to get her wet clothes off. Tayg’s too.
She stepped outside and moved to the side of the horse, untying the tether that had helped hold Tayg in the saddle.
“You must awaken,” she said, shaking him. When he didn’t respond, anxiety poured through her. “Tayg! Awaken!” She winced at the note of panic in her voice, but there was no help for it. Her mind was slow, and she knew they were still in grave danger. She was tired, cold, hungry, and scared. He damn well better not have died on her just when she had rescued him.
Gently she poked him in the ribs. “Tayg!” she said in her nastiest voice, hoping to rouse him. “I cannot carry you, so you’d best wake or I’ll leave you here in the snow. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to your pitiful singing anymore.”
Slowly Tayg opened his eyes and pushed himself up until he was sitting, though he swayed enough so Cat grabbed his arm.
“You need not take that tone with me, lass,” he said, a hint of a smile in his voice, though the groan that followed told her how much pain he was in.
He all but fell into her arms as he tried to lower himself from the saddle.
“I’ll take whatever tone I must, bard.” She wrapped one arm around his waist and grasped his arm where it draped over her shoulders with her free hand. “Come on, then. My fe
et are freezing, and I’ve still got to start a fire.”
Tayg grunted and moved slowly with her. She stopped them just before they entered the hut and took care to shake as much snow as possible from their cloaks, then led him into the cave-like shelter.
She propped him against the wall at the back of the space and headed for the door again. “Where are you going?” Tayg asked, his voice pain-sharpened.
She sighed. “I’ve got to get the horse in here.”
Catriona settled the horse on the opposite side of the hut from where she had left Tayg then pulled the door firmly closed behind her, shutting out the wind and swirling snow, and enclosing them in complete and utter darkness. She tried to think what to do next, but she was so cold and so tired she could barely stand.
Heat.
Yes, that was always the first thing Tayg did when they made camp. His first priority was always a fire. Isobel had said the hut was stocked with wood, as most such huts were. There was only the task of finding it in the dark, building a fire in the as-yet-undiscovered fire pit, and then the small problem of actually getting it to burn.
Catriona began searching along the walls and quickly stumbled into the woodpile, which was neatly stacked right next to a pile of dried heather and other tinder. She gathered up the makings of a small fire and turned to what she hoped was the middle of the chamber. She stubbed her toe on the ring of stones that defined the fire pit and quickly laid the fire. She groped for the horse, who blessedly made enough noise with his shifting and occasional snorts that he was easy to find. She felt her way through the bags that Isobel had managed to remove from the great hall until she found the fire kit.
She knelt by the ring of stones and laid the fire starter kit in her lap so she could peel off her sodden woolen mittens. She had to take a moment to warm her fingers with her breath before she could pull her sgian dhu from its sheath at her waist, grasp the flint, and bring the two together. Another moment and she had sparks, but it took longer than she wished before she finally had a tiny flickering flame lick to life in the bits of heather. Finally the delicious smell of burning wood rose into the frozen air.
Charming the Shrew Page 17
