The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Damn it, how could Brayden make Wil go from dread, to insight, to umbrage in the space of ten words?

  “Pity?” was all Wil could grind out.

  “Not pity.” Brayden kept his mien calm.

  “Understanding—something I need desperately and you provide sparing little of. If you’d just told me all of this from the beginning…” He shook his head, threw out his hands. “What did you think was going to happen? What did you think I would do?” He held a hand up when Wil opened his mouth. “Besides killing you, I mean, because if you say that one more bleeding time, I swear…” He growled with a roll of his eyes. “Well, I don’t know what I’ll do. Killing you now would only prove your point, and I’ve a contrary nature.”

  Wil could only shrug and look away. “I thought Siofra was telling the truth.” He peered up, solemn now. “It wasn’t always… he was kind to me at first. He was the closest thing to a parent…” His mouth twisted, and he shuddered. “I had no reason to doubt him. I thought he was protecting me, and it wasn’t until after I started to rebel against the leaf that it turned… ugly. And even then, I thought it was me, my fault, I was bad, I couldn’t behave.”

  He met Brayden’s gaze squarely. “I tried to do more than find you when I went searching about in Lind. I couldn’t read the Old Ones, just like I couldn’t read you, and your mother was the only person in the entire village—in the entire world—who knew what you were.

  “Lind doesn’t just breed giants—they breed Watchers and have done for thousands of years, and no one knows what Lind is about but your shamans, no one. Why would they keep it so secret, if there wasn’t something terribly sinister beneath it all? How d’you know you’re not going to walk me right into a new trap if I agree to go there with you?”

  Brayden brooded into the dregs of his coffee. After several silent moments, his eyebrows drew together and he shook his head. “The problem,” he began slowly, “is that I don’t know anything. I’m basing our safety on dreams, and conjecture, and memories more than half a lifetime old. But the Old Ones do know, and I can’t believe people who carve ‘Mother’s Soldier’ into their faces exist solely to stamp out the Mother’s most-loved Gift.”

  Wil couldn’t help the roll of his eyes. “Just like the Brethren shouldn’t exist to usurp and redefine the Father’s Gift?”

  “All right,” Brayden conceded, rubbing at his brow.

  “You’re right to be cautious. I know in my gut I’m right, but with religious freaks, who can ever tell?” He set his cup on the shabby cupboard. “Compromise. We’ll head to Lind and find someplace safe for you to stay while you wait for me to go into the valley and see if I can find something that will help us. I’ll gather what information I can, then come back and we’ll discuss the next move. Will that do?”

  Wil looked down at the floor unhappily. Unfortunately, it made sense. But Siofra had made sense for a time, too.

  The Brethren had even seemed to make sense for a brief moment of hope. He’d never liked the idea of going back to Putnam, but even that had made sense, in a desperate sort of way.

  Anyway, Brayden was going out of his way to treat Wil like a partner, an equal voice, and he’d already demonstrated that he trusted Wil more than he probably should do. Wil thought perhaps that might translate into more freedom on the road, more chance of getting away clean, if he found he had to. And if Brayden really was going to find him someplace to lie up, safe, by himself…

  there’d be all kinds of opportunity then. In the meantime, Brayden was the best chance Wil had of shaking the Brethren and the Guild. And if nothing else came of all of this, Wil had certainly eaten better since Brayden had styled himself Wil’s protector than he ever had before.

  “All right,” Wil muttered to the floor, halfhearted and slightly sulky. “I imagine Lind is better than Ríocht, at least.”

  “Good, because that was going to be my next suggestion.”

  Wil stared. “Constable Brayden,” he said slowly, “did you just make a joke?”

  Brayden looked absurdly discomfited. “Um… no?”

  “No, no,” Wil put in, sardonic smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “You’ve a sense of humor. Not a very good one, but… well, who knew?”

  With directions from Jarvis—quite vocal in his opinion that they should not be venturing out in the rain what with the young man unwell—they found a shop on the northern outskirt of the village where Brayden kitted them both with raingear: waxed cloaks and wide-brimmed hats.

  They trudged for several miles along the road, the hardpack slipping and depressing under the horses’ hoofs.

  Wil rode with his head turned back for a while, watching with satisfaction as the prints filled with water then mud, then turned to indistinguishable divots that would no doubt continue to erode as the rain pounded the road. He smiled to himself, tipped his head down, oddly amused when a small deluge spilled from the hat’s brim. He’d never have thought of the hats, either, but they did a fine job of keeping the water from dripping over his face and into his eyes.

  They rode all through the miserable day, skirting down the first random lane they came to off the road then following that until it wound into another and another still. They finally set themselves west through heavy forest at what Wil assumed to be midday, because along with a dose of the meadowsweet and skullcap, Brayden handed him a handful each of hardtack and jerky, apparently meant to be lunch.

  The pace was slower once they left the road, the horses picking along the roots and slippery deadfall carefully.

  Wil hadn’t noticed yesterday, since he’d ridden in the lead most of the trip—likely so Brayden could keep an eye on him—but since Brayden led today, Wil could now see that he watched constantly, every angle, eyes swiveling in regular wide sweeps about the perimeter. He even craned his neck frequently to stretch his gaze up into the trees.

  Wil did the same, but found his own eyes catching on the subtle change of colors from one tree to the next, the way the rain weighted the pine boughs and made them tremble, the slight bit of iridescence in the wet sworls of his horse’s mane. Probably not the same things Brayden was paying attention to. Oh well.

  Wil’s stomach was growling and his eyelids were drooping by the time night fell properly and Brayden finally called a halt. And his thighs were killing him. And his arse-bones hurt. He hadn’t even known he had arse-bones.

  He dismounted slowly, clinging to the saddle-bow until the ground stopped feeling like it was trying to sway out from under him. His right hand had been throbbing for hours and miles, probably from the wet and cold, and he’d been keeping it securely tucked to his chest beneath cloak and coat.

  “This is the densest we’ll find in the dark,” Brayden muttered as he led his horse over and pushed the reins into Wil’s hand. He dragged his pack from the saddlebag, freeing the hatchet and shovel from their little loops on the sides. “We’ll need a fire, or these cloaks will be no more than useless weight. I hate to do it. I might as well leave a sign that says, ‘We came this way,’ but I haven’t much choice. And the horses should have at least a small shelter.”

  A fire. It was a nice thought, but unless Brayden was a secret shaman, a fire was likely just wishful thinking. Still, it might be fun to watch him try. Shelter might be a more reasonable expectation, but for horses?

  Brayden paused, leaned in and squinted through the darkness at Wil. “Doing all right?”

  Wil’s first impulse was to growl, To hell with the horses, what about shelter for us? His second impulse was to snark that no, he wasn’t doing all right, he’d likely never get his knees back together again, and his arse-bones had gone from aching to really aching, and by the way, he was starving, what the fuck, did Brayden have a spare stomach or something? He ended up nodding, voicing a polite, “Fine,” then making himself busy with digging out then filling and strapping on the feedbags while Brayden chopped at pine boughs and cursed every time one of them dumped a bucket-load of water on his head. Wil thought abo
ut telling Brayden that it might be easier without the rifle swinging about on its strap behind him, and he needn’t worry—Wil had no intention of nicking it and shooting him in the back—but the colorful outbursts were, after all, the most entertainment Wil had had all day.

  He kept quiet, smiling into the darkness as he stood with the horses and listened to their slow munching, to the sharp sounds of snapping branches, and the occasional irritated mutter in the otherwise silence of the thick forest.

  He was nearly in a state of half-sleep on his feet when the brilliant spark of a match nearly dazzled Wil’s eyes. And then the brighter flare of flames catching and spreading into a small but real campfire nearly dazzled his reason.

  “How did you do that?” he demanded, undecided if he was pleased or resentful.

  Brayden looked over in Wil’s general direction, blinking and squinting around the light. He frowned.

  “How did I do what?”

  Augh. Not only was the man able to start fires in the rain, but he had no idea why it would amaze someone who hadn’t guessed the possibility. Wil stared, still undecided if he should be backing away and signing charms or throwing himself at Brayden with a grateful embrace.

  Brayden had shed his hat somewhere and thrown back the hood of his cloak. The firelight scudded over his features with careful fingers, drawing gold and light touches of claret from hair curling damp and unruly. The effect kept glissading back and forth between primitive forest god and boyish artlessness.

  Wil shook himself, shifted his stance. “The fire,” he said. “How did you start a fire with wet wood?”

  “Oh.” Brayden turned back to the smoky fire, feeding it what looked like hacked up chips and small split branches. “It’s easy with pine,” he told Wil as he worked steadily, stoking and fanning as he continually added fuel.

  “You can do it with any kind of wood if you split the bigger branches to get to the dry wood inside and chip away the wet bark. But with pine, there’s the sap or resin inside that helps it catch a lot quicker and burn hotter, so the wet outside will dry and burn, too. Well, most of the time.” He shrugged, poking at the base of the flames.

  “We’ll have to keep a steady eye on it, else it’ll likely sputter, but I need the light to make the shelter, and we might as well have a hot supper while we’re at it.”

  Huh. “That’s…” Wil swallowed his self-consciousness with an effort. “Will you show me?”

  Brayden didn’t even raise his eyebrows; he merely nodded, said, “Of course, but right now there are other priorities, all right? Between fuel for the fire and the shelter, I’ll need to cut quite a lot more.” He jerked his chin toward the horses. “D’you know how to hobble?”

  Wil rolled his eyes. “I did work in a stable, y’know.”

  “For two weeks,” Brayden muttered, then, louder: “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Yes, I know how to hobble horses.” Wil had already taken some lengths of rope from his horse’s saddlebag and was looping them to size.

  “Well, could you take care of them and then come over here?” Brayden asked. “I could use a hand.”

  The mares were still munching tiredly and unlikely to wander off, but Wil braided the knots, mostly by feel in the dim light of the small fire, then looped the hobbles about the fore-fetlocks of both horses. Neither one of them even twitched, but he quietly apologized anyway, and promised them each an apple later before he went to help with the shelter. Brayden had already started without him, moving beyond the small circle of wavering light, but all Wil had to do was follow the muttered curses in the dark.

  “Good,” Brayden said, took Wil by the shoulders, stood a little too close behind him, and guided his left hand up over his head. Wil was already gripping a thick, crosshatched bundle of prickly branches before he thought to shrug Brayden’s grip off, and by then, Brayden was already rattling off instructions: “All right, feel how these are connected by this one joint? I need you to hold that tight and don’t let them loose while I lift the other end and get it secured in those branches over there.” What with his eyes having to re-adjust to the dark again, Wil couldn’t see two feet in front of his face, so he decided to take Brayden’s word that there were indeed branches ‘over there.’ “It’s going to be heavy for a few minutes, so be ready,” Brayden went on, then he let go of Wil’s hand and was gone.

  It did indeed get very heavy, and Wil had a hard time of it, what with the bark digging into his hand, and the circulation in his arm slowing to a near-halt by the time Brayden was satisfied and told him he could let go. They repeated the process three more times before Wil was able to see exactly what Brayden had done. He was terribly impressed. He’d been expecting something like a lean-to, but Brayden had more-or-less built a roof made of pine boughs, laced and woven together, using the branches of the surrounding trees as supports. It was higher on one side than the other— “So the water will run off and we won’t end up buried beneath a small forest,” Brayden told Wil.

  It wasn’t until some feeling leached back into Wil’s arm that he blinked, frowning “We? I thought it was for the horses.”

  “Well, it is, but there’s no sense in us sleeping in the rain when we’ve made the thing as big as a small house.”

  Brayden’s demeanor was too casual, too blatantly cool.

  It tweaked at Wil, and he looked closer, noting the way the dark gaze shifted, like Brayden was… embarrassed?

  Ah. Wil got it now. Brayden hadn’t built the shelter for the horses at all—he’d done it for Wil. He was doing that nice thing again. As it was every time something like this happened, Wil was both touched and discomfited. And now he was embarrassed.

  “Why?” Brayden wanted to know. “Are you going to have a problem sharing with the horses?”

  Wil paused for a moment, blinking until the question sank in. And then he laughed out loud, almost doubled-over with the irony and the sheer relief at not having to deal head-on with the niceness thing. “Sorry,” he chuckled when Brayden’s brow twisted and he tilted his head. “No, really. But if you’d seen some of the places I’ve slept…” Wil swept a hand up and down the length of the structure. “This is very fine and more than I’d hoped for.” He smirked at Brayden in the dark. “You definitely have your uses, Constable Brayden.”

  “It’s best if you do it away from you,” Brayden advised, watching carefully as Wil trimmed wet bark away from pine branches with Brayden’s wicked dagger.

  “Do it toward you and slip…” He opened a hand and shrugged.

  Wil nodded and adjusted his hold, the heft and grip of the big knife a surprisingly comfortable fit in his palm. It had been awkward going, getting used to doing it with his left hand, but once he caught the rhythm, his speed picked up considerably. Brayden was working on the bigger limbs with the hatchet, sitting atop one of the saddles, propping the branches from shoulder-to-ground between his legsl, and hacking off chunks in a steady spray. His boots were already half-buried in bark and curled shims.

  He was angled away from the fire, gaze shifting constantly to different points in the forest, doglegging around the curtain of the cloaks with every other sweep.

  Wil sat on his bit of carpet with his back leaning against his own saddle, legs stretched out and feet crossed at the ankle. His boots sat next the fire, drying, his stockings hanging over their sides. The detritus from his own work steadily piled in his lap, and every once in a while he stopped to brush it away and wiggle his toes in the warmth of the flames.

  Supper had been an interesting stew made of lumps of jerky and selections from the sacks of dried vegetables in Brayden’s pack. Brayden had added the medicinal dose to Wil’s bowl only after he’d pointedly asked Wil if it was all right. Considering how bad the dose had tasted without anything to camouflage it, and how sore he was, Wil allowed that it was absolutely all right. It was amazing what a little salt could do for the flavor of what would have otherwise been rather bland fare. Combined with the hardtack, two diced potatoes
from Wil’s pack, and one each of the somewhat bruised apples afterward, Wil’s stomach had stopped complaining, the dose had taken the edge off the aches, and with the activity and the warmth from the fire, the chill in his bones was starting to recede.

  They’d hung the cloaks from the branches closest the fire, hopefully to dry a little before morning. The crude partition offered the additional advantage of providing a bit of a boundary between themselves and the horses, which, if it wasn’t exactly a marker of civilization, was at least a reflection of it. With the excuse of making sure the animals were set for the night and checking the hobbles, Wil had earlier ducked around the makeshift curtain to make good on his promise of treats for the mares from his rapidly depleting store of apples. It was all right—they’d both nickered happily at him and seemed to enjoy them a lot more than he did. Anyway, it wasn’t likely he was going to starve without them, not with Brayden around.

  And if Brayden had been watching from the other side of the drying cloaks and snorting at Wil’s bit of altruism, he at least had the perspicacity to pretend he hadn’t been.

  “So, I’ve been thinking,” Brayden began, tossing one trimmed branch toward the pile near the fire and picking up another.

  “Oh, good,” Wil muttered, mouth slightly pinched.

  Brayden shot him a sideways glance but didn’t acknowledge the sarcastic bent to Wil’s retort. “There are so many things in all this business that don’t connect, so many loose threads flapping about in a windstorm.

  My job is to find answers, and it’s a habit I don’t intend to shake. And since you’re the only one here…” He shrugged.

  Surprisingly, Wil’s supper still sat pleasantly in his stomach and didn’t roil about in agitation. He hewed away several sprigs from his branch, slicing off their small stumps. “I don’t know what answers I can give you,” he told Brayden quietly. “But I suppose it’s your right to ask.”

  “I appreciate that.” Brayden went silent again until he’d finished with the limb he was working on and chucked it over to join the others. He flipped the hatchet’s blade into the soft ground between his feet and turned to Wil. “Why didn’t you ever kill Siofra?”