let it be only their song that fills your ears until my return. For I will return. Only heartache and toil shall you reap until a Buchanan bairn is born to rule the MacKerrick clan. And when you are on bended knee, I will have my revenge.
By spring’s first thaw, should Conall still live, he would beg forgiveness from Angus Buchanan, for a wrong committed against the clan chief’s sister while Conall and Duncan still nursed in their mother’s arms. Although his people cried out against it as bowing to the Buchanan’s witchery, Conall knew ’twas likely their only chance for survival.
He traversed a narrow bog, tugging the sheep after him, and scanned the upper bank for the jumble of rocks that marked the path leading to Ronan’s old hut. He had not traveled this far to the edge of MacKerrick lands in months—mayhap more than a year—and he hoped that the long-abandoned hut in the vale was still habitable.
’Twas peace and solitude Conall so desperately needed, and he was certain to find it in his uncle’s hunting cottage, just beyond this bank…
He saw the weak column of filmy smoke from the roof before he smelled the smoldering peat.
And meat. He smelled meat cooking. Conall’s stomach growled.
With two more strides, the ancient sod house came into view, snuggled into the earth like a toadstool, its short wooden door standing slightly ajar.
Conall’s face darkened. He slid his bow and quiver and his pack from his shoulders and dropped the sheep’s tether, and reached for his sword.
Evelyn plucked the blackened strip of meat from the spit with forefinger and thumb, blew on it, shook it, then tossed it to Alinor, who snatched it from the air with an expert chomp. Two swift bites and the piece was gone. Alinor swiped a long, pink tongue over her pointed canines with obvious relish.
“Oh, I agree,” Evelyn said, retrieving another strip of meat. “Quite good.” She bit into the tough, half-burnt chunk, trying to rip off a piece small enough to chew. “A tad dry, though,” she amended around the mouthful of meat. She tossed the remaining hunk to the wolf lying nearby.
Alinor made quick work of the morsel and then set to licking the fur in front of the makeshift bandage wound around her middle.
“Itching, is it?” Evelyn asked, and then sucked her fingers clean before rising from the fire and limping the width of the hut to the ragged lengths of cloth dangling from the ceiling. She gripped several in her hands, testing their dryness, before choosing two and tugging them free.
She picked up the shallow bowl filled with melted snow and floating chunks of moss and returned to the wolf’s side, sinking to her bottom with a hiss. Her ankle, knee, and hip were improving each day, the swelling nearly gone, but each joint in her right leg was still painted with deep black and purple and green bruises.
Alinor flopped completely onto her side with a great sigh and stretched out her legs to either side of Evelyn. The wolf closed her eyes.
“You like this, do you?” Evelyn grinned, reaching for the knot and picking it loose. She slipped the bandage from beneath the animal and set it aside to be washed later, then reached for the gummy clump of moss pressed to Alinor’s ribs. She flung the soiled mass onto the fire.
The wound beneath had improved significantly. Although crusty, the skin around the long, ragged edges was no longer blazing red and emitted no foul odor. Evelyn could even see tiny black stubble in Alinor’s startlingly white skin where the fur was beginning to grow back.
Satisfied, Evelyn wadded up one of the clean strips of cloth and dunked it in the bowl, wringing the water from it before dabbing gently at Alinor’s wound. The wolf flinched slightly at first, but then relaxed again.
Thank you, God, Evelyn said silently as she tended the animal. She’d probably spoken the phrase a thousand times in the last—how long? Three weeks? Four? Evelyn was not certain how much time had passed since discovering Minerva’s dead mare, but in truth, it no longer mattered. She felt she could never be grateful enough for the divine intervention that had brought Alinor into her life.
Evelyn had thought she’d fallen into the very depths of the coldest, darkest hell after fleeing the gray wolves those many weeks ago. She’d landed hard on her right leg and hip and her breath had left her, as had her consciousness. When she had awoken, it was to a world of grainy darkness, a smell of rot and mildew, and to a screaming pain in her leg. She could feel cold, dry dirt and stone beneath her cheek and she wondered if she was dead, although she could not imagine who would have been about to bury her.
But there had been no soil pressing down on her, and so after mustering the courage to move her battered body, she’d dragged herself blindly along the packed dirt until she’d reached a cold, crumbly barrier. Evelyn had pulled herself up into a seated position when the watery-sounding whine first reached her ears. Her body went rigid, her mind still gripped by images of gnashing fangs and blood arcing through snowy air.
Her eyes traveled upward instinctively to find a ragged hole in the black above her, where foggy light filtered down. Was she trapped once again, this time in some sort of cave?
The whining sounded again and Evelyn shivered, even as the tone of the cry pierced her heart.
Hurts.
She listened to the animal for what seemed like an eternity, until tears ran down her cheeks and she sobbed into her elbow. Her fear waged battle on her soul. Yellow eyes and a twisting, fighting, black body filled her mind, and Evelyn knew ’twas the black wolf who cried.
Hurts. Hurts.
Evelyn began to drag herself along the dirt again, feeling the moist barrier with her fingers.
She touched rough wood and her palms skimmed up and down, testing its dimensions.
A door?
Her fingers caught on a rough L shape and Evelyn grasped it, pulled. Wood creaked.
She could hear the wolf still beyond the door and she wondered if she was not opening the gateway to her own death.
Hurts.
She pulled harder, and a weak sliver of gray light sliced across her face—fading daylight.
Evelyn grunted as she strained at the door and it dragged open at last.
The giant black wolf slumped not three yards from Evelyn in the growing, dense dusk. The animal’s head bobbed and swayed on its thick neck, its muzzle pointed at the ground. One paw was held delicately in the air, and a wide path of crimson snow led to the animal’s hindquarters.
Blood. The wolf’s blood.
The beast raised its yellow eyes to Evelyn, as if just realizing it was being watched. It whined again, faintly, and tried to scoot backward in the snow, away from Evelyn.
Hurts. Afraid.
But the wolf’s injured paw combined with its obvious blood loss conspired against the animal and it fell sideways with a frightened yelp. It struggled to rise again for a moment, but then gave up, its sides rising shallowly, the bloom of blood widening.
This animal had saved her life, of that Evelyn was certain. Although it might now mean her death, she could not watch it suffer. Would not.
Afraid.
