Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(42)
“Lugh’s Seat is coming up fast port-side,” Lachlan said, throwing his voice over his shoulder. “Cut to stern, half-speed, drag the blades.”
The man behind her worked the rudder as the galley slowed. Energy surged in the oarsmen, who’d been rowing tirelessly in shifts for hours. Their minds swam with a mixture of tingling anticipation and heart-pounding wariness that she suspected all soldiers felt when faced with looming danger.
A craggy rock appeared from out of the fog, the base foamed with the crash of the sea. Seals swarmed over the stone, barking and ducking their sleek black heads as they dove headlong into the surf. Lachlan shouted orders as the galley slipped by only to weave through a series of smaller rocky outcroppings, just as infested. But for the random arrangement of stony islets, she was reminded of Inishmaan and the other Aran Islands and how they appeared to sailors as their ships tacked their way into Galway Bay.
The fog thinned to wisps as they entered the mouth of a river. Now she could see the sun, a bright white spot in the sky.
“Head to that anchorage,” Lachlan said, pointing to a scalloped landing just ahead, a sliver of mud at the base of a wooded slope. “We’re in MacDonald lands, but they rarely patrol these wild places.”
With a foot on the gunwale and a hand on the curved prow, he twisted to meet her gaze. His face was stone, but his eyes posed a silent question. She cast her mind toward the shore, spreading her consciousness as far as she could. She did the same for the opposite shore, sensing only the seals swimming around the galley, poking their heads above the water in curiosity, as well as the tickling consciousness on land of red squirrels, tiny voles, and a flock of flighty birds.
Her heart lurched when she turned to find Lachlan waiting, but she met those midnight-sky eyes and nodded.
“We’ll camp here,” he announced. “Tomorrow we’ll march out by land.”
When the shallow-draft galley pulled close to the shore, Lachlan leapt out and dragged the tow-line to a sturdy tree trunk. The men settled their oars, paddle-up, and then by turns leapt over the gunwale, hauling their packs above their heads. She stood up and headed toward the bow to find Lachlan waiting, his hand held out toward her.
The word betrothed was like a wall between them, one that had nothing to do with the black curtain of his mind.
Slipping a strong arm around her back, he swept her up as if she weighed no more than a bag of flour. She may as well have been a sack of supplies for all the attention he paid to her as he carried her to the shore. Absorbed in the pattern of beard now thick upon his jaw, she didn’t realize how far he’d carried her beyond the anchorage until he deposited her out of earshot of the men.
He said, “Still no one patrolling?”
She started at his rough voice, so curt. Like he hadn’t stretched his naked body over hers last night.
“There’s no one nearby.” She mentally probed the woods all the way up the slope. “Not as far as I can tell.”
“And how far is that?”
Each clipped question was a pinprick that drew another drop of her heart’s blood. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“On the height of Inishmaan, I could hear sailors on the ships that passed to and from Galway.” She wished he wouldn’t loom so, she could hardly breathe. “But I could see those ships with my own eyes, and I was far away from people like your sailors, filling up my mind with noise.”
It was a half-answer, but it was the only one she had. It had never even occurred to her to measure the range of her gift, it was always too broad as it was. Yet he stood before her as if waiting for a better explanation.
She said, “If I were to move farther from those sailors and foray into the forest a little deeper—”
“No.”
“Why? Do you think I’ll run away?”
“If you’re seen, we’ll be forced into a skirmish.”
“I won’t be seen because I will sense them before they see me. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
He twisted to glance toward the sailors, setting up camp some ways away.
“They can’t hear us,” she said. “Though they are wondering if I summoned up the fog that shielded our journey, or conjured the seals, and what other witchery I might now be brewing for you.”
“In Derry, you told me that those men were loyal.”
“They are loyal. To Angus, and thus, by his command, to you. That doesn’t mean their minds aren’t wild with superstition. Now are you to let me use my gift for our safety, or was your reason for dragging me here just a mockery?”
She imagined she saw a glint of guilt on his face before he turned away, waving to the deeper woods.
“Be off,” he said. “But don’t wander far.”
She turned on one heel and headed away from him. Slivers of pale sunlight cut through the trees to streak the forest floor. She pulled her senses away from Lachlan’s shuttered thoughts and cast her mind wildly into the world. She sensed no other life but that of an owl stirring in a hole in a tree and a fox going still as she passed by its den under the wood of a fallen pine.
She continued to walk long after she stopped bothering to listen. These quiet, thick woods bore no resemblance to the windswept heights of Inishmaan, but her soul sensed that it was a lonely place nonetheless. She let her feet lead her. A pang of longing pierced her to the quick, for the warmth of her family’s hearth, for the sight of her mother’s gentle eyes, for the familiarity of her own people.