The Irish Warrior

He glanced over his shoulder. “Ye did fine back there.”

Still curt, but communicative. She did not take her eyes off the treacherous, root-strewn ground below. “So did you. I had no notion you could mimic a man from Shropshire.”

“I don’t often find the need.”

“No,” she agreed ruefully. “I expect not.”

He grunted. Senna scowled. Back to that, were they?

They walked for a long time, and Senna soon found that ignoring her painful muscles was one thing, but ignoring her growling stomach was quite another. By sunset her belly was reprimanding her at regular intervals.

She hadn’t filched half enough food for them. She’d planned a quick trip to Dublin, not this trek across the marchlands. Cheese and dried meat were good, but they were almost gone, and she was hungry for real food, and above all, fresh meat.

He turned back regularly to watch for her welfare. Once he pulled her up the other side of a steep stream embankment, another time pushed her away from a deep crevasse she was about to blunder into.

“Sooth, woman,” he growled from a few feet ahead after one such incident. “Can ye not keep your eyes open?”

“Sooth, woman,” She mimicked his impatient tone, then stumbled and stubbed her toe. She hopped around on one foot, muttering.

He didn’t look back and he didn’t stop walking, but he said over his shoulder, “’Tis yer penalty for being contrary.”

She glared at him. “’Tis, is it?”

“Aye.”

Too weary to summon the strength for a good inhalation, she certainly could not come up with a good, biting retort. She yanked a tree branch out of her way then let it go. It slapped her bent backside as she walked under. She rubbed her nose and blundered on, each step a leaden effort, eyeing his back with an evil glare.

Long dark hair swung down past his shoulders. His chin was up, his shoulders back, and his gaze moved in a constant sweep of the land. The plated muscles of his thighs worked tirelessly, eating up the miles between them and a modicum of safety. He hopped over a downed tree trunk and, pushing lightly on the balls of his feet, leapt the width of a small creek. Landing without a sound in the thick, fecund earth on the far side, he turned and extended a hand for her.

Accursed Irish.

She glared at his upright figure across the creek. Her spine was curved in an endless, creaking bend. Her feet were screaming, her thighs burning, and if he did anything else agile or energetic, she would cuff him. Simply reach out and smack him on the back of the head.

She crawled over the greening stump, her nose pressed into the moss. Disdaining his help, she leapt over the creek, tripped as she took off, and landed smack in the center of the babbling stream, wetting herself to the knee.

Cursed Irish.

He said nothing as she slogged up beside him, squishing and squeaking. Slanting evening light sliced between the tree branches and lit up the contours of his impassive face, but as soon as she opened her mouth, he shook his head and turned away.

Some time later, he finally halted them. “We’ll camp here for a meal,” he announced curtly.

All in all, he was being very curt, which she considered highly unfair. She was the rejected party. Curtness was hers.

She sat down beside the pit as he gathered wood. Sleep would solve a few of her problems. For a little while.

But when Finian sat down nearby, even sleep became a lost cause. “Let me see yer fingers,” he said. Again, curtly. He extended his hand.

She retracted hers, holding it to her chest. “They are hale.”

He regarded her with a disheartening mixture of disgust and perceptiveness. “Senna—”

“Grand.”

Had her teeth just gritted?

“What was that?” he said, looking around.

She glanced over her shoulder, as if seeking the source of the strange, creaking noise. “Perhaps another bird. Some are ground dwelling, build their nests in rocks and such.”