He tore the arrow from the mare’s hip, and she squealed; rearing back, blood oozing again.
Hagan whispered to her and held on to the reins, but she didn’t trust him and her eyes were wild as he led her behind Wind. Night closed around him, and the forest became so dark, he could barely see. He had no choice but to follow the stream and hope to find shelter.
“There is death in the forest.” The old woman’s voice was sharp as a crow’s caw and caused his skin to prickle in fear.
“Death? Whose?” Wolf asked as they made camp for the night. They’d had to keep moving, for surely by now Frederick had made his way back to Erbyn, and Hagan had sent out his soldiers. Wolf wasn’t worried about the warriors from Erbyn, he was more concerned with Prydd and Tadd’s reaction to the letter.
Wolf wanted just one chance at Eaton’s son.
“ ’Tis not clear,” she said, obviously vexed. Isolde sketched upon the ground, using a sharp stick and reading her own scratches as if they were the very words of God. She muttered to herself, cast some herbs into the wind, and frowned at her marks in the mud.
“Surely not my death,” Wolf said, not concerned. It mattered not a lot whether he lived or died, though he would like to finish a few deeds before he crossed to the other side, whatever that might be. Mayhap there was a God; then again, mayhap not. He wasn’t certain, and he was sure if there was a heaven and a hell, he would be more likely to enter through gates of brimstone and fire rather than gold and splendor. He hadn’t been a saint, but he wasn’t about to change his ways. Not when vengeance against Tadd was at hand.
The old scar splicing his brow seemed to tingle, and he scratched at his beard.
“You are too stubborn to die,” Isolde said. Biting her lip, she mumbled something in the words of the old ones, the language of the Welsh of which he understood little.
He felt a gasp of wind against the back of his neck, though the air was still. Turning, he half expected a beast with breath as cold as ice to be standing behind him, but there was no one near him. Nothing stirred.
“What of Sorcha?” he asked finally, for he knew she was on the old woman’s mind.
“I wish I knew,” Isolde said, and stared up at the black sky. A few billowing clouds moved across the half moon, and in the darkness Wolf saw lines of despair and worry deepen upon Isolde’s forehead. “I fear she is lost.”
“Lost?”
“Aye.”
“Is she not at Erbyn?”
Isolde rubbed her fingers together, as if they itched. Closing her eyes, she lifted her face to the pale light of the moon. “She is alone and afraid, though she pretends not to be. She is hiding in a place of great power and waits for the dawn.”
“What will happen then?”
The old woman’s fingers curled into fists so tight the knuckles bleached her old skin white. She trembled slightly, as if a shaft of fear sliced through her. “She is in danger.”
Wolf took a step closer. “From whom?”
The old face wrinkled. “I know not.”
“Hagan?”
One of Isolde’s arms began to shake more violently. “Nay. The brother.”
“Tadd?” Wolf asked, his hatred of his old enemy turning in his stomach like a snake shedding its skin.
“Nay …” Her other arm shook as well. “ ’Tis the brother of Hagan who would destroy her.”
“Darton.” Wolf’s lips thinned as he stared at the old woman. Was she to be believed? Her eyes were round with fear, her frail body spent from looking into the mirror of the future, and yet she could be just an old woman, one who wanted to fool him or one whose mind was already half-gone.
Whichever she was, Wolf could take no chances. Sorcha of Prydd was much too valuable.
Sorcha rested her back against the damp wall. Her entire body ached, and muscles she hadn’t known existed throbbed from her hours on the horse, the scramble down the hillside, and long walk in the icy water of the stream.
Her feet were numb with the cold, and she huddled in a corner of the old house, hoping to sleep until morning, when she could set off on foot to Prydd. She prayed that Leah and Bjorn had escaped the huntsmen, whoever they were, but fear was her constant and only companion.
The thought that even now Leah might be captured worried her. Had she saved her sister from the evils of Erbyn only to lure her into more danger, where Hagan didn’t rule and couldn’t protect her? Somehow, through any means possible, she had to save Leah. If she wasn’t dead already. Oh, Lord, surely she couldn’t be responsible for more deaths, she thought desperately. Keane, Henry, and Gwendolyn were more than enough to bear in her heart, but Leah and Bjorn as well …
Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them back. This was no time to cry. This was time to plot how to find the men who had attacked them. She thought they were part of the robber band she and Hagan had seen earlier, but she hadn’t noticed the leader, nor had she seen Frederick’s horse. However, she hadn’t spent a lot of time looking over her shoulder.