When the Cat was away, it seemed the rats in his loft played tag.
No doubt the old lady was too deaf to hear their thumping and scrabbling overhead, but they’d kept Aengus awake so long that he’d already had occasion to toss another log on the fire. That last series of thumps had sounded like they’d begun a rousing game of leapfrog.
For the first time Aengus’s fingers were twined between Lasrua’s, but they were not holding hands, they were holding fists. He only wished he knew whether she was clenching at him out of anger or out of fear. Holy God, but the girl could squeeze!
Aengus was nervous. The fire was hot at their backs—an entire log burned to warm the echoing chamber—but his sweat was due to something other than the heat. It had a sharp, sour odor Lasrua had learned to recognize. She was getting used to his human scent and even found herself sniffing after it sometimes, but her elven nose still wrinkled at the stench of a nervous man.
The shadows cast by Raven Crag and the fells were advancing apace with the mare’s dawdling walk. The valley north of Acanweald was at its narrowest here, the hills steep on either side and the forests dark. Yusuf knew he had only minutes of sunlight remaining.
Uallach could not make herself feel that spring would come this year.
Oh, she knew how the calendar worked, and there was no denying the ground was firm and dry, and the sunlight warm on her cheek, even at this late hour of the day. The thorn bushes and treetops were loud with birdsong and chatter, and if anyone ought to know it was the birds.
Olaf’s plan to surprise his Mama from her nap was foiled by Mama herself, for she’d had the foresight to be already awake.
Still, he was pleased to see the unguarded expression of delight that crossed her face. They had at least surprised her!
Murchad tried to hide his shock at his first sight of his sister, but it did not feel like he succeeded. How thin she had grown, even since the wedding!
A single man had died, but to Murchad, riding up the empty road, it felt like his homeland had been decimated by a plague.
The last time he’d passed through the Gate of Ken, it had been the eve of Diarmait’s wedding. Then, people had swarmed past his horse’s flanks until Murchad had felt wobbly as a wooden buoy floating on a sea of smiling faces. The air above had been awhirl with scarves and banners, jugglers’ balls, and jangling bells; and the voices of the crowd had all run together into a low roar rippling with laughter.
Diarmait had been so much in Murchad’s thoughts of late, it was no wonder his slumbering mind resurrected him from the signs that sank into his sleep. A musical male voice roughened by the guttural accent of Galloway… a hand on his shoulder shaking him with brotherly disregard…
Aed had knocked on the outside of the door, and now he knocked on the inside of the door, and still Congal did not so much as grunt.
“I always thought she was the finest lady I knew, even if she did laugh when she farted, which my Ma never did.”
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