Chapter 32

waxing moon

Morag! Lady Morag!”

“What’s happened to her?”

“She’s exhausted. Lady, let go of the horse.”

Unable to straighten up, Morag bared her teeth. “Get away from me.” Voices swirled around her. Faces drifted in and out of her blurred vision. “Get away.”

The dark horse rose up in a half-hearted rear, barely able to lift his front legs above the knees of the men around him.

“Steady, lad,” a strong voice said. “Steady now.”

“Get away,” Morag rasped, her dry throat scraped raw from the effort to speak. “I killed the last man who got in my way. I’ll kill you, too.”

“There now, Lady Morag,” the strong voice said. “There now. You’re so tired you’re not thinking clearly. Come on now, darling. Let us help you off the horse so we can tend to both of you.”

Darling? Tend to her? Morag struggled to see the face that went with that voice. It finally came into focus. She didn’t remember his name, but she remembered his face. A Lord of the Horse. A Clan’s stable master.

“I have to keep going,” Morag said. “I have to reach Bretonwood before he does. I have to.”

“And you will, darling. You will. But now you have to get down off the horse. You’re too tired to ride, and he’s too tired to carry you.” A huff of exasperation. “And what is it we should tell Lady Ashk when she returns if we let you ride off without looking after you?”

Ashk. She’d seen him when she’d ridden east with Ashk.

“If I could have some water…and a little food.”

“That’s the way of it,” the stable master said. “Here now. Let us give you a hand down.”

She dismounted and would have crumpled to the stable floor if the stable master hadn’t been ready to support her.

“Bring a stool for Lady Morag and a dipper of water. Put extra straw in that stall. Give the lad a good bed. Let him have some water and feed him by hand once you have the tack stripped off of him. There now, Lady. Just sit down here. Easy now. Here’s some water. Sip it, now. Just sip. Boy, run up to the Clan house. Tell our Lady of the Hearth that the Gatherer is down here and needs something warm and easy to eat. Hurry up now.”

Hands brushed her tangled hair away from her face, tucked a blanket around her.

She sipped the water and watched in a daze as men gathered around her dark horse, stripping off the saddle and bridle, bringing him water, feeding him handfuls of grain, wiping him down with a soft cloth. The soothing murmur of voices talking, reassuring, leading the horse to the stall.