“Bollocks,” said the second. “Any man can be caught, so long as he’s flesh and blood. Somerled’s right. Eyvind turned into a traitor. Traitors have to be taken and punished. No chieftain worth his salt lets a man turn against his own and get away with it, Wolfskin or no Wolfskin.”

“Never catch him, not unless he wants to be caught,” muttered the first man. “If you ask me, Somerled’s a fool.”

“What?” Four voices spoke as one. His companions turned toward him, eyes narrowed, mouths grim. Each fingered his weapon.

“Nothing. Come on, then. North it is.”

They moved across the land in silence, leaving no tumbledown hut untouched, no cave, no sheepfold, no heap of weathered rock unsearched. In the hay barn, small creatures stirred in the walls, and Guard’s ears twitched. Nessa slept a sleep of dark dreams.

ELEVEN

As night fell a chill wind came up, numbing his ears, hurting his head, setting a shiver in his bones. He had stolen sword and knife, a pair of boots, a haunch of meat which he’d already eaten, crouched motionless in the lee of a stone wall between fields, some time during the day’s gradual journey southward. Without fire it would be a cold, dark night. But fire could only attract pursuers; in darkness, he was safe from Somerled. A wolf finds his way by moon and stars, by the faint scent of the enemy, by the subtle movement of leaf and twig. Thus Eyvind must go; but for now his aching body demanded rest, his throbbing head and hazy eyes cried out for sleep. Ah, sleep: he longed for it and dreaded it. Sleep brought a bright tangle of dreams, and all the dreams were of her. The bad ones: Nessa frightened, Nessa captive, Nessa burning; from those he would wake with flesh bathed in cold sweat, heart racing, eyes full of tears. The good ones: her soft voice, her elusive smile, the scent of spring flowers; words of love she had never spoken, sweet touches she had never given. He walked with her on the shore in summer; he sat silent by her on the clifftop in springtime. Waking from those dreams was bitterest of all, and he did not know which was strongest in him, the craving to see her or the horror of confronting, each time anew, the knowledge that she had been taken from him. He cursed the gods for sending him such dreams, and yet he would not have been without them.