The Crowded Shadows (10 page)

“Won’t be long,” he said.

In barely any time at all he came stalking from the bathhouse, his hair soaking, his clothes damp from having been pulled over wet skin. He moved immediately to gather up his things.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s getting late.” He shrugged on his knapsack, slung his crossbow and quiver across his back and shouldered his saddle bags. “Come
on
!” he demanded, and Wynter and Razi froze, alerted by the unaccustomed sharpness in his voice.

He looked up to find them staring. His eyes slid to the side. “We need to go,” he said. “It’s getting late.” Wynter slowly met Razi’s eyes. He shrugged and the two of them hurried to pack their things. Whatever it was, they weren’t going to dawdle. If Christopher wanted to leave that badly, they’d leave.

The yard was quiet when they went to fetch their horses, all the tarmen drowsy after their dinners. There was a line of men snoozing and smoking pipes on the benches in the yard, their tankards at their feet, but they barely raised their heads as the three travellers rode from the stables, heading for the exit.

They had almost made it out the gate when a woman began shouting and screaming from the complex of buildings at the back of the inn. Wynter looked back to see the sleepy men beginning to rise to their feet. The woman’s cries became more coherent as she neared the yard, and Razi brought his horse to a halt and looked back as her words became clear.

“…
needs help! Someone help him! Someone get help!”

Razi immediately went to turn back. He opened his mouth to call that he was a doctor, but Christopher reached across and gripped his wrist, silencing him and staying the dancing turn of his horse.

“Ain’t naught you can do,” he said quietly. “Fellow was careless, got himself crushed beneath a barrel. He’s naught but a ghost now.” He looked at Wynter. “All right, sweetheart?” he said. “He’s naught but a ghost.”

He let go of Razi’s wrist and reined his horse back a few steps, awaiting his decision. Wynter and Razi stared at him for a moment, their eyes wide. Then, as if someone had dropped a starter’s flag, or given a secret command, the three of them turned their horses and trotted out of the yard and off up the road.

I
t was late at night and the moon was shining brightly by the time they finally slid from their saddles. They had just enough energy to tend their horses, then they didn’t so much set up camp as sprawl, exhausted, on their randomly scattered bedrolls and gawp up at the milky stars. They were still deep in the monstrous pines, but they had made excellent progress. By noon the next day they would be back at the river and ten days after that they would be in Alberon’s camp and the truth would at last be within their grasp.

After a while, Razi hauled himself up and settled himself on a tree-trunk, preparing to take first watch, but Wynter and Christopher had secretly agreed to split the first two shifts, and they were determined he would not win out. Christopher silently took the cloak from Razi’s shoulders and threw it onto his friend’s bedroll, while Wynter folded her arms and glared her support.

“Go to sleep,” he commanded. “You’re taking
third
watch.”

Razi groused and bitched, and generally stamped about for a few minutes as he tried to bully them into submission. But within moments of grudgingly laying down, he was unconscious. Wynter smiled at Christopher across Razi’s sleeping back. Christopher winked at her. She wrapped herself in her cloak, lay back and was gone as soon as she shut her eyes.

*   *   *

Seconds later, Christopher was insistently shaking her awake.

She rose to the surface of consciousness as if struggling her way through tar. Christopher mumbled something incoherent. He stumbled his way to his bedroll and was out cold before she’d even wiped the sleep crumbs from her eyes.

Wynter blinked around in bewilderment. The clearing was swimming in moonlight. The horses were softly breathing spectres against the trees. At her feet, Razi’s dark silhouette sighed and muttered in his sleep.

Slowly, Wynter’s confusion drained from her, and she cursed and bowed her head. It was time for her watch. She forced herself to get to her feet and staggered about for a while to get her blood flowing. When she was fairly certain that she wouldn’t drop off as soon as she stopped moving, she pulled her cloak around her and sat on the tree trunk, listening to the quiet movements of the night.

Time passed. The stars wheeled overhead, and the moon made its steady progress across the sky. Over the horizon, far, far away, thunder rolled dryly. Wynter thought about her father. In her mind, Lorcan stood in a meadow at sunrise, looking over the river by their home. The sun was in his hair and he lifted his hand and whispered,
Look, darling. There, on the far bank. A deer!

She did not think that anything short of a scream would wake the men; still, when the tears came, she buried her face in her cloak and muffled her sobs.

“Razi,” she whispered, reaching to shake him awake. He opened his eyes before she even touched him, and she withdrew her hand, smiling. He gazed back in curious, wide-eyed detachment and she realised that he was still asleep, with his eyes open. “It’s time for your watch,” she said, patting his chest.

Razi blinked vacantly a few times. Then the childlike roundness left his eyes and he winced, rolled over and pushed himself up with a groan. “Oh, bloody hell,” he hissed. “I miss my bed.”

He heaved himself to his feet and shambled about to get the kinks out of his legs. Then he wandered over for his habitual check of the horses.

Christopher was fast asleep, flat on his back, his covers pooled around his ankles. He was as lax and as sprawling as a puppy, his mouth open slightly, his breath sighing out into the still air. Wynter watched his chest rise and fall, his pale undershirt glowing softly in the waning moonlight. She hitched her cloak and shuffled to his side.

“
Wynter!
” Razi’s sharp call startled her, and she glanced over at him, nervous suddenly that he might object to their sharing a bedroll. To her surprise he gestured to Christopher and whispered, “Check for his knives!”

His knives! Wynter peered down at their sleeping friend. She didn’t see any knives, but she hesitated now, wary. She had forgotten Christopher’s tendency to leap from his sleep with a blade in his fist.

“Christopher?” she whispered. “Chris?”

He startled, his hands jumping slightly as he opened his eyes. “
Sea? Táim anseo
…”
He cleared his throat and looked up at her, frowning. “Girly?”

Shy now under his blinking, grey-eyed confusion, Wynter nodded tentatively to Christopher’s bedroll. “Is… is it all right?” she whispered.

Christopher gazed at her, not quite awake. His eyes wandered for a moment as if he was about to fall back asleep. Then he lifted his arm in bleary invitation and Wynter lay down into his embrace. She put her head on his chest and looped her arm across his warm stomach. He snaked his arm around her waist, pulled her in close and sighed. She felt his breathing deepen and his body relaxed beside hers.

She lay with her eyes open, looking out into the clearing. She could hear Razi taking the aired clothes down from the trees and folding them away into their bags. He did not seem bothered in the least by their intimacy.

This is strange
, she thought,
this lying here together
. And it
was
strange. But somehow it was also fine. It was comfortable, and good, and right. She closed her eyes and settled her cheek against Christopher’s chest, listening to his heart pump steadily beneath her ear.

“I didn’t think you’d come back to me,” he said, surprising her that he was still awake. She opened her eyes again and felt his voice vibrate inside him as he said, “I thought you’d think me too wicked, after what I did to that man.”

She turned her cheek against his shirt again, taking comfort in the soft fabric against her skin, and she inhaled his smell, that lovely spicy odour. She tightened her arm around his waist. For a moment she hesitated, then she whispered, “Do you think it wicked that I’m glad he’s dead?”

Christopher didn’t answer. He was blinking up at the stars, just as she was blinking out into the moon-washed trees, both afraid of what the other must think of them. “I was afraid that he would follow us,” he said. “I was frightened of what he might do. If he found you alone again.”

She nodded against his chest.
Me too
, she thought.
Me too
.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of it,” he said, tightening his arm around her.

“My God,” said Razi softly, his voice heavy with dread. “Did that man hurt you? Did…? What did that man do to you, Wynter?”

Wynter shut her eyes and turned her face into Christopher’s chest. She did not answer. Christopher brought his hand up to rest against the thick coil of hair at the back of her head. He took a breath to tell Razi about the bandit and she immediately pressed her fingers to his lips to make him stop. But Christopher gently pulled her hand away and clasped it to his chest. Then he went ahead and told Razi everything, just as she had told it to him.

Razi was still and silent for a long time after Christopher stopped talking. Eventually Wynter couldn’t stand it any longer and she turned her head to see him. He was standing looking at them, his face lost in shadows.

“Why did you not tell me?” he said, his voice thick and disbelieving. “Why did you not ask for my help? I would have protected you!”

Wynter stared at him, not knowing how to explain.

Christopher lay very still beneath her, his hand on her hair, her palm still pressed to his chest. “She was ashamed, Razi,” he said quietly. “She didn’t know what to say.”

“But what if that man had
killed
you, Chris? What if his friend had come and
…”
Razi cut himself off. He pulled his hands across his face, and then stood looking up at the stars, gathering his patience. “Next time, tell me,” he said at last. “Next time you are in trouble,
tell me
. Together we’ll find a better way.”

Wynter jerked awake, images of fire in her head, drums beating. “Embla,” she whispered, but the dream fled before she could catch hold of it, and even that name left her, lost as soon as it passed her lips.

The moon had sunk behind the trees, and the clearing was very dark and still. Wynter’s eyes slid shut again, sleep pulling her like an undertow. Christopher had rolled onto his side and she lay pressed to his back, her forehead resting against his shoulder blades, her arm looped across his waist. As she began to spiral downwards into the dark, she stroked his stomach lightly, the way a drowsing child might stroke a blanket or a doll. At her touch, Christopher mumbled and stretched a little.

Wynter felt herself floating off the edge of consciousness. She slid her hand beneath Christopher’s shirt, enjoying the softness of his skin against her fingertips. He sighed, and she continued to stroke his stomach, almost asleep.

Suddenly Christopher gripped her hand in his, pulling her fingers up and away. Sleep retreated a fraction and she half-opened her eyes. “You ’right, Chris?”

He seemed very tense, holding his breath, Wynter’s hand squashed tightly in his. She went to speak again, but her eyes slid shut of their own accord and she stumbled completely into the dark, losing her grip on the world for a while.

When she drifted back up, he was gone. She put her hand out to feel for him but his side of the bedroll was empty. She closed her fingers in his abandoned cloak and sleep claimed her again.

She woke one more time that night to find Christopher slipping back into their bed. He pulled their cloaks over him and settled down with his back to her. She scooted over and looped her arm across his waist again, snuggling her head in against his back. He hesitated, then took her hand in his, kissed her fingers with his cold lips and settled down with a sigh.

Over the horizon thunder boomed again, dry and lightless, the uneasy promise of storms.

“T
his is quite a travel party,” said Christopher. He ground his toe into a post hole and looked anxiously around the deserted camp. “Must have been at least three big tents here. Ten men, perhaps, maybe even more.”

Wynter stooped and lifted a handful of cinders from the remains of the campfire. It had been almost two days since they had tried to spy on the inhabitants of this camp, but warmth still lurked under the surface of these carefully damped down ashes. “These fires haven’t been doused long,” she said. “They only struck camp this morning.” She cleaned her hands on the grass and got to her feet. “I wish we’d managed to get a good look at them, instead of chasing each other through the woods like idiots.”

Christopher strolled over to the large area of poached ground where the travellers had kept their horses. “They’ve made no effort to hide their presence. They seem to have no fear of being discovered.”

“They were speaking Hadrish,” commented Wynter. “Perhaps they’re fur merchants?”

Razi stood on the other side of the clearing. He was staring at something on the ground, absently running his thumb across the scar on his lip. His expression disturbed Wynter, and as Christopher wandered off to follow the tracks of the horses, she drifted over to Razi and looked down at what was so absorbing him.