Healer

by Linda Windsor

  How had she spent her days before Ronan came into her life? Sure, she couldn’t remember. Yet she’d been diligent, always busy hunting or gathering, preparing for the Long Dark or for trading at the Leafbud and Sun Season fairs. The blue flowers of rosemary were in bloom, and white-blossomed wild garlic awaited in the shady damp of the forested streambeds. Perhaps she should go back for her basket and digging stick—

  Brenna cocked her head, listening. In the distance, the faint sound of hounds in pursuit echoed from the forest below her perch. Her pulse quickened. A hunt, and here she was an hour’s climb from her home in a dress that stood out like the sun in a clear sky. Her hand flew to her waist. And she was weaponless. Ronan had made her forget what she was as well. Hunted.

  Brenna hastened up the steep mountainside, following deer paths easily overlooked, unless one knew where they were. Overhead, a breeze whispered through the canopy of oak and hazel, carrying the sound of the hunt. The dogs were closer now, spurring her into as much of a run as the uneven ground would allow. She heard the thundering of horses’ hooves … and their riders’ shouts.

  “It went this way!”

  This way seemed to be the same route Brenna pursued. For every change in direction she took, the hunters followed, though they were still a distance behind. Briars picked at her skirt and skin as she stumbled uphill, tripping on her hem. In braccae, she would have been able to move as easily as Faol in the forest.

  Faol. Brenna had last seen the wolf following Ronan through the pass, keeping to the edge of the trees as he always did. A terrible foreboding seized her. Grabbing the trunk of a hazel, she paused, gasping for air.

  “I think I hit it,” a loud voice called.

  It. A dizzying wave washed over Brenna. She had to get back to the cave. If Faol was in trouble, he’d head there. Brenna plunged ahead, but a hurried climb up uneven ground spotted with slippery moss and lichen-covered rock was impossible without risking a broken neck. She’d never make it to the safety of her cave. And neither would Faol, if he was the target of the hunt. A white wolf pelt would bring a handsome purse for any man.

  Above her, pine thinned to a ledge notched by time into the side of the mountain. From it spilled a stream, forming a waterfall that pooled on a wooded plateau that dropped off sharply beyond. The pool was a favorite, shaded spot to spend time and find wild garlic.

  If she could make it there, Brenna might call Faol to her. They could hide behind the icy water spray. It wasn’t that far. Underbrush of heather and juniper and bramble shredded her stockings and skin as she made for the pool.

  Dare she call for Faol? If he was safely watching the hunt …

  Sodden winter leaves gave way beneath her foot, and down she went with a startled cry. The baby. Brenna crawled to her knees and forced herself up. She had to think about the baby she knew she carried. She’d known the moment the child was conceived. She’d seen the newborn squirming in her arms in the midst of passion’s dizzying storm and knew.

  The fall of water splashing upon a rock bed penetrated Brenna’s dazed thoughts, turning memories of bliss into present horror. Faol bolted up the hill toward her, limping. She couldn’t see the hounds on his trail, but she could hear them—and the excited shouts of the hunters.

  She stepped out into the wolf’s path. “Come on, laddie, let’s go.”

  As if understanding her intent, Faol passed her, moving toward the fall. Brenna fell into a staggering run behind him. They could make it. There was still time. The dogs would lose their scent in the water. It would be freezing cold, but the fall was large enough to hide them until the party gave up. When it was safe, she and Faol could return to their home, where she’d see to the arrow lodged in Faol’s hindquarter and heal it.

  Father God, let it be so.

  How could she have been so foolish? Faol limped ahead of her, and while she had nothing but scratches, her legs grew heavier with each step she took. Blood pounded in her ears so loud it seemed to shake the ground beneath her. But she could see the waterfall now. See Faol stop and turn.

  The hair on the wolf’s body stood straight up, making him look half again his size. And she could count every tooth in his head, bared as they were. He hunched, the way he always did when he was about to attack—

  “Well, what have we here?”

  Brenna spun so abruptly at the man’s voice that she nearly lost her footing. Fingers of iron clasped her arm, preventing her fall. She looked at them, her gaze skimming up a well-muscled arm to broad shoulders swathed in the colors of an O’Byrne. A fair-haired giant of one.

  “Spare my wolf. He’s a gentle—”

  A gray wolfhound shot through the periphery of her vision, followed by another.

  “No!” she screamed.

  The wolf and hounds clashed in a fury of snarls and snaps.

  And Brenna’s heart was at the center. “Stop them, sir. I beg you. I’ve raised him from a pup. Please.”

  Caden O’Byrne looked deep into the wide blue gaze turned up at him, tugging at him with a power that left him unsettled. There could be no doubt who this was. So why he felt compelled to help her was a mystery.

  “Gillis, leash the hounds.” Had she bewitched him already, to make him believe a wolf such as this could be tamed?

  “There’s no stopping them now, milord,” the hounds master said, breathless, as he caught up with Caden. “That wolf’d chew a man up as soon as them. Them, too, in the middle of a fight.”

  “Then give me the leashes,” the woman pleaded. “I’ll put them on. He’ll not harm me.”

  Caden didn’t know whether to trust her or not. Comely and convincing as she was, who was to say she’d not shift into a she-wolf and take on the other dog? Yet he saw no conniving in her gaze. Only fear. Stark fear and pleading.

  Curiosity to see what she might do got the better of him. “Give her the leashes.”

  In a flash, the woman seized them and raced straight into the fray. Quick as lightning, she slipped a leather noose about the dog circling the embattled two and tossed it in Gillis’s direction. The hounds master grabbed it and, with the help of a second man, hauled the straining, startled wolfhound away.

  She had courage, Caden would give her that. Or she was as mad as a swineherd.

  But as she reached the wolf and second wolfhound, the sickening snapping of bone stopped her still. The gray and bloodied wolfhound went limp, its last breath escaping in a strangled whine through the clench of the white wolf’s powerful jaws about its neck. The wolf held it a moment, looking beyond the woman, as if she were no threat, at the other dog being hauled away.

  “Faol.” She sank to her knees, weak with relief. “Father God be praised.”

  Behind Caden, servants led Ballach and the other mounts up the hillside. The forest had become too thick and the hillside too steep to risk a misstep with the horses, so they’d been left behind and the hunt taken up afoot.

  “Come, Faol,” the witchwoman said, opening her arms to the wounded, bloodied wolf.

  The wolf hunkered down, growling at Caden and his companions, never moving.

  “Husharoo, my love.”

  She sang to the savage creature as though to a babe. Mesmerized, Caden waited along with the others, some with ready spears, others with axes or knives, all poised for what might happen next. The scene and all in it grew still as a tomb.

  Until sunlight beaming through the canopy of leaves caught and danced off the woman’s extended hand, drawing Caden’s attention to the gold ring adorning her thumb. His body tightened, cold with recognition. It was Ronan’s. By his father’s aching bones, now he knew what had become of his brother.

  “Cursed Gowrys!” Caden started for the woman.

  It was all the provocation the wolf needed. Instinctively, Caden drew his knife. He heard the woman’s “No, Faol!” Saw relief turn to horror as she rose too late to stop the beast. Watched as the white fury seemingly took flight, coming straight at him. There was no time to think. Only to drive the dagg
er deep into the animal’s throat. Its running leap took Caden down. As he fell, his sense of place and motion slowed, giving him plenty of time to jerk the knife, making certain the wolf’s lifeline had been severed. But no chance to brace himself. He struck the ground with a bone-jarring thud. The beast’s hot blood spurted over him, its last growl filling Caden’s nostrils with feral breath.

  But it was the anguished wail from the woman that seized his senses. Before Caden could throw the animal off him, she pulled it away.

  Hysterical, sobbing and mumbling, she held the wolf’s head, oblivious to the blood ruining her tattered blue gown.

  “My fault,” she groaned, rocking back and forth. “Oh, Faol … m-my fault.”

  So much for the shape-shifting legend. She was just a madwoman who’d made a pet of a wolf. A madwoman who’d killed his brother. The woman his father had hunted all these years. Maybe, at last, she would be the key to Tarlach’s approval.

  “Seize her,” Caden ordered, climbing to his feet. “And skin the wolf. ’Twill make a fine trophy.”

  His order penetrated the captive’s fit of grief. “Nay,” she sobbed, swatting at the men who reluctantly approached her.

  More superstitious fools.

  “L—” She forced steel into her voice. “Leave us be.”

  “She’s naught but a weeping female with no more powers than that dead wolf,” Caden admonished them. “Seize her.”

  The men moved in, but still no one dared touch her. No one but the huntsman from Gwynedd. Yet as he reached for her, she stiffened, lifting a face to him smeared with the blood of the beast she’d nuzzled in her agony. Caden didn’t know if it was the sight of such beauty despoiled by savagery or the way she curled her lip at him, wolf-like, that made the man pause.

  “Touch me, and I’ll draw blood,” she growled lowly. Gone was the broken demeanor, and in its place was something else entirely. The sinewy way she moved her body, crouching, shifting back on her haunches, it was unworldly. “One bite or a scratch from me, and men will be hunting you for your pelt come nightfall.”

  Heming glanced at Caden, unnerved by the threat. “I say kill her, dead as the wolf.” Stepping back, he slipped his bow off his shoulder.

  What game did she play? For surely she could do no harm to them. Certainly she couldn’t turn them into wolves as she suggested.

  “She plays at your fear,” Caden said. “And you’re the fool for believing her.”

  “Her mother was a witch,” someone in the company reminded him.

  “Aye, and she’s a witch who killed my brother. See, she wears the O’Byrne ring.” Pure gold it was.

  The woman leapt to her feet, hands poised claw-like as she turned, glaring at Caden. “Nay,” she said. “One of you killed him, as sure as you killed Faol. And there’s the horse to prove it.” She jerked her finger at Ballach. “Speckled as the day I last saw it.”

  “God in Heaven,” Gillis said, crossing himself. “She turned Ronan into a wolf.”

  The possibility staggered Caden for a moment.

  “And I’ll do the same to you, if you so much as touch me,” she warned Heming.

  The man took another step back, preparing his bow. “Give me the word, milord, and I’ll put an arrow between her eyes.”

  This was nonsense. “You may be crazy, woman, but you’ve no more power than I,” Caden retorted.

  “Better to kill her and be sure,” Heming told him. He nocked an arrow, eager.

  Too eager, a small voice told Caden.“Hold, huntsman. I’d have her alive.”

  Caden made to grab her arm, but the wench was as fast as she was cunning. With a twist, she bolted toward the waterfall. Caden pursued her, determined to show his men there was nothing to fear, but slight as she was, she seemed to work her way through the trees like the wind, while he caught the slap of the brush and branches in her wake.

  “Shall I loose the hound, milord?” Gillis called after him.

  “Nay—” Caden broke off with a curse, spitting out a mouthful of leaves. Suddenly the left side of his head exploded in pain. Once his vision cleared, he saw her loose another stone. Instinctively he raised his hand and deflected it, though its sting shot from his wrist up his arm like a lighting bolt. His arm grew numb as the prickling burn ebbed.

  Caden leaned into a tree, heaving a sigh of relief. His arm was heavy, painful to lift, but he still could feel the rough bark against his skin. Sure, he’d struck his elbow and felt the same sensations. No witchcraft like that which had left his father’s axe arm useless for life.

  Still, she was as canny and dangerous as her wolf.

  He flexed his fingers, satisfied he was unharmed. “Surround the pool,” he shouted to the others, who scrambled after him. “Don’t let her escape, but I’ll be the one to take her.”

  Although from the anxiety drawing their faces, he needn’t worry about someone taking his prize. Gaze narrowing in determination, Caden brushed away the blood her first stone had drawn from his temple and strode at his leisure to close the distance between them. There was nowhere else for her to go now, but into the pool at the base of the waterfall.

  Which she did. And straight into the cascading white water pouring down the cliffside, where she vanished.

  Oaths and cries of astonishment echoed among the men who saw the roaring water curtain swallow her.

  “By my faith, she’s vanished.”

  “Turned to water like a fairy.”

  “’Tis just as well. No good can come of this.”

  Caden was stunned as well, but more from surprise than fear. Clever girl, this one.

  Drawing his sword, Caden plunged into the pool, disrupting the plant growth that still swayed and quivered in her wake. Had she been supernatural, her path wouldn’t have been marked. The water was a sharp breath short of freezing, seeping into his boots, soaking them. She’d pay well for this … and the hound her wolf killed. After he presented her to Tarlach and showed the old man that his fears were for naught.

  Standing before the fall, Caden poked his sword into the wet curtain. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was there. He’d held flesh and blood in his hand earlier, nothing more. But the blade touched nothing but the water pouring over it. He extended the sword even deeper, until the fall threatened to consume him as well. He felt space behind it. Space enough to hide a woman.

  And space enough for him to enter. Using the sword as a probe, he forced his way through the downpour pounding on his broad shoulders, eyes shut until the water eased away to naught but a mist. Caden blinked away the water, his gaze settling on the woman pressed against the stone wall at her back.

  “My father’s been waiting years to meet you”—his lips curled with sarcasm—“Milady Wolf.”

  Even with her soaked gown plastered against her body, she was a handsome woman. Slight compared to Rhianon, but handsome nonetheless. Had she thrown herself at his mercy, Caden may have felt more charitable toward her, but his soaked clothes and bleeding temple, not to mention one dead and costly hound, had done little to improve his humor.

  Terror seized her face as he started toward her. Good, he wanted her to be afraid of him. She should be. Her white fingers splayed against the wall as if drawing strength from it. Or perhaps she was grappling for a weapon for her incredible aim. She began to waver, as if trying to decide whether to make another run for it, or stay and face her fate.

  “You can’t escape,” he told her. “Your days of haunting the hills are done … wolf-woman.”

  She shrank away from his approach, but something in her gaze triggered an alarm.

  Too late. His boot slid out from under him on a slick patch of pond growth, sending him into a groin-tearing split. But for the buckling of his knee, which slammed onto the hard rock beneath, it might have been weeks before he could walk with a normal gait.

  “By all the gods, I’ll—” His minced oath broke off.

  She was gone, out into the sunlight.

  Swearing to diminish the torture o
f overextended muscle, Caden regained his footing and followed. The brilliant light and water temporarily blinded him, but he could hear the shouts of his men as they tried to stop her. To warn her. But from what?

  It wasn’t until his gaze adjusted to the light that he saw them gathered at the crag holding the pond nestled in its belly.

  No.

  Heart sinking to his stomach, Caden slogged through the water and peered over its hedge of rock. Below was another shelf of ragged rock. And splayed upon it was the raven-haired nymph, still as death.

  Heming’s voice penetrated the disbelief numbing Caden’s brain. “I tried to stop her, sir, but she wrestled free of my grasp and sooner than be captured, jumped.”

  “Fetch her body then,” Caden said woodenly. He’d wanted to frighten her as she’d done so many, but not kill her. From the moment she’d looked into his eyes, pleading for the life of her wolf, he’d seen something special.

  He shrugged off the pall of guilt smothering him. Regardless, Tarlach would have to acknowledge him for accomplishing what neither the chieftain nor his idolized eldest son could. It was going to be a good night at Glenarden.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was well past nun day when Ronan reached the plateau overlooking the river where Glenarden’s keep rose in regal fashion, banners flying over its stockade. He’d passed through acres of freshly plowed farmland sowed with peas, beans, and corn. Seen carefully chosen lumber cut and stacked at the edge of Glenarden’s thick forest—some for sale and some for further construction within the walls of the stockade. It appeared that Caden had slid into Ronan’s role well—a surprise given his younger brother’s usual indifference to such matters.

  It was partly pleasing. Ronan wanted Caden to be a capable administrator. But someone had tried to kill Ronan. Was he a chance horse thief or the hireling of an usurper? Regardless, Ronan now wore the simple garb of a farmer, borrowed from a trusted servant who’d been out in one of the fields. If someone at Glenarden wanted him dead, better Ronan slip in unnoticed to observe the changes that had taken place … and to speak to his father.