Page 11 of Bride of Mist
He needed to sleep for a few hours. If sleep was possible.
After that, he’d have to eat. If he could. He’d gone days without a decent meal.
Using cracked branches and twisted rushes, he assembled a primitive snare. Perhaps while he slept, some small, hapless night creature would volunteer to be his breakfast.
Then, bundling up in his plaid, he burrowed under a bed of pine needles beside the trail.
Exhaustion made him fall asleep in moments. He was immediately drawn into a world of harrowing nightmares.
Kirkoswald was engulfed in fire. Smoke boiled out of every thatched roof, coiling like dragon’s breath into the sky. Men and women, lads and lasses—trapped in the hellish inferno inside the church—scrabbled and pounded in panic at the doors, shrieking in agony and screaming his name.
And the blonde warrior angel he’d struck down at Creagor stood in the flames of the burning church rooftop to brandish an accusing finger at him.
Chapter 3
Feiyan traveled all night before the detour brought her back to the main road. The moon sank into the west. The stars winked out. The sky faded like a bruise, from deep indigo to soft purple. In another hour, the sun would rise.
When she emerged from the wood, she was disappointed to find the road unmarked. There was no sign a rider had passed this way.
Had he taken a different road? Had he stopped somewhere for the night? Or, she wondered with a leaden heart, had he managed to elude her? Was he even now perpetrating violence on more unsuspecting victims?
Her jaw tightened with worry as she cast a reluctant gaze back down the road. She’d have to backtrack. Find the place where he’d changed direction.
After half an hour, in the pale lavender light just before dawn, she spotted the dark silhouette of his destrier beside the road. Even a hundred yards away, the beast was unmistakable.
Enormous. Black. Magnificent.
It was tethered to a tree at the edge of a croft.
Feiyan curled her fingers around the leather grip of hershoudao,the deadly single-edged sword from the Orient she wore on her hip. She had to proceed with caution.
The man may have left the horse as bait. He could very well be hiding in the woods nearby with a bow and arrows.
Or he could have availed himself of the crofter’s cottage, killing the occupants and lodging there for the night.
She slipped her blade silently out of its sheath and approached the horse with caution.
When she was a dozen yards away, she heard the creak of the cottage door. She ducked quickly behind a pine and watched as a woman with a basket emerged from the cottage.
The woman suddenly stopped in her tracks, taken aback by the sight of the strange horse at the edge of her property.
“Robert!” she called out. “Come quick!”
A tall, gangly man hobbled out the door. “What the devil?”
Feiyan froze as the couple came near for a closer look.
The villain must not be in their cottage. Maybe he’d spent the night in one of their sheds. Maybe he was lurking inside, planning to waylay them when they came to investigate. Maybe he meant to slay them in cold blood.
She waited with bated breath as the woman cooed over the beautiful beast. The man took the horse’s bridle, calming the animal with soothing speech.
The woman nodded toward the horse’s head. “What’s that?”
The man pulled out a sooty rag tucked into the bridle. “A missive?”
“Are those letters?”
“Aye. Fetch Gille Christ.”
