Page 18 of Bride of Mist
He glanced again at the sword. He felt like he was in some fantastical tale where he’d thwarted a dark faerie, and this shining talisman was his reward.
Surely the thief wouldn’t just let him keep the thing. It was far too valuable.
He’d probably left to fetch his fellows and return in full force to reclaim his weapon.
Whatever the outlaw and his cohorts intended, Dougal was wide awake now. He might as well travel onward. It made no difference whether the lad and his band of outlaws were following him. What was one more foe when he was being pursued by an entire army?
Feiyan was furious.
Mostly with herself.
Furious for being caught. For surrendering her sword. For not killing the lout as he lay sleeping. No matter how innocent he appeared.
At least she’d escaped. And she’d managed to hold on to the rest of her weapons, which were tightly secured in the folds of her gambeson. But now that the knave had hershoudao, she had all the more reason to stay on his trail.
The conniving villain would assume she was long gone. But she intended to stick close. Keep an eye on him. Watch for an opportunity to reclaim her blade. Reclaim it andstabhim with it.
Next time, she wouldn’t hesitate. Meanwhile, her blunder had cost her the element of surprise. Now that he was alerted to her presence, he would be more wary. And she would have to be more cautious.
Fortunately, she was bloody good at concealment. She would shadow him, steal silently through the trees until he grew careless.
Retrieving her sword might not be easy. She’d seen the way he handled theshoudao. Dangling from the rope, she’d caught a glimpse of him testing the blade. He was no inelegant mercenary. He had the bearing of a skilled warrior.
But she was no ordinary outlaw. And she wasn’t about to let him get away with stealing her favorite weapon.
She tracked him for hours, avoiding detection by alternating her strategy. Sometimes she traveled through the underbrush, sometimes through the canopy. For a mile she would trail him at a distance, then surge ahead to lead the way. At some times she’d watch him through a dense thicket of trees. At others, she’d hide behind a boulder so close to the trail that she felt the breeze of his passing.
As for mac Darragh, he strode with confidence and purpose, not at all what she would have expected from a shiftless, mayhem-making vagabond. His forthright manner belied his capacity for irrational violence.
Of course, Feiyan knew better. She might have glimpsed the Westlander’s handsome face. But she’d also seen his dark heart. And she let that memory inform her as she screwed up the courage to do what she knew must ultimately be done.
She saw no need to linger over the deed. She had no stomach for torture. Once she had hershoudaoback in her possession, she’d commit his soul to the afterlife swiftly and surely, just as he’d felled Hallie with one blow.
Meanwhile, he continued on, ignorant of her dire intentions. Indeed, he seemed completely oblivious to her presence, a fact reinforced when he stopped on the trail, unceremoniously loosened his trews, and relieved himself behind the very tree in which she was perched.
She averted her eyes—mostly.
Hitching up his trews, he continued on, but it was a long while before she worked up the nerve to follow.
Gradually the fog lifted. The sky, visible between the spires of pines, grew light. The stars slowly dissolved. Like a woad-dyed kirtle that softened with each washing, the heavens faded from indigo to azure to cerulean as the sun cast its light on the waking world.
Feiyan could no longer rely on the shadows and the mist for cover. She drew up the green hood to conceal her hair and masked the lower part of her face, leaving a slit for her eyes, rendering her imperceptible.
The day brought a new camouflage of sound. Larks and sparrows twittered madly for mates. Woodpeckers knocked at oak trees. Families of quail and scampering coneys skittered through the leaf-fall. Squirrels and crows scolded one another from the branches.
It was midday when the man turned from the path, taking a winding deer trail that led down to the river. Here the water rushed past at great speed, frothing over rocks and coiling into deep currents along the shore. As Feiyan took cover in the rushes, the whisper and roar thankfully disguised the rumbling in her belly.
In her haste to escape, she’d been forced to leave behind the last of her food. Now she was beginning to feel pangs of hunger.
He must have been hungry as well. Making his way along the edge of the riverbank, he located a large boulder where an eddy swirled above a dark and shady pool. It was a perfect spot for trout.
He broke a long, finger-thick branch from an alder and used his dagger to strip off the twigs. Tying together several fibrous reeds, he made a fishing line. One end he tied to the pole. To the other, he attached a hook he carved out of wood. Then he dug in the mud until he found a lively earthworm to use for bait.
After that, he stood on the bank for a long while, dribbling his line into the water while Feiyan quietly climbed a nearby oak to observe.
From her perch on the oak limb, she could study every detail of his appearance, every nuance of his movement, every expression in his face. She hoped to work up a good loathing for the man so that killing him would be easy.
But as she watched him, it was difficult to imagine him as the demon who had charged through her clansmen. While he had the size and strength of the man who’d tried to single-handedly cut down an entire company of knights, his behavior as he fished was far different. Peaceful. Measured. Coaxing. Patient.
