Page 16 of Highland Slayer
And they were going to find her.
But that had been a difficult task. In spite of the reclusive and odd ways of the Ormsfolk, part of their culture was fishing. They had boats that they’d fashioned from wood from their forests and took to the seas easily. It had been one of those boats that the queen had taken in the dead of night, under a full moon, and sailed away on the current, for she knew how to sail a ship. She knew how to use currents. She was from a culture that lived on the sea, so the water was to her as land was to most men.
She thrived on it.
But the Serpent People knew the currents, too. They simply followed the tides by day, stopping only at night to search for signs of the queen. They were going on the assumption that the queen was a weak woman and would understandably need to stop at night to sleep. That had been their logic, anyway. Therefore, they’d stopped often, searching for the woman, stealing what they could to survive, killing those who got in their way. After almost two months of following the sea current through the Solway Firth and stopping every night to search for signs of her, they’d finally found evidence of the boat.
It was broken to pieces, and protruding out of the silt, but they recognized it. The queen had come ashore here. It was the mouth of a great river, flowing north into Scotland, which gave the Serpent People pause. Northern England was full of farmers and peasants, with a few great houses along the Scots border, but given that they were able to navigate by the stars, as their ancestors did, they knew they were in Scotland.
Venturing into clan territory was another matter because the Scots were fiercely protective of their lands. But the queen was here, and the fact that the boat wasn’t completely covered by silt meant the tides hadn’t a chance to bury it. That told them the queen had only just arrived, meaning she could not have gotten far.
Not far enough.
There were forty-six of them, spread out among five boats. They were heavily armed, with spears smeared with human feces and short swords that had been in poison brewed from the death cap mushroom. Perhaps they weren’t great in number like the clans tended to be, but they could do damage simply by nicking the skin. But that didn’t have to happen if they could find their queen before some Scots clan took her in.
They had to find her, and quickly.
As the sun began to set and a storm rolled in from the east, a group of them headed north, along the river. The search for their queen had begun.
God help the Scots if they wouldn’t give her up.
CHAPTER SIX
St. Margaret’s of Loch Doom
“Sir Estevan.Estevan!”
Someone kicked his foot, and Estevan found himself on his feet before he even realized he’d awoken. He found himself towering over Anaxandra and, woozy because he’d jumped up so fast, nearly falling onto her. She had to reach out to steady him.
“Are you well?” she asked.
He rubbed his eyes, finally standing without assistance. “Aye,” he said. “I stood up too fast, I suppose.”
“My apologies,” Anaxandra said, looking at him with concern. “Are you sure you are well?”
“I am.”
“Then Mother Michael needs you,” Anaxandra said. “Come with me.”
He did. A glance over his shoulder showed his brother and cousins all sleeping still. He was the only one awake. It was still dark, though he thought he could see a hint of dawn coming in through the ventilation windows high in the sanctuary. Everything felt cold and damp, as the fire was down to the embers now, and a layer of blue smoke hovered about six feet off the ground. He was walking right through it.
“What’s amiss?” he asked. “Why does Mother Michael wish tae see me?”
Anaxandra glanced at him. “The ill woman has awakened,” he said. “She keeps drawing something in the dirt and speakingwords we do not understand. Mother Michael hopes you can communicate with her.”
Estevan wasn’t so sure. Maybe he’d been ambitious thinking he could, since he knew the language so long ago. Scratching the back of his head, he was doubtful, but kept silent as they reached Mother Michael and the other nuns who had been assisting the ill woman. As he drew near, he could smell cloves strongly, something they were using in their medicaments. The injured woman had a paste on her wounds, which he assumed the clove smell was coming from.
But they could also hear her coughing.
The ill woman was also out of her cot and sitting on the ground, coughing and sniffling. It was clear that she was sick. The nuns were standing around her, puzzled, as she used a stick to draw in the hard-packed earth of the sanctuary. When Mother Michael noticed Estevan, she pointed to the drawings.
“Mayhap you can help us,” she said. “She has been trying to tell us something, but we know not what. We cannot convince her to get back into bed because these drawings seem most urgent. Can you ask her, please?”
Estevan was still a little groggy as he dutifully leaned over the sick woman to see what she’d drawn in the dirt. He couldn’t quite tell what it was, and the light was bad, so he turned to Anaxandra, who was standing behind him.
“Wake my brother, please,” he told her. “I’ll need his help.”
Anaxandra rushed off. He watched her return to the sleeping warriors in the corner before returning his attention to the woman sitting on the ground. She had been looking at the drawings she’d made in the dirt, but when she heard his voice, she looked up at him. Yesterday, she’d had a good deal of fear in her expression when he came near, but this morning, the fear was diminished somewhat. Now, it was replaced by a feverish countenance, but as Estevan looked at her, he could see that sherealized he and his brother and fellow knights had brought her to safety. They were not her enemy. When their eyes met, she pointed at the scribble in the dirt.
