Ingrey bit, chewed, did not answer.
“When your father gave you your wolf,” she began, “how—”
“You should go eat,” he interrupted her, around a mouthful of cold roast. “It’s going to be a long ride yet.” He rose and strode away from her, toward the wagon and its baskets. He did not want more food, but he did not want more of her chatter, either. He selected a not-too-wormy apple and nibbled it slowly while walking about. He stayed on the other side of the clearing from her, during the remainder of their rest.
As the cortege rumbled on through the afternoon, the rugged angles of the hills grew gentler and hamlets more frequent, their fields more extensive. The sun was slanting toward the treetops when they came to an unanticipated check. A rocky ford, hock deep on the ride in, had risen with the rains and was now in full and muddy flood.
Ingrey halted his horse and looked over the problem. Boleso’s wagon had not been made watertight with skins or tar, so the chance of its floating away at an awkward angle and yanking the horses off their feet was slight. The chance of its shipping water and bogging down, however, was good. He set mounted men at the wagon’s four corners with ropes to help warp it through the hazard, and waved the yeoman onward with what speed he could muster from his tired team. The water came up past the horses’ bellies, pushing the wagon off its wheels, but the outriders held it on course, and the whole assemblage struggled safely up the far bank. Only then did Ingrey motion Lady Ijada ahead of him into the water.
His gaze lifted to mark the wagon’s progress, then jerked back as the chestnut horse missed its footing, wallowed, and went down over its head. Lady Ijada was swept off into the torrent too quickly to cry out. Ingrey swore, spurring his horse forward into the flood. His head swiveled frantically, looking for dark hair, a flash of brown fabric in the turbid foam—her clothing would surely hold water, skirts dragging her down—there!
The cold water tugged at his knees as he urged his horse downstream. The dark head bobbed up by a trio of smooth rocks that stuck out of the spate boiling around them. An arm reached, caught…
“Hang on!” yelled Ingrey. “I’m coming to get you—!”
Two arms. Lady Ijada heaved herself upward, belly over the rock, wriggled and scrambled; by the time Ingrey brought his snorting horse close, she was standing upright, dripping and gasping. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her horse make it to the bank farther downstream, where it surged up, stumbled through the mud, and bolted into the woods. Ingrey spared it an unvoiced curse and waved one of his men after it.
He did not look to see if he was obeyed, for now he was within arm’s reach of Lady Ijada. He leaned toward her, she leaned toward him…
A dark red fog seemed to come up over his brain, clouding his vision. Gripping her arms, he toppled into the stream, pulling her from her perch. Down, if he held her down… water filled his mouth. He spat, gasped, and went under again. He was blinded and tumbling. Some distant part of his mind, far, far off, was screaming at him: What are you doing, you fool! He must hold her down –
The force of the water clubbed his head into something hard, and starry green sparks overflowed the red fog. All thought fled.
Sensation returned in panicked choking. Cold air slapped his face, somehow held up out of the water, and he drew enough breath to cough out both air and water. His limbs flailed, feeling desperately weak and heavy, as though trapped in oil.
“Stop fighting me!” Lady Ijada’s voice snapped in his ear. Something circling his neck tightened; he realized after a dizzy moment that it must be her arm. He must save her, drown her, save her—
She can swim. The belated realization slowed his flailing, if only in shock. Well, he could swim, too, after a fashion. He’d stayed alive through a shipwreck, once, admittedly mostly by hanging on to things that floated. The only thing floating here seemed to be Lady Ijada. Surely the weight of his blades and boots must drag them both down—his feet struck something. The current spat them into a back eddy, the river bottom flattened out, then she was dragging him up onto some welcome, blessed shore.
He twisted around out of her arm’s grip, crawling up on hands and knees over the rocks onto the moss-covered bank. Pink water flowed from his hair, growing redder. He dashed it from his eyes and blinked around. The woods here were thick and tangled. He was not sure how far downstream they had come, but the ford, the wagon, and his men were nowhere in sight. He was shivering in shock from the head blow.
She stood up, water streaming from her clothes, and staggered out of the river toward him, her hand reaching. He cried out, a wordless bellow, and recoiled, wrapping his arms around a small tree, in part to hold himself upright, in part to hold… “Don’t touch me!”
“What? Lord Ingrey, you’re bleeding—”
“Don’t come any nearer!”
“Lord Ingrey, if you will just—”
His voice cracked. “My wolf is trying to kill you! It is coming unbound! Stay away!”
She stopped, stared. Her hair had come partly undone, and water trickled from it in sparkling drops, plashing silently into the moss at her feet, steady and fascinating as some strange water clock.
“Three times,” he gasped hoarsely. “That was the third time. Don’t you realize, I tried to drown you just now? It’s tried twice before. The first time I saw you, when I drew my steel, I meant to run you through on the spot. Then when we were sitting, I almost tried to strangle you.”
She was pale, thoughtful, intent. Not running away screaming. He wanted her to run, whether screaming or not made no matter to him. As long as she could outrun him…
“Run!”
Instead, maddeningly, she leaned against a tree bole and began to remove her squelching boots. It wasn’t until she had tipped out the second one that she said, “It wasn’t your wolf.”
His head was still ringing from the blow against the boulder. By the unpleasant rumbling in his gut, he was due to vomit some river water soon. He didn’t comprehend her. “What?”
“It wasn’t your wolf.” She set the boot down next to its mate and added in a tight, even voice, “I can smell your wolf, in a sense. Not smell really, but I don’t know any other way to describe it.”
“It—I tried to kill you!”
“It wasn’t your wolf. It wasn’t you, either. It was the other smell. All three times.”
Now he merely stared, all words deserting him.
“Lord Ingrey—you never asked where the ghost of Boleso’s leopard went.”
It wasn’t a stare anymore, he feared. It was a gape.
“It came to me.” Her hazel eyes met his for one level, intent moment.
“I… it… excuse me,” said Ingrey hoarsely. “I have to throw up now.”
He retreated around his too-narrow tree, for what little privacy it could render him. He wished he could say the spasm gave him a moment to gather his wits, but they seemed scattered for a mile behind him up the river valley. Drowned, they were, without benefit of wine. All of the punishment, none of the reward.
He stumbled back around the tree to find her calmly wringing out her jacket. He gave up and sat down with a thump upon a mossy log. It was damp, but he was damper, his wet leathers sliding and squeaking unpleasantly.
She looked no different, to his eye. Well, wet, yes, sodden and wild, but still caressed by the slanting light as if the sun were her lover. He saw no cat shape in her shadow. He smelled nothing but himself, a sickly mix of wet leather, oil, sweat, and horse.