A short while later, Mark Jenkins knocked softly on the door.
THE TRAPPER’S CABIN
Santel Preskam cleared her throat, a raspy inhalation, and spat a mouthful of mucus into the underbrush. She stooped to make sure she was right; it was green. ‘Rutting demonshit,’ she cursed. She didn’t have time to be sick.
‘Rutting demonpiss river,’ she muttered, ‘if I wasn’t soaked to the bone every rutting day, I wouldn’t catch every rutting disease that floats by.’
Two days. It would be two days before she could get back to the cabin, but once there she promised herself she would crawl into bed and remain under the covers until the Twinmoon. But for now she trudged back up the riverbank, two empty traps in tow and tossed them over her horse’s saddle. She had not pulled anything from that run all season; it was time to move the traps further upstream in hopes of snaring a beaver, a weksel, or perhaps a muskrat.
She withdrew a plain green bottle from her saddlebag, pulled the cork and took a long draught of the dry Falkan wine – she might be an ill-educated trapper, but she did know her wines. Before moving south into the mountains, she’d worked in the scullery on a vineyard in the Central Falkan Plain. It was there she had vowed that even if she lived another two hundred Twinmoons, her life would be over too soon to ever drink anything but good vintages. It cost her a great deal in pelts, but she justified the expense as a trade-off for all the clothing and accessories she would need if she lived in a city. ‘I need good wine more than I need clean clothes out here,’ Santel told her horse before enjoying another mouthful. ‘Could do with a decent crystal goblet though,’ she said with a croaky laugh.
As the wine warmed her, she felt a little more confident she would make it back to the cabin despite the infection and fever. She stashed the bottle safely in her saddlebag and peered up through the woods.
Something moved.
Pulling a short forest bow from her shoulder, Santel nocked an arrow and stepped gingerly around her horse, hoping not to draw the attention of whatever it was that had passed between the trees up above. She squinted into the forest, then, seeing nothing, closed her eyes and listened. Nothing again. Exhaling in frustration, Santel whispered to her horse, ‘Whoring rutters! Now I’m seeing things.’
She was about to replace the bow when she felt something cross the path behind her. ‘Lords and gods!’ she exclaimed, pulling the bowstring taut against her cheek.
It moved again, this time to her right, and then again on the hill to her left. Santel held her breath. They were all around her. She was being hunted.
Desperate for a clean shot, she tried shouting, ‘C’mon out here, let’s settle this like adults!’
She detected movement again, behind the horse, and then on the hillside. Straining to catch a glimpse of whatever it was, Santel suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
‘Behind me!’ The words echoed in her mind, an instant too late. She felt that horrible, familiar sensation, the hollow certainty that had followed close on the heels of every careless, costly mistake she had ever made. She whirled about to face her attacker, screaming as she fired directly into its face. They were close about her now.
As the sun glinted through the window, Mark woke and lifted his head from the pillow with a start. Where was he? Nervous insecurity gripped him and he searched the unfamiliar room for the opaque grey patch, until his anxiety relaxed its hold on his memory and the events of the past Twinmoon returned in a flood. The Blackstone Mountains, his brush with death, Gabriel O’Reilly, and finally, finding Steven: the scenes replayed themselves in his head.
But here, safe, lying next to Brynne, it was easy to forget the hardships he and his friends had suffered. He was glad his memory, as if working independently, had softened the images for him this morning.
Gently, so as not to wake her, Mark settled back down and contemplated Brynne’s sleeping form. She lay on her side, her back to him. The edge of her right shoulder and upper arm blocked the sun’s first rays; her flesh was rimmed with a brilliant gold border. Her beauty left him breathless.
He reached out to pull her towards him; as she rolled over, the sunlight shone across her chest and stomach and momentarily blinded him. He ran his palm across the taut firmness of her abdomen, stroking her like a cat. Still asleep, she moved lazily under his hand; as he brushed away several adventuresome strands of hair that had journeyed boldly across her shoulders and now obscured her breasts she sighed softly and, eyes still closed, reached out for him. His arousal was almost instantaneous; as her gentle, clever fingers teased him harder than he had ever thought possible, he bent and kissed the indentation at the base of her neck, running his tongue across her soft skin.
Brynne opened her eyes a slit and smiled up at him. ‘Waiting for permission?’ she whispered, tracing the hard curves of his buttocks. ‘It’s a little late for that, I think.’ She pulled him down and kissed him tenderly. Mark lost himself in her softness and moistness and an almost lazy coming together that exploded into hard, fast emotion that overwhelmed him.
That same emotion had been almost as much a surprise as their passion the previous night. He blinked in an effort to adjust to the sudden brightness as the sun poured into the room. Brynne, smiling like a well-satisfied cat, rolled onto her stomach, pulled the wool blanket over them both and drifted back into slumber.
Last night their passion had been unchecked, their embrace powerful, ardent, fierce in its urgency. Shrouded in darkness, skin on skin, legs lost among legs and fingers entwined as if they would never again be free, they had clung and clawed and come together, a tumultuous wellspring of feelings in the knowledge that they had nearly died among the Blackstone peaks, relief that they had found each other, and fear for the morning, when they would once again have to face the evil that was threatening both their worlds.
Mark had not believed they would ever feel as much again as they had last night, but in the sunlit sensuality of morning, he found that he had underestimated both of them. Last night was not just frantic sex to forget the days and weeks of fear, or to celebrate their survivaclass="underline" it was far more than that.
Now he smiled to himself, because he knew he was falling in love with this woman – had fallen, already. He smiled, because he had held her tightly, had made love with her furiously, here in this bed, had fallen asleep by her side and awakened to find her still there.
Brynne’s reaction to Mark’s sudden appearance had been suitably dramatic: she had leaped up from the floor where she had been sharpening her hunting knife against a whetstone. She pushed the others aside and flew into his arms, alternatively crying against his neck and gazing deeply into his eyes, as if to ensure it really was him, and to ward against the possibility that he might vanish from the room and leave her alone again. In her enthusiasm, Brynne had forgotten to drop the knife; Mark had briefly worried that she might cut off one of his ears, or even accidentally stab him in the back. Now, watching her lush brown tresses fall across her cheek, Mark whispered, ‘That’s my girlfriend, my beautiful, sexy, knife-wielding revolutionary girlfriend.’
He closed his eyes and revelled as long as he could in the moment before the reality of their predicament crept into bed with him. With Steven injured and Sallax in his peculiar state, how were they going to get the small company to Orindale?
They had talked long into the night, discussing options. Mark agreed that Lahp’s plan to build a raft and float the rest of the way was the most viable suggestion so far. There was no way Steven could walk; he couldn’t yet manage more than a few paces at a time – and the rest of them were not much healthier. A few days’ rest here was what they needed first off. It would do them all good, and it would give him and Lahp a chance to construct a decent-sized raft.