Outlander 4 - Drums Of Autumn by Gabaldon Diana

Author:Gabaldon, Diana
Language: eng
Format: epub

29

CHARNEL HOUSES

J amie smelled the smoke long before the village came in sight. Willie saw him stiffen, and tensed in his own saddle, glancing warily around them.

“What?” the boy whispered. “What is it?”

“I dinna ken.” He kept his own voice low, though there was no evidence that anyone was near enough to hear them. He swung down from his horse and handed the reins to Willie, nodding toward a vine-covered cliff face whose foot was shrouded in brush.

“Take the horses behind the cliff, lad,” he said. “There’s a deer path there, that leads up to a spruce grove. Get well in among the trees, and wait there for me.” He hesitated, not wanting to scare the boy, but there was no help for it.

“If I should not come back by dark,” he said, “leave at once. Dinna wait for the morning; go back to the wee stream we just crossed, turn to your left, and follow it to a place where there’s a waterfall-you’ll hear it, even in the dark. Behind the falls there’s a wee cave; the Indians use it when they’re hunting.”

A small rim of white showed all the way around the lad’s blue irises. Jamie took a firm grip of the boy’s leg, just above the knee, to impress the directions upon him, and felt a quiver run through the long muscle of the thigh.

“Stay there till the morning,” he said, “and if I havena caught ye up by then-go home. Keep the sun on your left in the morning, on your right after noon, and in two days give your horse his head; you’ll be near enough home for him to find the way, I think.”

He took a deep breath, wondering what else to say, but there was nothing.

“God go with ye, lad.” He gave Willie as reassuring a smile as he could muster, clapped the horse on the rump to start it, and turned toward the scent of burning.

It wasn’t the normal smell of village fires; not even of the big ceremonial fires that Ian had told him of, when they burned whole trees in the firepit in the center of the village. Those were the size of Beltane fires, Ian said, and he knew the crackle and size of such a blaze. This was much bigger.

With great caution he made a wide circle, at last coming to a small hill from which he knew that he could gain a view of the village. As soon as he emerged from the forest’s shelter, though, he saw it. Rolling plumes of gray smoke were rising from the smoldering remnants of every longhouse in the village.

A thick brownish pall of smoke hung over the forest as far as he could see. He took a quick breath, coughed, and hastily drew a fold of his plaid across his nose and mouth, crossing himself with his free hand. He had smelled burning flesh before, and a sudden cold sweat bathed him at the memory of the funeral pyres of Culloden.

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