The Wolf & the Witch by Claire Delacroix

Author:Claire Delacroix
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-989367-71-1
Publisher: Deborah A. Cooke

“Rowan Fell and its church are in the opposite direction,” the Silver Wolf said from behind Alys as she approached the river.

She had expected him to follow and also to disapprove of her curiosity about her friends. She had known he drew near when the other mercenary halted his steps. She would never be unobserved so long as she was wed to this man, and already she chafed for freedom.

Alys spun to find the Silver Wolf immediately behind her. “It seems you have guessed my destination.”

“You voiced concern for your former comrades.”

“I would know the fullness of what you have done.”

Her declaration did not seem to surprise him, or her defiant tone. He gestured and they marched onward in silence, each step taking them closer to Morag’s hut. That his steps never wavered meant that he knew its exact location.

Any hope that he had been deceived was lost.

“There is not much time,” was his sole injunction.

Even though Alys tried to brace herself for the worst, still she uttered a cry when she saw what was left of the hut. Her husband paused and folded his arms across his chest as he grimly watched her reaction. Alys ran toward the shelter she had once shared, initially with Morag, then with Ceara, Nyssa and Elizabeth.

Just the day before, it had been a hut made of branches and boughs, buttressed and patched over the years, almost disguised in the forest. Now the boughs that had been on the roof were ripped asunder, the walls torn open so that they were barriers no longer. The stones from the makeshift hearth had been kicked into the forest, and the few household implements there had been cast out. Their beds had been cut down and torn apart, the destruction so complete that no one could take shelter there again.

Alys circled the hut several times, seeking some sign that would encourage her.

“They have fled,” the Silver Wolf said finally.

“Have they? You have had time to dispose of their corpses, if they were dead,” she retorted.

He smiled that maddening smile and she wished she had a dagger to hurl at his black heart. “I do not assault women.”

She gestured to the destruction of Morag’s hut. “This is not assault?”

“This is encouragement to find another abode, one further from my camp and my wife.”

Alys pivoted so that he might not glimpse the depth of her anger. Ceara’s bow was gone as well as her quiver. Dorcha was gone, and his favored perch. The earth had been marked by horses’ hooves, though she could not have guessed whether the Silver Wolf’s claim that he had regained his companion’s destrier was true: the tracks were too numerous and too muddled. Ceara would be furious if that had been the case. She had likely been counting the coin that beast would fetch in Carlisle.

There were no weapons left in the hut. Although she and her companions had possessed few, Alys would have been relieved to know that Nyssa and Ceara had taken them, rather than the Silver Wolf and his men having claimed them.

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