“I don’t think they do. There’s no way to cross that safely.”
The others had clearly come to the same conclusion, judging by the hand gestures. Davith nodded glumly, then cupped his hands around his mouth. “We’ll catch up with you!” he shouted, then turned back, tugging at Wren’s sleeve.
“They’ll have to backtrack to the last fork,” said Shane. “Hopefully the two trails will reconnect somewhere lower down. I don’t know how long that will take, but hopefully we can find shelter somewhere below and wait for them.”
“Think they’ll be okay?”
Shane watched the two, impassive. Davith appeared to be alternating talking and tugging Wren back down the path. “Will he take this opportunity to abandon her and escape?”
“Davith? No. I doubt it would even occur to him. He’s a cad, but he’s not actually a bad person.”
“Then I doubt their risk is substantially greater than ours. I cannot imagine any pursuers would give chase in this weather.”
Marguerite nodded. The Red Sail had deep pockets, but there were limits.
The pair vanished with a final wave. Marguerite dug into her pack and pulled out her spare pair of shoes. They were lighter, meant for court wear, and they were going to be absolutely ruined, but it was still better than going barefoot. She gazed at the embroidery with a touch of sorrow, then slid them onto her feet.
“Ready?” asked Shane.
She was cold and wet and miserable and shaky with adrenaline. She actually wanted to sit down in the middle of the trail and cry.
And if I do, he will use the voice and tell me that it’s okay and I will believe him. And I’ll probably feel better.
And then I’ll still have to walk the rest of the way in the rain and the mud, except it will be darker and colder and wetter and I’ll be embarrassed.
“Ready,” she said, squaring her shoulders, and followed him into the storm.
THIRTY-THREE
“I TAKE back everything I said about the occupants of these hills,” Marguerite said. “They are a noble people and I love them all.”
The cause of her change of heart was a shelter built out of carefully stacked and fitted stones. It was dark and dusty and various animals had obviously been using it, but it blocked the wind and the rain and felt a good twenty degrees warmer inside than out.
The only furniture, if you could call it that, was a stone box built into the wall, topped by a metal lid. Marguerite dared to hope that it contained firewood. Shane flipped it up and pulled out a flattened, irregular disc of what looked like mud.
“Hmm.”
“That tone fills me with dread,” said Marguerite, slumping back against the drystone wall.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose the good news is that we can make a fire.”
Marguerite forced her tired eyes to focus. It was very dark inside, but nevertheless… “Oh god.
That’s dried cow poop, isn’t it?”
“It might be sheep?”
“Is that better?”
“No, I think it’s about the same.” He took a few more of the patties from the box and set them in the soot-stained depression in the center of the shelter, then pulled out his tinderbox and set to work.
“I suppose beggars can’t be choosers,” said Marguerite philosophically. “It was good of them to keep the place stocked at all.”
“Indeed. You should get out of those wet clothes. I’ll build up the fire.”
She had no doubt that he was legitimately concerned that she might die of hypothermia. It was just that it also kicked the sexual tension up by about five notches.
Impressive that I can even think about that, after a long hike and nearly sliding to my death down a mountain.
On the other hand, that would definitely warm me up. “Right,” Marguerite said, and began stripping her soggy clothes off.
Painted orange by the fire, Shane’s throat moved as he swallowed hard. Carefully not looking in
her direction, he rummaged through his pack until he found a suitable length of cord and busied himself stringing it across the shelter to make a rough clothesline.
Marguerite wrung what water she could out of her cloak and stretched it out to sit on. Even damp wool was better than bare stone. The pungent smell of burning dung began to fill the small space, but so did the first stirrings of warmth. “Aren’t you wet, too?”
“Um,” he said. “I…yes. A bit.” Marguerite draped her sodden shirt and tunic over the line to dry, then sat back to enjoy the spectacle of a man trying to remove armor in an enclosed space with his eyes closed.
Shane got the surcoat and chain hauberk off and finally opened his eyes to look at his mail. “I need to hang this,” he muttered, “and oil it as soon as I can.” He looked up at the clothesline, then back down at the hauberk.
“I don’t think that’ll support it,” Marguerite offered.
He glanced toward her, probably involuntarily, and must have gotten an eyeful, because he jerked his gaze back so quickly that she was surprised he didn’t get a neck spasm.
“No,” he said. “No, it…err…no.” He draped the chain over the stone box, looked at it, sighed, moved it a bit, then sighed again and sat back on his heels. “If the gods will it, we will be in the highlands tomorrow and I can treat it properly.”
“From your lips to Their ears,” said Marguerite. “How much fuel do we have for the fire?”
“Enough to get through the night, so long as we are not extravagant with it.” He sounded apologetic. “That is, I do not think we can build it up much further than this.”
“Ah, well,” said Marguerite philosophically. “I suppose we’ll just have to find some other way to keep warm.”
Shane looked over at her, clearly startled. Then his eyes dropped below her collarbone, came back up immediately, and he cleared his throat several times.
If I sit around and wait for him to make a move, we’ll probably both freeze to death. Hell with it, she thought, and kissed him.
His lips were ice cold as she flicked her tongue across them and for a moment she thought she had made a complete fool of herself, but then his mouth opened under hers and he was burning hot and his hands slid into her hair and tilted her face up toward his. His hands were also cold and her skin was cold and she pressed her cold breasts against his equally cold chest and the only warmth in the world was between their mouths, and for a little bit, that was all she needed.
When it finally ended—when her back wasn’t going to let him bend her over his arm like that any longer, and when breathing through her nose was no longer enough air—he pulled back, his eyes wide and almost alarmed.
“I…" he began, and Marguerite put her fingers across his lips to stop whatever incredibly paladinly thing he was about to say next.
“If you shut up,” she said, moving to straddle him, “and don’t argue with me, we can get warm
and incidentally have really incredible sex. Or you can keep wallowing in self-loathing and we can freeze to death. Your choice.”
His eyes were a thin ring of ice around dark wells. He swallowed hard, and said, slightly higher-pitched than normal, “Am I allowed to wallow in self-loathing afterward?”