By the time we got to camp, only one thing was certain to me.
I would never ride with them again.
I would see my kin starve first.
I returned to the raided camp the next day, alone, with two peafowl that had taken me all day to hunt down. All that remained of their camp were the cold ashes of a fire and scattered scraps left behind in haste.
The tribe had moved on to someplace where we wouldn’t find them again, and I was glad to see them gone.
* * *
Our clan from the north arrived the next day. Fergus had told them to come. Liam was angry. Their numbers were greater than ours, but most were women and children. Mouths that would need to be fed. While we had eight strong men in our clan of eleven, they only had four in their clan of sixteen.
“They are our kin,” Fergus argued. “The numbers will make us strong. Look at Harik the Great. His
kinsmen number in the hundreds—that means power. He could squash us all in one fist. The only way our clan will be as great is if our sons have wives and our numbers grow.”
Liam argued there was barely enough food in the hills to feed our own.
“Then we will find new hills.”
I looked at the children huddled together, too afraid to speak, their eyes circled with hunger and days of walking. Laurida poured water into the kettle over the fire to make the stew stretch and then added two large handfuls of the salted meat we had stolen from the tribe. The mother of one of the children began to cry. The sound cut through me, strangely familiar—them or us—and for a fleeting moment, I was glad for what we had stolen.
The evening passed, prickly and uncomfortable, the children eating quietly, the heated words between Liam and Fergus weighing on the rest, Liam still casting glares at the newcomers. With their soup finished, the children and mothers looked glumly into the fire. The silence was stifling. I preferred squabbles and scuffles to the taut hush.
Anger welled in me, and I whispered to Laurida, “Why do we never tell stories?”
Laurida shrugged. “Stories are a luxury of the well-fed.”
“At least stories would fill the silence!” I snapped. “Or help us understand our past!” And then lower, under my breath as I glared down at the ground. “I don’t even know how my own mother died.”
Fergus’s boots suddenly filled my circle of vision. I looked up. His eyes blazed with anger. “She starved to death,” he said. “She hid away her share of food and gave it to you and Steffan. She died because of you. Is that the story you wanted to hear?”
On a different night, I might have felt the back of his hand again, but his expression was so filled with disgust, the effort to hit me must not have seemed worth it, and he turned away.
No, it was not the story I wanted to hear.
Chapter Thirteen
Morrighan
“Where were you?” I asked, running to meet him as he got off his horse. He hadn’t come for three days, and I had feared the worst.
He drew me into his arms, holding me tight in a strange, desperate way.
“Jafir?”
He pulled back, and that’s when I saw the side of his face, a purple bruise coloring it from cheekbone to jaw, circling under his eye.
Fear skittered through my chest. “What beast did this?” I demanded, reaching for his cheek.
He brushed my hand away. “It is nothing.”
“Jafir!” I insisted.
“It wasn’t a beast.” He tied his horse’s lead to a branch. “It was my father.”
“Your father?” I couldn’t hide my shock, nor did I want to. “Then he is the worst kind of animal.”