A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [141]
“Whisky’ll do us no good if we’re dead, Hodge! That’s Jamie Fraser’s wife, for Christ’s sake!”
“I know who she is. Get on with you!”
“But he—you don’t know the man, Hodge! I see him one time—”
“Spare me your memories. Get on, I said!”
This last was punctuated by a sudden vicious thunk, and a startled sound of pain. A pistol butt, I thought. Square across the face, I added mentally, swallowing as I heard the wet, wheezing gasps of a man with a broken nose.
A hand seized me by the hair and jerked my head round painfully. The thin man’s face stared down at me, eyes narrowed in calculation. He seemed only to want to assure himself that I was indeed alive, for he said nothing, and dropped my head again, indifferent as though it were a pinecone he had picked up along the way.
Someone was leading the horse I was on; there were several men on foot, as well. I heard them, calling to one another, half-running to keep up as the horses lurched up a rise, crashing and grunting like pigs through the undergrowth.
I couldn’t breathe, save in shallow gasps, and was being jolted unmercifully with each step—but I had no attention to spare for physical discomfort. Was Marsali dead? She had looked it, surely, but I’d seen no blood, and I clung to that small fact for the slim—and temporary—comfort that it was.
Even if she wasn’t dead yet, she soon might be. Whether from injury, shock, a sudden miscarriage—oh, God, oh, God, poor little Monsieur L’Oeuf—
My hands clenched helpless on the stirrup leathers, desperate. Who might find her—and when?
It had lacked little more than an hour to suppertime when I had arrived at the malting shed. How late was it now? I caught glimpses of the ground juddering past below, but my hair had come loose and streamed across my face whenever I tried to raise my head. There was a growing chill to the air, though, and a still look to the light that told me the sun was near the horizon. Within a few minutes, the light would start to fade.
And then what? How long before a search began? Fergus would notice Marsali’s absence when she didn’t appear to cook supper—but would he go to look for her, with the little girls in his care? No, he’d send Germain. That caused my heart to lurch and catch in my throat. For a five-year-old boy to find his mother . . .
I could still smell burning. I sniffed, once, twice, again, hoping that I was imagining it. But above the dust and sweat of horse, the tang of stirrup leather, and the whiff of crushed plants, I could distinctly smell the reek of smoke. The clearing, the shed—or both—were well and truly alight now. Someone would see the smoke, and come. But in time?
I shut my eyes tight, trying to stop thinking, seeking any distraction to keep from seeing in my mind’s eye the scene that must be taking place behind me.
There were still voices near. The man they called Hodge again. It must be his horse I rode; he was walking near its head, on the far side of the animal. Someone else was expostulating with him, but to no more effect than the first man.
“Spread them out,” he was saying tersely. “Divide the men in two groups—you’ll ’ave one, the rest go with me. Join again in three days’ time at Brownsville.”
Bloody hell. He expected pursuit, and meant to frustrate it by splitting his group and confusing the trail. Frantically, I tried to think of something to drop; surely I had something to leave as a means of telling Jamie which way I had been taken.
But I wore nothing save shift, stays, and stockings—my shoes had been lost when they dragged me to the horse. The stockings seemed the only possibility; though the garters, with extreme perversity, were for once snugly tied, and quite out of my reach at the moment.
All around me I could hear the noise of men and horses moving, calling and shoving as the main body split. Hodge chirruped to the horse, and we began to move faster.
My floating hair snagged on a twig as we brushed past a bush, held for a second, then broke