A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [166]
The face was lantern-jawed and hollow-cheeked; he looked surprised, eyes wide open to the flickering light. Something seemed oddly wrong, though, and I squinted, trying to make it out. Then I realized that his head was on backward.
It may have been seconds or minutes that I sat there staring at him, arms round my knees and my mind a total blank. Then the sound of soft footsteps made me look up.
Arch Bug came out of the dark, tall and thin and black against the flicker of a growing fire. I saw that he had an ax gripped hard in his left hand; it too was black, and the smell of blood came strong and rich as he leaned near.
“There are some left still alive,” he said, and I felt something cold and hard touch my hand. “Will ye have your vengeance now upon them, a bana-mhaighistear?”
I looked down and found that he was offering me a dirk, hilt-first. I had stood up, but couldn’t remember rising.
I couldn’t speak, and couldn’t move—and yet my fingers curled without my willing them to, my hand rising up to take the knife as I watched it, faintly curious. Then Jamie’s hand came down upon the dirk, snatching it away, and I saw as from a great distance that the light fell on his hand, gleaming wet with blood smeared past the wrist. Random drops shone red, dark jewels glowing, caught in the curly hairs of his arm.
“There is an oath upon her,” he said to Arch, and I realized dimly that he was still speaking in Gaelic, though I understood him clearly. “She may not kill, save it is for mercy or her life. It is myself who kills for her.”
“And I,” said a tall figure behind him, softly. Ian.
Arch nodded understanding, though his face was still in darkness. Someone else was there beside him—Fergus. I knew him at once, but it took a moment’s struggle for me to put a name to the streaked pale face and wiry figure.
“Madame,” he said, and his voice was thin with shock. “Milady.”
Then Jamie looked at me, and his own face changed, awareness coming back into his eyes. I saw his nostrils flare, as he caught the scent of sweat and semen on my clothes.
“Which of them?” he said. “How many?” He spoke in English now, and his voice was remarkably matter-of-fact, as it might be if he were inquiring as to the number of guests expected for dinner, and I found the simple tone of it steadying.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They—it was dark.”
He nodded, squeezed my arm hard, and turned.
“Kill them all,” he said to Fergus, his voice still calm. Fergus’s eyes were huge and dark, sunk into his head, burning. He merely nodded, and took hold of the hatchet in his belt. The front of his shirt was splashed, and the end of his hook looked dark and sticky.
In a distant sort of way, I thought I should say something. But I didn’t. I stood up straight with the tree against my back and said nothing at all.
Jamie glanced at the dirk he held as though to ensure that it was in good order—it was not; he wiped the blade on his thigh, ignoring the drying blood that gummed the wooden hilt—and went back to the clearing.
I stood quite still. There were more sounds, but I paid no more heed to them than to the rush of wind through the needles overhead; it was a balsam tree, and the breath of it was clean and fresh, falling over me in a wash of fragrant resins, powerful enough to taste on my palate, though little penetrated the clotted membranes of my nose. Beneath the gentle veil of the tree’s perfume, I tasted blood, and sodden rags, and the stink of my own weary skin.
Dawn had broken. Birds sang in the distant wood, and light lay soft as wood ash on the ground.
I stood quite still, and thought of nothing but how pleasant it would be to stand neck-deep in hot water, to scrub the skin quite away from my flesh, and let the blood run red and clean down my legs, billowing out in soft clouds that would hide me.
29
PERFECTLY FINE
THEY’D RIDDEN AWAY then. Left them, without