Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [260]
The other eye opened, and regarded the dancing waves of light reflected across the timbered ceiling. Then they fixed on me, deep pools of limpid blue.
“Between hell now, and hell later, Sassenach,” he said, his speech measured and precise, “I will take later, every time.” His eyes closed. He belched softly, once, and the long body relaxed, rocked at ease on the cradle of the deep.
* * *
The horses seemed as eager as we; sensing the nearness of stables and food, they began to push the pace a bit, heads up and ears cocked forward in anticipation.
I was just reflecting that I could do with a wash and a bite to eat, myself, when my horse, slightly in the lead, dug in its feet and came to a slithering halt, hooves buried fetlock deep in the reddish dust. The mare shook her head violently from side to side, snorting and whooshing.
“Hey, lass, what’s amiss? Got a bee up your nose?” Jamie swung down from his own mount and hurried to grab the gray mare’s bridle. Feeling the broad back shiver and twitch beneath me, I slid down as well.
“Whatever is the matter with her?” I gazed curiously at the horse, which was pulling backward against Jamie’s grip on the bridle, shaking her mane, with eyes bugging. The other horses, as though infected by her unease, began to stamp and shift as well.
Jamie glanced briefly over his shoulder at the empty road.
“She sees something.”
Fergus raised himself in his shortened stirrups and shaded his eyes, staring over the mare’s back. Lowering his hand, he looked at me and shrugged.
I shrugged back; there seemed to be nothing whatever to cause the mare’s distress—the road and the fields lay vacant all around us, grain-heads ripening and drying in the late summer sun. The nearest grove of trees was more than a hundred yards away, beyond a small heap of stones that might have been the remnants of a tumbled chimneystack. Wolves were almost unheard of in cleared land like this, and surely no fox or badger would disturb a horse at this distance.
Giving up the attempt to coax the mare forward, Jamie led her in a half-circle; she went willingly enough, back in the direction we had come.
He motioned to Murtagh to lead the other horses out of the way, then swung himself into the saddle, and leaning forward, one hand clutched in the mare’s mane, urged her slowly forward, speaking softly in her ear. She came hesitantly, but without resistance, until she reached the point of her previous stopping. There she halted again and stood shivering, and nothing would persuade her to move a step farther.
“All right, then,” said Jamie, resigned. “Have it your way.” He turned the horse’s head and led her into the field, the yellow grain-heads brushing the shaggy hairs of her belly. We rustled after them, the horses bending their necks to snatch a mouthful of grain here and there as we passed through the field.
As we rounded a small granite outcrop just below the crest of the hill, I heard a brief warning bark just ahead. We emerged onto the road to find a black and white shepherd dog on guard, head up and tail stiff as he kept a wary eye on us.
He uttered another short yap, and a matching black and white figure shot out of a clump of alders, followed more slowly by a tall, slender figure wrapped in a brown hunting plaid.
“Ian!”
“Jamie!”
Jamie tossed the mare’s reins back to me, and met his brother-in-law in the middle of the road, where the two men clutched each other round the shoulders, laughing and pounding each other on the back. Released from suspicion, the dogs frolicked happily around them, tails wagging, darting aside now and then to sniff at the legs of the horses.
“We didna expect ye ’til tomorrow at the earliest,” Ian was saying, his long, homely face beaming.
“We had a good wind crossing,” Jamie explained. “Or at least Claire tells me we did; I wasna taking much notice, myself.” He cast a glance back at me, grinning, and Ian came up to grasp my hand.
“Good-sister,” he said in formal greeting. Then he smiled, the warmth