Brighid raised one eyebrow at him.
“Well, it’s you who said you’ve missed me, but how could that be? We’ve been working side by side for days clearing out that wreck my sister calls a castle.” He winked at her. “Or is this your subtle way of telling me you’d like to spend even more time with me?” He made a great show of sighing. “Go easy with me, Huntress, I am only one man.”
Brighid’s mild annoyance changed to something that felt almost like fear.
“Brighid?” He reached forward and touched her arm gently. “Have I offended you? I thought you knew I only jested.”
“No…I…” She floundered. What was she supposed to say? She stared at the man sitting next to her. He was carefree and kind and charismatic-everything that the Cuchulainn who was at that moment watching over the New Fomorian camp was not. And she knew with a feeling as sure as her knowledge of the habits of the animals he wasn’t a figment of her dreaming imagination. He was the part of Cuchulainn that had been shattered at Brenna’s death, and this part of Cu seemed to be caught in a time before the tragic event. Brighid searched desperately within herself. What should she say to him?
“Brighid? What is it?”
“Cu, you know we’re in my dream?”
The warrior nodded.
“In the waking world we are no longer at MacCallan Castle,” she said slowly.
Cuchulainn sat up straight and took the sweetgrass from between his teeth. “But that’s not possible. Just this evening we worked together to clean out the Chieftain’s quarters as a surprise for El.” His smile faltered only a little. “We can’t be traveling. We’re busy working.”
“Who?” she asked quietly. “Who is busy working on El’s chamber, Cuchulainn?”
“Have you been overimbibing my sister’s stash of red wine, Brighid?” he asked with humor that was obviously forced. “It’s mostly been the three of us-you, Brenna and me.”
Brighid drew a deep breath. “Cu, what you’re remembering…it happened in the past…more than two full cycles of the moon since-”
“No!” With a sharp, jerky movement the warrior stood. “No…” He backed away from her.
“Cu, wait!” Brighid reached toward him, but all she touched was the darkness of her tent as her eyes opened to the fading night.
That was when her headache began. The cold drizzle of the morning had done nothing to dispel it. Brighid had tried to catch Ciara’s eye and pull her aside. She needed to talk to the Shaman about her dream. But the Shaman had been kept busy herding the waterlogged goats.
“You’re setting a fast pace for such a miserable day.”
Cuchulainn’s gruff voice jolted through her thoughts. She looked around and felt a little like she was waking from another dream.
“Sorry,” she said shortly. “I hadn’t realized I’d pulled away from the rest of them.”
A grunt was his only reply. She expected him to turn and ride away, but as Brighid slowed her pace Cu’s gelding stayed beside her. His hair was damp and too damned long. He looked like one of the semiwild goats Ciara had spent the morning wrestling.
“You need a haircut,” she said.
His eyes widened in surprise before they narrowed into the flat, cynical expression that had overtaken his face in the past months. “I do not care about my hair.”
Huh, Brighid’s mind whirred. He was visibly shaken by a normal, personal comment. And something suddenly made sense to her. Everyone had been tiptoeing around Cuchulainn since Brenna’s death, treating him like he was a delicate egg that needed to be sheltered. Even the hybrids were careful with him-not expecting him to stay for dinner and most of the storytelling-allowing him to escape to his tent so he could brood alone. No wonder the joyous part of him had retreated. If she had a choice, she wouldn’t want to spend time with the black cloud that had become Cuchulainn, either.
“Obviously. Your hair looks awful,” she snapped. “You also need a shave and a change of-” she gestured at the stained kilt that was barely visible beneath the goat’s pelt he’d thrown over his shoulders “-whatever it is you claim to be wearing.”
“The more delicate aspects of a gentleman’s toilette have not been foremost on my mind these past cycles of the moon.” His voice was thick with sarcasm.
“Perhaps you’d like to reconsider that Goddess-be-damned attitude, boy.” The Huntress purposefully drew out the word. Granted, she was probably only a year or two older, but she drew her seniority around her like a rich cloak and sent the warrior a haughty look. “By this time tomorrow we’ll be entering Guardian Pass. The children, as admittedly annoying as they are, deserve our help greeting Partholon. Our help, Cuchulainn. That doesn’t mean me playing the Huntress and you playing the Long-Suffering Warrior.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Look at you! Your sister would barely recognize you.”
“Huntress, I warn you. I am in no mood for your-”
“Spare me!” She interrupted him, tossing her hair back and curling her lip. “Try to remember that what we’re doing isn’t for me or for you. It’s for them.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the mass of children following them. “Get yourself together and don’t let them down.”
“Do you think this is a good spot for the midday meal?” Ciara rushed up to them in a flutter of dark, wet wings. If she sensed the tension between the centaur and the warrior, her happy, open expression showed no sign of it.
“Yes,” Cuchulainn said in a clipped tone.
“Fine with me,” Brighid said.
“Lovely! I’ll tell the children. But we shouldn’t stop long. We’re all so excited about the possibility of entering Guardian Pass tomorrow. We don’t want to fall behind schedule.”
The winged woman rushed off and Brighid could hear her calling the children to order and organizing the brief break. The Huntress slowed to a stop. Squaring her shoulders she turned to the warrior, ready to do battle. But instead of cynicism or anger, Cuchulainn just looked old beyond his years and very, very tired.
“So I look that bad?” he said.
“That bad and then some,” Brighid said.
“Is this part of the soul-fixing thing you have to do?”
The Huntress shrugged. “It might be. It might not be. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing.”
“Well, you’re certainly being an irritant.”
“And you’re not being much better,” she said.
He slanted a considering look at her. “Does that make us a team?”
“You mean together we’re not as irritating or, in your case, as pathetic?” Brighid said.
“I think your manner with patients needs some work.”
“Probably. I usually kill my ‘patients.’”
“That could be the problem,” Cu said.
“Yeah, but it’s only one of them,” Brighid said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The drizzle kept up the entire day until even the children were subdued and comparatively quiet as they made camp that night. When Ciara completed the evening prayer with, “…Fill me with our Goddess’s blessed power, Touch me with her blazing might,” Brighid didn’t think she’d ever been so relieved to hear any words in her life.
The homey warmth of the Shaman-enhanced campfire worked like a magical charm. Soon pots were boiling with stew supplemented with several stringy snow geese Brighid had shot not long before they stopped for the night. The Huntress rested beside the fire and the musty scents of the fuel and the stew mingled to lull her into a relaxed, contented state. By the Goddess, she was tired. Her dream the night before had definitely not provided her with much rest. The Huntress was used to going several days without sleep-sometimes hunts were exhausting, and a centaur’s stamina was always greater than a human’s. But one night flitting about the Otherworld had worn on her as if she had been hunting nonstop for a week.