“Take the reins,” Leif said, dropping them into my lap.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I first felt his hands upon my hair. With gentle yet efficient movements, he combed my hair back from my face. His fingers were warm and strong as they brushed against my neck, and I could feel an answering warmth stir inside me. No one but my handmaiden had ever touched my hair, and having a man touch it seemed intensely intimate. A few moments of a tugging sensation, and then my hair was neatly plaited behind me.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. I reached back and felt the smooth braid. How strange that this Northman warrior should know how to do something so domestic. “How did you learn to do this?”
He retrieved the reins from my lap. “I had a sister once. She had long, unruly hair, and after our mother died, I was often called upon to help her subdue it.”
His words were matter-of-fact, but I heard the sorrowful undercurrent to his tone. I turned toward him, and our gazes caught and held. An old wound was visible in his eyes, and I felt something move inside me in answer. He had two siblings—one who had later died. The similarities between us couldn’t be ignored. An uncomfortable sensation of self-reproach roiled inside me at my earlier thoughts that he was a barbarian, beneath my notice. He was someone who had, in many ways, suffered just as much as I had.
But even as I felt my thoughts soften toward him, I heard the screams of my clansmen, saw Alana’s blood pour down her neck.
I cleared my throat softly. “How did she die?”
“She was murdered,” he said. The pain and wrath in his voice was so apparent that I flinched.
I couldn’t stop my reply, not when I knew exactly what he was feeling. “I, too, lost a sister.”
The same emotions seemed to flit across Leif’s face, and so when he asked the inevitable question, I almost didn’t want to answer him for fear of breaking the fragile friendship we’d created.
“How?” he asked.
“She was murdered,” I answered, stealing his words. I turned around to look at him again.
He searched my face for a moment and found the answer there in the set of my jaw, in the shifting of my gaze. Thankfully he didn’t force me to say it: that it was his own people who had killed her.
Thunder rumbled directly overhead, and I glanced up sharply.
Distracted by our conversation, I hadn’t noticed the state of the weather around us. The wind had blown in a massive dark cloud, which loomed ominously above us. Unpredictable and rapidly changing weather wasn’t unusual for éirinn, but it seemed to happen the most when shelter wasn’t available.
A torrent of rain released itself upon us, penetrating our cloaks and garments almost instantly, so they lay wet and flush against us.
Leif urged Sleipnir into a gallop toward a thick forest of towering oak and ash trees. A cave would be more welcome, but at least the leaves would filter some of the rain. The cold water ran in rivers down my face, chilling me until my teeth chattered.
As we galloped to the shelter of the wood, the muddy ground revealed a set of tracks left by animals with paws as big as Sleipnir’s hooves. Much bigger than wolves. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
My heart pounded in my chest. Turn back, my instincts screamed at me.
I shouted at Leif to stop, that we must turn back, but he could not hear me over the roar of the storm.
We made it to the forest, the trees filtering some of the rain, at least to the point that I could hear again. From deep within the forest came a small sound. Leif brought Sleipnir to a halt, and I strained to hear. The baying of hounds, followed by the low tones of a hunting horn.
My eyes widened in terror. “Move. We must leave now.” The words tumbled out in a panicked rush.
“What ghoulish Gaelic creature is after us now?” Leif asked. There was more amusement to his tone than the dire situation warranted.
“Those sounds are the Wild Hunt, and if we’re discovered, if we’re even scented, we’ll be hunted down and slaughtered like sheep.”
Every nerve, every instinct within me was on fire with the need to escape.
Leif snorted and tightened his hold on me, urging Sleipnir once again into a gallop. “You also said the each-uisce couldn’t be killed,” he shouted above Sleipnir’s hoofbeats. “Who is hunting us?”
The hair-raising sound of the baying grew still closer, until even Sleipnir snorted with terror. The path between the trees grew narrower and narrower. Twigs and branches grabbed at our sodden clothes. The fear within me grew to such colossal proportions that it developed a taste. It tasted like blood.
“Another of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Flidais,” I said grimly. “She is a protector of wild animals and hunts humans for sport, but it’s strange to encounter her during the day.”
I remembered the tales of the Wild Hunt—mostly stories to frighten children from wandering the forests alone, but they had clung to the recesses of my mind. The victims were herded into another realm, one from which there was no escape. The forest of the hunt was never-ending, the trees themselves aiding the hunter in trapping the prey. The hounds varied, from wolves to dog-boar hybrids, but always they tore the prey into pieces so small there was nothing left for even carrion birds.
With riotous barking to announce their presence, the hellhounds burst from the trees. They were enormous, almost as big as Sleipnir. I risked a glance as we raced on, only to see nothing but hideous creatures with yellow eyes, their coats the color of rotten leaves. One launched itself at us, sharp teeth snapping. Leif wrenched the reins to the right and used Sleipnir’s powerful shoulder to slam the hound into a wide oak. Sleipnir tossed his head, the whites of his eyes nearly all I could see.
Leif wheeled Sleipnir around to where we’d entered the forest, and one of the hounds almost caught its strong jaw around Sleipnir’s leg, but Sleipnir flew over it as though he had wings.
His hooves thundered across the muddy terrain, sending torrents of water up in his wake, and still the hounds closed in. They howled and snapped at Sleipnir’s haunches, staying on him even as he zigzagged to avoid them.
We burst free of the forest only to find ourselves herded toward another copse of trees. Only this time, as we galloped closer, I realized this wasn’t an ordinary forest. The tops of the trees had bowed over and entwined with each other on either side of a wide path, until they formed a tunnel made up of gnarled branches and leaves.
A deafening silence fell upon us as soon as Sleipnir entered the tunnel, as though the rain had cleared in an instant. The sounds of the hounds disappeared, but I sensed that we were far from safety. When I looked behind us, the torrent still fell, everywhere but over the forest entrance. I shuddered.
Sleipnir flicked his ears back and began to back up, but he was soon met with resistance.
I leaned forward and rubbed his neck in an effort to soothe him, though I was as terrified as he. “There is no use going back now. We have entered the Faerie Tunnel, and we will only be able to leave if and when it suits them.”
“If we cannot go back, then we must continue on,” Leif said, nudging a reluctant Sleipnir forward.
The eerie silence of the forest, completely absent of chirping birds, small animals moving through the underbrush, or even insects buzzing, filled me with as much dread as the howling of wolves. The fall of Sleipnir’s hooves seemed like the loud banging of drums in comparison, and I scanned the trees for any sign of life as we passed.
I couldn’t help but fear we’d been herded directly into a trap.
9