THE journey back took longer than the one there, but Elinor had planned for this; she had known the weather would already be harsher and the days shorter by the time they turned around. She had constructed their trip based upon what she remembered from her last journey to Eilean Glan and what she had researched. She had each day’s distance and each night’s stop planned out.
By now, Merida realized that Fergus had been wrong about why Elinor hesitated to travel. It was not that she needed things to be nice. She needed things to be perfect, and it was hard to make travel perfect. She had lost faith in her ability to do it. Now she was remembering.
The return trip began well. They traveled through the dense forests without luring the wolves out. They camped in clearings that overlooked secretive little rivers. They ate meals nearly as fancy as the ones at the castle, augmented by salmon from the fast rivers. They told stories around fires. They saw wondrous vistas from atop high bluffs, and Merida was overcome with how beautiful the world was. The sun went down and mist crept out; the sun rose and banished the mist and off they traveled again.
It remained very fortunate weather, although the crisp edge and the smell of oak leaves made Merida nervous, reminding her Christmas was soon coming.
“Something’s going to go wrong,” Harris told Merida. “It can’t stay like this.”
“When did you become such a toad?” Merida asked. “Is this a new thing or have you always been a toad? She’s doing a good job.”
“This isn’t about Mum,” Harris said in his cool tone. “Not everything is criticism. I was trying to have a conversation, but I should have known better.”
“Here’s something better for you,” Merida said, and pulled his hair.
He bit her.
“Oh, very adult,” Merida said.
“You’re just sorry you didn’t get me first,” Harris said. “Brionn, come on!” His dog, as ever, didn’t listen, and continued to wreak havoc among the pack ponies.
“I see something going wrong right now,” Merida said, with a meaningful look at Brionn. “Clean up your own house before you start trashing others.”
But Harris was, as Harris often was, right. Or at least not entirely wrong.
At first it was a day when they didn’t cover quite as much ground as Elinor had planned.
Then it was a day when their intended campsite had been flooded and they had to camp several miles farther out.
And then, on the third day, they came across a completely destroyed town.
“What happened here?” Elinor demanded. Merida could tell her mother was becoming more upset because she became ever more rigid and queenly. The less she understood what was going on or how to fix it, the more rules and orders she was likely to deliver. “I want an answer!”
Her question was all the more ridiculous because it was obvious what had happened. The town had been razed to the ground. The doors had been barricaded. The roofs had been set alight. The livestock had been slaughtered. The pine trees for timbering had been felled and splintered. The wells had been salted. Anyone left behind was dead, and horribly so. They had been made to die slowly. It all smelled of destruction.
So the scouts who had alerted her to the destroyed town didn’t answer her. And they didn’t have an answer to the real question, which was Who did this?
As they picked through the town, Merida felt her stomach churn. She had blamed Feradach for Kinlochy’s destruction before this, but now that she saw how cruelly this town had been cut to bits and tormented, she understood the difference.
He was nature.
This was human.
Feradach had ruined that town only as much as required. This town’s destruction had far more in common with the initial brutal invasion of Keithneil. It had been pillaged in such a way that did not consider the future at all.
Finally Elinor waved a hand to spread the soldiers who had gathered close and protective around their queen as she investigated. She asked the unanswerable question. “Who did this?”
A clear voice came from among the few pine trees still standing. “I did.”
Merida looked up and saw a man sitting on horseback, shoulders thrown back, head held high. In the half-felled trees behind him other warriors were visible. One of them wore a cloak made entirely of wolf tails.
“Name yourself,” Elinor said, and her voice did not falter at all.
“I am Domnall mac Alpin,” he replied.
Harris gave Merida a knowing look. Things had gone terribly wrong.
He was the Dásachtach.
Merida had not expected the Dásachtach to be young. For some reason, she thought he would be an old, jaded warlord, powerful and wizened. A man who had compassion once, perhaps, but lost it. A man who had slowly acquired the respect or fear of all the people around him.
But he was young.
He was barely older than her, perhaps, if even that. His face seemed pleasant. Earnest. He seemed less like someone you would cower from and more like someone whose favor you would like to have.
He did not, however, seem to have that effect on Merida’s mother. She said, in her same imperious tone, “Explain yourself.”
He did not posture and say he didn’t have to answer to her or anyone else. He didn’t ask her to prove her status and right to demand anything of him. He just did exactly as she asked. He explained how this kingdom had been fussing with its neighbors for generations. Stealing cattle. Stealing daughters. Refusing to help when the Norsemen came. Letting reformers come through and harass the clergy. Cutting down their resources and wasting them without sharing them with others. The trees on this rock wouldn’t last forever, after all.
“I asked them to comply again and again,” the Dásachtach said. Now he looked grim. Depressed. “Just a little show of loyalty. Anything, really. Send me sons; marry their daughters to the neighbors who were so fearful of them. Give us a choice. Anything. But…”
He held out his hand helplessly and showed them the ruined town as if that was the only option he’d had available.
If there hadn’t still been smoke roiling off the town, it might have seemed more compassionate, but as it was, it remained a hard sell for the queen of DunBroch.
“This is no way to change hearts,” Elinor said. “There are many other ways.”
As they’d been speaking, more men had come into view behind him among the trees. It was not an entire army, but it was certainly enough to take out the DunBroch travelers if it came to a battle. Unlike the rigid dignity of Ardbarrach’s regiments, the Dásachtach’s group was a somehow free and organic mass, sinuous and fierce. If Ardbarrach’s forces had been like a well-trained machine, this was like a nest of snakes, coiling and turning over each other. They were cunning and mobile and somehow seemed much more dangerous.
Harris watched them intently.
“If only that were true,” the Dásachtach replied sadly. “If only that were true. Dear woman. You have not told me your name.”
“Elinor of DunBroch,” Elinor said, and Merida was proud of her mother’s mettle. She was not having any of his fairy-tale spinning. “We have just returned from a journey to Eilean Glan, as per our discussion with your man, and have arranged for foster girls to come to DunBroch.”
“How excellent to hear you are working toward unity,” he said. “This must be your daughter. And oh—who’s this?”
A dog was scurrying around his horse’s legs, its tail up and curious. Very few horses like to be meddled with by strange dogs, especially in wolf season, and the Dásachtach’s mount was no different. It whirled and tossed its head and kicked out, but the dog was like warm jelly and simply trickled out of harm’s way.
“Tsssss!” Harris hissed through his teeth.
Because of course the dog that had crossed the distance to them was Brionn. Of course.