FINDING TRACES
Blaine rode through the woods, his horse, Bert, panting under him. He knew he was pushing too hard, but he could not stop. Could not wait. He had to find her. Had to find her now.
“Chrissie!” he shouted desperately. “Chrissie.”
He knew it was foolish to waste energy calling out, but shouting her name was a war cry. It drove him onward when he would have stopped. His back ached from riding and his feet had gone numb with cold. He knew Bert was exhausted and he knew it was stupid, being out here in the woods at night, alone.
I should have waited, gathered a party of guardsmen, and sent them out in all directions. He had no reason, besides a hunch and the fact that he had seen Chrissie ride this way before, to think she had gone east.
“I'm a numb skull,” he told himself angrily. Reproaching himself didn't help matters, so Blaine took to swearing quietly under his breath, trying to keep his spirits up.
“These woods are shite at night,” he informed Bert quietly. “All these roots and tree branches and slippery needles and...What is that?”
He stopped. Something was coming through the trees. Whatever it was, it was running hard and fast. He could hear its feet drumming on the hard, dry ground. He whistled under his breath, terror holding him upright.
It didn't sound like a wolf. It wasn't a bear. It didn't sound like a human: No one he had ever heard ran that fast. It could be a deer. Or a boar. Or a...
A horse. It was running, wild eyed and snorting, tail streaming on the night cold, hooves beating the silent pine needles. It was a bay horse, tall and slim legged. A Jennet, a small, delicate, compact horse, the sort of horse ladies rode.
“Oh, my Heavens...” Blaine stared. “Princess?”
It was Chrissie's horse. The sight filled him with terror. He knew the name Chrissie had given her new Jennet, because he had teased her about it once, calling it silly. Chrissie had been offended and they had fought, then he had felt guilty. He was relieved for the silly incident now, for it made him remember the name.
“Princess! Whoa!” he called out loudly.
The horse heard him, for she turned and stared, snorting wildly. It was her. She knew her name.
“Hey, whist, then.” Blaine whispered gently. “'Tis well. It's me. Blaine. You're safe. Hush.”
The horse stopped running and stood where she was. She stood panting, head hanging down, looking at her feet, breath heaving into her aching lungs after the run. Blaine waited. The last thing he needed to do was frighten her away. He studied her, trying desperately to see if there was any indication of where she had come from, or of how she came to be out here on her own, riderless.
Where is Chrissie? A thousand terrifying scenes ran through his mind. Chrissie, thrown from her horse, lying somewhere with broken bones, freezing slowly in the cold. Chrissie, attacked by robbers or raiders, pulled from her saddle in an ambush, taken somewhere far away. Chrissie, attacked by wolves...
“Princess,” he whispered again. His own horse stood mercifully still and he slipped off as lightly as he could manage, landing soundlessly on feet numb with cold. Princess, thank Heaven, stayed where she was.
“Hush, then,” he coaxed. “Hey, Princess. It's safe. It's me. We can go home.” He reached up to her bridle. “Where is she, Princess?” he asked, wishing she could answer. The horse stayed where she was, regarding him with a sidelong look.
Blaine went to search for clues. He noticed that Princess seemed unharmed. That, at least, suggested that no wolves had attacked the pair. He looked down at her legs. Felt them. If they were swollen and hot, she had probably been running hard for a long time. They were warm, but not inflamed.
“Well, then,” he said aloud, thinking as he ran a hand down to her hooves, searching for clues. “She can't be far. But was she there, where Princess came from?” he sighed. He was suddenly hit with inspiration, and he checked her hooves. If she had muddy feet, they had probably been on the moorlands, which lay perhaps a quarter mile away.
“Yes,” he whispered, feeling a tiny sense of triumph. Her hooves were muddy, and the mud had only recently dried. She must have been on the moors perhaps half an hour ago. “Did you lose Chrissie out there, eh?” he whispered.
Taking a guess that Chrissie might have been thrown – the saddle was in place, so she had not slipped off from a too loose girth – he decided to walk through the forest to the edge.
He mounted his own horse, keeping hold of the reins of Princess so she followed them. She seemed relieved to see known faces.
“If she's been out there for half an hour, she must almost be dead of cold by now,” Blaine muttered. He was terrified. If she was there, perhaps injured, she must be freezing. That was if wolves had not found her already. Or outlaws. Blaine was not religious, but he found himself praying for her safety.
I have to reach her soon.
He was riding through the woods, agitated and alert, when he found the fire. The horses smelled it first, or he would have seen nothing.
“A fire, eh?” he asked, as Bert sniffed and Princess stopped where she was, rolling her eyes, agitated. “Let's see?”
Blaine walked over, his boots quiet in the leaves. He crouched at the fire, feeling it. It was still warm, the coals glowing.
“This hasn't been alone for long,” he decided. He looked around. There was a depression in the leaf mold near him, where it looked as if a man had sat. He walked around, trying to make sense of things. Someone had taken a brand from the fire, he noted, for it lay where it was in the leaf mold, still smoldering. He stamped it out. As he bent down to check it was cool, he noticed something.
The pine needles were disturbed here, stirred about as if there had been someone lying here. Or two people. There was the sign of some sort of activity – broken twigs, a sapling and some bracken recently trampled. There, a boot print. A very small one.
A lady's boot print?
Fearing he was clutching at straws, feeling his heart flip in his chest, Blaine searched the clearing. He was almost giving up when he found a strand of hair. Raven hair.
“She was here,” he whispered aloud. Which was terrifying. Whoever had been here – outlaws, poachers, border reivers – they had taken her with them.
He looked about, heart pounding, until he found it. Horse manure and tracks. Lots of them.
“They had their horses here,” he said aloud, looking around. He could see the ground was disturbed at the end of the clearing, and in the mud there he found the tracks went west. Back towards Lochlann.
“Blast,” he swore. If they had gone that way, they could be anywhere now. His only reason for believing he could find them was that the fire was still warm. They had not been gone long.
Praying that he could still find them, Blaine mounted his horse. Leading her horse, riding almost blind along the path left by their horses, he headed through the forest and back out onto the moors, almost the same way he had just come.
As he rode, Blaine thought of her. Chrissie, her lips against his. Laughing in the sunlight. Smiling at him in that way that made his heart flip over and soar like a bird.
“Please,” he whispered to the night, praying she could hear him. “Please, be safe.”
Whether she cared for him, whether she would ever marry him, whether his dreams ever came true, did not really matter in that moment. All he wanted was that she would be alive, well, and safe. That sometimes, in the future, he would see her, see her smile, and hear her laugh, even from a distance.
“You make my world more beautiful, just by being alive,” he whispered to the darkness, suddenly knowing it to be true. “Please, Chrissie. Please. Please be safe.”