Page 24 of A Wolf's Bargain
Not a single one.
Cora scanned the camp with new eyes, suddenly noticing things she’d missed before. Men stood around a cook pot, stirring and tossing in a potato or carrot. One man sat outside his tent, idly mending clothes and shoes. Another balanced a small bucket between his legs and scrubbed at a pair of trousers. All trousers. Not a skirt to be seen.
She wondered if she ought to be afraid. Her husband had left her, a solitary woman, in a camp of fifty men with no chaperone or other female presence at all. Was she in danger? The scowling man, Eoin, came to mind. Might he turn that anger on her without her husband there to stop him?
“Lady, are you well?”
Cora looked up to find a young man—one of her patient’s friends, she thought—staring at her. He sported a short, patchy beard and had the gangly, uneven limbs of a boy on his way to manhood. A small, thin fur covered his shoulders—but not a wolf, she realized. Something smaller—a fox, maybe? There was no gold pin holding it in place like Cillian and his ‘brothers’ wore, and she wondered if there was more meaning behind it than she’d thought.
The poor lad shuffled nervously, and Cora realized she’d been staring at him. “Oh, my apologies!” she said. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Are you sure? You’ve been staring at that rock for ages. Some of us were worried you might be ill.”
Cora opened her mouth to dismiss his words but stopped when an idea struck. “What’s your name, lad?”
The boy straightened, his chest puffed out as much as it could. “Seamus, Lady. Of the Fáelad clan. Cillian—your husband—he’s one of my cousins.”
Cora smiled warmly and said, “Oh! Well, that makes us family, doesn’t it? It’s a pleasure to meet you, Seamus.”
Seamus blushed, the color reaching all the way to his hair. “Did you need something, Lady? You have been here for quite a while, and I—we, me and the others, that is—thought you might need help.”
Cora looked behind him to see a pair of young men with similar uneven beards and scraggly pelts. As soon as theyrealized she’d spotted them, they glanced away as though they hadn’t been staring.
“Actually, some help would be wonderful,” she said, gesturing at the basket she’d found to hold her nonexistent supplies. “My husband has tasked me with serving the ill and injured here, but I need herbs and other resources to do it. Do you know where I might find comfrey and feverfew in camp? And some catgut?”
Seamus glanced back at his friends, then shrugged apologetically. “I don’t think we have anything like that here, Lady. The luchthonn don’t need much in the way of healing, and themadraí... well—”
“Forgive me. What do your dogs have to do with the need for medicines?”
“Oh! No, Lady. It’s what we—us from the luchthonn tribes—call the human men in our numbers.”
Cora blinked slowly. “Right. Of course. And how many...madraíare there here?”
Seamus shrugged again. “I dunno. Twenty maybe?”
“And they’re never injured? Never sick? And why wouldn’t the luchthonn need healing? Are they gods that nothing harms them?”
The longer their conversation went on, the more uncomfortable Cora became. If his expression was anything to go by, Seamus shared her discomfort. “We just—well, we heal quickly. I’m not sure why. And sure, themadraíget hurt and sick. But, usually, the other madraí see to them or they just... you know, die.”
It wasn’t fair to the lad to take her frustration—her anger—out on him. She repeated that thought to herself until the urge to shout receded. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I see. Well, my husband—your cousin—has tasked me with changingall that. I’ve some skill in this area, as you saw earlier, but I need supplies. Are you familiar with the forest to the east of camp?”
“Aye, Lady.”
“Good. Thank you for answering my questions, Seamus, truly. I’m afraid I know nothing about this world, but I’d like to learn. Do you think you and your friends might travel with me into the forest? If you do, as well as answer a few more questions, I promise to make you the tastiest stew you’ve ever eaten for your dinner.”
CORA COUNTED ON THEfact that young men never seemed to stop eating, and if the interested shine in Seamus’s eyes was anything to go by, she’d judged correctly. He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. A hopeful smile curving on his lips, he asked, “Would you... if I caught you a hare or two, would you add it to your stew? Rabbit’s my favorite.”
“Seamus, you keep me away from any bears in those woods, and I’ll put whatever you like in.”
The more Cora watched her guides make their way through the forest, the more she was reminded of a litter of hunting pups. Like the dogs, the boys had more energy than sense, but they teased and pestered each other just like pups who nipped at their litter-mates' ears. As soon as the initial awkwardness had faded, they’d lobbed question after question at her about life in a castle and the herbs she needed to find. She’d never considered that her former life might be as alien to them as theirs was to her.
“Lady, pardon me, but you lie,” Seamus accused after she’d described the large hall where they held harvest feasts and grand celebrations. “Why would anyone need a whole room for that? Why trap yourself with all those walls when you could just celebrate outside? Sounds awful to me.”
Cora laughed, shaking her head at his expression. “Do the luchthonn not use buildings at all? Do you all live in tents?”
“Well, no, not really,” he replied. “There are houses and such atClann Abhaile, the Clan’s homeland, but none of the roaming packs ever build anything like a house.”
Cora scanned the ground for the purple flowers that marked the comfrey plant. It was hard to focus on her task when every word out of the boys’ mouths only raised more questions. “What’s theClann Abhaile? What do you mean, the roaming packs?”