Page 4 of The Shape of Silence

Two days later, she saw the dog again, this time closer to the house, sitting where the trees thinned as if he sniffed her out or had followed her, and now watched her. She didn’t think he was fully grown yet, but he seemed to move with some confidence, and she could see that his legs were going to be very long even when the rest of him caught up. She threw a stone near him to advise that this space was hers and not his, and he moved away at once, though not far enough to be gone.

For weeks he came and went, sometimes seen and sometimes only guessed at by the sound of furtive tracking in her wake. Over that time he began to change in small, steady ways. His ribs showed less. His coat grew coarser and darker, losing the soft look of a puppy’s fur. His body almost caught up to the size of his legs, though not entirely, just enough so that he didn’t appear to be in danger of toppling over. More than once, she found a snare sprung and empty, the wire twisted where something had worked at it, and she fixed it without looking around, though she knew well enough what had taken her food.

One morning, when she lifted a rabbit free and felt the familiar weight of it in her hands, she became aware of the dog standing not ten paces away, his tail down, his eyes fixed on the body she held.

Considering the three other rabbits in her pouch, she sighed and tossed the one in her hand toward him. He didn’t lunge forward for it, but waited and watched her, as if testing to be sure it was not a trick, and then he stepped forward, took it, and was gone.

After that, he followed her more openly, though never close enough to be in the way. He seemed to keep his distance while she moved through the forest but came closer day by day when she was near the house, and he never again took from her traps. At night, she began to hear him outside the house, not whining or barking, just there. Always with a mind that it was so much easier to provide food for one than two—as the man might have thought—she didn’t open the door. But then, neither did she send him away. Come morning, he was always gone.

The first snow came early that year. She woke to air thick with cold and found the dog’s familiar tracks at the door, pressed deep and close together, as if he had turned in a small circle and settled there, but he, as usual, was gone. She stood for a long moment with her hand on the latch and then went about her day.

That night, wind came along with the snow. She lay awake, listening to the way it found every loose place in the walls, every thin seam in the roof. At some point, she heard the dog settle in against the outside of the door before there was complete silence again, except for the wind. She chewed her lip for several minutes before she rose and put on her boots and opened the door.

He was there, curled tight against the wall, his back to the wind, his nose tucked into his tail. He looked up when the small golden light reached him but otherwise did not move.

She stood in the doorway with the cold pouring in around her ankles and weighed the pros and cons before she stepped aside, holding open the door.

He stood, stiffly it seemed, but didn’t rush past her. He gave himself a good shake, sending a bit of snow flying, and entered with enough hesitation that she urged him along by moving the door, wanting to shut out the cold now. He circled the room once, and it seemed he was being careful not to touch anything, before he watched her climb back into bed, and then lay down between her and the fire.

He never spent a night outside again after that.

Chapter One

Scotland 1305

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The camp lay in a shallow fold of ground where the wind passed over them rather than through them, which was something at least. Morggán stood at the edge of it with his hands braced on his belt and watched his men settle in with sluggish movements that came of too many nights spent this way—fires banked low, gear stacked where it could be reached in the dark, horses picketed with more strategy than comfort.

Behind him, Alasdair was arguing with Finlay in a voice that he didn’t bother to keep low.

“If the Earl says we move at dawn, we move at dawn,” Finlay said, with the patient stubbornness of a man who liked rules because they gave him something to adhere to, a path to follow. He was broad through the shoulders and steady on his feet, a shield man by instinct even when he was not carrying one.

“And if the Earl says we should all jump into the river and see who floats longest?” Alasdair replied. He was leaner, quicker, and had never yet met an idea he could not improve by pointing out exactly how bad it was. “Will ye do that as well, or will ye ask why first?”

Finlay snorted. “I would ask whether ye were jumping before me.”

“That’s because ye’re a coward,” Alasdair said pleasantly.

Morggán turned before it could go further. “Cease,” he said wearily, not bothering to raise his voice.

The two folded the argument away, to be taken out again later when there was more time and less to do.

He walked back toward them, the small knot of men who mattered most to him in a fight: Alasdair and Finlay, Eòin the Younger, and Donnchadh, who rarely spoke unless he decided he had something to say worth hearing.

Eòin was crouched over a map scratched into the dirt with the end of a stick, improving it in small, fussy ways that made it only slightly more accurate but somehow more reassuring. Donnchadh stood a little apart, arms folded, watching Eòin scratch in the dirt with an expression that said the drawing would do no good, not when the whole thing stunk of disaster waiting.

“So the earl says he’s found a column, coming north,” Morggán said, standing near Eòin’s shoulder. “Where do the scouts put them?”

“Here,” Eòin said without looking up, pointing the stick outside his sketch, toward the south. “English. Moving north with wagons. Supplies, and lightly guarded, he says. Dog-tired, he says, at the end of their line.”

“And ye believe him?” Alasdair asked.

“I believe he believes it,” Eòin said, and glanced up long enough to offer a thin smile. “Which is nae the same thing.”

Donnchadh shifted his weight. “Even if it is true, they will nae be alone for long. The English dinna leave their throats uncovered unless they have teeth somewhere close by.”

Morggán nodded. That had been his thought as well, and it had not grown more comfortable with the passing of the day. “The Earl wants a clean strike,” he said. “Something visible. Something that looks like momentum and strategy rather than some half-cocked plan.”