Page 45 of The Shape of Silence

“Ye did well enough already,” he said.

Avery shot him a look that clearly said she thought otherwise.

“Alasdair talks enough for six men,” Morggán continued mildly. “Tormod holds court when he’s in the mood. A dozen others will talk non-stop if we dinna shut them up besides. Ye need scarcely say a word at all if ye dinna want to.”

Another reluctant softening touched her expression then vanished again almost immediately.

“And if after five moments ye decide ye hate every one of them,” he added, “I’ll walk ye back here myself—and with a bowl full of stew and enough bread to make ye sick.”

Avery gave him a knowing smile, plainly recognizing the attempt to coax her. The small grin faded as quickly as it had come, however, and she studied him then in that intent silent way she had, as though weighing not merely the words themselves but the truth behind them.

Morggán held her gaze steadily.

In truth, he wanted more than simply to feed her properly tonight. He wanted the sight of people around her to not seem like an approaching storm. He wanted her to know or remember perhaps that voices and laughter and company need not send her into retreat, that the world beyond this hut did not exist solely to threaten her.

At length Avery looked down toward Charlie again and scratched slowly behind one ear.

Finally, she acquiesced. “Maybe for five minutes.”

Relief moved unexpectedly through Morggán at the words.

He rose again, as slowly as he’d gone down, and said quietly, “Five moments it is. I’ll collect ye when the boards are set.”

***

Avery paused as they rounded the corner of the house, stopping near the little garden plot in which she and Morggán had labored only hours earlier. As promised, Morggán had come to get her about an hour after she’d accepted his invitation—an entire hour in which she’d regretted every minute she’d not been more staunch in her refusal. But then Morggán had extended his hand to her, helping her to her feet, and yeah, for a moment, she’d been so preoccupied with the feel of his hand around hers that she hadn’t really prepared herself for what waited beyond the corner of the house. He had not immediately released her after pulling her to her feet inside, and though at last she had gently tugged her hand free as they’d crossed the threshold, the warmth and strength of his grip seemed strangely to linger still. She’d just caught herself clenching and unclenching her fingers absently, as though some part of her wished to hold onto the sensation.

And thus she found herself wholly unprepared for the sight before her, staring out at a version of her forest she scarcely recognized.

Before today, silence had governed this place. Even when wind moved through the trees or rain struck the leaves or Charlie crashed carelessly through brush after some scent, the forest had always belonged first to stillness. The sounds had fit together naturally. Nothing truly had ever intruded, and nothing lingered. Not until this moment, it seemed.

Beyond that narrow open space that immediately surrounded her house, the forest thickened almost immediately, trunks rising close together in deepening shade exactly as they always had—and yet not as it always had, the woods no longer belonged wholly to themselves, and certainly not to her anymore.

Men occupied the entire area that she could see.

Not gathered tightly together in one great noisy camp, but scattered naturally throughout the trees in small clusters and shifting pockets of movement, as though an armed company had quietly threaded itself into the forest and settled there with long practice. No great blaze burned among the trees. These men clearly knew better than to risk fire in dry woodland.

The forest remained mostly dark beneath the shade of the canopy under a now gray sky. Yet everywhere Avery looked she discovered signs of the army hidden among the trees. Horses stood tethered beneath pines and ash trees farther back in the woods, some lowering their heads lazily toward brush and grass while others flicked ears toward the steady murmur of voices drifting through the forest. Small tents made from what looked to Avery like greased canvas or oiled cloth now peppered the woods between the trunks, low and weather-darkened, but not invisible. Blankets and packs rested against roots and fallen logs. Shields leaned beside trunks. Men moved quietly between the trees, appearing and disappearing through shadow with surprising softness for people so heavily armed.

Avery was stunned speechless by how quickly and naturally they seemed to inhabit the place.

They weren’t loud, thankfully. There was no shouting or any crashing disorder. The army hadn’t overtaken the forest so much as settled carefully into it, bending itself around the woods. For fifty or more armed men, they produced much less noise than expected. Conversation drifted low and intermittent rather than constant. A few men laughed now and then, but even that seemed restrained.

To her immediate right, a large fire had been built in the clearing behind the house itself, several broad iron kettles much larger than her own small ones hanging above it while more than a few rough logs and split stumps had already been dragged into a loose circle between the house and the fire, just beyond the garden plot. Beyond the fire, long boards had been laid across barrels to make crude tables, their surfaces crowded already with dark loaves of bread, large wedges of hard cheese, strips of dried meat, and bundles wrapped in cloth. Men passed steadily back and forth between the kettles where a stew of some sort was ladled into a bowl or cup of their own before moving onto the ‘boards’ as Morggán had called them, adding bread and cheese to their meal.

To Avery, after years of scraping together meals alone from whatever she could snare, gather, or preserve, the sight looked almost absurdly abundant. Not luxurious exactly, but sprawling in a way that made her think fleetingly and somewhat incredulously of grand buffets in hotels and conference centers from her old life, endless tables where food simply appeared and people expected to eat their fill. The comparison struck her as ridiculous almost immediately given the mud and smoke and armed men surrounding it, yet the thought lingered all the same.

On those stumps and seats closer to the house, were men she’d been introduced to, Tormod and Alasdair among them, and several others.

Morggán waited beside her, his presence recalled when he took one step closer to her.

“Avery,” he said quietly, for her ears alone, informing her, “five minutes is all.”

Managing to produce what she hoped was a confident smile, she nodded and waited for Morggán to move before she fell into step beside him.

Several heads lifted at their approach, not all at once and not with enough sharpness to startle her, but she felt the attention gather anyway.

Morggán led her to the fire where his officers sat or crouched in uneven positions around the clearing. Tormod occupied a fallen log near the flames, broad forearms resting upon his knees while Donnchadh sat beside him on the ground, his back against another well-planted stump, sharpening a knife with slow absent strokes against stone. Finlay appeared deep into a conversation with Eòin that neither man paused despite their approach, though both glanced up briefly in acknowledgment. Eòin alone grinned openly the moment he spotted her.