Page 14 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Morgan turns away. He crosses to the chest where his saddlebag sits and pulls out his own clothes: a tunic that fits his body because it was made for his body, the wool familiar against his fingers, the weight of it right, and trousers that sit on his hips the way they are supposed to. He dresses in them with movements that are careful and deliberate and does not rush, because rushing would admit something, and he is not admitting anything, not to Bohdi, not to the room, and not to himself.

The Wolfe finery remains folded on the bed exactly where Dade laid it. Morgan does not touch it. He does not move it. He leaves it there as an unanswered question and pulls his own shirt over his head and laces it at the collar and becomes, by the act of dressing himself in his own clothes, the prince of Rengara rather than the chieftain's bride.

Behind him, he hears Bohdi right the fallen chair. The legs scrape against the stone. The chair settles back into place at the table with a quiet thud.

Morgan looks over his shoulder.

Bohdi's hand is resting on the back of the chair, fingers loose, and he is standing easy. Everything about him looks steady: the shoulders, the stance, the set of his jaw. He looks like he has dealt with a situation and moved past it, has already filed the incident and turned his attention to what comes next.

Morgan finishes dressing. He checks his reflection in the small square of polished metal that serves as a mirror and pushes his hair back from his face. He looks like himself.

"Ready?" Bohdi asks. His voice is normal.

"Ready," Morgan says.

They leave the room together. The Wolfe clothes lie on the bed behind them, folded and untouched, and Morgan closes the door on them without looking back.

Chapter 6

Bohdi

Bohdi would like to inform the warchief that the prince's usual idea of a hunt is tracking down a misfiled grain levy, but he keeps his mouth shut and helps him into the saddle instead.

The hunting excursion is apparently a sacred tradition among the betrothed of the Wolfe clan. Ivan announced it with expansive pride, as though inviting the prince to ride into the woods and watch things die was the highest honor a man could bestow.

Morgan sits his horse with rigid posture, still in considerable pain from the ride south and not going to acknowledge it if it kills him, which it might. Bohdi swings up onto his own mount and falls in beside him, close enough to speak without being overheard.

"You all right?"

"I'm fine."

He is not fine. He is stiff-backed and hollow-eyed and the bruised look beneath his composure has not faded since the incident with Dade that morning — an incident Bohdi has filed under the growing list of things about this stronghold that are going to end with his axe in someone. But Morgan's chin is up and his jaw is set and his eyes are fixed forward. The stubbornness in every line of him is so complete that Bohdi feels the familiar, infuriating swell of admiration rise in his chest and settle there, warm and immovable.

He lets it go. He lets Morgan be fine.

The hunting party assembles in the courtyard — a dozen warriors on horseback, bristling with spears and bows and the loud enthusiasm of men who have not had this much entertainment in weeks. Ivan is at the head, mounted on a heavy-boned gray stallion that matches its rider in bulk and temperament, and beside him rides Garrik.

Ivan's ward sits his horse with a warrior's ease, the short brown hair with its shaved sides catching the morning light, and Bohdi takes the opportunity to study him more closely than their brief introduction over last night's supper allowed. Garrik is lean where Ivan is massive, built for speed rather than force, and he carries himself with quiet confidence, his marks earned in the field rather than the training yard.

He is also, Bohdi notes, looking at Morgan.

It is not surprising. It is never surprising. Morgan is a beauty in Rengara and everywhere beyond it — the blond hair, the sharp face, the lean figure, the way he holds himself with a composure that is either untouchable or an invitation depending on how you read it. If Bohdi had a coin for every pair of eyes he's batted off the prince's person over the years, he'd have a king's ransom sitting in a chest under his bed. Garrik's interest is merely the latest entry in a very long ledger, and Bohdi notices it but isn't particularly threatened by it.

Garrik catches him looking, holds his gaze for a moment with an expression that is more amused than chastened, and then turns his horse toward the gate. The hunting party moves out.

They ride east into thick forest that climbs the hills in dense stands of pine and hardwood, the trail wide enough for three horses abreast and churned to mud by recent rain. Ivan sets a brisk pace that clearly has to do with proving a point about who controls the speed and direction of everyone around him. Bohdi matches it easily. Morgan matches it through sheer determination.

Ivan proves himself a good hunter. He reads the ground, reads the wind, positions his men with quick, practiced authority. He has done this a hundred times and probably enjoyed every one. He is in his element and the warriors around him respond with the easy deference of men accustomed to following and good at it.

He also proves himself a truly abysmal husband-to-be.

Ivan makes no attempt at conversation with Morgan whatsoever. The prince rides at the chieftain's right hand and Ivan speaks over him, around him, and past him, treating him as a decorative element of the saddle. He talks to Bohdi.

"How large are the elk herds in the north?" Ivan calls over his shoulder. "I've heard they run thicker than cattle."

"Thicker and meaner," Bohdi says. "A bull elk in rut will charge a man on horseback without thinking twice. We lost a scout last winter to one — gored clean through the thigh."

"Ha! And is it true a man can lose fingers pissing in a Rengaran blizzard?"