and remove your shirt.'
'Lady, it is cold. I will certainly freeze.'
'Listen to you now,' she chided, undoing the laces at his throat. 'And you, a True Son of the North, crying about a little cold.'
'God preserve us,' he sighed. Shrugging off his cloak, he pulled open his shirt, and drew it over his head.
It was the first time she had seen him without his shirt and the broad sweep of his muscled shoulders and the pale curly hair on his chest pleased her. She found herself gazing raptly at him in the wavering glow of the fire.
'Well?' he said, stirring her to action. 'Get on with it then.'
Kneeling beside Rognvald, Cait took his arm, lifted it and stretched it out. The errant blade had caught him on the back of the arm, poked a hole through his shirt and produced a small ragged-looking gash. The edges of the cut were puckered and inflamed; there had not been much bleeding, but some of the fabric of the shirt had been driven into the wound. She could see several discoloured threads sticking out, but all in all, it was as Rognvald maintained, little more than a nasty scratch.
Cait set to work, dampening a square of cloth in the bowl and applying it to the wound. She put the hot cloth against the cut and held it there to soften the dried blood. Rognvald, adopting the pained expression of a man who is being made to endure humiliation at the hands of an inscrutable higher power, stared at the fire, avoiding Cait's eyes.
After a while, she asked, 'How long do you think Alethea could survive out here-alone in the cold?'
'It is difficult to say,' Rognvald replied. 'Water is good and abundant. The days are not so cold in the valleys, and there is shelter to be found. If she kept her wits about her, she would not be much worse off than she was before.'
'What about the wolves?'
He shook his head. 'Yngvar thinks every forest abounds with wolves. Have you heard any wolves since coming to these mountains? Have you seen even so much as a wolfish footprint in the mud or snow?'
'No, but -'
'If there were any wolves hereabouts, we would have known about them long since.'
She accepted his judgement, and continued dabbing at the cut, washing it gently. When she had cleaned it, she turned his arm towards the firelight, and proceeded to pull the embedded shreds of his shirt from the wound. The first threads came free dragging clots of blood, and drawing a wince from Rognvald.
'Am I hurting you?'
'No,' he said. 'It is just a little cold, that's all.'
'Here.' She picked up his cloak and made to pull it up around his shoulders. As she did so she saw that his back was a lumpen mass of welted scars, poorly healed, and livid still. The sight caught her by surprise. 'Your back!' she gasped. 'What happened to you?'
'The Saracens,' he muttered.
'In battle?'
'After,' he told her, pulling the cloak around him. 'They thought I might tell them the strength of the garrison at Tripoli -' he paused, '- among other things.'
'But you refused to tell them so they tortured you,' she guessed.
He looked at her sideways, and then shook his head with reluctant resignation.
'You told them?' said Cait, mildly appalled by this revelation.
'Aye,' he confessed, 'I told them. I am not proud of it, mind. But it was no secret anyway. The city was not under siege; travellers came and went as freely as birds. The next merchant through the gates would have told them if I did not-they had only to ask.'
'Then why did they torture you?'
'Because,' he replied, as if the subject wearied him, 'Prince Mujir ed-Din had just come to the throne, and the wazir hoped to impress him with his skill in dealing with Christian prisoners. When I answered him outright, I made the wazir look foolish. So, he had me beaten in revenge.'
'I see,' replied Cait. Pulling two more scraps of cloth from the wound, she flipped the bloody threads into the fire, then washed the cut again before binding it with strips of clean linen cloth. 'Had I a little unguent,' she said when she finished, 'it would heal more quickly.'
'All the same, I am much obliged, my lady,' Rognvald said, flexing his bandaged arm. 'I thank you.'
He drew his shirt back on and sat for a moment, regarding her in the firelight. He lifted his hand as if to touch her, hesitated, then stood abruptly. 'If you have no further need of me, I will sleep a little before I take my watch.'
Cait bade him good night and watched him walk away, then went to her own tent, but found she could not sleep for thinking about Alethea. The thought of the young woman-unprepared in so many ways-wandering lost and alone in the high mountain wilderness kept her awake long into the night. She kept seeing her sister struggling through the snow, shivering, freezing, gasping out her last breath on a lonely mountainside, her pitiful cries for help unheard and unheeded.
Pangs of guilty remorse assailed her. She stared into the dwindling fire and heard again her father's dying words: Promise you will not avenge me… Let it end here.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The sun rose as a pale red blot in a darkly ominous sky, and Cait rose, too. A servant brought her a bowl of warm water, and she washed, then held the basin for a time letting the heat seep into her fingers. The rest of the camp was stirring and she heard the voices of the knights as they commenced the morning ritual of feeding, watering, and grooming the horses.
She sat clutching the bowl and listening to the knights, and her heart quailed within her. Dread, thick as the wintry mist shrouding the mountainside, swept over her. Closing her eyes, she bit her lip to keep from crying out, all the while telling herself that her distress was born of agitation and frustration, and that her spirits would improve as soon as they were on the trail once more. But, as her thoughts turned to renewing the search, she remembered those they would be leaving behind, and the stifling black desolation of the previous day descended upon her once more.
This day, she thought hopelessly, would be no different from any that had gone before: beginning in futility, ending in despair, with nothing but bone-cold monotony in between. She held little confidence that they would be able to find the place Abu had tried to describe, and even if they did, it would not make the slightest difference: Alethea would not be found and the search would go on. Indeed, the search would go on-and on and on and on for ever more without end.
She dragged herself from her tent and stood for a moment, looking up at the dark, unsettled sky. Clouds swirled on a swift east wind, but the tall pines around the camp remained untouched. The air was heavy. There would be rain or snow before day's end; she could already feel the relentless numbing cold of the trail and her sense of aching dread increased.
Rognvald appeared silently beside her. 'Caitriona.' She jumped as he spoke. 'I did not mean to startle you. I was just telling the men we should strike camp and move on. We can break fast on the trail, but I fear it would be unwise to remain at Ali Waqqar's doorstep any longer.'
'What about Paulo? Is it safe to move him?'
'Perhaps not,' allowed the lord, 'but we cannot leave him here.'
'Very well.'
He heard the defeat in her voice and said, 'Come, my lady, we must appear confident for the men.'
She looked at him and wondered at the source of his fortitude. 'Why?'
'Because,' he told her, 'they are trusting in us.'
He moved away; as she made to follow, Halhuli called to her from across the camp. He was standing before Prince Hasan's tent wearing an expression she had not seen before. She hurried to him. 'What is wrong, Halhuli?'
