“I will, then,” agreed Kelpie promptly. “And give an important word to you, and also a task if you will do it.”
The man listened while she talked and ate, his face growing graver and grimmer. “Aye so,” he agreed. “’Tis the hand of destiny that I live alone here and knew nothing of the clan rising, or I would be with them, and a bad time of it you would be having alone and in this weather. Eat your fill, then, whilst I fill my pouch, and I’ll be away before you’re done. You can be biding here whilst I am gone.”
“That I will not!” retorted Kelpie firmly. “For every house in Lochaber is a danger. I’ll be away east out of trouble.”
He frowned and shook his head. “There is no shelter to the east of here, lass, and it too cold to be sleeping out. And I have just come from hunting a wolf that has been skulking upriver. You would be safer here, I am thinking, for my house is alone and well hidden. But if you’re feared to rest here, there is a bittie cave nearby, and you are welcome to my blankets and food. Follow the Spean along up for a mile or so, and where the Cour is entering it turn south for a bit and mark sharp the west bank. The cave is in a high bluff and well hid with juniper. But I’m thinking you’ll be safe enough the night here, whatever, and it nearly dark already. There’ll be no Campbells along this day, and ’tis no good for you to be freezing.”
“Aye, then,” agreed Kelpie, seeing the sense to this, and the man was off. Odd, she didn’t know the name of him, nor he hers, and yet he was away on a dangerous errand on her word. A purpose in common—or common danger—she decided, was like a spell, binding even strangers one to another.
The morning was heavy with clouds, the new snow a dead white beneath the gray of the sky. Kelpie put out the fire for fear of any betraying smoke and set out to locate the cave, wishing she dared stay in the warmth of the shieling. But as she trudged along the Cour River, watching the west bank, she stopped. Clear in the snow were footprints coming down the Cour—and stopping just ahead in a tumbled heap of snow. Kelpie stared, eyes narrowed. Footsteps didn’t just stop, unless someone had wings.
No, there were no wings. There the prints went, back the way they came. In a moment Kelpie had read the story. A man it was, by the size of the prints, and coming north along the Cour in a great hurry, so that he did not notice the treacherous slab of granite by the river, with ice under the snow. And there he had slipped and fallen; the mark was plain. Then, it would seem, he had made back the way he had come, limping sorely.
Kelpie straightened and looked up the glen cautiously. Where was he, then? And who was he? Warily she began to follow the retreating footprints.
They angled up the hill to the right presently, through a thick patch of pine and juniper. Kelpie hesitated, peering through it, her right hand reaching for the sgian dhu in the front of her dress, feet ready to run. Nothing stirred. And then a tiny trickle of smoke floated up just a few feet away from behind the brush. Dhé! It must be that he had found the cave and taken shelter there. Probably he was not a Campbell, then, but more likely hiding from them—though he would not stay hidden long, with the smoke giving him away. Kelpie grinned sourly and shrugged. This was no place for her, then. She turned and prepared to slip quietly away, back to the shieling.
“And have I taken the home of the water witch?”