The House Of Gaian

stepped up beside her. “I wish they hadn’t made the fog.”
    “It was needed,” Ashk said quietly.
    “I know, but...” Morphia wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “I didn’t tell you everything about the dream I had last night. I couldn’t. I still can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “I told you something terrible was coming, and it is. I know it. I can feel the echo of it from the dream.
    But I can’t tell you what it is because my mind won’t let me see it.”
    A fist of dread settled in Ashk’s stomach. “Is there anything you can tell me?”
    “Only that it will come among us shrouded by fog. And it hunts.”
    “It was a damned fool thing to do,” Donovan said in a low voice roughened by exhaustion and pain.
    “You’ve mentioned that already,” Aiden replied, keeping his own voice low in the hopes the sound wouldn’t carry.
    “But I’m grateful. Have I mentioned that, too?”
    “Several times.”
    “Will you write a song about it? The Bard’s Rescue of the Baron?”
    Aiden snorted softly. “That’ll be good for two verses and a chorus, if that.”
    Donovan was quiet for a moment. “They were close. I could hear them moving around in the fog, searching for survivors. For prisoners, they said. If you hadn’t found me, I’d be in the hands of the Black Coats now.”
    “I didn’t find you, I tripped over you. If I hadn’t, I would have walked right into them. So we both have reason to be grateful.” He would never forget those tense minutes when he lay sprawled in the road next to Donovan, who was desperately trying to stifle moans of pain, realizing they both might have the misfortune of meeting the Master Inquisitor. And he would always be grateful for Minstrel’s uncanny sense of direction. Twice the horse had balked when he’d tried to turn him, so he’d finally given Minstrel his head and let the horse choose where they were going. What Minstrel couldn’t see, he could smell and hear, and he seemed to know if the sounds or smells belonged to friend or foe.
    He had been a damned fool to go out once the fog started rolling in. He’d gone anyway to help lead the wounded back to Squire Thurston’s estate or the village proper. And he’d been a twice-damned fool for going out again when he couldn’t see the road or the land around him beyond his stretched hand. He’d gone out anyway because there were two people he knew who had been fighting on that part of the battlefield. He’d found one. He hadn’t found the other.
    “Aiden—”

    “Hush,” Aiden said at the same time Minstrel snorted. “I think I see lights up ahead.”
    He felt a lightness in Minstrel’s stride, an eagerness that gave him hope. As they got closer, the horse bugled.
    Dark shapes moved in the fog, and a hard voice said, “Who’s there?”
    Aiden drew back on the reins enough to slow Minstrel to a walk. “Aiden, the Bard, and Baron Donovan.
    ”
    Excited voices now. Relieved voices.
    “Donovan’s hurt,” Aiden said.
    “Here, sir.” A man moved toward him, holding up an oil lamp. “You just follow me to the house. It’ll relieve the Squire’s mind that Baron Donovan’s been found.”
    Aiden followed the man up to the front door of the house. When he dismounted, he got a good look at Donovan’s side— and wished he hadn’t.
    Donovan gave Aiden a pained smile. “I couldn’t leave Gwenny. That’s reason enough to fight to live—
    and keep on fighting. You’ll send her a message in the morning, won’t you, Aiden?”
    “I will.”
    Donovan closed his eyes and slumped in the saddle. Men caught him and carried him into the house while Aiden, leading Minstrel, followed the man with the oil lamp back to the stables.
    “We’ll take good care of him, Bard,” one of the men said. “That we will. You’d best go back to the house before your legs give out on you.”
    Pausing long enough to promise Minstrel an extra song in the morning, Aiden left the stables. But he didn’
    t go back to the house. Instead he walked toward the pasture fence—or where it should have been if he could see it. He wasn’t ready to enter a house full of wounded. There would be pain there and loss there, and some of those men wouldn’t see the sun rise. He hoped with all his heart Donovan wasn’t one of them.
    The fog parted suddenly, giving him a clear view of the pasture fence—and the hawk perched on the top rail.
    Aiden moved quickly, before the fog obscured his vision again. His hand touched