Free Dark Mist Rising by Anna Kendall

handsome. He seemed to feel no fear whatsoever at striding out the door into an occupied village with a man he did not know, a weapon he could not use and a dog that killed.
    He was an idiot.
    But I needed him.

10
     
    His name was Tom Jenkins and he was sixteen years old. Confidently he led me out the kitchen door into the moonlight, around the well house, and into a thick hedgerow bordering a small lane. A long, thin patch of bare ground had been scraped clean in the very centre of the hedge, completely invisible from either side. Tom whispered, ‘Made it for Joan Westfield and me. Biggest teats in Almsbury! Stay here while I look around.'
    He was enjoying this.
    I huddled in the tiny space, scratched by twigs, the reek of blood still in my nostrils and the real thing clotting on my aching temples. Tom returned in a few minutes. ‘This way, Peter.'
    He led me along the lane, within the deep shadow of the hedgerow. When we left the shadows, Tom went first, running across fields silvered by moonlight. We ran crouched low, and once I stumbled and sprawled flat. Something small and fast skittered away from me in the half-grown hay.
    We passed a barn but Tom whispered, ‘No, that's the first place they'll search for you.' We kept moving until I could go no further. My legs simply refused to carry me. I collapsed onto the ground beside a ditch.
    ‘Peter, you have to go on!'
    ‘I ... I can't.'
    I felt him crouch beside me and then he heaved me onto his great shoulders on top of the pack he already carried and set off.
    ‘Put me down! You ... you can't ...'
    He carried me another hundred yards. He was immensely strong, but he could not have kept it up much longer. This was a theatrical bit of business, a display of his great strength. When I wriggled off his shoulders he was panting heavily, and I was shamed into staggering forward on my own. Which may have been what he intended in the first place.
    The full moon shed clear, cruel light. Once I heard shouting in the distance. Soldiers? Had the carnage in the cottage been discovered?
    For the first time, I wondered why Shadow was not with us. Or was he, trailing along somewhere behind? Had the dog taken injuries I had not, in my own pain, even noticed?
    ‘Shadow ...'
    ‘Don't try to talk,' Tom said ‘We're almost there.'
    ‘There' turned out to be a cave on the side of a hill, its entrance hidden by bushes. Inside, it was so dark that I could see neither the cave's dimensions nor its interior. I had no cloak with me, nothing to lie upon, but Tom produced one from his pack. ‘Sleep,' he said softly, suddenly tender as a woman.
    I slept.

    I woke with my left side much warmer than my right. Shadow lay pressed up against me. Tom Jenkins was gone.
    Sunlight filtered weakly through the brush in front of the cave. Sitting up, I saw it was about the size of a cottage kitchen, but roofed low with irregular rock. A man could not stand upright. In the back, water dripped slowly down the rock, and the space smelled dank. Rocks and logs had been dragged inside to form a table and stools, such as children might make for their play. Tom Jenkins's pack lay open and its contents scattered on the ground. He'd been several days at high pasture with his father's sheep, he'd told me, and the pack held flint and steel to strike a fire, a thin blanket, small cookpot, tin tankard, pewter spoon, salt in a twist of paper. The butchering knife was gone. The gun he'd taken from the cottage leaned against the cave wall, but I did not know how to shoot it and in any case I had no bullets .
    Shadow stirred. ‘Hey, boy, hey ...' I could barely get the words out. My throat was swollen, my mouth dry, my head throbbing. Every muscle ached. Worse, I didn't know what to do next. Where was I? Would Tom Jenkins return, and if he did, would he bring with him savage soldiers? If the Young Chieftain had offered a reward for the man who had killed four of his soldiers ...
    The thought was like a hot sword in the