Free The Selkie’s Daughter by Deborah MacGillivray Page A

to close around the hilt of the knife and pull it from the sheath.  The first try he could not tug it from the leather scabbard fastened at his belt.  On the second go, he gritted his teeth and managed to get the weapon out, only to drop the bloody thing at the side of his body.  He was fast losing his remaining strength, as his fingers shifted through the wet snow.  He could not find it. 
    Blackness roiled through his mind, a giant ravenous serpent.  Mayhap if he were in God’s mercy, he would lose sense-of-self, and when they came to murder him, his spirit would have moved on and he would not have to suffer such an inglorious end.
    Rhys lay there, the snow covering his face, thinking in an odd, detached way, how nature could be so magnificent, and yet in the same breath, so deadly.  The huge fluffy flakes were beautiful, turning the remote forest of Rowenwood into a magical fairyland.  The snowfall was cold, wet.  It was quickly covering him.
    It little mattered if they came upon him and ended his life, or just left him here.  He was too far away from traveled paths.  Even if killers somehow missed him in this storm, he would soon freeze to death.
    How strange to have his life end in this manner…cold, alone and helpless, leagues away from Journey’s End of his new home of Glenrogha, in service of his liege Earl Julian Challon.  Cruelly, it would not be his destiny to see the wild Scottish glen his lord now called home.  He tried to laugh, self-derisive; he probably would not even be buried there as the bodies of he and his men would be dragged off by winter-starved wolves.  In a few days passing, few signs would be left to indicate he, along with ten and seven men, had met their end in this secluded wood on The Marches. Before leaving Colchester behind, he had sent a missive to Challon that he would reach Glenrogha a fortnight ahead of Christmas.  Fate now whispered the threat he might never see another such holiday again.
    Heavy footfalls drew closer.  Rhys’s hand searched through the snow, trying to locate the fallen dagger.  His fingers were so numb he feared he was fast losing the ability to tell if he touched a blade or a twig.
    Another set of steps came running.  “Angus, ye needs must come.  Himself gave orders to set out.  He spake we be near the grove of the old witch.  No taste holds he for lingerin’ in this becursed place.”
    “I ain’t afraid of no hag,” Angus barked.  “One might still breathe.  His horse’s tracks showed him movin’ ahead of the group.”
    “Leave him!” the second man barked.  “Took two arrows or more, he did.  Saw that grey beast of his galloping over the ridge.  He be on the ground somewhere, bleedin’ like a stuck sow.  Willna last long a’tall in this damn blow.”  He stopped speaking when the howl of a wolf echoed high up the hill.  “Hear that?  They smell blood.  They’ll be finishin’ up our task here.  If’n Laidlaw leaves withou’ us we’ll get lost in this friggin’ storm.  I want to be far away from here when them wolves come.”
    The shuffling of the first man grew closer.  So near, Rhys could hear his assailant breathing hard.  He was unsure whether his tracks still showed, or if he were visible under the curtain of white falling fast about him.  In the gloaming, it might be hard to tell a fallen body half covered with snow from the craggy rocks scattered about the hillside.
    As a warrior, he lived with the acceptance that he could always die in battle.  But to lie helpless, barely able to do more than watch as some villain robbed him of life seemed too much to bear.
    Accepting divine will, he finally was able to close his eyes against the heavy falling snow.  With his last breaths in this world, he reflected upon things he had hoped to find in his lifetime and never accomplished.  Born a third son, he had been sent to squire for Julian Challon––the Black Dragon––and later his liege had raised him to