Read Online Hunter's Woman by Kaitlyn O'Connor - Free Book Online

be coughing more than you’d expect.”
    Again the woman nodded, gathered the child up, and departed.
    Aslyn stood in the doorway watching as the woman scurried down the street.  Seven years old and the woman could carry him about as if he was no more than a toddler.  With any luck he’d make it through the cold, but she had her doubts the child would see many more winters.
    The thought brought the urge to cry.  She thrust it away angrily and closed the door.  Pity would not help the child, and she had nothing else to give him ...  nothing to give any of the hundreds of Hoannys she’d seen in her travels.  If she’d been the wealthiest person in the world, she could not save them all, nor even a fraction of them.  One person could not.  She’d done the best—the only thing she could for him. 
    In any case, she had problems enough of her own.  Instead of eating, she paced the cottage, round and round, but she could not outrun her anxieties and finally forced herself to sit and eat.  She wanted, desperately, to leave Krackensled, but, from what she could see, that was no longer an option—if it had ever been.  The soldiers would be patrolling the area.  She would almost certainly be stopped and questioned if she tried to leave, and, unfortunately, the lies she’d told to cover herself precluded any that would allow her passage. 
    She deeply regretted, now, that she had told them she was on pilgrimage.  If only she’d thought of some other tale, something that would have left relatives somewhere that she could claim to be going to visit, or who needed her!
    It was pointless to kick herself over it now.  She would know better another time … if there was another time. 
    But, if what she suspected was true….
    She pushed the thought from her mind.  Perhaps, she thought hopefully, they would grow tired of waiting long before the moon became full again and move on. 
    Or perhaps imaginations were running wild because there had been such an unusual number of attacks and it truly was nothing more than a roving pack of tolks?  If that were the case, then the soldiers were bound to trap and kill the tolks before long.
    Surely it could have nothing to do with her … malady.  Surely it could not!
    But, in the end, did it matter?  She was trapped here.  If she stayed, the soldiers might well be hunting her when next the moon was full.
    * * * *
    It was nearing dusk almost a week after her arrival in Krackensled when Aslyn left the cottage with her cook pot, intent upon cleaning it and filling it at the well.  The perpetual tribit stew had given out at long last.  Aslyn could not confess to being sorry to see the last of it.  Toward the end it had born little resemblance to that first pot of tribit stew, for Aslyn had tossed whatever she caught, or gathered, or was ‘paid’ into it each day—another tribit a farmer had brought, a few mushrooms, a handful of withered greens—but she found she no longer had much fondness for tribit stew.
    The thunder of hooves brought her out of her abstraction.  She looked up to see a group of soldiers approaching from the opposite end of town and checked for a fraction of a second before it occurred to her that whirling around and returning to the house would be the best way to attract attention to herself.  She continued on her way after that brief hesitation, her head down, as if she was carefully watching where she set her feet, but she stole a quick glance or two in their direction. 
    She didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry when they halted at the well and began dipping water for their kirkins. 
    She slowed her steps, wondering if they might finish up and leave before she reached them, casting quick, surreptitious glances to the right and left in search of an alternative.  Another quick glance told her she’d already passed the only crossing between her and the men.  She would not be able to pretend she’d had another destination in mind.