#DailyLines #MOBY #WRITTENInMYOwnHEARTSBlood #Book8 OutMARCH25th #noImnottellingyouwhoitis

He slid off, and led the way down to the creek’s edge, careful of loose stones and boggy earth—the creekbank here was mostly soft mud, edged with mats of duckweed and small reedbeds. A glimpse of red caught his eye and he tensed, but it was a British soldier, face-down in the mud and clearly dead, his legs swaying in the current.

He shucked his moccasions and edged out into the water himself; the creek was fairly wide here, and only a couple of feet deep, with a silty bottom; his feet sank in ankle-deep. He edged out again and led the horse farther up the ravine, looking for better footing, though the gelding was nearly desperate for the water, pushing Ian with his head; he wouldn’t wait long.

The sounds of the skirmish had faded; he could hear men up above and some way off, but nothing in the ravine itself anymore.

There, that would do. He let the horse’s reins fall, and it lunged for the creek, stood with its forefeet sunk in mud but its hind feet solid on a patch of gravel, blissfully gulping water. He felt the pull of the water nearly as much, and sank to his knees, feeling the blissful chill as it soaked his clothes, that sensation fading instantly to nothingness as he cupped his hands and drank, and cupped and drank again and again, choking now and then in the effort to drink faster than he could swallow.

At last he stopped—reluctantly—and dashed water over his face and chest; it was cooling, though the bear-grease in his paint made the water bead and run off his skin.


“Come on,” he said to the horse. “Ye’ll burst and ye keep on like that, amadan.” It took some struggle, but he got the horse’s nose out of the creek, water and bits of green weed sloshing out of his mouth as the horse snorted and shook its head. It was while hauling the horse’s head round in order to lead him up the bank that he saw the other British soldier.

This one was lying near the bottom of the ravine, too, but not in the mud. He was lying face down, but with his head turned to one side, and…

“Och, Jesus, _no_!” Ian flung his horse’s reins hastily round a tree trunk and bounded up the slope.

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