The Drunk Wolf novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Two Horses

I sat on the wet cobbles holding Morag's hand and couldn't say anything at all.

"I put the phial in his coat pocket myself," she said. "I buttoned the flap. I told him to keep it dry."

"They brought his coat back," I said. "After. I folded it. There was nothing in the pockets."

"Then somebody took it out."

"Or it fell."

Morag looked at me.

"Where he fell," she said.

Struan came up the yard with soot to his elbows and sat down on my other side.

He'd heard. I could see it in his face.

"Tomorrow," he said. "First light. I'll come with you."

The deer hill is the long ridge on the far side of the loch from the castle.

My father rode it every October for the stags.

We left the horses at the march dyke and walked the last of it.

The path along the top is too narrow for a nervous horse.

Struan walked behind me and didn't talk.

The place was easy to find.

There's a slab of grey rock at the lip of the corrie where the path squeezes between the cliff and a boulder.

Below it, a long way below, the scree runs down to the lochan.

They'd found my father at the bottom, with his horse.

My uncle had said he was a quarter mile ahead, after a stag, and heard the horse scream.

I stood on the slab and looked down for a long time.

The wind came up the corrie and pulled at my plait.

"Sorcha," Struan said.

He was crouched at the edge of the slab.

"Look."

The rock was scored with pale scratches, in two sets.

Shoe marks. Iron dragged across stone.

One set of scrapes went straight to the edge and over it.

The other came in from the side, from behind the boulder, and pressed hard against the first.

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