Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,56

of the latter, she would choose it for his sake. Thus, rather than run to overtake him, with determined calm she put her wet mantle over her arm and started back up the path.

Had she not yielded to the compulsion to look around, a quarter hour later she would have reached the camp. Still Vitalis was not upon the boulder, but as she was now elevated above the pool, she saw something else occupied the space where he had been.

Mantle. Boots. Pack.

A good place to pace, just as that which was caged in his breast paced. A good place to let out the animal, though it must be done slowly to keep hold of its straining leash.

Drawing great breaths he expended on curses that eased muscles so tight it felt they might bleed, Vitalis traversed the slick floor of what was too shallow to be a cave behind the falling water, but accommodating enough to provide privacy needed since he had left his friend to a heinous death so he might finish what he should not have begun.

Spray and mist further dampening his tunic and causing it to cling, he loosed a growl that wanted to be a roar, pivoted at the far boundary, and halfway down the rock wall’s length, turned and pressed his back against the slick surface.

Chest burning, head pounding, he dropped to his haunches, bent forward, and squeezing his arms against his sides, gripped his head in his hands.

Let it out, he told himself. No one will hear you above the water, not Nicola at the pool, not any who hunt the wood. Release it, then get the termagant back to camp and, as quickly as possible, to Wulfen.

He dragged his hands out of his hair, down the sides of his bearded face, and in the light filtered by falling water, opened before him what looked clawed paws as his fingers strained to make fists though there was only rock against which to pound and break them. Still, fists they became.

He thrust upright. Arms trembling with the effort to keep them at his sides, he crossed to where he had entered the space behind the falls, turned into the corner, and pressed his fists against the rock on both sides of his head.

Certain if he did not shout out this anger, he would bloody knuckles and break bones that would make it impossible to wield blades when it was the enemy before him rather than immovable rock, Vitalis dragged his brow down the wall and bellowed.

The sound released with such force it raked his throat and the inside of his skull, but it did not deter him from roaring again over Zedekiah’s death, nor slamming a fist against the rock. The pain shooting up his left hand and arm jolted enough reason into his crimson haze to keep him from repeating that mistake.

He pushed off the wall and, pacing again, shouted over the delay in punishing those who had slain his friend, the loss of his lands, the loss of Hawisa, and De Warenne’s disparaging of women like Vitalis’s mother who had been as much his sire’s partner in managing their holdings as a wife.

Then there was God to rage against, the only one who would hear him—providing He cared to listen. Vitalis shouted and once more drove his knuckles against the rock wall.

His next bellow born of raw, physical pain, he bent forward. Lest the beast’s leash slip through his fingers, he rocked his body to calm it, then gripping his right hand over the quaking left and pressing it to his chest, he set his back against the wall and lowered to his knees.

Grunting, growling, shaking his head as if denial of the moisture on his face would transform it into unsalted water, he confronted God who merely looked down upon this hell He had allowed to engulf Saxon England.

Praise You? he scorned. Pray to You? Of what benefit to even acknowledge You? I cannot see nor feel You. Mayhap You are made of imagining only—but a means of men like Turold to control those stronger than they.

He squeezed his eyes closed, and tasting the salt traveling his cheeks and lips before sliding into his beard, accepted the faith he had been holding to by mere threads had become a single, frayed one now in danger of snapping.

Continuing to cradle his hand, hating he shuddered like a boy in a corner crying on the inside so none discover how far he was from attaining