Then the skirl of pipes lifted on the air and the Jacobite army surged forward. Dylan’s voice joined the roar, and he ran to close the space between himself and the charging English cavalry.
There was no sense of tactics anymore, but only the focused desire to kill the enemy. Guns roared. Dylan fired his pistol at a charging dragoon, and the enemy soldier toppled. Then he dropped the gun and drew his sword, a roar of fury in his throat. The heather and stony ground made footing difficult and running dangerous, and gave an advantage to the four-footed horses. The clang of thousands of clashing swords was deafening. Dylan ran past others engaged, and a dragoon rode at him. He dodged to the rider’s left so the right-handed cavalryman had a shortened reach, and parried easily. But the horseman wheeled, crowding him with his mount. There was no room among the flailing men to gain space, so Dylan stepped into the attack, his sword in a high guard, and with his dirk stabbed the dragoon’s thigh. He pulled it out and stabbed again.
There was no immediate reaction, though blood surged and the Redcoat slipped in his saddle as he slashed with his saber at Dylan’s head. Dylan parried with his dirk and attacked with his sword. It slipped into the Englishman’s back. He stiffened with pain and the knowledge that he was ended. When Dylan retrieved his weapon, the dragoon fell from his saddle and Dylan turned to seek another opponent.
All was chaos. Dylan was no longer sure which way he’d come. His focus narrowed to staying alive, parrying enemy swords and cutting down anything in a red coat that moved. But as the afternoon wore on, the men in red seemed to overwhelm the men in kilts. In the dim distance the pipes called to rally at the battalion colors. Dylan fell back to make his way there, and found himself treading on and leaping over the bodies of Balhaldie’s MacGregors, men he recognized as comrades. His unit was retreating in the face of a fresh charge of Lowland troops. They circled back down the slope the way they had come, now at a serious disadvantage with the enemy on higher ground. Dylan’s hair stuck to his sweaty face, and he discovered his cap was gone.
Horses screamed, wounded, some dying. A dragoon charged at Dylan, sword raised, but a MacPherson swung and hacked the horse’s tendon. The animal fell sideways, crippled. The unhorsed dragoon regained his feet and renewed his assault. Dylan, attempting to retreat, almost didn’t parry in time. The Jacobite presence was thinning here, and he needed to get back to his lines. Tiring, he gave ground, but the soldier pressed him. The clang of their swords was lost in the din around them. Dylan parried frantically. The dragoon snarled at him, and came on with lightning speed. Dylan backed against other men, and could go no farther. In a moment of indecision, Dylan made the wrong parry against a feint, and the Englishman ran him through.
For one seemingly endless moment, Dylan stared at the hilt pressed to his gut, and a distant, detached part of his mind took note of the chiseled face on the bowl guard, identifying it as a “mortuary” hilt. The bodiless head, sometimes thought to be that of the executed Charles I, was covered in his own blood. Then the weapon was yanked from his body. Once he saw that the clansman was done for, the dragoon turned for a fresh quarry, finding one in another MacGregor who had come to help.
Dylan’s sword thudded to the ground on the hillside and he stood, the heel of his right hand pressed against his gut. His left hand clenched around Brigid’s hilt and pressed against his right hand. “No,” he said. “No, I can’t die.” But as blood ran down his back from the exit wound and down his leg, soaking his shirt so it stuck to him, he realized that even if he didn’t die today from blood loss, he had at the most a few days before he would perish in a very ugly manner from peritonitis. And the blood pouring out of him, oozing between his fingers and dripping from the tail of his sark, made it likely he’d be gone in a matter of minutes.
He looked up to see Sinann, wide-eyed and speechless as she fluttered down to him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t change anything.” He staggered, but tried not to fall. He didn’t want to lie on the ground until he had to. The world began to spin. “No,” he said again. “No . . . No . . .”
As if from a distance, Sinann’s voice came and comprehension failed him. She was weeping as she said, “A Dhilein, you must go home.”
The world blackened. Dylan knew he was passing from it and wondered if there would be a light to follow like everyone said. Shrieking pain wracked him, and he wondered how he could feel pain if he was dead. Then the light did come. All around him was brightness. Then that brightness differentiated into colors. The colors became faces. Familiar ones, though he couldn’t place them. “Chan eil,” he kept saying, still denying his death as it was happening. “Chan eil, chan eil. . . .” No, no, no.
Heat. It was hot.
Someone screamed. Then he collapsed to the grass. More people screamed. Someone shouted to call 911. Someone else shouted that there was a fire truck in the parking lot. Hands lifted him. The world faded again, and he knew he was dying.
CHAPTER 23
Dylan awoke to a stench of antiseptic and plastic. And to pain. Intense pain. His gut felt like his insides would fall out if he moved. He wasn’t dead, and had to think about it before deciding that was a good thing. He grunted and tried to get the plastic thing off his face. A nurse materialized by his side and removed it for him.
“Mr. Matheson, how are you feeling?” Mister? How long had it been since he’d been called “mister”? It felt strange. He looked at the nurse, who was pretty and dark-haired and wore deep purple scrubs. The color was so vivid he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Everything was so bright. As if God, sometime during the twentieth century, had come through with a watercolor set and touched up everything. “Mr. Matheson?” The nurse still awaited a reply.
He said, “I’m not dead,” and discovered his throat was sore and his voice almost too hoarse to be intelligible.
She smiled, as if he’d made a joke. “No, you’re not. You’ve lost your spleen and a kidney, but you’re going to be all right. Provided your other kidney stays healthy, you shouldn’t even have any long-term effects from this. I’ll get you something for the pain, then we’ll move you into a room.” She waggled a finger and drawled at him, “Don’t you go no place, now.” She giggled and left him to grunt again to himself.
He tried to sit up, but there were no pillows on the gurney to lean against, so the effort was wasted. He lay back down and waited to be moved. The pretty nurse returned with a syringe, which he let her stick in his upper hip, though he cared little about the pain-killer. He’d taken far worse pain than this in the past without it. His wounds and the surgery incision were no more annoying than the catheter in his penis, which he found an almost intolerable invasion of his body.
They took him to a private room, so he knew his mother had found him and was pulling strings somewhere. When he’d been a part of this century, his health insurance wouldn’t have covered a private room. He wondered how long he’d been gone. Had he been missing for two years? Did he even have a life to go back to? He looked around the room and wondered. The TV was on with the sound off, and he stared at it for a moment. Images flashed, one after another, and he found it disconcerting. Confusing. He decided he didn’t want the entire world inside his room, so he reached for the remote and pushed the green power button. The screen went dead, and the room seemed peaceful.
The door moved, and his mother peeked in. “Dylan?”
“Mom.” She came in, and he saw how panicked she’d been and how relieved she was to see him alive. Her face was white and her eyes red from crying. She looked terrible, but it had been so long and he was so happy to see her it didn’t matter. He thought she was beautiful.
His voice cracked. “Mom, I’m okay. It doesn’t even hurt.” Not anymore, at least. Whatever he’d been shot with was kicking in nicely. She came to take his hand, and he noticed how clean he was. Someone had scrubbed him down thoroughly at some point while he was out, but under his arms he found orange-brown antiseptic left from his operation. He felt his hair, and found it stil
l full of dirt, sweat, and blood. He ran his fingers through it in an effort to organize it for his mother, but it did little good.
Mom sat on the edge of his bed to tell him how happy she was he would be all right. He neither heard nor cared what she said, he was so intent on watching her face. He had missed her so much! He only held her hand, not wanting to let go.
The door opened again, and Cody appeared. “Dylan?” She came into the room, and time warped again for him. She had on the same seventeenth-century outfit she’d worn at the Games on that day. . . .
“Mom, what year is it?”
His mother stopped in the middle of a complaint about how skinny he was and didn’t he ever eat, and she laughed. “What year?”
He had to breathe hard to keep talking. “Just tell me. I’ve forgotten. Trauma does that, and they’ve got me on some wicked strong pain killers.” Another deep breath. “What year is it?”
She uttered another nervous laugh. “2000.”
“September 30?”
She looked at her watch. “For another few minutes. It’s almost midnight.”
He blinked at Cody. It was the same day. Sinann had returned him to the moment just after he’d touched the claymore. They didn’t even know he’d been gone. He squeezed his eyes shut.
From the doorway his father’s voice addressed his mother, “We need to get home, Barri.” Big surprise Dad wouldn’t come into the room. Dylan kept his eyes shut until his mother kissed his cheek and said, “I’ll come back to see you tomorrow. You get some rest.” He nodded, and watched her leave.
Cody stood there, twisting her collapsed kerchief hat in her hands. “We were scared to death, Dylan.” She looked like she’d been crying, and might start up again if encouraged.
“How are you, Cody?” For her it had been hours, but for him it had been two years.
She gave him a puzzled smile, then sat on the edge of his bed. “Dylan, how in the world did you keep standing for so long?”
He frowned. “Huh?”
“After he stabbed you. You walked over to the sword and picked it up, and nobody even saw you were bleeding. You said you felt funny, or something, then I blinked and suddenly you were on your way to the ground and covered with blood. It was like it all came spurting out at once.” He grunted and made a face. “Oh, sorry. But, anyway, people were screaming and crowding around you, and I couldn’t even see what they were doing. You were muttering something about canned eels, and some people thought you’d eaten something you shouldn’t have. But they didn’t see the blood. The firemen put you in the truck and ran the siren all the way to the hospital. I’ve been in the waiting room since they brought you here. Raymond is having fits. . . .”
Raymond . . . he of the polyester hair. Dylan remembered and nodded.
“Anyway, we’re real glad you’re alive. That guy should be put in jail.”
“What guy?”
“Bedford.”
Cold sweat broke out, but then Dylan remembered she meant the Yankee, the one who had inherited the claymore. “He didn’t do it.”
That silenced her for a moment. Then she said, “Yes, he did.”
“No. It wasn’t his fault.”
“He stabbed you. It was only a sparring match, and he almost killed you.”
“No. He did nothing. He never touched me.”
“But—”
“Cody, let it be!” Her eyes went wide again, and he lowered his voice. “Whatever happened, it was between the two of us and doesnae concern anyone else. Do you understand?”
She considered it for a moment, then nodded. Then she smiled and said, “I think the Games went to your head. Doesnae?”
He sighed and smiled, and thought of how much there was about him now she couldn’t know.
“Well, listen,” she said, “like I said, Raymond is having conniptions so I’d better go. We’ll see you tomorrow, all right?” She went to give him a hug, and he put an arm around her waist. But when her hand slipped around to the open back of his hospital gown, she gasped.
He lay back, flat against his pillows and muttered a Gaelic curse at his stupidity.
“Dylan? What happened to you? What happened to your back?” She reached for the shoulder of his gown and he tried to fend her off, but she murmured to him that it was all right. “Dylan, please let me see.” He wanted her to just get out and leave him alone, but after a moment decided she was still his most loyal friend in this century. It wouldn’t be so horrible to let her see. He rolled a little for her to look at his back, and let her reach for the gown again.
There was a dark silence as she stared, then she said, “These are scars. Old scars.” Her voice was soft, in awe. “I’ve never seen ones like that before. Or that many. What happened to you?”
How could he explain he’d been whipped nearly to death two hundred and eighty-six years ago? He sat back up against his pillows and said, “Motorcycle accident?”
“When? Those scars weren’t there last week during class. You wore a loose tank shirt that day, remember, and had to take it off because it tore. These weren’t there. And since when do you ride a bike? Dylan, this is awful. This is way too much scarring to even be kinky fun gotten out of hand. This is torture. This is . . . impossible.”
He sighed. “I can’t explain it. I just can’t.”
“Dyl—”
“Please. Just let it go, Cody. I can’t explain it. And don’t tell anyone else. Please.”
Tears had filled her eyes, and she whispered, “You know I won’t. I just . . . I’m so sorry.”
He squeezed her hand, and she kissed his forehead before leaving.
The following morning he awoke to more pain, the continued annoyance of that catheter, and the entrance of his surgeon making rounds. The thin, bald man in a white coat strolled into the room and addressed Dylan with a condescending tone. “Hello, Mr. Matheson, I’m Dr. French. You seem to have been a little careless around sharp objects lately.” He sounded just like the pompous sort Seumas used to tease at every opportunity.
Seumas. Dylan’s heart sank to remember his friend was dead and had been for a long, long time. Dr. French probably thought he was being funny, but he didn’t look up from the clipboard containing Dylan’s chart for his reaction.
The guy had been here for thirty seconds and was already getting on Dylan’s nerves.
“Hey.” Dylan looked around the room. “Where’s my stuff?” He knew when he’d been sent back to this century he’d had Brigid in his hand. His cut and bloodied sark was probably in the garbage and his sword had been dropped on the battlefield, but the hospital better not have done anything with his dirks.
“What stuff?”
“I had two dir . . . knives. Where are they? And a scabbard on a baldric.”
The surgeon didn’t seem the least interested in helping him. “You can talk to a nur—”
“Call the nurse now.”
“You can—”
“Now.”
Exasperated, the doctor turned from the bed and spotted a cabinet in the corner. “I’ll bet they’re in there.”
“Go look.”
Dr. French sighed and went to look. Leaning against the back of the cabinet was Dylan’s scabbard, and on the shelves were Brigid, his sgian dubh, his boots, wool stockings, and his leggings. Those were all he’d worn into battle, except for his sark. “Is that what you want?”
Dylan laid his head back on his pillows. “Yeah.”
Dr. French sighed and returned to the bedside. “All right, then.”
“When can I get out of here?” Dylan asked, sharply.
The surgeon laughed. “Well, we’ll see about releasing you soon.” It was clear the physician intended to discharge Dylan in his own good time. “How about if I at least let you get out of bed this morning?”
Dylan looked at him sideways. “How about if we get this catheter out of my dick first?”
Dr. French was ruffled by that, which had been Dylan’s purpose in saying it. He said, “We
ll, we’ll do that as soon as we can. Meanwhile, let’s—”
“Let’s get the tube gone.”
French considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. I’ll have a nurse come and take it out for you.”
“Thank you.”
Once the catheter was gone, Dylan felt less helpless and tied to the hospital, which improved his disposition a bit. He walked to the bathroom and back, and never even leaned on his IV tree. Back from the bathroom, he took a private moment to examine the surgery damage. The original cut had been small, made with a narrow cavalry sword, but in removing the spleen and kidney both entry and exit wounds had been enlarged. The front scar was extended only an extra couple of inches, but as he felt around to his back he found gauze bandages taped near his spine and around to his side. He shuddered and realized he did need the pain killer after all. Nobody from the eighteenth century had ever survived this sort of incision long enough to need anesthesia.
Sometime at mid-morning, there was a short knock on his door and a cop entered. “Dylan Matheson?” He was in plain clothes, but Dylan had come to easily recognize the look of a man who considered himself a watchdog of Law and Order. “I’m Detective Jones and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Dylan said nothing.
Jones stopped in the middle of the room, clearly surprised at Dylan’s lack of cooperation, and said, “You don’t mind, do you?” He had the look of a bulldog, with a receding hairline he disguised by combing his hair forward in a cascading lock. Dylan stared at that lock. Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was a gut reaction to the cop’s authoritative demeanor, but he couldn’t get over how stupid it looked.
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