Stranded By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 2

by Preston, Rebecca

  Perhaps she could go back, she decided, gently reining her horse around and steering her away from the encampment. Grab some men, attack this camp… with the element of surprise, they could probably kill the leader. But she was frustrated — without closing the burgh, even rooting out this little nest was no guarantee that the problem would be solved. What would stop yet more goblins from pouring out of the burgh and taking over — meaner and nastier than even these ones?

  Lost in these thoughts, she almost lost her seat completely when her horse shied. Steadying herself, she patted the mare’s neck, confused by the way the horse was panting in terror, trying to yank the reins out of her hands… it was very out-of-character for the usually placid chestnut mare to be behaving like this, and she frowned with concern. The focus of her fear seemed to be a bush by the side of the path. She slid off the horse’s back, curious despite herself, and walked over to investigate just what it was about this bush that had her mare so frightened. The mare followed uneasily behind her, snorting and rolling her eyes as they neared the bush.

  As they rounded the bush, Nancy gasped, realizing exactly what had disturbed her horse. There, in the dirt behind the bush, lay a goblin — and it was looking straight at her.

  Chapter 50

  Nancy tensed. The iron dirk she’d brought with her was still on the back of her horse, but she still had her good luck charm, the iron ingot, sitting in her pocket. She grabbed it as quickly as she could, yanking it out to hold it up in front of her, expecting the goblin to leap at her — but instead, it just uttered a frail shriek and shrank back away from her.

  Confused — and a little reassured that she wasn’t in immediate danger — Nancy lowered the iron bar, looking more closely at the creature before her. The first thing she noticed was that it was a lot smaller than the others that she’d met. Something about it made her think that it must be a juvenile goblin, somehow — something in its eyes, perhaps, which weren’t crinkled with malice like the eyes of the goblins she’d met during the attack the night before. They were wide, and full of fear — as well as intelligence. It was holding one hand up in front of its face as though to defend itself. Its skin was gray rather than black like the Bogans’, and when she looked at its head, she saw a pair of furry gray ears like a horse’s, flattened against its head in fear.

  Not exactly the most terrifying sight she’d ever seen, she decided, lowering the bar further. She was curious despite herself. She knew the creature would attack her the minute it got the chance, so she stayed on guard… but still, it seemed reasonably helpless at the moment. Perhaps it could give her some valuable information. Should she attempt to take it prisoner, drag it back to the castle? It could lead them to its leader’s camp.

  The creature whimpered again, and she frowned. There was no mistaking that tone — the creature was in pain. And no wonder. When she looked closer at it, she saw a broken-off piece of wood jutting out from its right leg, which it was holding gingerly away from its body. On closer inspection, she realized it was an arrow. It seemed this creature had been struck in the attack last night — she could see that the arrow was one of the ones that the Keep used. Good, she thought savagely. After all, they’d been attacking her home. But she couldn’t help but feel a pang of something else as the creature whimpered and shut its eyes, clearly resigned to its fate at her hands.

  There was something else strange about it, she realized. Though it was holding one of its arms up, the other arm was still at its side. There was a reason for that. The arm, compared to the other arm, was withered and small… and she realized with a shock that it ended at the wrist, the hand completely missing. Had that happened last night? She felt a little bad for it — it was cruel, to cripple a creature like this without at least giving it the dignity of a clean death. But the injury looked old — there was no fresh blood welling from it, only a wrinkled, withered arm.

  “What happened there?” she whispered, almost to herself. Her horse snorted as the creature peered up at her — and to her surprise, spoke in high, raspy voice.

  “Iron is a poison to us,” the creature managed. She was surprised to hear it speaking English — the rest of the creatures seemed to converse in their own language.

  “Iron took your arm?”

  “And my leg, soon enough,” it whimpered, squeezing its eyes shut. She saw it pluck helplessly at the embedded arrow with its good arm. There wasn’t enough strength in its frail little body to yank the arrow free. “End my life, please, if that’s what you plan to do.”

  Nancy stared down at the hapless creature. What it was saying made sense — it was their enemy. One less goblin was a good thing — it meant one less creature to hunt travelers, to kill them and gnaw the flesh of their bones. But looking at this creature, somehow, she couldn’t imagine it doing anything untoward. It looked so sad, so resigned, so miserable as it lay there in the dirt, plucking wretchedly at the arrow embedded in its leg.

  Resolute, Nancy moved forward. The creature flinched and hissed as her hand came closer to it — then its eyes widened as instead of striking it, she wrapped her hand around the arrow. With one clean jerk, she yanked it free — the creature yelped with pain, but she could see the relief on its face as the iron arrowhead was pulled free of the wound. The creature pressed its good hand to the injury, whispering to itself in a language she didn’t recognize — and as she watched, the blood that was welling up in the wound abated, and disappeared. Before long, the wound had closed over, leaving a nasty scar but nothing else.

  “You’re a Glashtyn,” she murmured, wide-eyed as she stared down at the creature. The book had mentioned that the creatures sometimes had powerful healing magics — arrested, of course, by the presence of iron. The creature was staring at her in disbelief.

  “How do you know that?” it asked. Then, almost immediately, with mounting suspicion, it said, “Why did you help me?”

  “They left you to die? Your friends?” She nodded over her shoulder toward the beach where she’d seen the ringleader eating his meal.

  The Glashtyn nodded, its eyes dark. “I was damaged already, but with the arrow to my leg… no value anymore.” It got to its feet carefully, taking a few gentle steps to test the healing. Nancy’s horse was still peering at it with deep suspicion, but the mare seemed to have calmed down a little during the conversation between the two. “You’ve done me a kindness,” the little goblin said suddenly, turning to her. She had the strangest feeling of ritual — that these words carried more weight than just politeness. “I owe you a favor.”

  And with that, it disappeared into the woods, as quickly as blinking. Nancy stared after it, confused — and beginning to doubt her preconceptions about goblins being mindless, murderous creatures. The Glashtyn could have done anything — could have attacked her, could have screamed for its companions. Instead, it had thanked her and left. Could it be that she’d been right — that not all goblins were mindless, evil murderers?

  “What do we have here, then?” came a rasping, unfamiliar voice behind her.

  Her horse screamed, rearing up onto her back legs, and Nancy whirled around, taken by surprise. Then her heart sank into her toes. There, standing before her, was the Redcap she’d seen sitting by the fire. The meat he’d been gnawing on was clutched in one of his bony hands, fingertips tipped by claws. In the other hand was a sharp, wicked knife… just like the one she’d found in Marianne’s larder.

  “My name’s Grimtooth, what’s yours?” the goblin rasped, an ironic twist to his lips suggesting that he didn’t care much at all what her name was. With a jerk of his head, the goblins behind him fanned out, surrounding her. She stared around at them, feeling her heart beginning to pound sickly in her chest — there were at least a dozen, and she could hear more moving in the trees. She was very much outnumbered.

  “What do you think? Should we eat her?” hissed one of the Bogans who stood to Grimtooth’s right. He was only a little creature, but something about him suggested that he outranked the ot
hers. He was wearing a ragged black gambeson for a start, unlike the others, who were mostly clad in not much more than a loincloth. It was strange to look at them so close to one another. Nancy’s book had observed that Redcaps were much taller than Bogans, but the comparison was almost funny — the little black goblin barely came up to Grimtooth’s waist.

  “Shut it, Needle,” hissed one of the other Bogans. This one was wearing an odd leather apron and seemed a little taller than his fellow Bogans — though he still didn’t come close to matching the one that had identified himself as Grimtooth. He peered at Nancy closely, and she recoiled a little, not pleased by the nasty intelligence that lurked in his eyes.

  “What do you think we should do with her, Longfingers?” Grimtooth asked of the taller Bogan — Nancy’s eyes shot to the creature’s hands, and sure enough, he had spindly, spiderlike fingers in place of the sharp talons that most of the other Bogans had. Is that common, Nancy worried, sick with fear even as she tried to gather as much information about these creatures as she could? Her horse was yanking at the reins and whinnying with despair and misery. The chestnut mare clearly hated the goblins — she did too, if she was honest.

  Before she could blink, a third Bogan had darted forward. With an agile leap, it flung itself into the air and seized hold of the horse’s reins, yanking them out of Nancy’s hand and leading the rearing, resentful horse away from her. She started after them, but before she could do anything, Longfingers was there, a sharp blade materializing in his unpleasantly spindly little fingers.

  “Watch yourself, girlie,” he murmured in a voice that was like a blade scraping against a whetstone. “Wouldn’t want the boys to get too excited, would you?”

  She glared around at the goblins in the circle. Longfingers reached toward her — and she struck him hard in the side of the head with the iron bar that was still clutched in her fist. Howling, the goblin staggered away, clutching at his head where she’d struck him, retreating in fear of more damage. Grimtooth made an exasperated sound.

  “She barely touched you, don’t be such a baby —”

  “Iron,” Longfingers was howling, clutching sadly at his head. “She hit me with iron, iron, iron—”

  “You sound like Darter, you mewling coward,” Grimtooth said irritably, striking his lieutenant upside the head with a closed fist.

  But the goblins were all looking at her with new respect and wariness. Clearly, the iron in her hand made her powerful… but they’d taken her horse, she realized, watching as the sharp-toothed goblin led the mare away. One of the others circled around to investigate the horse — but the mare kicked out with her rear hoof unexpectedly, kicking the goblin a clear three feet backwards into the bushes. It set up a shrieking.

  “They shoe the creatures with iron, idiot!” shrieked the goblin that had taken the reins.

  “Shut up, Nibbler!” the other goblin howled.

  She could see it as it struggled to its feet — there was a horseshoe-shaped burn in its belly, gently smoking. Iron was serious business, it seemed. She held out the iron bar warily, spinning in a circle to make sure they all saw that she was serious about using it.

  Grimtooth rolled his gleaming eyes at her. “Nobody’s impressed, girlie. You can brandish that iron all you want. We’ve got food and you don’t, and eventually you’ll starve or fall asleep on your feet. We can wait.”

  Nancy felt fear settle into her stomach, but she put on a brave front regardless, brandishing the iron at Grimtooth. It was heartening, to see the savage leader of the band shrink away a little from the iron — but the cruel smile on his face didn’t abate. “How was your attack last night?” she asked, trying to irritate him. “Didn’t go so well, did it?”

  “Last night’s … attack?” Grimtooth looked around at his fellows, one eyebrow raised in a pantomime of confusion. “Oh! She means the test!”

  The goblins all cackled amongst themselves, as if on cue.

  “We were just seeing how ready you were for a real fight,” Grimtooth told her, his nasty eyes narrowed with triumph. “Not bad, I have to say… though I hope you didn’t waste too many of your arrows on that first assault.”

  “We killed dozens of your goblins,” Nancy said, teeth gritted. “That’s a huge loss for you —”

  “Did you, though? How many bodies did you manage to scoop up?” Grimtooth asked, raising an eyebrow. Nancy hesitated. She had to admit — she hadn’t seen the cleanup taking place. Only the goblins pierced by arrows. Now she thought about it, there hadn’t been much blood on the grass outside the gate that night. Had it been tidied up? Or —

  Grimtooth snapped his fingers. Suddenly, there was a goblin right beside her, hissing and chattering. She shrieked, striking at it with the iron in her hand… and as the iron touched it, it dissolved into smoke that coiled out across the grass, then vanished. Grimtooth cackled.

  “Oh, you killed a few, don’t get me wrong. But not as many as you thought. How many arrows left, hmm? How many arrows and how many of us? Can’t wait,” he said, grinning. “Can’t wait til the real attack.”

  Nancy’s heart was sinking. Last night had felt like a pretty real attack to her… to all of them. They’d been counting on the goblins’ numbers being decimated by the arrows. And when she thought about it, they were definitely low. She was grateful, suddenly, for the way Maeve had kept hold of used arrows… recycling seemed like a good tactic. God, she needed to get back to the castle… needed to warn everybody that things weren’t as they seemed, that there was another attack coming. But as if they sensed her need, the goblins cackled at her, grouping up to keep her separate from her horse.

  “Oh, no. You’ll be staying with us.” Grimtooth’s eyes were gleaming. “You’ve got the stink of the castle leadership on you. Ever been fishing, human-pet? Guess what? You’re going to be the worm!”

  Chapter 51

  Time dragged past, painfully slow. She could see the sun moving through the sky as the afternoon wore on, knew that they must be looking for her by now, concerned by her absence. Hopefully Malcolm would have checked the stable and found her mare missing… maybe he’d join the dots, come to try to find her. She burned with humiliation at the idea of needing to be saved by him from these horrible creatures, but she had to admit, she’d take any kind of rescue she could get at this point. She hated being surrounded by them, the stench of their unwashed bodies, their sharp teeth glinting at her as they snapped and teased her.

  None of them could get anywhere near her because of the iron in her hand. Thankfully, it was also keeping her horse safe — though they’d tied the old girl to a tree, they were wary of her iron-shod hooves, and she seemed aware of that power, threatening any approaching goblin with a well-placed kick. One of the goblins had boldly tried to climb into the tree and use it as a vantage point from which to grasp at the bundle of scuba gear on the horse’s back, but hissed in horror when it discovered the iron dirk that she’d put on the top of the bundle. That was a blessing, at least — they wouldn’t be able to steal or interfere with her scuba gear. But by the same token — neither would she. And who knew how many more goblins were going to pour through the burgh before she got a chance to get down there… if she ever could?

  Things weren’t looking good. Catastrophic, even. She was torn between wanting Malcolm to come and save her and feeling afraid that that was exactly what Grimtooth wanted. He certainly seemed enthusiastic about the idea of her being discovered. They were making no attempt to be quiet, hooting and hollering as they circled and taunted her. Some of them, at Grimtooth’s order, set a new fire, just outside of the range of Nancy’s iron bar, and then dragged some disgusting raw meat up from their old campsite. Grimtooth stabbed a piece with a stick, then held it out to Nancy, who shrank away, revolted by the sight of it.

  “Do you know what this is, human?” he asked her, his eyes wide and innocent. “Guess what kind of creature we butchered to get this delicious cut! Go on, guess.” He cackled, holding the piece of raw, dripping flesh
over the fire until the rancid stench she’d smelled earlier drifted over to her. “That’s right, dearie. It’s a big, delicious human steak! Makes a growing boy big and strong,” he added, rubbing his rounded little belly. The other goblins shrieked with laughter, all clearly vying with each other for Grimtooth’s favor. She could see why — as he regarded his followers, he lazily flicked the lump of meat into their midst. They squabbled and screamed over it. Somehow, she got the idea that food was power, in this particular little hierarchy at any rate.

  The sun sank lower and lower in the sky, and Grimtooth grew bored with taunting her with meat. Now, he moved in as close as he could, his piggy little eyes boring into hers. Up this close, she could see the red cap he wore — it was a tiny thing, barely covering his patchy, scaly scalp, and the color of it was closer to brown than red. It stank, too — stank like old rot. She realized, with a sickening lurch, that the story about Redcaps dipping their hats in the blood of their enemies was literally true. That was why Grimtooth smelled so bad. Would he dip his cap in her blood, too, if he got around the iron? She tightened her grip on the bar, thankful to have it, knowing that she’d be dead by now if she hadn’t happened to keep it in her pocket at all times.