Plaid Nights Anthology

by Torquere Press LLC

  Oh Lord, ye are merciful indeed, Conall prayed. The Almighty had sent him a seraph with a halo of fire and a form that Conall could love. The angel’s eyes were nearly black, like the loch in winter, and his skin was dappled gold.

  The angel opened his mouth and said, “There y’are, ye great triumphant slop-for-brains.”

  Conall blinked. The angel was not an angel, but a man, barely older than Conall’s seventeen years. The halo of fire was only his hair—the reddest and wildest Conall had ever seen, lit from behind by a small hearth-fire. The skin Conall had taken for dappled was only ferociously freckled. The red man frowned down at Conall disapprovingly, hands on hips, reminding Conall so strongly of his sisters that he felt a painful surge in his gut.

  “Can ye tell me the year?” the red man asked.

  “Four—” Conall swallowed and tried again. “Fourteen hundred and sixty-three. Where?” It wasn’t even a full question, but Conall couldn’t pass another noise out of his throat.

  “Ye’re in Inveraray,” the red man said.

  Inveraray. A town on the north shore of Loch Fyne. Still in Argyll, but many miles south of where he ought to be. Conall shook his head as much as he was able, which not was much. “My—my—”

  “Clan? Friends?” The red man frowned harder. “Mostly dead, from what I understand.”

  Conall felt the ache in his throat and the warmth in his eyes, and tried to turn his head away. He could feel the pain now, dull and throbbing in his hip, sharp and burning on his side—stone-heavy and choking at his heart. He tried to take a breath, and a whine escaped his throat.

  “Oh, Blessed Mother,” the red man said. Conall refused to look at him, but a cool wet cloth stroked gently over Conall’s brow. “Easy. The men who brought ye to me weren’t keen on chat. I’ll just tell ye what I know, aye?”

  Conall breathed out and shut his eyes. Elspeth had always said she could see his thoughts through his eyes as easily as if they were glass. He would not let this stranger see the shame and pain in them. He would not let the red man see how happy he’d been when he thought the red man had been an angel. He would not let the red man see how crushingly alone he felt, laid out on a table and unable to move, separated from his clan and family by unknowable distance and what they could never know of him.

  The red man sat on a stool. “They brought ye in yesterday. There were…four men? Three men a-horse, and a woman. I was more focused on the two of ye hog-tied and bleeding like centerpieces for the laird’s feast, so ye’ll forgive me for not remembering. The man who left ye with me said he was Alan MacCoul.”

  Da. The knot in Conall’s chest relaxed by a few notches. The woman with him would be Sorcha.

  “Never seen a woman so bloody outside of childbirth.”

  Conall’s belly jumped with a small laugh, and he groaned at the pain again. “Ye try stopping her fighting, if ye think ye can.”

  “My mother was woman enough in my life, I thank ye,” the red man said, but his dark eyes were softer. “I’ve got another here in your MacDougall colors. Alan MacCoul said to tell ye—and these are his words precisely as he said them to me—your shield is with ye, and he has your sword, but very little else survived.”

  Conall swallowed several times, until he was sure he could speak more than one word at a time. “What is his look—the other man?”

  The red man scratched his chin; Conall heard the scritch of a growing beard under his fingernails. “In a simple word, large—I swear to the Mother, he must have some ox blood in him. Younger than ye’d expect to be bald.”

  “Blair.” Conall tried to sit up—he had to go to him, he had to—

  He fell back against the table, groaning, feeling as though the wound on his side had a blade in it again.

  The red man sat with his arms crossed, smirking through his disapproval. “Not trying that again, are ye?” Conall growled and gripped the sides of the table, hoping to roll himself off. A broad, strong hand suddenly pinned his chest down. “None of that,” said the red man. “Your lad—his skin’s a peculiar color. Is that normal for him?”

  Conall nodded. Everyone noticed Blair’s skin. ‘Twas the same brown as the hills in early winter. He’d been at Conall’s side since they were bairns, and a future without him in Conall’s life was as unfathomable as navigating through a strong mist on the loch. They two and Sorcha had never been in a fight without one another. That’s what Da had meant—Blair was Conall’s shield, Sorcha his sword. They and Da had survived the battle, but few others had.

  Snippets and scraps of memory were coming back. Conall recalled flashes of the battle: Blair and Sorcha fighting alongside him; the sun flashing on swords and dirks; pain. He remembered just one thing after: opening his eyes while draped across Luasganach, his steady gelding, and seeing Blair slumped upon a horse that wasn’t his. Conall brought his attention back to the red man, who watched him with sharp black eyes.

  “Who are ye?” Conall asked.

  “Eoghann Kilduff MacAdam.” The red man—Eoghann—clasped Conall’s hand.

  Conall ran through the names in his mind. Kilduff and MacAdam. “Ye’re a MacGregor,” he said. That was the MacAdams’ clan. And the Kilduffs…oh God Almighty. “And a Lamont.”

  Eoghann smiled, showing all his teeth and little mirth. “Aye, tolla-thon, that I am.”

  ***

  Conall had awoken late at night, so late as to be verging on early. His right hip was bound up tightly, the linen strips wrapping around his waist and thigh.

  “No bending that hip joint for a long while, MacDougall,” Eoghann said. “Not if ye have plans for using it again.”

  The bindings ended just a few inches before the linen for Conall’s rib wound. He remembered the blow—a Stewart clansman wielding a claymore had swung with enough force to cut Conall clean in half. Conall had dodged, but the claymore’s wide arc had still struck him deep across his left ribs. Eoghann hadn’t removed Conall’s clothes. They were mostly brown and stiff with dried blood. His shirt was pushed up around his underarms, and his kilt unbelted and draped over his thighs like a blanket.

  Eoghann stirred something in a pot over the hearth. Blair was laid out on the floor on one side of it—the side farther from the door. Blair had a large MacDougall tartan—Sorcha’s, Conall suspected—draped over him, so Conall couldn’t get a look at his injuries other than the bandage wrapped around his head.

  “Why did I get the table?”

  Eoghann looked up from his stirring. “What’s that?”

  “Why did he get the floor, and I got the table?” Conall tried to push himself up on his elbows. Eoghann twitched in his direction, as if about to move to push Conall down again, but stayed by the fire. “He’s surely worse off than I am.”

  “Your Blair didn’t have his great bloody limbs hanging all out of place,” Eoghann said. “He had three arrows in him, along with the head wound. Lucky I was able to get them all out, but that did nearly as much damage as sticking him with them. He mostly needs rest. I’ll watch for infection, and brew him a tea to get his blood back up.” Eoghann straightened. “Do ye care to tell me who was so bound and determined to kill ye?”

  Conall’s arms were trembling from trying to keep himself up. He ignored them. “Do ye care to tell me what a Lamont is doing this side of Loch Fyne?”

  Eoghann rose from his crouch. “I know the healing arts, and I come to Inveraray to tend the people here. I stayed because a MacDougall war chief foisted a brace of half-dead clansmen upon me without telling me why.” Eoghann raised his brows at Conall’s trembling shoulders, unimpressed. “Ye trying to injure your shoulder joints as well?”

  Conall couldn’t speak. The effort of keeping himself propped was too much. Eoghann smirked.

  “There’s a pallet in the corner, if ye think ye could stand the indignity of being helped onto it.”

  The pain from Conall’s blade wound was spreading into a burn all along his side. It felt like that Stewart’s claymore was still notched between hi
s ribs. As if awakened by the pain, Conall’s hip throbbed with an ache that rippled outward from a point deeper than Conall thought he was capable of sensing. He was torn and bleeding and hobbled, and this fire-headed Lamont had mended him when he could’ve harmed Conall further. Da hadn’t seen the need to leave a guard; nor had Sorcha. Conall nodded.

  Eoghann nodded in return, sharp and approving. “Lay back, it’ll go easier.” Conall lowered himself onto the table. Eoghann was nearly as broad in the shoulders as he, but his shirt hung loosely. Conall braced himself to do most of the work of moving himself.

  With no warning, Eoghann grabbed Conall’s shins just below the knee and turned his whole body in a practiced heave. In the same movement, Eoghann pulled until Conall’s arse rested on the edge of the table. Eoghann grasped Conall behind the neck and hoisted him up, still careful not to bend Conall’s leg at the hip.

  Conall’s heart pounded. He’d never been moved so forcefully by a single man. Eoghann’s warm, broad hand still held him by the neck. This close, he could see Eoghann’s eyelashes, pale and gleaming gold in the firelight. Eoghann’s mouth was plush and slightly parted. Conall’s mouth was dry.

  “Watch the leg now,” Eoghann said, his voice low. He pulled Conall’s good arm around his shoulders. Without thinking, Conall grabbed onto Eoghann’s shirt. Together, they shifted Conall’s weight onto his left leg and the arm around Eoghann’s shoulders.

  And Conall’s kilt, which had been only draped over his intimates, slid to the floor between them with a soft thud. They stood there for a moment, facing each other, Conall leaning heavily on Eoghann.

  Conall had been bare in the presence of men before, when the clansmen had to change or bathe as a group. There’d been more than one incident with summer kilts and a strong wind. This moment between the wounded and the healer should not have meant anything—yet Conall couldn’t breathe.

  Eoghann turned like a hinge, so that he stood alongside Conall instead of in front of him. “Don’t step on it,” Eoghann said. Conall couldn’t tell if he meant the leg or the kilt, but he wasn’t going to ask. Eoghann turned them in the direction of the pallet and shifted his grip from Conall’s neck to his waist.

  Conall jumped in little steps until they were standing alongside the pallet. “Here’s the tricky bit,” Eoghann said. Conall understood; the pallet was raised off the ground, but it still wasn’t as high as the table. It would be difficult to get Conall onto it without bending at the hip.

  Eoghann gently removed Conall’s arm from his freckled shoulders and put both hands on Conall’s waist. “Bend over—get your arms on it first.” Conall saw what he was getting at, and immediately felt heat flush into his face.

  He leaned over, extending his good arm toward the pallet and lifting his bad leg behind him, to keep it in line with his back. In doing so, he had to present his bare arse to Eoghann’s view. Eoghann’s hands were warm and strong on his waist, and tightened the farther Conall bent. Conall had a sudden warm rush low in his belly and thought, before he could stop himself, that he hoped Eoghann liked what he saw. If he did, he was better than Conall at hiding it. With his steady aid, Conall leaned and then rolled down onto the pallet without upsetting his hip or his side wound. Before he could settle fully, Eoghann was draping Conall’s kilt over his hips again.

  Conall nearly groaned at the feeling of the pallet beneath him. ‘Twasn’t his mattress at home, but ‘twas more generous than the surgery table or nights sleeping on the ground. He might have groaned a bit, in truth, he was so tired.

  Above him, Eoghann snorted. “Now ye’ll just sleep to get away from my questions.”

  “Ye’ve caught me,” Conall said, slurry with exhaustion. “’Twas always my intention. Got wounded just for ye.”

  He thought he heard a chuckle somewhere far away. “In the morning then. Just answer me one thing, MacDougall.”

  Conall grunted.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Conall Alexander MacFarlane MacCoul.”

  ***

  Conall dreamed. Two hands, bigger and harder than a woman’s, held him by the waist. They slid up his ribs. Vibrant red hair brushed his skin as a pair of lips pressed a kiss to the wound on his side. The hands slid down, over his flanks, squeezing his arse like they enjoyed the feel of it. The lips moved upward, up the dip between the muscles in his chest, over his throat. One of the hands drew his head back by the hair, making Conall moan, and teeth nipped at the soft skin under his chin. The other hand moved from Conall’s arse to low on his belly, until the thumb and forefinger bracketed Conall’s cock. He could feel them against his shaft even though they weren’t touching.

  The lips moved from his throat to drag across the planes of his face, leaving behind small trails of heat and wetness. Conall trembled and panted. He sank his hands into the red hair—God Almighty, ‘twas thick—and someone groaned. A hard, flat body pressed against Conall’s, and everything was heat and skin and sensation. The lips moved to his ear as the body surged forward, the teeth bit gently at his ear, and a familiar voice whispered, “Tolla-thon.”

  The dream changed. Conall stood in the trees, within sight of the edge of a great loch. A man stood at the edge, ankle-deep in the water, holding a staff and wearing a dark kilt. ‘Twas a gray day, the kind that foretold a great storm, and the wind off the loch filled the kilt like a sail. It billowed wildly around the man, but he took no note of it.

  Conall was struck by the sudden certainty that the man was in danger. With the certainty came a grief so powerful he felt sick with it. He had to concentrate to keep from emptying his stomach on the forest floor. Conall stumbled forward through the trees, intent on the man, on warning him. As he went, the wind pressed harder and harder against him. The dark-kilted man seemed not to feel it, but it drove Conall to his knees. He couldn’t reach the man. He couldn’t save him. Conall buried his face in the fallen leaves and howled.

  ***

  When Conall next woke, he sensed he should feel heartbroken, but he didn’t know why. It seemed only a few hours had passed. Blair was in his same place by the hearth. Eoghann sat against the wall across the door that had dawn light seeping in around its edges—the door that led outside. His eyes were closed. A dirk rested, unsheathed, on the floor beside him.

  For a terrible, sickening moment, Conall thought Eoghann was dead. The Stewarts or MacLarens or both had followed them, come to finish their work, and killed Eoghann. Then Conall saw the peace of Eoghann’s expression, and the gentle swell and fall of his chest. The bloodstains on Eoghann’s clothes were Conall’s and Blair’s.

  Conall let his head fall back against the pallet. His heart pounded against his ribs—not the first time it had done so because of Eoghann, and surely not the last. This time it pounded not from excitement, but from fear. Fear of Eoghann dying, sure, but even more in fear of his reaction to thinking Eoghann was dead. He’d known the man—the Lamont, no less—for little more than a few waking moments, and already he felt bound to him. Conall was accustomed to the strange (wrong) lust he felt for other men’s bodies, but this…this was more dangerous. This was worse.

  The fire, burning low but still crackling, popped loudly. Conall heard Eoghann startle awake with a sharp intake of breath and the scrape of the dirk against the wooden floor. He raised his head from the pallet as if waking.

  Eoghann’s hair had mostly fallen out of its short queue. It stuck up at odd angles, almost like an irate cat was draped over Eoghann’s head. His black eyes, on the other hand, were keen as the blade he held.

  “Defending the castle?” Conall asked. “How was the watch?”

  Eoghann glared at him. “Och, aye, now ye wake. Dropping your name like a bloody great stone from a tower and hiding away for the rest of us to tend to it.”

  That stone Eoghann spoke of seemed to plummet into Conall’s stomach, suddenly weighing him down. “How long—”

  “Ye were asleep for another day and night,” said Eoghann. He stood and paced over to the fire an
d banked it. “Blair woke more than once, but he wasn’t good for much aside from sipping his tea.”

  Eoghann’s manner grew more and more hot with every word he spoke. Conall waited to make sure he was finished. Then Conall asked, “Have ye heard, then?”

  “Heard?” Eoghann said. “Heard what? Heard that two weeks ago the war chief Alan MacCoul murdered the chief of the Stewarts at Dunstaffnage chapel, where the Stewart was moments away from wedding a MacLaren woman?”

  A MacLaren woman who’d given Sir John Stewart a natural son the same age as Conall. Conall turned away.

  “Or should I have heard that the Stewart chief married his lady as he died, as his last act in this life?”

  Conall shut his eyes.

  “At last and most importantly, should I have heard that four days ago, their son Dugald led the Stewarts and MacLarens against Alan MacCoul and clan MacDougall? That the MacFarlanes fought for the MacDougalls. That fifty young Stewarts, one hundred and thirty MacLarens, even more MacDougalls, and the Mother-blessed chief of the MacFarlanes died at a battle on the Bridge of Orchy.”

  The breath froze in Conall’s chest. He hadn’t known the numbers. He hadn’t known how many. Da hadn’t exaggerated.

  Da was the natural grandson of the MacDougall chief before the current one, so he’d been given the seat at Dunstaffnage. The MacDougall clansmen of Dunstaffnage didn’t hold with the current chief, who lived many miles away and had little will to stand for the clan when ‘twas needed. Da wanted the chiefdom so he could save the clan; one big step toward the chiefdom was securing the Stewarts’ land. If Sir John Stewart hadn’t tried to marry his MacLaren woman—hadn’t tried to secure Dugald as the next Stewart chief—Da wouldn’t have moved against him.

  “We warned him,” Conall said. And och, they had. They’d warned Sir John what would have to happen if he tried to marry Dugald’s mother. “If he’d just let his brother inherit—” Walter Stewart was weak, over-cautious, easily dealt with. No murder on holy ground, no battle that made the River Orchy run red. “He chose his own fate.”