Gregor headed back to Jamie, who was now surrounded by the captain and several of his men. Jamie finished giving out orders to start packing up camp, then turned to his nephew.
“What ye want to do, balach?” he asked, still mounted on his horse.
“Tie him to Hermes by his bits and drag him through the Scottish countryside,” Gregor shot back aggressively.
“Easy, balach,” Jamie warned him. “Losing yer temper isn’t an option.”
“It wasn’t a flippant remark,” Gregor grinned devilishly. “It was a promise. We’re going to find Morgana, with or without a trail because we have someone the bastard forgot about.”
“Who?” Jamie asked, looking at Gregor as if he had lost his mind.
“Not who, what—Zeus.”
Jamie’s eyes grew wide in understanding, and Gregor’s grin widened as he nodded.
“That’s right. He didnae take the beastie, did he?” he asked.
“Nay,” Jamie confirmed. “He was in the castle when it happened, which is how we discovered she was gone.” Just then Jamie winced as he remembered something.
“Oh, and lad, I been meaning to tell ye. Zeus, he…uh…well, ye see he…”
“What?” Gregor demanded, not in the mood for dramatics.
“He chewed a hole through yer door.” The explanation came out in a rush, and Jamie looked down at the ground as if something amusing was suddenly there.
Gregor raised an eyebrow. “What do ye mean he chewed a hole through the door? It was made of oak and steel.”
“Aye,” Jamie agreed, rubbing the back of his neck as he nodded. “Aye it was. But the thing just chewed a hole as tall as himself right through it.”
Despite the dire circumstances, Gregor let out a bark of a laugh. The dog had true grit, and was extremely loyal to his mistress. Gregor knew he would lead them to her. And when he did, he’d rescue Morgana and kill Fordun once and for all.
“Fergus,” Gregor called out for the boy. A moment later he showed up at his Laird Henwen’s side.
“Aye, me Laird Henwen?” he asked dutifully.
“Tell the captain to pack up the troops and head back toward the village. Me uncle and I are going to ride ahead.” He gave the boy a few more instructions and then sent him off. Moments later, Gregor was astride Hermes’s saddle and was ready to go.
“Right then,” Jamie nodded, taking in his nephew’s new focus. “Let’s go get yer bride back, shall we?”
England, on the road to London
“Oh, don’t look so angry little one,” Fordun cooed degradingly, stroking Morgana’s cheek. “You knew you had this coming. Besides, you should feel lucky. That bounty on your head has made you famous.”
“Why would I feel lucky about that?” Morgana shot back.
“Because,” Fordun replied, his grip tightening painfully on her chin, “The Chief Magistrate, Sir Richard Montagu, has been wanting to get their hands on you as much as I have. Despite how badly I want to burn you right now, I have to take you to them first.”
A dark, maniacal chuckle burst out of Fordun when Morgana yanked her chin away from his grasp and attempted to move her chair farther away. Not wanting to take any chances, Fordun had fortified her restraints with the little remaining bit of black magic he had pulled from the priest.
It had been ages since he’d made such an official sacrifice to the old ones. Normally when he killed it was to absorb life into his own spirit. However, with Morgana in such close reach and him so tired of the pursuit, he had wanted to do as much as he could to receive the help he so needed to catch the little redheaded witch.
“I have a secret to tell you,” Fordun told her as he pulled his dagger from his sheath. “Do you want to hear it?”
Muffled screams poured out from Morgana’s gag and the muffled words “Go to hell” could be made out rather distinctly despite the cloth in her mouth. Fordun chuckled, a little impressed by the girl’s fearless attitude toward the situation. With all of his victims he had heard pleas for their life, or someone else’s if there was more than one at a time. But what he never heard was plain old resistance.
“You are an adorable little creature, aren’t you?” Fordun asked, getting down to her eye level.
“All fire and fury, just like your mother,” he mused, pushing the dagger’s tip into the hollow of her throat. Morgana stilled, even her breath as she lowered her eyes down to where the dagger kissed her flesh.
“She just would not shut up about you, you know? She told me if I ever laid a hand on you, I was going to live the rest of my life as a limp, useless, memory of a man.” Fordun chuckled, and shook his head.
“She was the reason I started using gags, you know?” he mused, putting more pressure onto the blade. In front of him Morgana’s breathing began to quicken, but she didn’t try to move away from the dagger.
“She just wouldn’t give up. Just kept running her mouth about how I was going to pay for what I did to her beloved Samuel.”
Fordun heard the faintest sound of whimper from behind her gag, and he knew he had struck a nerve. There it is. I have your weak spot now. He pressed the blade of the knife into her throat until blood trickled out, and he made a rather quick, thin slice to toward her shoulder blade.
He waited with sick pleasure to hear her whimper or watch her face distort in pain, but she did neither. Instead, she stared back at him with so much hatred that he nearly felt intimidated. Nearly.
“A strong one,” he mused, circling her chair. She was wearing her powder-blue dress, just like she had done at the ball, but it was much worse for wear. His guards had been liberal with their roughness, and had caused several tears in her sleeves, in the skirt, and one rather scintillating one that ran from her right breast down to just below her left.
“Tell me,” he encouraged, placing the dagger on the opposite side of her collarbone. “Have you ever heard of ‘death by a thousand cuts’?”
Chapter 27
Pain laced through Morgana as Fordun made the tenth cut. It had been over an hour that she had been left in the tent alone with Fordun, and it had been nothing short of horrific. It was very clear to Morgana that Fordun had been waiting for this moment for quite some time. In fact, she would go so far to say that he had become obsessed.
Now that he had her in his grasp, he was going to do what he could to make her regret running away from him. No matter what he did though, whether it was cutting her or hitting her or worse, she refused to scream. Fordun had already tortured her for half her life, whether he was there to see it or not, and she wasn’t giving him any more of her fear. She may have looked delicate; she was anything but.
Through the years she had gotten harder, stronger. She had allowed the pain of her loss to fuel her will to survive, and it had worked well. After all, she had a lot of loss. Her mother, her father, her aunt, her youth, her innocence, her ability to trust or make friends. But all of it only pushed her forward.
“Well, well, it looks like the wilderness may have toughened you a little,” Fordun mused, sounding both annoyed and amused. In his hand he twirled the dagger over and over in his fingers as if it were a mere toy. Then, as if bored with it, he flung it down to the earth, where the blade buried itself.
Fordun went down on his haunches to look in her eyes. For a while, he simply studied her face, as if looking for any sign of displeasure. When he saw none, he simply shrugged.
“Not to worry,” he stated, sounding optimistic. “We have a long way to go and plenty of time. And I’ve never had a man, let alone a woman, make it to the thousandth cut. But one way or another witch, I will make you scream.”
He reached out and ripped the gag away from between her teeth, his fingernails coarsely digging into the side of her mouth as he pulled the fabric away. Immediately hate-filled words spewed from her lips like curses. She promised him that if she did in fact have any power she would use all that she had to put him in the ground where he belonged.
In response, Fordun laughe
d and cut her again, as if hoping to catch her off guard so she would scream. Instead, she spat at him, hocking the saliva right onto his cheek. For the first time, Fordun seemed taken aback by her behavior. He stared at her in disbelief, as if she had gone insane.
“You are nothing. Do you hear me, Nigel Fordun!” she spat, taking advantage of stunned silence. Her laugh was hollow. “A man of God, they say. Whatever they think you are, I know you are not. And whatever you think this will make you become, you won’t. You are nothing but death and fear. You haven’t cleansed this world of anything. You haven’t brought glory to God. You’ve just paraded around like a spoiled little boy that is far too self-absorbed to care about the lives he’s ruined.”
He did not say a word.
“I will not die afraid of you,” she continued, when he remained locked in place staring at her. “You may have the death of my body if you want, but you will not have my fear, or my pleas of mercy, or my pride. So go on. Do your worst. Death will be a reprieve if it means never having to put up with you again.”
For several long moments, Fordun still didn’t say a word. Instead, he simply continued to stare at her, as if trying to contemplate if she was genuine or not. Finally, he turned from her to leave, but then stepped back and backhanded her soundly. The rings on his hand knocked harshly into her teeth, and she felt blood burst from her gums and lips.
“You don’t know anything about me you little witch,” he seethed, his anger finally showing through. “But if you want to see who I am, don’t you worry. I’ll be more than happy to show you.”
He grabbed a fistful of Morgana’s hair and yanked her head back. When she felt like she couldn’t possibly bend her neck back any further, his mouth came down over hers and he forced his tongue into her mouth.
Being kissed by Fordun was not at all like being kissed by Gregor. His tongue lapped over the blood that welled up on her lips and in her mouth, and he drank from her as she tried repeatedly to wrench her mouth away from his. When her teeth bit down on his lip in an attempt to get away, Fordun grabbed her nose and pinched it shut so that she was forced to keep her mouth open.
Of all the abuse he had done to her that day, his kiss was what made her want to scream the most. It was vile, and so foul that only when she nearly vomited on him did he pull away. When he did, Fordun pulled away from her with a bright new light in his eyes. Around his mouth like a clown was a large brilliant circle of her blood.
He smeared the blood over his mouth and up over his cheeks barbarically, smiling as he did so. There was a dangerous energy emanating off of him. Something dark and powerful that had no place in the Christian world, yet it had somehow crawled out of the depths of hell and found Morgana a most enticing meal.
“We will see,” he told her, his tongue dodging out to taste her blood on his lips.
“Just how strong you think you are, and just how strong you actually are.” He moved around her, circling like a buzzard over a carcass. Morgana watched him closely, not sure at all what to expect. Of all things though, she didn’t expect him to leave.
For the next several minutes, Morgana kept her eyes on the tent flap, barely able to breathe. When she felt sure he wasn’t going to come back immediately, her head dropped into her chest and she let out a muffled sob. Tears fell in waves down her cheeks, washing the blood down her chin and causing it to drip over her dress.
As she saw the red drops saturate into the delicate blue of her now-ruined dress, she cried even harder and thought of Gregor and Zeus. She should have never left the castle without Zeus, or at least an escort. If Gregor had been there, he would have of course joined her. But then, what if Fordun had killed either of them?
As she thought of all the damage that could have been done to the two men in her life, she suddenly felt thankful that she had been alone. To think that she had been safe had been incredibly foolish on her part, and if she hadn’t been feeling so nauseous, she would have known better. But that didn’t matter now.
What did matter was what was about to happen. She had no doubt that Gregor was coming for her. And with Zeus there to lead them, she was sure that they were only a couple days’ ride away. All she had to do was stay alive until they got there. Which, she realized, would be the tricky part.
Though she had been blindfolded and gagged for the journey, Morgana had overheard the guards talking. Fordun’s company had traveled south, out of Scotland and back into England toward the capital. The problem was because she had been blindfolded constantly, even when let out to relieve herself, she had no idea how many days they had been traveling.
Three? Four? A week or longer? There was no way to tell. Fordun’s men refused to speak to her other than to throw horrible insults at her, so there was no chance of a kind spirit in the lot. She could try to get out of her bindings, or even moved the chair to the tent flap where she might be able to take a peek.
But if she did that there was no guarantee that she’d be able to see anything or she’d be able to recognize anything or she’d be able to do it without getting caught. The safest place to be was in the chair, but the least she could do was try to make herself a little more comfortable.
She began to scooch around in her shackles, trying to find a more comfortable way to wear them when two guards came in. In between them they carried a tub-sized wash basin heavy with murky water. On the left shoulder of the left guard, was a simple white shift. A third guard came in right after, carrying a tray of food and pitcher of water.
Morgana eyed them suspiciously as they sat up the wash basin near the center of the otherwise empty cot. When they were finished, two of them left to stand watch outside while the third came over to her. For a moment he simply looked over her, taking in her bruised face and soiled dress.
He reached out to Morgana and she bit at him, hatred shining bright in her eyes. Instead of hitting her though, he grabbed her by the chin and forced her to keep her face steady. From his pocket he produced a handkerchief and began wiping the blood away from Morgana’s mouth. The small act of kindness startled her, and she stopped her struggling to let him wash her face.
When he finished, he went to the tray that had the food and brought back a metal collar attached to a chain link leash in one hand a lock in the other.
“My name is Bartholomew and I’ve been with Fordun for a long time,” the man said, his voice barely above her whisper as he fastened the collar around her neck.
“I’ve seen him do many things. For the sake of God. For the sake of himself. And I’ve never questioned it.” He paused, going to the support beam of the tent to secure the other end of the chain with the lock.
When he finished, he drew a key from a ring at his hip and unlocked her shackles from her wrists. Morgana’s arms ached as they fell away from behind her back and dropped to her sides. Her hands, which had gone numb, began to tingle viciously as feeling came back to them.
She looked up at him to give her thanks, but he silenced her.
“You being kind to me won’t help you escape,” he explained, giving her a sideways glance. “I do not question who Fordun hunts or how he decides to punish those unfortunate enough to land on his bad side. Your fate has been sealed with him. There’s nothing I can do about that. But what I can do is keep the other men away from you. It’s not too rare that Fordun allows certain…activities to transpire when it comes to his female prisoners.”
“Why?” Morgana blurted out. Immediately she regretted it. This man was trying to keep her safe, if only a little, and she knew she was in no position to ask questions. Still, despite knowing that, she couldn’t help her curiosity.
“Why does it matter to you what happens to me?” she asked.
Bartholomew looked at her blankly, as if he wasn’t sure how to answer. Perhaps he didn’t know himself, Morgana wondered. Or perhaps it was just a trick to make her feel safe when she wasn’t. All she knew was that she needed to find out something, anything, that could keep her alive until Gregor was able to come to he
r.
“What is he?” she asked, as the Bartholomew went to leave. He stopped in his tracks and turned to her with a stony expression.
“Can you at least tell me that? Does he actually work for the church? Does he really think I’m a witch?”
“I don’t know what he is,” he replied to her first question. The look on his face told Morgana that he was telling the truth. “What I do know is that he is not human like me.”
“I’m human too,” Morgana pleaded.
Her words seem to strike a chord in him, and for a second the man looked contemplative, perhaps even guilty. Then as if he could spare no concern over her, the guilt vanished, and his stony expression returned. Without another word he left the tent, leaving Morgana to eat and bathe.
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