“Do you fear an attack?” Callum said.
“What do I know?” Samuel said. “I always fear it. That’s how a man stays alive.”
“We’ve seventy men,” Liam said. “That should give even the most passionate Scotsman pause.”
“Surely no lord would attack a company sent by King David?” Callum said. “He would be courting war with England.”
“Scotsmen aren’t always known for their sense, especially Highlanders,” said Liam, revealing his prejudices.
The tension in Samuel’s face reminded Callum of Afghanistan in other ways, chief among them the constant fear of betrayal. Callum had learned to pass as a normal person in the four years since he’d come home from the war, but the closer he allowed anyone to get to him, the harder it had been to hide his wounds. Callum had borne witness to man’s inhumanity to man and had perpetrated it on those weaker than himself. It was a cliché to say that he couldn’t wash that away with water and soap, but Callum had wondered sometimes if he hadn’t been trying to. He had been one of the lucky ones, too, because even if he’d left part of himself on the battlefield, physically he looked whole.
Callum’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. Today if it came to a fight, he’d be using his sword for the first time, killing men up close and personal.
Then Callum straightened his shoulders. If something was truly wrong, he had no time for second thoughts or inner turmoil. He looked around for James Stewart, whom he’d last seen riding near Kirby’s carriage, but James was no longer there. Callum did notice that the bishop now sat beside his driver instead of inside the carriage.
Callum didn’t know why Kirby had chosen this moment to expose himself to the elements, but he mentally shrugged away the bishop’s peculiarities and twisted in his saddle, still looking for James. He spied him and Robbie at the rear of the host of men. Callum directed his horse to the side of the road and caught James’s eye. James lifted a hand in acknowledgement and he and Robbie trotted their horses along the edge of the road, avoiding the columns of riders, in order to reach Callum more quickly.
“Samuel doesn’t like the feel of this place,” Callum said when they reached him. “There are too many trees and the road is too narrow. His instincts tell him something isn’t right.”
James sniffed. “We ride on the main road from Glasgow to Stirling. For all that the English believe Scots to be barbarians, I can’t believe we’re anything but perfectly safe—”
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH—!”
The cry came long and loud, an eerie screech that was cut off suddenly. Horses bucked and skittered, their masters struggling to control them. Robbie’s horse reared, almost threw him, and then took off, racing back towards Glasgow, with Robbie hanging on for dear life.
“Robert!” James dug in his heels to go after him, and Callum with him, but the five seconds between Robbie’s escape and James’s response was too long. The enemy, whoever they were, was upon them.
“Protect the Bishop!”
The call came from one of the men near Kirby’s carriage at the front of the company. Callum turned to see the long handle of a spear sticking out of Kirby’s back and a bloom of red across his white mantle. He toppled off his seat and ended up face first in the muddy ditch beside the road.
Callum’s sword appeared in his hand without him realizing he’d pulled it from its sheath. He looked for James, even as he raised his shield and wheeled his horse, trying to look in all directions at once. “Jesus Christ! Where did they come from?”
James flung himself from his horse and grabbed both his horse’s bridle and Callum’s. “I’d like to know that too.”
Callum looked north and south, holding up his shield to protect himself while trying to find the source of the spears and arrows that flew from the heights on either side. A dozen men had already gone down. The high wail came again.
“Get off that damn horse.” James pulled at Callum’s cloak and dragged him from the saddle so that Callum might crouch with him in the muck of the road. They used their horses as buffers, though the beasts were panicky enough that Callum didn’t think they’d stay still much longer, no matter how well trained. “These men are MacDougalls,” said James.
“How do you know?” Callum said. Even he had heard of the MacDougalls. As a clan, they had a colorful and martial history.
But James didn’t have time to answer. The spearman and archers had done their work and now a hundred screaming Highlanders descended the hills that rose up on either side of the road. The caterwauling cry blocked out every other sound. A few men even dropped from the tree branches above their heads.
James and Callum fought back to back, slashing and thrusting at their attackers. Their company was outnumbered, though not hopelessly so. They’d been caught unawares, however, so they fought at a terrible disadvantage. Those months of practice paid off for Callum, as his arm seemed to move of its own accord, driving at any man who came against him.
The fighters on both sides gave no quarter. The MacDougalls seemed intent on slaughter and Callum’s company just wanted to survive. With war all around, Callum’s mouth was dry and gritty with the taste of sand, though it was rain he felt on his face today.
James was chanting in Gaelic what sounded like a poem. With all the chaos around them, Callum couldn’t decipher more than one word in three. For his part, Callum kept up a steady stream of profanity in English—and not the medieval profanity that cursed saints and bones. That wasn’t meaty enough for Callum today. He didn’t care who heard him. By that point, they were going down. Callum had lost sight of Samuel and Liam long since.
“In the name of St. Andrew!” James shouted and leapt at a fiery haired warrior, while Callum blocked an axe destined for James’s head. James then gutted a second man who slashed his sword at Callum and with a shout of his own, Callum launched himself at a man just beyond James.
“Hold! Hold I say!”
The order came through a red haze that covered Callum’s eyes. A Scottish warrior with a yellow beard and pale eyes planted himself in front of Callum, ignoring his superior’s order, and thus, Callum didn’t obey him either. With a twist and a shove, Callum upended the man and drove his sword through his midsection. Callum staggered to his feet, his face streaming with a mixture of water and blood, and swung around, looking for James. He’d been beside Callum only a second earlier.
In the moment that he turned, however, someone cannoned into him from behind and knocked him to the ground. Callum’s helmet slammed into a rock on the edge of the road, his sight blackened, and he heard nothing more.
* * * * *
Callum’s eyes popped open in the instant between unconsciousness and awareness to find darkness all around him. He lay on his side on the ground, though he had no immediate memory as to where he was or how he’d gotten there except that he was pretty sure his vehicle had been blown up by an IED. He had a moment of panic when he couldn’t feel his feet, but then he focused harder and shifted them. Relief coursed through him. Callum lifted his head from the ground and blinked. The air didn’t smell like the desert. In fact, it was definitely raining.
“Stay still.”
The words came from behind him, a woman’s voice, and now that he was awake, a faint glow cut through the darkness. Instinctively disobeying, Callum rolled onto his back, towards the shape behind him. As he rolled, he put a hand to his head and his fingers felt for the wound that was giving him a headache. It felt like a sharpened stake had been driven into his skull.
At the sight of the woman, however, Callum dropped his hand, instantly confused not only by her face, but because he wasn’t wearing his army-issued combat helmet. The helmet his fingers probed was metal. “Where am I?” he said.
The woman put her hand on Callum’s arm to stop him from touching his head again and said, amusement in her voice, “Where do you think you are? You’re in a ditch beside the road, just where they left you.”
And then Callum remembered … he remembered and
it was as if someone had taken the stake from his head, stabbed it into his gut, and twisted. He tried to sit up but the woman’s gentle hands forced him to lie back down.
“It’s okay; you’re okay.”
Callum let the woman ease the helmet from his head. His whole head ached and when he pressed his fingers to his hairline, they came away wet. Because it was still raining, he didn’t know if it was water or blood he was feeling. He tasted the moisture on the tip of his finger. Blood.
“I asked you not to do that.” The woman pressed a hand to Callum’s shoulder, forcing him to stay on the ground. Then she shone a light into each of his eyes in turn. “I’m no doctor, but I think you have a concussion.”
Callum blinked back the rain that continued to pitter-patter on his face and squinted past the light. Noticing, the woman directed the light away from his eyes.
Callum swallowed, trying to find his voice. The more he looked at the woman, the less he cared if his head hurt or even if he was bleeding out. There was no way he was going to lie still another moment, not when the woman was holding an honest-to-God modern torch—a flashlight—in her hand. Callum pushed to a sitting position, leaning on one hand, and brought his face to within inches of hers.
A moment ago, Callum had almost mistaken the woman for Anna, but now that he was up close, he could see the differences clearly. The woman’s hair was black and straight, not brown like Anna’s. Her eyes were also dark and set in a face with a wide forehead and high cheekbones. “Who are you?” Callum said.
“Tell me your name first.”
“Callum.”
The woman sat back on her heels. Callum reached for the hand that held the torch and brought it between them so that it illumined their faces in a ‘v’ of light.
“And you’re—”
“From the future. Yes,” Callum said.
The woman gave a cry that was half laughter, half startled surprise. “When I heard you cursing in English—real English—during the battle, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve searched for so long …” Her throat closed on the last word, but she didn’t look away. Her eyes were very wide and clear as she gazed at Callum.
Callum’s hand was still around hers, both of them holding the torch. “If I tell you when I’m from, will you tell me your name, and what you’re doing here?”
“Yes.” She eased back onto her heels, seeming to want more distance between them.
Callum loosened his hold on her hand without letting her go entirely. The woman was far closer to mastering her emotions than Callum was to his. He needed to get this out of the way right now before his head exploded. “2016,” he said.
“Oh God.” The woman jerked away.
Callum reached for her, fearing that she wasn’t going to keep up her end of the bargain. If she ran away, he couldn’t chase her. He didn’t even know if he could walk. But then she stopped, breathing hard, having scrambled only four or five feet from Callum. She looked at him, her hands clenched into fists and what he thought might be tear tracks on her dirty cheeks, mixing with the raindrops.
Then as before, her chin firmed. She crawled back to him, her eyes on his. “My name is Cassie. I was born in Oregon.”
Chapter Four
Cassie
Somehow Cassie got Callum upright and walking—or rather stumbling—heading off the road and into the hills to the northwest of the ambush site.
“Where are we going?” Callum said, though it came out more of a mumble, something like where we? and Cassie had to infer the rest.
“Some place safe,” Cassie said.
It was a wonder he could walk at all, given how long she’d had to leave him lying in the mud until the MacDougalls had marched off. If they’d discovered he wasn’t dead and threatened to finish the job, she might have had to pull a Pocahontas and cover his body with her own. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that.
“Is it far?”
“Farther than you want to walk just now, but we can make it,” Cassie said.
After that, Callum didn’t ask any more questions, just kept walking with his head down, his arm around Cassie’s shoulder and hers around his waist, holding him up. Cassie was tall for a woman, almost 5’ 9”, but he was bigger, easily over six feet. He wore a cloak that weighed twice as much as it should, due to the rain that had waterlogged it. He wore armor, too. She didn’t know how he’d come to be a knight in the king’s company, but she’d seen him fight and he’d handled himself better than all but a few others, Scot or English.
Cassie had known that Callum was from the twenty-first century from the first time he’d said you bloody cocked up bastard knob head! while cutting through two MacDougalls to help one of his fellow soldiers. As they’d walked, and before he became too breathless to talk, Callum had told her about his mission for King David. It had been the first positive news Cassie had heard all day. It meant that King David hadn’t been among those killed or captured. The king hadn’t come at all.
In the nearly five years that she’d lived in Scotland, Cassie had learned to ignore the rain. As the miles passed, it tapered off, even as the wind picked up. She kept Callum walking higher into the hills, going up and down, heading northwest all the while through scrub and stands of trees.
Finally, as the sky began to lighten towards morning and Callum was stumbling badly, worse with every step he took, they reached Cassie’s house. It was set in the middle of a small clearing with a garden next to it. Callum pulled up at the sight of it and spoke his first sentence in hours. “Who lives here?”
“I do.”
Though Callum balked like a three-year-old, as if Cassie was dragging him to the dentist instead of entering her home, she eventually got his feet moving again. He was so tired that after his initial protest, he couldn’t fight her anymore. Cassie tugged him to the door, lifted the latch, and let them in.
She had built the house herself, for herself, so Cassie hadn’t bothered with more than one room. She did have a bed, which she’d also built, and a down mattress, a luxury for which she’d traded labor, rabbit skins, and herbs for three months before she could afford it. Though Callum made straight for the bed, Cassie steered him towards a low stool by the banked fire instead and began stripping him of his clothes.
“You’re soaked. I’m not letting you ruin my mattress,” Cassie said.
Callum gazed at her blankly. Cassie wanted to fall face first onto her bed too, so she could sympathize with the dullness of his expression. She got his cloak, boots, and mail shirt off him without Callum making much more than a token protest, but as she reached around him to untuck his undershirt, her hand came into contact with something hard and metal at the small of his back.
“No.” Callum caught her hand in a strong grip, fully awake for the first time in hours.
Cassie and Callum gazed at each other for five seconds, suspended in a silent tug of war, and then Cassie sat back to allow Callum to pull out the gun himself. He held it loosely in his hand. Cassie was pretty sure his eyes weren’t really focusing, even though he’d reacted quickly when she reached for it.
“I’ll keep it safe,” she said, holding out her hand, palm up, and waiting for him to give it to her.
He studied her for another ten seconds and then nodded. “Okay.”
Cassie put the gun on a high shelf behind a box of herbs.
After that, he didn’t argue with her anymore. She took his shirt and pants, leaving him only braes—medieval underwear—and refrained from exclaiming holy crap, the man is cut! out loud.
“We’ll talk when you wake up,” she said instead.
Cassie got him off the stool and over to the bed. He lay down and she covered him with a blanket. Within five seconds, he’d closed his eyes and was breathing evenly.
Cassie gazed down at him, glad that he was covered because it seemed unfair to gape at him while he was asleep. He was tall and, to go along with his body, disconcertingly handsome. He had dark brown, close-cropped hair and the most regular features of any
man she’d seen outside of television. His hazel eyes were currently hidden, which was a good thing since earlier they’d looked at her with startling frankness. In the old world, women must have been lining up to be with him. Cassie wondered what girl he might have left behind.
She took a last look at him, making sure he was really asleep, though that didn’t seem much in doubt. She’d walked through the woods for half the night with him, and if he had been able to argue coherently or had any real ability to move about on his own volition, he wouldn’t have accepted her ministrations in the first place. His looks aside, the head wound was the first thing she was worried about. She’d tended it briefly in the ditch beside the road, but even with the flashlight held between her teeth, with the rain and the dark, she hadn’t been able to do much for him.
Cassie stirred the fire, which in her absence had died down to a few embers, got it going again, and set a pot of water over it. She didn’t have any antibiotic ointment, but at least she could clean and pack his wound. The herbs in the Middle Ages weren’t bad for healing and certainly were better than nothing. It was just that they weren’t as powerful and didn’t work as consistently as many manmade drugs. She’d gotten a good look at Callum’s body when she’d undressed him and he was otherwise whole, except for bruises and an old scar that looked like he’d once taken a bullet on his right side, high in his chest.
While she waited for the water to heat, Cassie went through Callum’s belongings. As far as she was concerned, they were past worrying about manners or privacy. She wasn’t going to wait until he was awake to find out more about him. She had a strange man in her bed. That was rare enough—okay, so rare it had never happened before—that she wasn’t going to trust him just because he was from the modern world. She needed to know as much about him as she could, preferably before he woke up and found her going through his clothes.
Cassie dumped the rest of the water out of his boots and set them close to the fire. Then she hung his shirt and pants on her clothesline and laid his armor across the table. It took up half of the space. Callum had been cognizant enough at the ambush site not to sheath his sword while it was still bloody, but Cassie unsheathed it again to make sure he’d dried it completely. The leather wrap for the hilt was butter soft, and gold filigree adorned the crossguard and pommel. Someone had paid a pretty penny for that sword.
Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) Page 6