At last they found a small pile beside their trail, still slightly warm, and hope began to stir in the hunters’ hungry bellies. The track led to a treeless outcropping, the granite slick and black underfoot. Dougal was surefooted as the wiliest of deer, but even he had trouble keeping his feet under him when they passed by the edge of a sheer cliff. Below they heard the rush of rapids, swollen by the beginnings of spring thaw.
Glenna led, creeping away from the precipice, her gaze rapt. When she stopped, so did Dougal, ignoring the urge to tug affectionately on the single flaxen braid falling down her back. Instead, he followed her line of vision and caught sight of the deer.
The beast stood no more than twenty feet away, upwind from where Dougal and Glenna stood, almost hidden among the skeletons of leafless trees. Young, with only two small points to his antlers, the buck had plainly eaten even more poorly than Dougal and Glenna lately. The angled mounds of his shoulder bones protruded under the mangy coat, the hard prominence of his rib cage was clearly visible, his round black nose was dry, and his neck arched with a distant memory of health.
The deer’s long lips flapped at small piles of unmelted snow as if hoping to find some trace of sustenance buried within. Dougal slowly reached behind his back to slide his bow from his shoulder, but Glenna was there first. Silent as the cloudless sky, she had already nocked the arrow, a look of fierce concentration claiming her expression. Her shoulders were taut, strong right arm hitched back, fingers hooked on the string. She squinted, closing her left eye and focusing on the target. Dougal’s gaze flickered from her to the deer, heard the almost imperceptible twang of the release, then the subtle thud as the arrow struck home.
The sorry buck collapsed, half into the mud, half into the porous crystals of a black-crusted snowdrift. The beast lay still, without even one jerking muscle. Clean through the heart, then. Her skill always impressed Dougal. He’d never seen her miss.
Glenna shrugged. “Poor fellow did better by my arrow than he might have by other means.”
“True enough,” Dougal said, nodding. “He was starvin’ worse than we are.”
She shouldered her bow and they walked toward the motionless brown shape. Halfway there, Dougal stopped short, startled by an unfamiliar click! from within the trees. Glenna stood still beside him and glanced inquiringly up. He peered through the woods around them, but saw nothing move. He supposed it could have just been a lump of melted snow crashing through the brittle limbs.
“Ye heard nothin’?” he asked.
She shrugged again. “No.”
Slightly reassured, he nodded and unsheathed his dirk, then went to gather up the deer. He crouched beside the animal’s mangy coat and rested his fingers on the neck, feeling for a pulse, finding none. He tugged the arrow from the animal’s side, absently noting the weak resistance of the heart muscles as it released. Glenna’s aim was absolutely perfect, he thought, smiling to himself.
Dougal swiped the broad arrowhead against his breeks, cleaning the blood from its tip, then straightened, handing the arrow to Glenna. But what he saw in her expression froze the blood in his veins. The sun was sinking, its pale orange rays surrounding her like a halo. She stood stiff as rock, save the rapid flit of her eyes.
Behind and beside her stood five red-coated soldiers, faces partially hidden by the open-mouthed barrels of their muskets. The soldiers looked almost as scruffy as did they, but were much better armed. Dougal stood to his full height so that he towered over them, and took a protective step toward Glenna.
The muskets immediately transferred their attention onto him as was his intent. Dougal looked at Glenna, trying to hold her eyes on his. She was trembling, her eyes wild with panic.
This will be fine, his expression tried to tell her. We will be all right.
A shudder ran through her and Dougal knew she saw again the life they had escaped back at Tilbury, a decade ago.
I’m here. I’ll keep ye safe, he tried to tell her, but she looked away.
She knew. Just like his brothers had on that bloody April morning. He had assured them they would live, and they had died. They had known despite what he’d said, but he’d said it anyway.
“This here’s the king’s property,” announced one soldier, jerking Dougal’s gaze from Glenna. “And you’ll be coming with us as well.”
“Why’s that?” Dougal asked.
“You’re poachers, you are.”
“No’ poachers,” Dougal replied, folding his arms across his chest. “This land isna English, ’tis still Scotland, the last time I checked, and—” He stopped abruptly, feeling foolish. Of course it was English. There was no Scotland anymore.
“Good of you to feed the king li’ this,” another soldier said, stooping to lift the slack-jawed head of the deer. He examined the slender neck, then dropped the head to the dirt. “His Majesty’s army is hungry.” He grinned, showing dark, tobacco-stained teeth, which would shortly be tearing into Glenna’s catch.
Dougal wasn’t sure what to do. They were plainly outnumbered. He had to protect Glenna. Fortunately, the soldiers solved his dilemma when one of the soldiers grabbed at her, attempting to cup her chin in his hand. Dougal lunged at him without thinking, grabbed the man, and rolled him to the ground. He slugged the soldier’s face and heard the fine jawbone crack under his fist. He pulled his arm back to strike again but hunched forward when a boot connected with his kidney. Rolling off the first soldier, who now lay moaning and gripping his face in the mud behind him, Dougal seized the offending boot and yanked the second man to the ground. They rolled over each other, sliding down the slippery granite floor, grasping at any kind of purchase while still concentrating on the fight.
The soldier managed to slam his fist into Dougal’s nose, hard enough that his head snapped back on his neck. For a moment he saw stars and a wave of nausea caught in his belly. He gasped in air and forced himself back to the fight, but by now the soldier had climbed on top of him and was pressing the long barrel of his musket across Dougal’s throat, leaning hard so that there was no more air to grab. Stars began to reemerge in his vision.
“Dougal!” Glenna screamed.
He couldn’t see her, but he heard her terror, and from that he garnered enough strength to roll his legs under the man’s belly and kick up, sending him flying. Grasping at his throat and wheezing hard, Dougal struggled to his knees, forcing the bruised muscles to open, to allow in air. He took a moment to glance toward Glenna and saw two soldiers had her arms pinned behind her back. For the time being they weren’t hurting her, only watching Dougal battle the other three. She struggled against them, but she wasn’t going anywhere.
They couldn’t go back to prison. Couldn’t. It would kill her, and quite possibly kill him as well. He couldn’t allow it.
The stunned soldier had gotten back to his feet and returned to Dougal. One hand clenched the hilt of a light English sword, tarnished blade almost black in the fading light. The other hand was an angry fist. The soldier’s eyes flickered to just behind Dougal’s head and a smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
“Dougal!” Glenna shrieked, this time with urgency. Dougal’s blade was halfway out of its sheath when everything went black.
CHAPTER 20
After the Fall
When he awoke, his body was screaming for air. Solid weight held him down, a strangling pressure, crushing his chest. His heart leapt into action, pumping panic through his system, forcing fire from his lungs. He clawed through the force, trying not to see the lights that danced in the darkness behind his eyes. So close, so close—he burst through the surface of the freezing river, gasping, sputtering, inhaling every bit of air he could find.
And then he was under again, his feet flailing beneath him, kicking out, searching for something solid. They were numb and it took a great effort to make them kick, to make his arms paddle.
The river took pity and shoved him up just long enough so he could scrabble around, gasping, trying to fix his position. Harsh white fo
am hit the rocks on the edge of the river, like spit on sharp black teeth. Twenty feet away, now fifteen, closer, closer . . .
The water sucked at him, dragging him under, popping him up again, carrying him downstream and building speed. Dougal was helpless, riding the current, grabbing ineffectively at boulders that poked through the shallower sections. He was weakening, losing the battle to stay afloat. But his hands and feet took over, grasping for rocks, searching for the stony bed of the stream.
He felt a jarring impact of granite against his knee, the edge slicing deeply enough the pain cut through the numbness. He grabbed for the sharp edge, felt the slick rock slip through his fingers. His arm reached for the brief opportunity and the rock dug into his chest. The current shoved at him again, pulverising his grip on the rock, forcing him to let go, and his body was suddenly flying through the water, floating, then sinking, floating again, drawing closer to the inevitable drop of the approaching falls.
Dougal’s mind calmly informed him that the falls would kill him. The bottom was, more than likely, lined by more boulders, their edges whittled to blades by centuries of relentless water. But there was nothing he could do. His body spun as the current grew more urgent, so that his legs went first and he stared helplessly over his toes. His feet rose straight up, as if his body were a plank of pine, up and over his head. Then the water closed over him, and for the first time in his life, Dougal gave up.
CHAPTER 21
Existing in the Dark
What tied him down? His hands were bound—no. They weren’t bound. They weren’t held at all, but heavy, numb with cold, weighted by his own defeat. Slowly, slowly, awareness began to bloom in his waterlogged mind, like a seeping wound onto linen.
He didn’t move at first, keeping his eyes closed while he tried to locate his limbs. One arm extended over his head, as if he raised it in greeting. The other was pinned beneath him, squeezed by a collection of various-sized rocks, most of them rounded by age. And his legs, well, they were there, somewhere, though he felt no evidence of them.
The cold. He had to move. If he stayed in this frigid river, he would be dead before nightfall. He pried open his eyes, but it felt like a foreign act, as if he’d never opened them in his life. His lids were swollen, banged, and bruised. He tried again, urging the light to come, disregarding the sensation of scraping sand over his eyes until finally he could see his surroundings.
He lay on his side and saw he had landed, by some trick of God, with his face angled off a flat rock, like a pillow. And because of that rock, he thought, he was alive.
Huh. Was that a good thing or bad?
The back of his head was splashed repeatedly by waves. Concentrating hard on controlling the limbs he couldn’t feel, he pushed with his lower arm, finding balance with his hand, then shoved upward, needing to get his head out of the water. The moment he did, his brain exploded, firing flames through the backs of his eyes and ears, stealing sound from his mouth. Farther down, his neck seized into a vicious cramp, holding him hostage until he was able to wiggle out of it. He lowered his waving hand from above his head and reached for the spot where the pain seemed to start. Gingerly, he touched the large, hard swelling pressing up from under his hair. When he pulled his hand away, his palm was bloody. At least the cold water would keep down the swelling. But that bump. How had he—
In a breath it came rushing back: the fight, the soldier’s grin, Glenna’s cry—oh, Glenna!
Get out o’ the water, clumsy eegit, he told himself and began to drag his body through the boulders, toward the promise of dry spring grass. As he pulled, twisting his body in whatever direction it needed to go, he became aware of other injuries, most likely cuts and bruises suffered during his fall, but also his throbbing nose from the earlier fight. The lump behind his neck was a constant dagger sunken through his brain.
He slithered from the water, barely registering how the boulders tapered off, becoming smaller rocks, then pebbles, scraping his belly. His fingertips were raw, leaving a watery trail of blood as he passed, but he hardly noticed. Instead, he cringed as blood poured back into his numbed feet, howled as surges of liquid fire burned through the sleeping limbs.
He dragged himself four or five feet beyond the reach of the river, then stopped and let his cheek fall onto the pebbles. He shook from the cold, sweating from exertion and pain, and his eyes burned, begging to close again. So he let them. What did it matter where he was, or what might happen? Why had God even brought him through this ordeal? He wished He hadn’t.
Because Dougal wanted to die. In his mind he saw the soldiers with Glenna, saw how her expression must have appeared as they heaved his senseless body over the edge. She was no longer a girl in boy’s clothing, but a beautiful, vital woman, now prisoner to five soldiers.
“God, Glenna,” he moaned.
Something in his chest caught fire, a pulsing burn that forced tears from his eyes. The sobs came from deep within, rocking his frame, shuddering through his torn chest and bruised throat. I’m here. I’ll keep ye safe, he had tried to tell her. And she had looked away. She had known even then he would let her down. That he would allow the enemy to take her, as they had taken everyone else in his life. His mother and father, brothers, friends . . . Everyone he had sworn to protect was gone. Assurances and promises made and broken, that’s all he had brought to this world.
But for some reason, he was still alive. Somewhere in his memory his mother told him, “There is a reason for everythin’, my lad. There is a reason you are here.” He could think of only one reason. With the life he still had, he would find Glenna. She could still be alive, and he was the only person on earth who cared enough to save her.
Dougal needed to get warm. He would be useless to Glenna if he froze to death. He patted the soaked sheath at his side, relieved his dirk had miraculously remained with him throughout the wet journey, then eased up onto his feet. Wobbling slightly, he aimed for the sparse forest twenty feet away.
Lighting a fire was second nature to Dougal. First he had to find a protected area where he could sleep if he hoped to survive the night. Not so much from animals, because he knew the slightest noise would wake him. No, predators were not a big threat. But the frigid water that had soaked into his bones, the winter air that threatened to freeze him from the outside in, that was a problem. He found a small clearing fenced by fallen trees, and knelt on the cold, wet ground. Shaking so hard he couldn’t yet control his individual fingers, he made his hands into shovels and scooped together a small nest of rocks. He laid strips of birch bark on top, then added a handful of curled, dry moss he’d pulled off a tree. Then he went in search of a fire starter.
Near the base of another birch tree grew a strange white fungus, protruding like a horse’s hoof from the papery bark. Dougal cut off a large chunk with his dirk and managed to control his hands enough that he could curl back the tough outer layer, revealing its ochre-coloured flesh. He stretched the inner part of the fungus over a boulder, then struck it hard with the handle of his dirk until the flesh began to flatten under his blows. The skin of his knuckles, already split from the earlier conflict, opened again. Before long, fresh blood painted spidery trails over the thick bones of his wrist. But the movement was welcome to Dougal, despite the pain. He needed to feel as if he were accomplishing something again. As if he were alive. The repetitive pounding woke the rest of his blood as well, stoking heat in the veins that had cooled in the river.
He hammered the belly of the fungus into a flat strip with the consistency of leather, then tore it down the middle and gently scraped it with his knife so the tiny fibres curled into a soft tangle. He pressed the material flat on a small granite rock with his thumb, letting the frayed edge extend over the corner, then struck the rock with the back of his dirk blade again and again. Bright orange sparks shot into the air until at last a tiny ember caught onto the hairs of the flattened fungus.
Dougal puffed gently on the light, encouraging it, giving it enough strength that when he
held it against the small nest of dried moss and bark, it finally lit. Tentative tongues of heat licked the tinder. Dougal crouched as low as he could, breathing life into the flames and gradually feeding twigs into the fire.
His face glowing golden in the flames, he held his fingers as close to the fire as he could, then did the same with his feet. When at last he was warm, when the quaking throughout his body had ceased, he cut down a few small branches and laid them over his body, hoping for any possible insulation. Eventually, curled tightly into a ball, Dougal drifted to sleep.
He rarely saw his dreams. But on this night, lying in the moment between sleep and wakefulness, he saw his mother’s face as he’d last seen it, lined by years on the farm, bravely set in a smile as she saw her men off to battle. What of her? Did she yet live? Did she wonder what had happened to them all?
In his dream he searched for a way home, a way to the life that once was clean and clear and fragrant with heather. His laughter rolled through his brain along with that of his brothers, his mother and father. And the sweet, sweet giggles of Glenna. She was there, too. They laughed and danced—then all at once were gone and he sat alone in a black corner of their home, hearing nothing but the sound of his heart.
And from within the cracked shell of his dream he heard a familiar voice. It was calm, sweet, almost teasing, and it seemed to pass through his mother’s lips, though her image had disappeared with the others.
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