“Hi, I’m Kaitlyn, I’m married to Young Magnus. We haven’t met yet...officially, but your name is Rory?” I used my blade to cut a piece of linen from the hem of my skirt. I folded it and pressed it on his wound. He winced and groaned in pain. I pressed and considered the first aid supplies in my bag — did I remember duct tape? I had joked about bringing it, but did I? His eyes opened and he looked around panicked. Blood was soaking through the cloth covering my hands. His eyes were wild, his lips and skin pale. He grabbed my wrist, tight. I tried using my calming voice. “That would make me your sister in a way because Magnus is...”
A dark shadow crossed over us — I turned — a soldier, his sword raised — swinging down at me. I screamed. Then Magnus was there, his sword swinging up, halting the blade, driving the soldier back, and chasing him with broad strokes and lunges until Magnus’s blade went through him. The guard dropped to the ground.
I had to remind myself to breathe.
I needed to get Lizbeth’s husband to the trees. I checked under the cloth. It was bleeding heavily. He was moaning and writhing. I hooked my hands under his shoulders, heaved him up, and dragged him across the ground. Drag, rest, heave again, drag, rest, with a lot of dramatic complaining for my part. “Wow, are you like a fucking giant?” Drag, rest, heave. “Maybe you’re only eating carbs? Is that what it is?” Heave, drag. “Goddamnit, seems like the forest was closer a second ago. Why the hell is it so far away now?”
One last drag and I collapsed on my butt. My eyes were drawn across the horribly violent battlefield to the castle. Up on the high wall a woman stood watching the battle below.
My hair raised as a chill crossed over my skin. She looked like Lady Mairead but it was a long distance. I couldn’t be sure. I pressed my hands back to the cloth on his wound. “You’re going to be okay because you’re Lizbeth’s husband. You have kids right? You’re a dad. You have to stay with me. I have some medicine I can probably...” I dropped my backpack to the ground and fumbled with the zipper.
All the while thinking, “It couldn’t have been Lady Mairead. I mean, it was her home, but Sean was held prisoner there — would she imprison her sons?” I needed both of my hands for this zipper. I ripped it open and rustled around inside of it.
I thought we were fighting Lord Delapointe, but was this battle really against Lady Mairead? Lizbeth’s husband clutched my hand. “Take care.”
With a gurgling noise his body stilled —
An arm grabbed me around the waist and lifted me from the ground.
Chapter 25
Kicking and screaming I was bodily thrown across the front of a horse, against the crotch of some strange man. With my head hanging down, my left arm was wrenched behind my back. My right wrist was gripped hard, a rope wrapped around it tight, and it was bound to my left wrist. I screamed and struggled. “It hurts! Stop! Please!”
A man’s voice above me yelled, “Hiye!” and the horse galloped, pummeling my stomach as I banged up and down against the animal’s shoulders. My cheek repeatedly banged against the man’s thigh.
“Please, who are you, where are you taking me?” Tears streamed from my eyes, up my forehead, following gravity, headed for the ground. “Please, it hurts,” I begged. I started to slide forward and a knee butted my forehead pushing me back.
Beside my horse was another, its legs a blur of motion — the only thing I could see besides the ground. Behind us, by the sound of the hooves, were at least three more. “Please.” My voice became a whisper, because there was no one who seemed to be listening, no one to beg. My voice was lost in the side of the beast.
We left the woods and raced across a field and then on and on and on until I lost my consciousness as a last resort.
Chapter 26
I woke up hours later laying in a heap, freezing, my hands still bound, my mouth in dirt, dirt in my mouth. Freaking dirt from 1702 in my mouth. I spit and raised my head to look around. A circle of five men crouched near a fire. One glanced my way and another man said something I didn’t understand. They all laughed.
“Where’s Magnus? Magnus Campbell? Who are you, and why am I here?” I wanted my voice to sound outraged but instead it sounded shaky and scared. “Where’s my husband? I’m married to Magnus Campbell — where is he? Are you taking me back to Balloch?”
They laughed more and continued on with their discussion.
More pressing I had to pee. It was all I could think about. “I have to go to the bathroom; I need my hands.” One guy glanced at me. He was a hulking dude, red-haired, fat-cheeked. His nose was red, pitted, and bulbous in all the wrong places.
He grumbled, tossed his plate of food on the ground, and lumbered toward me. He fiddled with my ropes, letting them fall to the ground. And shoved me, just to be a dick. My stomach muscles were so sore and my wrists were raw. “Where are we? I demand to know.” I stretched out my arms, man, that hurt.
One of the guys said something that sounded like, “Cally,” which wasn’t helpful at all. I tugged at my bodice for air and gave up making sense of my predicament because I really did have to urinate and I was going to go right there and then my legs would be wet and that would suck.
I strode to the edge of the clearing, crouched behind a tree and peed. After I peed I sat down and cried. I didn’t know where the hell I was — what I was doing here? How long had we been riding, was I kidnapped? Was that even a thing in 1702?
I checked the sheath at my waist. My knife was gone.
My backpack. Shit. It wasn’t on my back. I didn’t see it near, or on, or around the horses...
I took it off.
When I was pressing the cloth to Lizbeth’s husband’s shoulder, I took it off. Because it had been constricting my movement. Because I was going to look through it for duct tape.
I was the biggest dumbass in the world.
And it slammed into me — I was dead.
Completely.
Irretrievably.
How far had we traveled while I was passed out on the horse? In what direction? How would Magnus ever find me? In the pouch around my waist I had my phone. A pad of paper and a pen.
The red-haired man shuffled over and growled, “Get up, we have tae move.”
I pulled the knife from my bodice and pointed it at him from my place in the dirt. “Don’t come near me. You tell me where Magnus is, right now.”
He laughed, great big guffaws of laughter.
“What’s so funny you fucking monster?”
He shook his head. “You have just shown where ye keep your blade.”
“Oh yeah? Well... I might not be — you’re still an ugly monster. I’m calling you, McBulbous, because you have a stupid fucking nose.”
“Get up.”
When I refused to stand, he lifted me around my waist, tossed me over his shoulder, and carried me to the horse. I struggled, but my heart wasn’t really in it. This guy, McBulbous, he was in charge of me now. Because where would I run? Nowhere. This was it.
He threw me like a sack over the back of the horse again. “Please let me sit up, it hurts.”
He climbed behind me on the horse and said something I couldn’t understand to one of the other men.
“Are you trying to kill me?”
His arm grabbed me roughly and cartwheeled me up to a sitting position and then with jerks and yanks and painful grabs, he tied my hands together with a length of rope.
He was so gross. He smelled like a dog and his breath smelled like a constant belch and his arms were around me while we rode. I huddled, holding my elbows in, my head down, trying to be as small as possible so he wouldn’t touch any part of me. But I wasn’t fooling myself; McBulbous was literally right there, everywhere.
Hours passed and night was coming on.
The men led us into a valley. From the trail above I made out at least a dozen little thatched-roof shacks dotted around fields. Low stone walls weaved between the green patches of land. “Where are we?”
McBulbous grunted stinkin
g shit-breath on my neck.
We approached one of the larger houses and the men tied the horses to a fence near a stone wall. When I was ordered to drop to the ground. I refused. Instead I stared straight ahead.
McBulbous ordered me again, then yanked my arm pulling me from the horse. I screamed. Without my hands to break my fall my shoulder hit the ground, hard. Laying in the dirt I yelled, “You suck, you’re the biggest stupidest monster in the history of the world.” He grabbed me up by my elbow and shoved me inside the low door of the house.
The big large room was dark except for a low fire at one end. An old man, bent and gnarled, sat on a stool close beside the coals stirring something in a pot. He grunted when we walked in and seemed not to care about my presence at all.
My captors filled the room and sprawled all around on the floor. There was a pig in the room. Some chickens were scratching around too close to my feet.
It smelled like a barnyard. Like a barnyard where the farmer has stopped giving a shit kind of barnyard.
Our host spooned something gray from the pot into a clay bowl and thrust it towards one of the men.
The clay bowl was passed from man to man. It was refilled and passed again. They all ate from it, whatever that gray stuff was, and then finally it was passed to me. About a half cup of congealed gray something was at the bottom of the bowl. Some kind of grain mushed with milk, I hoped. It was cold and tasted disgusting but I was so freaking hungry and thirsty, so freaking thirsty. I shoveled the food into my mouth and licked the inside of the bowl.
The men seemed to think this was funny. One of them handed me a beer. I gulped it down, and groaned as the liquid filled my body. I wanted, needed another — to numb myself. I figured alcoholism might be the only way to survive this, but what was there to survive for? Life in the 1700s sucked, hard. Without Magnus I was better off dead.
The old man of the house passed through the room. “Help me.” I held out my bound wrists.
He kept his eyes averted and walked on by.
Then my captors ignored me.
It was probably safer that way. As ugly as McBulbous was, the other men were horrid looking. Dirty. Actually bloody. They stank. And dumbass McBulbous seemed like he was the smartest of the lot. He was the only one who seemed to know English.
I didn’t want to say anything. I kind of hoped they might forget about me, but the endless loop in my head — where was Magnus, where was Magnus, where am I, what was going on — was making me feel crazy.
Plus, I was so thirsty. “I need another beer.”
McBulbous, lying against the opposite wall, grunted. He passed a mug to me through three other men. One who took a long drink from it. I still drank it because what else could I be worried about anymore?
I raised my voice trying to sound courageous. “What happened to Young Magnus Campbell?”
McBulbous grunted, “Dead.”
I put my head down on my knees and cried for a long, long time.
The men spoke amongst themselves, laughing, disinterested.
I sniffled and interrupted them. “Where are you taking me?”
“Away.”
“I am Kaitlyn Campbell. I am the niece of the Earl of Breadalbane. My brother is Sean Campbell. My sister is Lizbeth Camp—”
“I know all this.” McBulbous waved me away as if I was insignificant. “Lady Mairead has told us.”
Oh.
“So be quiet, else we will make ye quiet.”
Chapter 27
I slept in a ball on the cold hard floor of a filthy cottage. By cold I meant fucking freezing. By filthy I meant the pig was wondering when the maid would show up. By hard I meant this was beyond what I was capable of surviving. The air was warmed by the breath and sweat and farts of so many disgusting pigs and real pigs that I wondered if I might pass out from the gas. Plus I needed to pee. My body was pissing me off. I was thirsty and needed to urinate at the same time. I needed to pee for about five hours by the time it was dawn enough for everyone to stand and eat some brittle bread. I was offered a small hunk. I chewed it down without anything to drink.
McBulbous untied my hands so I could use the bathroom, and I went and urinated in a field behind a rock wall. I scanned the horizon. Far away people dotted the fields. I considered yelling, “help!” but the wind was blowing towards me. There was no way they would hear me. And what farmer would interrupt his work and come running to fight five men because some Foreign woman yelled for help?
I could run, but McBulbous was about eight feet away.
I was forced onto the horse. We rode for a long way. An hour out I asked, “If Lady Mairead told you to take me — I still don’t understand where.”
“She said tae take ye tae Glasgow.”
“Is she paying you? Because if she is, my uncle, the Earl of Breadalbane, will pay more. I’m sure of it. If you’ll just take me to see him...”
“I will get paid after I leave ye in Glasgow. Or I can leave ye here by the side of the road and nae think on it a bit, but I am going this way, anyway. If ye keep running your mouth though, I will leave ye in a second.”
Oh.
I sat on the back of the horse as it walked its steady pace trying to decide if I was better off in the 18th century port city or an 18th century village? And how ‘better off’ was not a phrase I could apply to my life anymore.
I dozed, huddled over my aching sides, numb in every way. Until about twenty minutes later when I felt the first blasted, painful cramp of my period. It was beginning. My uterus saying, “Why hello Kaitlyn, remember me? I’ve decided to wring you out from the inside while you’re being people-trafficked in the eighteenth century. It will give you something else to focus on besides your eminent doom. And hey, maybe it’ll be so awful, like that time five months ago, that you’ll be begging for the end. Okay? Here goes—”
And oh god, it really, really sucked.
About forty minutes later I was crying. My guts were sloshing around while also crimping and burning, and I was running hot and cold, feverish. I whimpered trying to stay on top of the waves of pain.
I needed to go to the bathroom. I begged them to stop. Finally McBulbous all but threw me off the horse. I went crashing to the ground, tweaking my ankle pretty good. Shaking, I stumbled to the side of the road and the world went all dark in a tunnel around my vision like I might pass out while defecating. It hurt my stomach to hitch up my skirt and my legs were so weak I could barely hold myself in a crouch.
I found a giant leaf and used it to wipe myself. But I had nothing to stop the flow of my period down my white long underwear legs. My menstrual cup was in the backpack lying beside Lizbeth’s dying husband. Was it twenty feet away from my dying husband too? God. I had to get back there. I had to get to the bag. If Magnus’s body was there, maybe I could go back in time and save him before he died.
I was forced onto the horse again. I rode waves of pain. A bit later I began dry-heaving. It didn’t help. It kept getting worse and worse.
I collapsed on the neck of the horse in a state of semi-consciousness. My uterus felt like it wrenched around itself. I gagged and heaved some more and I guess McBulbous decided to take some pity on me. He spoke loudly to the other men and they all rode their horses off the trail into a field. He dropped off the horse and yanked me down, shrieking, to the cold ground. I decided I should probably just pass out. Wake up in two days when this was over.
I half-expected them to ride away, but they apparently decided it was a good time to take a break. There was a bit of sun. They sat ten feet away in the field, pulled food from their sacks, and ate without offering any to me. Not that I could have eaten.
They did talk about me as I swam in and out of consciousness. I saw them look over at me lying in the fetal position in the dirt. They went back to talking and ignoring me.
About an hour later they stood, stretched, and began gathering their things to ride some more. I sat up, trying to get control of myself. “How much farther is it?”
/> McBulbous grunted.
“I’m really thirsty.”
“Get on the horse. Or stay here. Is nae matter tae me. Ye would be unable tae survive the night, anyway. Twill be cold as a gravestone.”
I got on the horse.
We rode for hours, me crying, passing out, writhing, fitful, and broken-hearted. We were headed away, and I was lost. I couldn’t even think straight. I should’ve run away yesterday. As soon as I had the chance. I should have run, and now I was so far away that I would never get back. I didn’t even know how to ride a horse or survive a night or speak the language.
I realized the men were talking about me. I tried to pay attention — they seemed to be discussing what to do because I was such a pain in the ass. Apparently my captors were beginning to believe they would be better off if I was dead.
That’s how freaking dire my situation was.
And I couldn’t do anything but clutch at my stomach and groan as the horse bounced me up and down on its back.
It was growing colder and we had been riding for hours. I had no idea what the time was... or the day...
Ahead was a valley with a few scattered, low-slung houses. My teeth were chattering. I was so hungry and thirsty. Mostly thirsty.
“Please give me something to drink.”
McBulbous grunted angrily, rode our horse down the side of the trail, and stopped in a field. The men all dismounted and began urinating at the edge of the clearing. McBulbous reached up and yanked me from the horse. Even though he was doing this every single time I couldn’t figure out how to prepare, how to stop my fall. I crashed down on my shoulder again. I screamed up at him from the ground, “You are a fucking monster.”
“You have told me this afore.”
His shadow loomed over me, big and hulking. Scary. “Well, it's still true. You haven’t done one redeeming thing since I met you.” I pulled my tartan tighter around my shoulders. It was freezing out here. “Just an asshole. And I took history classes. We studied all the assholes throughout history and guess what? You’re proving yourself to be right up there at the top of the list. Biggest of all time.”
Warrior of My Own Page 9