by Laurin Wittig - Guardians Of The Targe 02 - Highlander Avenged
SCOTIA PLUNGED DOWN the ben just as dusk was beginning to fall, following Myles, a castle guard not much older than herself who had been assigned to the caves. They ran as fast as they dared through the forest. She knew they were getting close to the warriors’ camp when she started to hear the quiet hur-er of a tawny owl, the signal the clan used when they did not wish to reveal their positions. Myles responded in kind and no one stopped them.
As they skidded to a stop in the middle of a copse of trees, she saw a few tents, but little else. A scream built within her that someone should be standing guard, that someone should do something to stop this nightmare that had engulfed all of them, but she could not draw enough breath to speak, never mind yell.
“Scotia? Myles? What is it?”
She whirled to find Duncan, her childhood protector, now advisor to the chief, striding toward her from out of the wood. The relief that sliced through her at the sight of his familiar face made her knees weak and for a moment she wanted to throw herself into his strong arms and let him shelter her from all the pain that surrounded her, that pushed in on her until she thought she might collapse from the sheer weight of her grief.
But Duncan, who had been so sweet to her as a child, would now just chide her for acting like a wean and she’d not give him that satisfaction. Not now. Not ever again. She’d been through too much these last few weeks to ever let anyone hurt her again.
And yet her heart was aching with fear.
Nicholas, Rowan, and, it seemed, every warrior of the clan gathered around Scotia and Myles.
“Jeanette and Malcolm are missing,” she said as calmly as her labored breathing would allow. “They left the glen this morning to gather heather for mattresses. When they didn’t come back, I went in search of them.”
“By yourself?” Rowan interrupted.
“Nay”—she waved a hand toward Myles. “We tracked Jeanette and Malcolm.” She glanced at Duncan, who had once taught her such skills when he was learning them himself. His simple nod of acknowledgment steadied her more than it should have, but not enough. “We found their baskets not far from the shieling, but not them. We went to the shieling and found their tracks again, but from the look of the boot marks in the dirt, soldiers were there, too. We could not find them, nor any sign of them, anywhere after that. We need men to search for them.” With each word her voice rose, panic forcing through in spite of her need to hide it.
“Could you tell in what direction the English had gone when they left the shieling?” Nicholas asked Scotia.
“Nay. The grass was well trod from a path in the wood,” Myles answered, “but we could not find any trace of the English after just a short way down the path, nor of Jeanette and Malcolm.”
Nicholas scowled at the young guard. Scotia knew he had yet to forgive Myles for locking him up in a bothy when it was first revealed that Nicholas was a spy for the English. He had not forgiven Myles, even though it was Uilliam who had put him there; even though it was Uilliam who had then punched him for being a spy.
“Peigi made me bring him along,” Scotia said.
“You are sure your sister was not hiding in the wood?” Duncan asked her. “Did you call out for them?”
“I searched,” she said, letting her irritation at his doubt lend sharp edges to her words. “I did not call out, in case there were English close enough to hear. I am not daft, you ken?”
“I ken that,” Duncan said with a small shake of his head. He turned his attention to Nicholas. “I can start the search from the shieling. Perhaps I can pick up a trail Scotia and Myles did not see.”
“By the time you make it there, you’ll not be able to see much in the dark,” Nicholas said, “and torchlight will only make you a target if there are English still in the area.”
Duncan stilled beside Scotia, then looked over at her. “He is right.” He drummed his fingers against his thighs. Scotia found the familiar gesture of Duncan’s frustration—something she seemed to cause often—oddly calming. “I will head out at false dawn,” Duncan said. “’Twill give me enough light to get to the shielings by and I shall be ready to track them once there is enough daylight.”
“But they need help now!” Scotia glared at Duncan and Nicholas. They would dally when her sister was in danger?
“There is naught to be done right now. Malcolm is with her, aye?” Nicholas asked.
“He was. There is no guaranteeing he stayed with her. He could be a spy like you, Nicholas, for all we ken.” Her words failed to provoke him the way she hoped they would.
“I shall head out early, Scotia,” Duncan said, reprimand in his tone, even as the hand he rested on her arm was gentle and reassuring. “ ’Tis the best we can do. Malcolm will keep her safe. I’m sure of it and of him, even if you are not.”
Scotia bit her lip to keep from lashing out at his condescending words. He knew not what it felt like to have his family taken from him one by one. She would see her sister found—for now that was the most important thing. If Malcolm did not keep her safe, his life was forfeit, and this time it would be Scotia, not her father or any other man, who would take justice into her own hands.
CHAPTER TEN
THE PINK AND purple fingers of dawn were visible here and there through the leaves of the trees, but the light had not yet grown strong enough to penetrate the darkness beneath them. Malcolm could not remember the last time he had been so tired, or so determined. He would get Jeanette back to her kin safely, if it took the last ounce of strength and stamina he had.
And he was pretty close to the last of his strength. They both were.
“Are we getting close to the castle, angel?” he asked quietly. He had his good arm wrapped around her waist, supporting her as much as he was able. She was lucky that she had not hurt herself badly when she fell, but even a slight injury grew in pain when not taken care of, and they had not had the time, nor the materials needed, to take care of the scrapes she had sustained.
She did not take her eyes off the ground in front of them as she carefully set her feet, one after the other, on the trail they followed.
“It should be just a little farther. If we had walked along the shore of the loch, we would be there already.” Her voice was thick with what he knew must be a potent mix of exhaustion, pain, and hunger. He would give anything to be able to pick her up and carry her back to her home, but his arm would not support her weight. They had debated taking the easier, but more exposed, route once they had found their way within sight of the loch, but both agreed a careful route through the cover of the forest would be wiser, though they would have to be diligent about leaving as little trail behind as possible, which slowed them down even more.
Just then the forest opened up, as if a curtain had been drawn away from a window, and the castle wall loomed ahead of them. The gate was closed, though truly it could not make a difference with part of the curtain wall a pile of rubble and the inhabitants all gone into hiding. They stopped in the cover of the trees and waited.
Jeanette looked around and finally gave a strange hur-er sound. Almost immediately they heard the sounds of what must be several men dropping from their watch posts in the trees behind them, but just in case, Malcolm pushed Jeanette behind him and drew his dirk.
“ ’Tisn’t necessary, Malcolm,” she said, but her own voice was an almost silent whisper and he knew that she was as on edge as he.
“Jeanette?” A familiar voice came from the shadows.
“Aye, and Malcolm MacKenzie.” She stepped from behind Malcolm to stand next to him.
The lanky form of Alastair MacAlpin, Peigi’s grandson, stepped into the light. “Why are you here?”
“That is for us to discuss with Nicholas and Rowan,” she said, “but we do not ken where the warriors are camped.” Two other lads, too old to be weans, but yet too young to be men, came up behind Alastair, their dirks drawn.
/> “Stand down,” Alastair said. He glanced at the lads behind him. “I must take them to the camp. Spread out a bit more so you can watch my area as well as your own.” The two nodded, sheathed their dirks, and melted back into the wood.
“How far?” Malcolm asked.
Alastair considered Malcolm, then looked at Jeanette. “Not far. Can you walk some more, mistress?”
Jeanette nodded but Malcolm could see even that was an effort for her. The lass needed sleep, a good meal, and her scrapes and cuts tended, as did he, but they would both have to wait a while longer.
The lad set a steady pace, but not too fast, and Malcolm brought up the rear, determination the only thing keeping him alert. Fortunately, Alastair was true to his word, and it was not long before Malcolm heard the same call Jeanette had used. They walked a few more minutes and came to a stop in the midst of trees and bracken that looked nothing like a camp and everything like the rest of the wood they had been traversing. Alastair gave a shrill whistle and suddenly they were surrounded by the MacAlpin warriors Malcolm had seen at the castle, with their swords drawn.
“Where are Rowan and Nicholas?” Jeanette asked. “We need to speak with them immediately.”
“There is no one following them.” The voice came from behind Malcolm and though he did not recognize it, he would lay odds it was one of the lads Alastair had sent back to resume their watch. He nodded in appreciation for the caution the clan took.
“Uilliam? I ken you are there,” Jeanette said as she turned to look around her. Her voice was stronger than Malcolm expected. “Take us to them.” It was not a request, but a command spoken by someone used to having her instructions followed, and it was a side of Jeanette he had not yet seen.
The great black-haired bear of a man he’d met in the castle separated himself from the deep shadows of the forest. “Back to yer posts, lads,” he said to the warriors, even as he was glaring at Malcolm, his eyes squinting and his face grim. “Come with me,” he said to both of them.
“Rowan! Nicholas!” Uilliam yelled as they came within sight of a less-densely-treed area with a few tents set up in the space between trees. “They are safe!” He held up a hand toward Jeanette and Malcolm as Rowan and Scotia burst out of the largest of the tents set right in the middle of the campsite. Nicholas came running from the far side of the camp and young Myles rose from where he’d been sitting with his back against a tree, not far from Rowan’s tent.
“Why are you here?” Scotia demanded even as she swept her sister into a fierce embrace, forcing Malcolm to step out of the way. “You were supposed to return to the caves!”
Rowan hugged both of them.
“Scotia thought you two had been captured by English soldiers,” Nicholas said as he joined them.
“We nearly were,” Malcolm said. “How did you ken that?” he asked Scotia.
The lass scowled at him as she stood between Jeanette and Rowan, her arms looped around both women’s waists as if she needed to touch them, to hang on to them. “When you did not return by midafternoon, Myles and I went in search of you. We could see where you had been harvesting heather—”
Malcolm saw Jeanette’s pale cheeks pinken even as he tried to suppress the shot of desire that hit him, in spite of his fatigue, at the mention of their trysting place.
“—Then found your tracks again at the edge of the shieling. ’Twas clear English soldiers had been there and you were nowhere to be found, so I thought . . .” Scotia swallowed hard and blinked fast, pulling her cousin and her sister closer. “I will not lose anyone else,” she said, the momentary weakness now replaced by a glittering hardness in her eyes and a determined set to her chin.
“We escaped their notice,” Jeanette said, hugging Scotia tight. “In fact, we followed them in the hopes of learning something of use.” Her face turned colder than Malcolm had ever thought it could. The lass was as fiercely protective of her clan as he was of his.
“Nicholas,” she said, “the bastard Sassenach that Malcolm and I encountered on the ben is acting as scout for them.”
“So there are more, as Scotia reported,” Uilliam said as he joined the group.
“Six, at least that’s how many we saw,” Malcolm said. “We cannot say if there are more, for we were forced to break off our trailing them.”
Uilliam tugged on his beard and gave Malcolm a harsh look. “Nicholas,” he said, “we need to send word to Duncan to return.”
Nicholas nodded. “Myles, Alastair: Duncan headed for the shieling to try to pick up their tracks. Retrieve him and his party quickly, but carefully lest the English are about again this day.”
“Duncan is looking for us?” Jeanette asked, looking down at Scotia as if she suspected the girl had sent him on an errand.
“He is. His tracking skills are better than anyone else’s, including mine and Myles’s. I made him promise he would find you.”
“What happened to you?” Nicholas asked.
“ ’Tis a long story, with little good news to come out of it,” Jeanette said, with a brief glance at Malcolm. She lifted her skirts just enough to show her scraped-up ankle and shin. “I would have this seen to, and we both need a meal, while we will tell you all that we have learned.”
“Come, Cousin. I will see to you. You”—Rowan pointed at Scotia—“fetch what’s left of the morning meal to my tent. The rest of you, join us there anon.” With that, she took Jeanette from Scotia’s embrace and led her to the large tent in the middle of the camp.
“You should not have given in to the lassie’s daft notion of following the English,” Uilliam snarled at him, his eyes sparking like flints.
Malcolm pushed his hair out of his face and, trying to ignore his fatigue, turned to face the man square on. “It seemed the best thing to do. I did not ken how far we would have to follow them, nor that we would not be entirely successful.”
Uilliam’s shaggy head lowered and his eyes narrowed to slits. “If they had caught her, hurt her—”
“I would have killed them, or died trying,” Malcolm replied, and knew suddenly that he would indeed give his life to keep Jeanette MacAlpin safe.
IT WASN’T LONG before they all reassembled in the chief’s tent and Malcolm was grateful to find Jeanette sitting on a small bench next to Rowan, an empty porridge bowl balanced on her lap.
“No sign of Duncan yet?” Nicholas asked Uilliam, as Scotia handed Malcolm a bowl of his own.
“Nay, but the man is quick on his feet, he may have gotten farther up the ben than we expected before the lads could catch up to him. I’ve sent word to Peigi that these three”—he nodded at Jeanette, Scotia, who had taken her seat on the bench, too, and Malcolm—“are safely with us.”
Nicholas nodded. “We will start without Duncan, then.” He looked from Malcolm to Jeanette and back. “Will you tell us why the two of you spent the night in the wood?”
Malcolm wasn’t pleased with the man’s tone, but then again, he had managed to return Jeanette to her kin in less-than-perfect health. He would be unhappy should someone else have returned her in a like state. Quickly he explained how they had come to discover the English scouting party, saying only that they had been sheltering from the rain when it interrupted their harvesting of the heather for Peigi’s mattress, and leaving out the more personal activities they had enjoyed in between those events.
“We were still following them at a distance when it grew quite dark. We were tired, trying to follow the trail in spite of the darkness. Jeanette tripped on a tree root and the noise drew the attention of the scouting party. We were able to hide in the bracken, thanks mostly to the darkness and Jeanette’s stoic nature.” He smiled at her and was rewarded with a quiet smile in return.
“We had to wait there while they searched for us,” she said, taking up the story. “They had only sent two back to see what the noise was, and they were none too happy about it
. I think they must have been as tired and hungry as we were.”
“Why is that?” Nicholas asked.
“They were grumbling about spending the whole day traipsing up and down a mountain,” Jeanette said. “They said ’twas a waste of time when they’d already found a perfectly suitable location for the men who would soon arrive to wipe out that ‘bastard traitor spy and his witch.’”
To Nicholas’s credit, Malcolm could see the ire that rose in the man. He was not as cool and detached as he seemed after all.
“Is that all they said?” Nicholas asked.
“Aye,” Malcolm answered. “They said nothing else, but they tarried nearby for so long, any lingering twilight had been extinguished and we could not go anywhere—”
“Except to extricate ourselves from the brambles,” Jeanette interjected.
“Aye, except for that, until the moon rose, which was hardly an hour before dawn. Once we could see, we made our way slowly to the castle, and then here.”
“Kenneth will not like it that you spent a night unchaperoned with his daughter, instead of continuing following the English,” Uilliam said, tugging hard on his beard.
“He will not, but we need not tell him, either,” Jeanette said. “And it was not as you would imply, Uilliam. We were damp from the earlier rain, cold. We had been traveling almost the entire day without rest or food, and it was too dark to follow anyone. We kept each other warm, nothing more, and when the light came we decided together ’twas best if we found this camp in the hope Duncan would be here. He is far more skilled at tracking than we are. He should be sent to finish what we started.”
As if summoned, Duncan slipped through the tent flaps at that moment, joining the gathering just in time to hear his name.
“I am happy to hear you two are safe,” he said, smiling at Jeanette and slapping Malcolm hard on the back. “Who am I to track now?” he asked.