“Bears?” the man asked.
They all laughed.
“Go on wi' ye,” the first man said playfully. “Here. Take a wee brand if yer worried. Just dinnae set the woods on fire.”
He passed the man a brand, and then stoked the fire. The sparks flew and he poked it more vigorously, scattering the ashes. Chrissie prayed she wouldn't sneeze. She didn't.
The man who needed to leak, as he put it, set off. He chose a path that led almost directly past her. Chrissie lay still. She held her breath. Her heart was racing. This group could not be from Lochlann, or they would know there were no bears in this part of the woods. Chrissie lay there while the man stoked the fire and the other man walked past.
“Achoo!”
A man sneezed, and the man beside her jumped. Having been thrown off balance, he slipped and fell. On top of her.
Chrissie screamed.
“Wha...” the man shouted himself, then paused. “A lass!”
“No!” Chrissie sobbed. “No. Please!”
The man had grabbed her round the waist, and now he turned her over, staring into her face.
“By, she's bonny,” he said, slurring the words. His face was a picture of lust, and Chrissie felt her insides turn to water with sheer terror. It was such a look of threat that she wanted to run. She tried to run.
“No. Please. Help! Let me go...”
She struggled and almost got to her feet, but he was too strong and too heavy. She tried to stand and her ankle hurt so badly that she collapsed, hissing, tears streaking her face.
“Whoa, lass.” The man was still holding her, but he seemed more uncomfortable now.
“Please, let me go!” Chrissie said, her voice desperate. “I'm lost and hurt. Please don't hurt me.”
The man looked into her eyes. The lust was still there, and Chrissie despaired to see it. However, with it was something else. Shame and kindness.
“Come on, lass,” he whispered urgently. “Run.”
“Whist!” a voice called from the group. “What've you found? A lass?”
Chrissie's heart sank. Another man had appeared on the margin of the trees, bearing a brand like the one her companion held. He stared at her, as if to ask why she was not running, and made a shooing motion with his hands.
“Go. Go!”
“I can't!” Her ankle ached and there was no way she could put enough weight on it to walk, never mind run.
“Whoa, there, Keith!” the man whistled. “You got a beauty. Bring her here!”
“She cannae walk,” the man explained, looking desperate. “She's noble stock...say something!” he said to Chrissie urgently.
“Hello?” Chrissie said feeling suddenly stupid. Why had she chosen to say something so inanely polite in the middle of a dangerous situation?
“Ooh!” The man exclaimed. This man had a broad face, eyes wide and, if slightly brighter than the man who stumbled on her, then also slightly harder. Chrissie quailed. “Ooh! Keith. Dinnae keep this one for yersel'! You rude bastard. Bring her here so's we can all share.”
“No!” Chrissie screamed. She launched herself to her feet, groaning as her ankle creaked and sent a pain like a burn through her leg. She raised the foot and hopped three paces, then crashed down as she tripped. She screamed. She clawed her way along the ground. The man ran after her, grabbing the neck of her gown from behind, hauling her up with one hand.
“No!” Chrissie screamed again.
“No!” The man – Keith – said urgently. “Bruce, no. She's a noblewoman. Gently born. Perhaps she...perhaps she knows sommat, like.”
Chrissie looked at him gratefully. Her captor stared, eyes narrowing.
“Well, then,” he said, addressing her savior. “If she's a noblewoman, as you say, then let's find out what she knows. Up!”
He dragged Chrissie to her feet. She let out a scream as the weight went onto her broken ankle, and Keith protested.
“I'll carry her, sir. She's hurtin' sorely.”
The second man, evidently the boss, looked at him oddly. “Fine,” he said decidedly, stepping back so that Chrissie slumped suddenly, falling over again to sit on the pine needles.
“I'm sorry,” Keith whispered. Chrissie bit her lip.
“It's no' your fault.”
He looked miserable, shaking his head. His eyes were damp, Chrissie noticed, and she felt touched by his care. He lifted her up and he carried her towards the fire, behind her captor.
In the circle of soldiers, Chrissie looked blankly away into the forest. Opposite her, the leader settled himself on his haunches and stared at her.
“So,” he said quietly. “My man says you're a lady.” The men all chuckled and Chrissie winced. “Prove it.”
Chrissie swallowed. “I will, if you let me go.”
They all laughed.
“That depends on who you are. Tell me!” His face was suddenly inches from hers, his eyes narrow, the scent of his breath in her nostrils. Chrissie pulled back, feeling petrified. She closed her eyes, trying to think.
“I'm Chrissie Connolly,” she said at last, feeling desperate. She hoped that would either mean something to them – enough to keep her safe – or not. Which could, if they were enemies of Lochlann, be no bad thing.
The men began talking. Evidently there was some debate going on about what that meant and who she was. Chrissie strained to catch what was being said, but the dialect they spoke was slightly different to the one she was used to, and she had to try hard to understand it.
“...she's no' from the castle.”
“Whist, man! Course she is. Lochlann's her home. Sure it is.”
“Bruce's a fool. Should ask her...”
“Quiet!”
Bruce had evidently got some idea of what was being said, especially as it regarded himself, and he brought all their attention back on him where he sat at the end of the clearing, arms folded.
“Miss Connolly,” he said, making a parody of courtesy that made her cringe, “where do you come from? Tell us.”
“From the castle,” she said. She had no idea if that was the right answer or not, only that her protector seemed to think noble status could save her. She hoped so.
Everyone fell silent.
“You're certain of that?” the leader asked quietly.
Chrissie would have found that amusing had it not been quite so terrifying. Of course she knew where she came from! “Yes,” she said firmly.
“Well, then,” the man said, and he sounded almost disappointed. “That makes things different. You're coming with us.”
Chrissie stared at him. “What?” she asked. “No. Wait. Please! I don't understand...”However, they were already lifting her. Chrissie found herself thrown over the back of a horse, head dangling, a man mounted behind her. She screamed, struggled, and kicked, but the man slapped her, hard, and she lay silent.
As they set off through the forest, the embers smoldering behind, Chrissie closed her eyes and prayed. She was out of the cold, it was true, and she was going somewhere. However, she didn't know where.
As the ride began, jarring, jolting, and bumpy, Chrissie felt herself start to lose consciousness from the cold and the terror. Her last thought as she passed out was I wonder if Blaine will ever know what happened.
She prayed that he would.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FINDING TRACES
FINDING TRACES
Blaine rode through the woods, his horse, Bert, panting under him. He knew he was pushing too hard, but he could not stop. Could not wait. He had to find her. Had to find her now.
“Chrissie!” he shouted desperately. “Chrissie.”
He knew it was foolish to waste energy calling out, but shouting her name was a war cry. It drove him onward when he would have stopped. His back ached from riding and his feet had gone numb with cold. He knew Bert was exhausted and he knew it was stupid, being out here in the woods at night, alone.
I should have waited, gathered a party of guardsmen, and sent
them out in all directions. He had no reason, besides a hunch and the fact that he had seen Chrissie ride this way before, to think she had gone east.
“I'm a numb skull,” he told himself angrily. Reproaching himself didn't help matters, so Blaine took to swearing quietly under his breath, trying to keep his spirits up.
“These woods are shite at night,” he informed Bert quietly. “All these roots and tree branches and slippery needles and...What is that?”
He stopped. Something was coming through the trees. Whatever it was, it was running hard and fast. He could hear its feet drumming on the hard, dry ground. He whistled under his breath, terror holding him upright.
It didn't sound like a wolf. It wasn't a bear. It didn't sound like a human: No one he had ever heard ran that fast. It could be a deer. Or a boar. Or a...
A horse. It was running, wild eyed and snorting, tail streaming on the night cold, hooves beating the silent pine needles. It was a bay horse, tall and slim legged. A Jennet, a small, delicate, compact horse, the sort of horse ladies rode.
“Oh, my Heavens...” Blaine stared. “Princess?”
It was Chrissie's horse. The sight filled him with terror. He knew the name Chrissie had given her new Jennet, because he had teased her about it once, calling it silly. Chrissie had been offended and they had fought, then he had felt guilty. He was relieved for the silly incident now, for it made him remember the name.
“Princess! Whoa!” he called out loudly.
The horse heard him, for she turned and stared, snorting wildly. It was her. She knew her name.
“Hey, whist, then.” Blaine whispered gently. “'Tis well. It's me. Blaine. You're safe. Hush.”
The horse stopped running and stood where she was. She stood panting, head hanging down, looking at her feet, breath heaving into her aching lungs after the run. Blaine waited. The last thing he needed to do was frighten her away. He studied her, trying desperately to see if there was any indication of where she had come from, or of how she came to be out here on her own, riderless.
Where is Chrissie? A thousand terrifying scenes ran through his mind. Chrissie, thrown from her horse, lying somewhere with broken bones, freezing slowly in the cold. Chrissie, attacked by robbers or raiders, pulled from her saddle in an ambush, taken somewhere far away. Chrissie, attacked by wolves...
“Princess,” he whispered again. His own horse stood mercifully still and he slipped off as lightly as he could manage, landing soundlessly on feet numb with cold. Princess, thank Heaven, stayed where she was.
“Hush, then,” he coaxed. “Hey, Princess. It's safe. It's me. We can go home.” He reached up to her bridle. “Where is she, Princess?” he asked, wishing she could answer. The horse stayed where she was, regarding him with a sidelong look.
Blaine went to search for clues. He noticed that Princess seemed unharmed. That, at least, suggested that no wolves had attacked the pair. He looked down at her legs. Felt them. If they were swollen and hot, she had probably been running hard for a long time. They were warm, but not inflamed.
“Well, then,” he said aloud, thinking as he ran a hand down to her hooves, searching for clues. “She can't be far. But was she there, where Princess came from?” he sighed. He was suddenly hit with inspiration, and he checked her hooves. If she had muddy feet, they had probably been on the moorlands, which lay perhaps a quarter mile away.
“Yes,” he whispered, feeling a tiny sense of triumph. Her hooves were muddy, and the mud had only recently dried. She must have been on the moors perhaps half an hour ago. “Did you lose Chrissie out there, eh?” he whispered.
Taking a guess that Chrissie might have been thrown – the saddle was in place, so she had not slipped off from a too loose girth – he decided to walk through the forest to the edge.
He mounted his own horse, keeping hold of the reins of Princess so she followed them. She seemed relieved to see known faces.
“If she's been out there for half an hour, she must almost be dead of cold by now,” Blaine muttered. He was terrified. If she was there, perhaps injured, she must be freezing. That was if wolves had not found her already. Or outlaws. Blaine was not religious, but he found himself praying for her safety.
I have to reach her soon.
He was riding through the woods, agitated and alert, when he found the fire. The horses smelled it first, or he would have seen nothing.
“A fire, eh?” he asked, as Bert sniffed and Princess stopped where she was, rolling her eyes, agitated. “Let's see?”
Blaine walked over, his boots quiet in the leaves. He crouched at the fire, feeling it. It was still warm, the coals glowing.
“This hasn't been alone for long,” he decided. He looked around. There was a depression in the leaf mold near him, where it looked as if a man had sat. He walked around, trying to make sense of things. Someone had taken a brand from the fire, he noted, for it lay where it was in the leaf mold, still smoldering. He stamped it out. As he bent down to check it was cool, he noticed something.
The pine needles were disturbed here, stirred about as if there had been someone lying here. Or two people. There was the sign of some sort of activity – broken twigs, a sapling and some bracken recently trampled. There, a boot print. A very small one.
A lady's boot print?
Fearing he was clutching at straws, feeling his heart flip in his chest, Blaine searched the clearing. He was almost giving up when he found a strand of hair. Raven hair.
“She was here,” he whispered aloud. Which was terrifying. Whoever had been here – outlaws, poachers, border reivers – they had taken her with them.
He looked about, heart pounding, until he found it. Horse manure and tracks. Lots of them.
“They had their horses here,” he said aloud, looking around. He could see the ground was disturbed at the end of the clearing, and in the mud there he found the tracks went west. Back towards Lochlann.
“Blast,” he swore. If they had gone that way, they could be anywhere now. His only reason for believing he could find them was that the fire was still warm. They had not been gone long.
Praying that he could still find them, Blaine mounted his horse. Leading her horse, riding almost blind along the path left by their horses, he headed through the forest and back out onto the moors, almost the same way he had just come.
As he rode, Blaine thought of her. Chrissie, her lips against his. Laughing in the sunlight. Smiling at him in that way that made his heart flip over and soar like a bird.
“Please,” he whispered to the night, praying she could hear him. “Please, be safe.”
Whether she cared for him, whether she would ever marry him, whether his dreams ever came true, did not really matter in that moment. All he wanted was that she would be alive, well, and safe. That sometimes, in the future, he would see her, see her smile, and hear her laugh, even from a distance.
“You make my world more beautiful, just by being alive,” he whispered to the darkness, suddenly knowing it to be true. “Please, Chrissie. Please. Please be safe.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AT THE FORT
AT THE FORT
The light bit into Chrissie's eyelids and made her head hurt. She winced and made a small moan of pain. It stayed where it was, orange and pulsing, and so she risked opening her eyes.
The light was lamplight. Chrissie was suddenly fully awake, terrified. She was on a horse, she remembered that now. She remembered why. She was a captive of whatever soldiers had been lurking in the woods. Now she was, it seemed, in a fortress.
“...and it's about time you were back!” someone shouted. Chrissie cringed, but realized they were not shouting at her, rather at the man who held her over his horse. Bruce, her captor.
“Took time through the woods,” the man said, sounding bitter. He evidently did not like to be shouted at. “An' good thing, too. Look what we found.”
“What? You found a lass. Great,” the man said sarcastically. “Try telling that one to Black Leonard.”<
br />
“I'll tell him,” the man said quietly. “And he'll be pleased to hear it. This is a prisoner.”
“You don't need to tell me that,” the man said with a soft laugh. “I can see that for meself.”
Chrissie felt a stab of anger. She was cold, tired, and in pain. That did not mean she was inhuman, or that she could be subjected to such remarks. She stiffened.
“I am Chrissie Connolly,” she said, praying that meant something. “I demand to see whoever commands this fortress.”
Both men were silent for a while. Further down the tunnel, Chrissie could hear men unsaddling their horses, unpacking, and generally settling down. At length, the second man spoke.
“Aye, lass. Ye'll see him alright.”
Chrissie swallowed. Now that she had said it, she was not at all sure that was what she wanted. Who was Black Leonard, and why would he be angry?
“Where are we?” she asked.
The first man, the one who held her captive, made a nasty attempt at laughter. “Why should we tell you that?”
Chrissie was silent. The man was a bully, clearly, and there was not going to be any reasoning with his kind. All she could do was pray that whoever was in charge here at the fort was more reasonable and would understand her predicament. She really was nobody, just a woman, alone, wounded, and vulnerable, caught on her own in the woods at night. She was no threat to anyone.
“Please, just take me inside?” she tried. “It's cold in here.”
Both men chuckled.
“Aye, lass,” the newcomer said, and strangely he did not sound entirely unkind. “It is. Bring her up.”
Grumbling under his breath, Bruce dismounted. He lifted Chrissie from the saddle, throwing her over his shoulder in a way that drove the breath from her body, and carried her across the stone tunnel, following the first man. They reached a door.
“Sean!”
“Yes, boss?”
“Unsaddle my horse. I've got business indoors.”
“Aye, Bruce.”
With that, the door opened and the two men walked inside, Chrissie with them. She looked around.
The Highland Hero (Lairds of Dunkeld Series) (A Medieval Scottish Romance Story) Page 9