by Mariah Stone
Muireach let out a long sigh. “Aye. Ye’re right. But it will be more difficult for us to get out of the castle with me. Guards ken I’m the warden and needed here day and night. Why would I suddenly leave in the middle of the night? They’ll smell a foul play like vultures smell carrion.”
“I wilna leave without ye, man,” Owen said. “We’ll think of something.”
Muireach grunted and continued saddling the third horse. When it was ready, they walked back out into the night. Amber’s long, strong legs brushed against him as he helped her mount. She looked at the horse as though it were a kelpie, but she didn’t say anything. Mayhap she didn’t know how to ride, which wasn’t surprising, considering she was from the future. Amy grew up on a farm and could ride, but Kate, Ian’s woman, had learned to ride here.
“Everything all right, lass?” Owen said, his hand still on her ankle. “Ye can ride, canna ye?”
“Yep. Yep.”
“We’ll go slowly until we reach the forest. Then I’ll take ye on my horse. I dinna want yer wounds to reopen from hard riding. We dinna want ye to bleed again.”
“Okay. I’ll try not to bleed to death.”
Muireach and Owen mounted, and they slowly rode down the hill. They passed the castle buildings, the dark palisade, and went into the outer yard. The thatched houses were quiet until a dog barked a couple of times from somewhere. Owen put one hand on his sword, but the night fell quiet again, the only noise the soft thumps of the horses’ hooves against dry dirt.
Finally, walls as tall as mountains stood before them. The gatehouse had two square towers on either side that loomed over them and seemed to support the black sky. The small windows on the first floor were illuminated from the inside with the golden glow of torches. Owen wondered how many sentinels were up there.
He glanced up and cleared his throat. He needed to do his best impersonation of an English accent. “Open the gates!” he called.
Someone appeared in the window. “Who goes there?”
“William and I have been sent to accompany Muireach on a mission from the commander,” he said.
Owen was a good singer and could mimic people well, but he could hear his accent slipping.
The dark figure was silent for a moment. “But the commander left. He never said anything about letting anyone else out.”
Owen almost said, aye, but stopped himself. “Yes. But he gave me the mission before he had to go. Open the gates. We must make haste.”
“Why must Muireach go? He never leaves the castle.”
“It’s none of your concern,” Owen said angrily.
“It is. He’s a Scot.”
Owen gritted his teeth. “One of the Bruce’s men was caught in Caerlaverock. Muireach knows him and must confirm his identity.”
The guard grunted. “Wait there.”
The guard moved from the window, and Owen saw two shadows on the wall. The man was probably talking it through with another guard.
Owen rubbed the back of his neck. The skin around his eyes tightened as he peered into the darkness trying to see what was going on upstairs. His gut stiff, he exchanged a glance with Amber, who sat like a log and held the reins like they were her last hope.
The shadows in the window disappeared, and after a while, two guards came out of the tower. One of them looked at Owen. Now that the soldier was closer, he could probably see Owen’s injured eye and the bruise. Amber turned her face a little to the side and bowed her head. Sweat tickled down Owen’s back.
“Got in a fight, I see?” the guard said.
Owen chuckled. “Some people cannot keep their mouths shut when they’ve had a few mugs of ale.”
The guard nodded, looked at Amber, and frowned. “I don’t recognize you. William, is it? Are you new?”
“New, yes,” she said, doing her best to make her voice sound hoarse and English. “Friend, we must away.”
“All right, all right.”
The guard finally stepped back, and the two of them proceeded to the gates, lifted three heavy bars, and pulled the gates open.
Owen inhaled deeply and then let out a long breath. There it was, freedom, right in the darkness between those giant, impenetrable doors.
He urged his horse forward gently. He’d send it into a gallop if he could, be he’d promised Amber they’d go slowly. He heard the other horses moving behind him, and his heart thumped in his chest as he listened for any signs of pursuit.
The forest was getting closer. The moon came out from behind the clouds, and he saw the woods before him like a black, frozen sea. Not long now. He looked back. Even in the darkness, he could see Amber’s wide eye and her erect posture. Her horse snorted and shook its head. Amber was making it nervous.
“Just a little longer, lass,” Owen said.
“Stop them!” someone cried from the castle. There was the rumble of horse hooves and Owen saw the dark shadows of three…four…five riders galloping down the slope from the gates.
His skin chilled. “Quick!” he yelled. “Forward!”
Muireach’s horse darted forward.
“How?” Amber cried. “How do I make it gallop?”
Damn, she really didn’t know how to ride a horse. “Spur it on with your heels in its sides!”
The riders were approaching, but he couldn’t leave her alone.
“Come, Amber! Do it.”
She dug her heels into the horse’s sides and it neighed, reared, and dashed forward. Owen followed.
They approached the woods, but the riders were right behind them. Amber rode first, her horse flying now. She didn’t have any control over it. Please dinna throw Amber off.
He spurred his horse on, allowing it to gallop faster. But the guards were already catching up. Muireach slowed his horse down and came level with Owen.
“I’ll hinder them. Ye and Amber go on.”
“What? Nae!”
“Aye. ’Tis how I fight for Scotland’s freedom. The Bruce must ken about the ambush at the Pass of Brander. ’Tis how he can get rid of the MacDougalls and win this war.”
“Nae, Muireach! We can all escape, the three of us.”
“Goodbye, Owen Cambel. For Scotland!” He unsheathed his sword, turned his horse, and galloped back towards the riders.
“Stop!” Owen called.
Owen was torn between needing to save Amber and wanting to get Muireach back. But the older man was already too far away. If Owen turned back now, he’d lose sight of Amber, and who knew where her horse would take her, or if it would throw her off its back.
“Damn it, Muireach!” Owen cursed under his breath as his throat tightened painfully and nausea rose in his stomach.
The man had made his choice. And he was right. Owen needed to get the information about the Pass of Brander to the Bruce. It wasn’t about his freedom anymore. It was about Scotland’s.
He glanced back for the last time. Muireach had stopped three of them. One already lay on the ground, and two were fighting him. Two more riders still chasing after Owen and Amber. But they’d slowed down when Muireach attacked and were far behind now. Owen and Amber had a good chance of losing them.
He needed to catch up with Amber, so he spurred the horse on, leaning close to its mane in an attempt to fuse with its sleek body and dissolve in the wind.
Chapter 13
Black trees flashed against the dark-gray night, branches hitting her face, grazing her skin, and tearing her clothes.
Amber prayed. Please, don’t let me die. Please, let all this be a dream…
The last time Amber had prayed like this was when she’d found Bryan in a pool of blood in his barracks in Afghanistan.
That night, she’d prayed for it all to be a nightmare. That life wouldn’t fade from his eyes as she held him. That the bullet wound was just a prank—something he’d decided in his drunken brain would be hilarious.
He whimpered as she held him. “Shh,” she said, stroking the side of his head. His blue eyes were wide and held hers. “I’
ll call the medics, you just hold on, okay, Bryan?” She took her phone out, but he grasped her hand with his bloody fingers.
“Listen to me, babe… Major Jackson did this.”
Amber frowned and shook her head. She’d always known there was something strange about Major Jackson. The aura of all-consuming power around him, gossip on the base that he held poker nights and always won. Pretty much the whole base owed him money. When they were still in a relationship, Bryan had started weekly outings with Jackson to a teahouse in Kabul called Aman Safar. That was also around the time he became more and more irritable and started being rougher and rougher with her.
Yes, she knew Jackson was a bad man to mess with, but shooting an officer? And yet she could picture it. Jackson, all tall, square-jawed, with shoulders as broad as a tank, with a gun pointing at Bryan.
“Why?” she said through a clenched throat.
“He smuggles Afghani drugs into the US. I helped him because I owed him a lot of money. He owned me. But I just couldn’t live with it any longer. Just imagining how many Americans became drug addicts because of me… The guilt was eating me alive. I said I’d report him if he didn’t stop. I have proof… Aman Safar…” He swallowed hard. He was so pale. “He’ll be back soon. Run and hide, Amber. Run and hide…”
And then he stilled, and his body went slack against her. His eyes glazed over, and she knew he was gone. Run and hide, were his last words.
And that was what she’d done. Instead of standing up and fighting him. Instead of making sure the drug-smuggling bastard was behind bars.
The thunder of hooves rumbling next to her dragged her out of her memories.
“Dinna fash, lass,” Owen called, and relief flooded her in a warm wave. “Just hold on a wee bit longer. They think we’re going north to Inverlochy. We’ll go east to lose them. It’ll all be over soon enough.”
She was afraid if she moved the wrong way, she’d lose her balance and fall, so she nodded without looking at Owen. She had no idea what she was doing, and it felt like all that stood between life and death were her fists clenched in the poor horse’s rough mane.
Owen took her reins, and by some miracle, both horses turned right and continued their wild ride to the east. Amber didn’t know how long they went on like that. An eternity, surely.
Finally, the horses slowed down. The horse was wet with sweat and smelled like salt air mixed with freshly cut wood.
“I think she’s tired,” Amber called to Owen.
He was still riding by her side.
“Aye. Mine, too. They’ve galloped a long way.”
The horses slowed to a walk, and Amber breathed heavily with the animal.
“God, I can’t believe this is over,” she said.
They cleared the woods and rode over rolling hills, silver in the moonlight. “Aye. See there?” He pointed somewhere between the hills and Amber saw dark dots and squares. “A village or a small town. We may be able to sleep in an inn tonight.”
Amber exhaled. An inn sounded like heaven. She craved a bed and a shower, which wasn’t possible, of course. But if there was a bath…
“Really?” she said. “Are you sure they won’t find us here?”
“’Tis verra difficult to find tracks at night, and they’ll think we’re heading north.” His face darkened. “Thanks to Muireach, there are just two men after us. ’Tis unlikely they’ll find us tonight. They’ll have more men on the morrow, but we’ll be far away by then. And we’ll be much more careful.”
Amber’s gut squeezed at the thought of Muireach and his brave decision to stay and fight so she and Owen could escape.
“Maybe he managed to get away,” she offered, although she realized the hope of that was minimal.
“Mayhap,” Owen said, his tone suggesting he didn’t hold out much hope for that, either.
Amber’s chest tightened. Still, it was good to talk, to get distracted from the fact that by some miracle, she was still on the horse. Now that the animal walked calmly down the hill, it was much easier to hold on. They were approaching a village, and it looked bigger than they had initially thought.
“How do you think they found out we were gone in the first place?” she said.
“Mayhap someone saw the dead guards. Or mayhap the mad English prisoner cried bloody murder.”
“I can’t believe we’re out of there. I can’t believe I’m alive.” She looked back, but the dark forest behind them was quiet.
Owen threw an amused glance at her. “Ye’ve never ridden a horse, have ye?”
She bit her upper lip. “Nope. In the future, most people don’t.”
“Why didna ye say anything?”
“I didn’t want to slow us down.”
“Ye dinna lack courage, lass.”
Amber chuckled. His compliment spread through her veins like warm honey, but a voice deep inside her reminded her he was wrong. If she really had courage, she would have chosen to stay and face Major Jackson and the charges against her. She’d have looked for ways to prove her innocence and to put him behind bars for murder and drug smuggling. But the system had let her down, and she didn’t have any faith in it.
“I wish you were right,” she said. “Unfortunately, all I’ve been doing recently is running away. Nothing courageous about that.”
“Sometimes ’tis all ye can do.”
She gave a sound of acknowledgment. He was right, of course. Why was he suddenly so wise?
When they reached the village, it was quiet and dark. The shutters on the windows of the thatched-roof houses were closed. Horses’ hooves thumped softly against the dirt road. Cowsheds and chicken pens stood here and there. They passed by a blacksmith’s workshop, a shoemaker… Amber scanned the medieval village with a tightness in her gut, her senses heightened as she looked for signs of the soldiers pursuing them. Finally, they saw a two-story building with a pole and a branch with leaves attached at its end.
“’Tis the sign for a tavern,” Owen said.
They stopped by the inn, and Owen dismounted and tied the horses to a stand next to a trough. Both animals drank thirstily. Owen came to stand by her horse, his hair seeming silver in the moonlight. In his medieval tunic and with a sword at his hip, he looked like a prince from a fairy tale. Except his dark and intense gaze screamed rogue.
“Let me help ye come down, lass.” He stretched out his hands.
Carefully, with her legs shaking, Amber moved one leg over the horse’s back and slid down the saddle into the safe haven of his arms. It occurred to her how she went to him without hesitation. His scent enveloped her—the earthy, salty aroma of the horse, and his own manly musk.
His eyes were gray in the eerie light of the night, smoldering, captivating her in a trance. They promised a happily ever after wrapped in a damn good night, sinful and naughty and free.
His lips were right before her, just an inch away. He looked at her mouth like all the happiness of the world was on her lips.
“I heard the horses,” a voice said, and they both glanced in the direction of the inn. A man in his fifties stood there dressed in a long tunic, his bare legs glowing white. He had a barrel of a stomach, and a night cap on his balding head. “Do ye need a room?”
Owen gently let Amber go and stepped back from her. Cold air chilled where his arms and chest has been pressed against her, and she longed for that kind of proximity.
“Yes,” Owen said with an English accent. Right. They were still dressed as Englishmen, and this area was probably occupied by the English, so they needed to keep up the pretense for a while longer. “We need a room, dinner, and a bath. We rode hard on the king’s business and long for a good night’s sleep—whatever is left of the night.”
There’d been a money pouch on one of the guard’s belts, so they had something to pay with.
“Aye.” The innkeeper’s gaze lingered on Amber, and she lowered her head to hide her face. She was still wearing the helm, and her hair was hidden under it, but what if a lock or two go
t out?
“Come with me,” said the innkeeper.
They went through the hall on the ground floor, passing a bar, tables, and benches. The space smelled like old food and stale alcohol. On the first floor, several doors led to rooms. Theirs was small but homey and smelled like fresh linens, woodsmoke, and lavender. A large fireplace with fire dancing in it gave the room a warm, golden glow. A large bed stood at the far end, as well as a bath that looked more like a giant, wooden barrel. It appeared clean enough, and Amber’s muscles ached when she saw the bed.
“Ye two don’t mind sharing the bed? We dinna have another room free,” the innkeeper asked as Owen eyed the bed as though it were a lion he needed to hunt with his bare hands.
Owen cleared his throat. “That will do.”
“Hot water is coming. For dinner, I have stew and some bread, cheese, and apples. Ale, mayhap?”
Owen nodded, and the innkeeper left the room. Amber couldn’t wait a minute longer. She went straight to the bed and fell on it. After days of lying on the hard, cold bench, it felt like falling into a cloud.
She moaned as her aching muscles relaxed. The lacerations on her back stung a little in a pleasant, healing way, and she didn’t mind.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Is this stuffed with feathers? Whoever invented a mattress is a genius.”
Owen chuckled. “Only noblemen sleep on feather mattresses. This must be simply wool.”
There was a knock on the door, and a young woman entered with two clay bowls of stew, a loaf of bread, a small pot of butter, and a piece of cheese. She put the food on a round table in the corner of the room together with a wooden jug of ale and two clay cups. With a curious glance in Amber’s direction, she left.
“Come,” Owen said. “Eat, lass. Ye need to eat.”
“After everything that happened tonight, I’m not really hungry.”
She removed the helm, and set it aside. Her scalp ached deliciously from the freedom. Her muscles throbbed all over, and dried sweat covered every inch of her body.