Highland Warrior

by McCollum, Heather

  The large jug that they had carefully cracked in half was lowered inside. Under the edge of the grass, Harriett split it open. Joshua smelled the rank seal beneath them, the soil, and the herbs scattered over them. Harriett lowered one half of the clay vessel over his face, blocking out the sound of the sea birds overhead. The wind was muted, as were the voices around them. The first toss of dirt onto his targe sounded loud, a hollow thud that almost made him jerk upright in defense. Kára squeezed his hand hard at the macabre sound of them being buried alive. He might have nightmares, too.

  Joshua turned his thoughts from the dirt piling up over his legs and chest to the fact that Dishington would try to make certain he was dead. He had his arms left unwrapped under the outer blanket and targe in case he had to punch his way up out of the soil to save them. Kára had opted for the same. Did Dishington believe her to be dead? Or would he try to make certain she was truly a corpse, too?

  Bloody hell. This ridiculous plan had too many parts that could go foking wrong. He had anticipated Robert and Patrick would believe the farce because they wanted to. Patrick could brag that he had killed the Horseman of War and Robert would not risk infection to verify it. The killing would feed Patrick’s conceit, and the disease would feed Robert’s fear. But John Dishington wanted Joshua to be alive and cared little about disease, living his life by walking the thin line of victory and death as a mercenary. Of course, he was not fooled. But what would he do about it?

  …

  Kára concentrated on breathing evenly as the weight of the dirt pressed in on her. Osk had pulled out all the heavy rocks, but the soil itself was heavy after several inches. Their faces, under the pottery jug, would be last to be covered, giving them as much air as possible.

  Slow breaths. Birds flying in a blue sky. Wide open moors covered with purple thistle and bluebells. The scenes were to keep her calm, but with each drop of dirt, her breath stuttered, threatening to make her gasp. Instead, she squeezed Joshua’s hand, and he squeezed back, his thumb rubbing against her own the smallest amount that the encasing dirt would allow. Could the dirt grow heavy enough to crush her chest? Of course it could, but they would fight their way out before that happened if Osk didn’t shovel it off fast enough. The thought made her heart thump faster, which made her pull in a fast couple of breaths before she caught herself.

  Tears leaked out of her eyes, sliding down the sides of her face. Amma would be angry if she smeared the white paste with them. The thought made her smile there under the pottery in the dark, cold grave.

  Joshua squeezed her fingers again, and she returned it gently. One squeeze only. They had worked out the signals beforehand. Three squeezes in rapid succession meant that they needed to get out fast. It was her key to unlock this hell if she felt like she couldn’t breathe or bear the press of death anymore.

  “I promise I will uncover you soon.” Kára heard Osk’s voice outside the pottery covering her face right before the sound of dirt falling on it startled her. Soil, cold and grainy, filled the narrow space between the pot and the blanket covering her body. Chills raced up and down Kára, and she fought to keep calm. She squeezed Joshua’s hand. Once, just once, although she nearly panicked and squeezed many times rapidly.

  Summer breezes. Beams of sun sparkling on the white caps in the ocean. She remembered Geir’s smile and how it made him look years younger, almost like her unbreeched lad again. Joshua… Joshua… The sparkle in his light blue eyes when he teased her. His luscious mouth that gave so generously. How he taught Geir to throw a dagger and slowly won the respect of Osk and even Amma. How he was sacrificing his honor to…save her people? No. Amma was right. He could have helped her people and traveled on, saving his clan by staying away from his brother. To go through this play, this horrible farce, that made him look like the failure that The Brute pronounced over their grave, Joshua was doing more than saving her people and his clan— He was creating a way that he could go home and be with her there.

  He squeezed her hand again, and she returned the pressure. At the same time her heart squeezed with the realization that he was willing to be buried alive with her so they could be together in his home. Together. Joshua. I love you.

  She sucked in air, probably too much, and swallowed past the lump in her throat. More tears leaked out of her closed eyes, sliding down like a river to her temples. I love you. Why hadn’t she told him before this? What if something went wrong, and they died without her telling him? I need to tell him.

  The dirt stopped falling, and the weight of the inches over them held her firmly stuck in the ground. Planted in darkness, encased in cold. The need to stretch and move pulsed through her. How much longer? How much longer before she could feel the breeze once more and look into Joshua’s face and tell him what she’d discovered? Long minutes continued as she concentrated on even breaths. When would it be safe enough for Osk and Calder to start uncovering them?

  A voice above, a deep rumble, and the earth above her pressed down harder. She sucked in the air under the jug as she felt a crushing weight. Next to her, Joshua squeezed her hand. Once. Twice. Thrice.

  …

  Dishington was above him. Joshua knew it, his instincts fully alert. They’d been buried for a slow count of nine hundred, which should be about fifteen minutes. Their air would run out soon, but that was not the current threat.

  After giving Kára the signal that they’d be coming out, he pulled his hand through the heavy soil. He would not be able to press the targe up with all that weight on him, not from a supine position. He had calculated that it would weigh about three hundred pounds, and he could not get his legs under him. Nay, he must punch up through the soil first.

  A yell came from above. Pressure thrust down across his chest as his targe radiated a strike against it, making him inhale. The tip of a blade pricked the skin of his chest under the layers of wool wrappings. Dishington meant to stab him in his grave.

  It was time for the dead to rise!

  He moved his hand that lay between Kára and him, but it was his right hand that he’d kept bent, his fist ready as Osk and Calder had finished their burying, leaving only several inches of soil over his fist.

  For a second, he felt a tug across his chest, a lessening of pressure, as Dishington fought to yank his sword free of the targe and what he likely hoped was Joshua’s bleeding body. With the next tug, Joshua punched his fist up through the soil. The movement of wind touched his knuckles. With all his strength, he moved upward, all his muscles struggling to lift. He shifted his knees up and down, dislodging the soil. His other hand reached the jug at his face and punched up through the crumbly loose earth.

  “Bloody foking hell!” Dishington’s voice penetrated the thinning soil as he tried again to yank the tip of his sword free of Joshua’s targe and the soil over it. It became a race. The liberation of his sword against Joshua’s rising, with deadly force, from the grave. It was a game of survival for both him and Kára, and Joshua would use every weapon he had to win.

  Joshua whipped off the broken pottery from his face, using all his abdominal muscles to lift his torso up through the soil that Osk and Calder had left as loose as they could. Where were they?

  He sucked in refreshingly cold air. Kára was rising, too, beside him, but Dishington was focused on Joshua. In the flickering glow of a lantern set several grave markers over, Joshua could see the widening of Dishington’s eyes as the dirt fell away from him. Dishington yanked once more, and his sword slid free. He stumbled backward.

  Ignoring the grime caking his mouth, Joshua’s voice rang out with the power of the legend upon which he’d been raised. “Then another horse came out,” he said, moving his legs to loosen the earth still entrapping him. “A fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other.”

  “Shite!” Dishington yelled. “Hold your foking tongue!”

  Lowering his fi
st back into the dirt, Joshua grabbed the hilt of his sword, sliding it up and out of the earth. “To him was given a large sword,” he bellowed and lifted the sword up into the air as if it, too, rose from the grave by God’s hand.

  Dishington’s eyes opened even wider, and he raised his own sword.

  “And with this large sword,” Joshua continued, using all his might to break free of the loosened dirt, “I have come back from the grave with vengeance against those who show no honor. I have come for ye, John Dishington.”

  The ominous words, resounding in the chilled wind, from someone breaking out of a grave in the middle of the night, were enough to make Dishington hesitate. Even if logically he knew the whole spectacle was a farce, the combined elements fed the fears owned by every mortal man. He took another step back, which gave Joshua enough time to pull his legs free of his earthen shackles.

  Muscles aching from the pressure and cold, Joshua called on his fury to heat his blood. “Ye dare to strike against God’s messenger,” Joshua declared, his voice thundering as he leaped from the shallow grave, striding slowly toward his adversary.

  Off to the side, he glanced at Calder and Osk tied up against the chapel, Osk bent over unconscious while Calder struggled in his ropes, a gag in his mouth. But no one else was about as Joshua stalked after the grisly man who seemed to have recovered from his unease.

  “Lying bastard,” Dishington said and surged forward, his sword point out as if he were jousting. Joshua held himself ready to deflect it. At the last second, Dishington tripped, flying forward with the force of his run. Eyes and mouth opening wide, he hurtled directly into Joshua’s sword point. Shock and pain molded his face into a death mask, and he crumpled to the trampled grass.

  “I hope it is a painful trip to Hell,” Joshua said, wiping an arm over his face to rid his eyes of grit. He spit out more grime.

  “Joshua.”

  Joshua spun around to see Kára struggling to free herself completely of the dirt. The glow that the lantern cast across the stone markers, along with her rising from the grave, was indeed a sight to make a grown man hesitate. Joshua hurried over, cupping his hands to shovel off the layers weighting her legs and reached under her arms to slide her out. “Kára. Are ye hurt?”

  “I… Joshua… I…” Kára could not seem to catch her breath. “You need to know.”

  Wiping at her face with his thumbs, she caught his hands, looking up into his face. “Under the ground I realized…” She reached up, catching his face in her hands. He could feel her trembling. “I…I need you to know… If one of us died without you knowing…”

  “Aye, lass?” he prompted, catching her hands with his.

  Behind him, someone spit. “God’s bones, you two, set us free,” Calder called, followed by a low moan from Osk.

  Kára dropped her hand, her gaze sliding past him. “Oh God,” she whispered and hurried past him. “Where is Amma?” She crouched, yanking free her dagger, to saw at their ties. Joshua glanced at the unmoving body of Dishington and followed her, drawing his own sgian dubh to help.

  “Back at the tavern waiting for us,” Calder said. “After Lord Robert, Patrick, and his men rode away, the Hillside men urged her to walk back down with them before taking her to your den to wait with Geir and Hilda. We stayed back here in the dark to help you dig out.”

  “Then that bastard snuck up on us. Hit us hard,” Osk said, rubbing his head, his hair sticking out in all directions. He looked at blood smeared on his fingers and cursed.

  Calder gathered the rope. “I woke in time to see him stepping on Kára’s grave and then kneeling near where your head was buried,” he said, nodding to Joshua.

  Kára rubbed her chest. “I felt his weight.”

  Calder walked over to where the unmoving body lay. “He tripped running at you.” He shook his head and crouched down near Dishington’s feet. He looked sideways at them over by the chapel, stopping on Kára. “He tripped over your family’s grave marker.”

  Her brows lowered. “’Tis impossible. Their marker is on the other side of me,” she said, walking over. The dirt-stained wrappings of her shroud dragged behind her like the sash of a muddy gown.

  “See,” Calder said from his position. “It has their names.”

  Kára grabbed the lantern, dodged around Dishington’s body, and held the light up to illuminate the slightly sunken area of undisturbed grass on the other side of where minutes ago she’d been buried. “It is…” She stared up at Joshua, her eyes and mouth wide. “The marker has been moved,” she said looking back at the stone where Calder stood.

  “Into the perfect place to trip Dishington, sending him flying into your sword,” Osk said as he rubbed the rope marks on his wrists. He smiled. “Da was helping you out, Highlander.”

  He could have finished Dishington himself. “It was my sword,” Joshua murmured. “And my words that frightened him back.”

  “Maybe he saw Da’s spirit behind you,” Osk said. He was in shadows, but Joshua heard the jest in his voice.

  Calder scratched his head. “If you had been awake, Osk, you would not say that.” He glanced at Joshua. “I nearly pissed myself when I saw you punch your hand up through the dirt and then sit up, spouting biblical prophecy as if God spoke through you.” He shook his head and looked at Osk. “Even if your da had been floating above, watching the Horseman of War lift his sword from his grave was more startling.”

  Kára took Joshua’s hand. She inhaled. “My menacing beast.” She pulled closer to him while Osk made a few retching sounds at her words.

  Joshua wiped his hand over her dusty hair, pulling her close once again. “It is time to go.”

  “Where there are trees?” she asked, searching his face.

  “Aye, and horses,” he said slowly.

  “You two could stop gazing at each other and help us get Dishington into your grave,” Osk said, and Joshua heard his sword thump on the ground behind him. “It seems fitting for him to lie for eternity with a stinking seal.”

  Kára continued to gaze at Joshua as she spoke. “We need to get cleaned up so we can travel as soon as you finish.”

  “But he is heavy, and I was just unconscious,” Osk said.

  Kára glanced at him. “And we had to dig our way out of our own graves with no help from you.” She caught Joshua’s hand and tugged him to follow her out from behind the chapel. He stalled her only to pick up his sword.

  With the moon hidden in the dense clouds and the lantern light blocked by the stone church, darkness enveloped them. But with the fresh air, it was nothing like being underground in a cemetery. Even the cold that cut through his tunic did not bother him.

  As soon as they rounded the second corner to see the dim lights of the village of Birsay below them, Kára pulled Joshua with her around the chapel wall. She pressed him up against the stone like she had done in the barn when they first met and pulled his face down to hers for a kiss. They were dirt-coated and smelling of earth and dead seal, but none of that mattered. Only Kára mattered, Kára…warm and soft and alive.

  The kiss was gentle, but she clung to him, and he could feel her tremble slightly. She breathed deeply against him without backing up.

  “When I felt you squeeze my hand three times,” she started, pausing as she inhaled and exhaled, “I frantically started to try to move, and for a time I could not even pull my hand out. I was trapped.” Her trembling increased. “But the whole time I kept thinking I had to get out to tell you…” Her hands slid over his face, and he could see the outline of her staring up at him. “Joshua Sinclair…I love you. I need you to know that.” She shook her head. “I could not imagine the pain of dying without being able to tell you what I have only now discovered in my heart.”

  Inside Joshua’s chest, the space he didn’t even know was hollow swelled full, and his arms gathered her up against him, his mouth capturing her lips. Never bef
ore had he felt such power growing inside him and yet such raw openness at the same time. He was filled with conviction, a new direction, as if coming out of the grave had given him a rebirth. But it was not the earth that had wrought this change in him; it was the woman in his arms, the woman he realized he could not imagine life without.

  Her presence in their grave had kept him rooted and strong, patient when the world was erupting around him. Knowing he must live to get her out alive had driven him up out of the earth like a true harbinger of God’s end of days. The words he had used to disturb Dishington had come from a place of desperate need, a need to protect, a need to love Kára Flett.

  His palms raised to her cheeks, cupping her gingerly. “I would have ye see me in the light of day, to see what is in my soul through my eyes,” he whispered. “But aye, Kára, I love ye, too.”

  Her arms tightened around him, her face reaching up to find his lips again as she stood between his straddled legs, leaning against the chapel. Their kiss was gentle with the promise of passion. The possibilities for a future grew from the kiss, nurtured by her words and the press of her in his arms. A feeling, new and fragile, yet it grew stronger as they clung to each other. The feeling was…hope.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”

  Sun Tzu – The Art of War

  The sway of the ship continued to lull Kára even as the sun rose until it lit behind her closed eyes. Nestled in the comfort of Joshua’s arms, warm and content, she let herself enjoy the sensation instead of pushing fully out of the bliss of sleep. After all, the night had been long, the distance great to reach the Bay of Skaill south of Birsay. Her horse, Broch, had carried Amma and, at times, Geir when he stumbled in exhaustion.

  The ship that Calder and Joshua had secured to carry them south to the mainland of Scotland was full beyond capacity. Twenty-five men had remained in Hillside after the initial battle to gain Geir’s freedom from Lord Robert. Even Broch had to stay up on deck, tethered to the rail, swaying over the swells of ocean through the last hours of night.