Chapter 28 #2
He didn’t sleep.
It was almost dawn when a watchman burst into the hall.
“Raid!” he bellowed.
Patrick leaped to his feet. “Fetch the laird!” he shouted. By the saints, this had come more quickly than he’d dared hope. In truth, he was surprised it had come at all. Malcolm’s commitment to his piper hadn’t seemed that deep.
“They’re looting the cattle,” the poor scout wheezed.
“Who?” another demanded.
“MacLeods,” the scout managed. “Bloody whoresons.”
“Are you sure?” Patrick asked. He made a great show of concern, especially when the Fergusson came stumbling down the stairs. Too much drink, Patrick decided. It would catch him up someday.
“Who?” Simon asked in a gravelly voice, belting on his sword.
“MacLeods,” Patrick said, trying to appear as if he could barely contain his enthusiasm. “Let me lead. I’ve never had the pleasure—bastard child and all—”
Simon looked at him blearily, then shook his head. “You’ll come along, but leading is my right.” He started barking orders to his men.
“But I—” Patrick interrupted.
The Fergusson’s glare, bleary though it was, was formidable. “You’ll stay well to the back. Iain, Neil, come. We’ll see these cowards put to the sword without delay.”
Patrick made a great show of preparing himself.
He’d shown a bit of what he could do the night before, but purposely not the whole truth.
And now he continued the ruse, worrying over his gear, dawdling on his way to the stables.
The Fergussons were almost frothing at the mouth, so eager were they to get their swords into MacLeod flesh.
Patrick tried to put that possibility for himself out of his mind.
He got on his horse, dawdled some more, then hung to the back as the force left the keep, their bloodcurdling screams ringing out in the predawn air.
“My knife,” Patrick said in dismay to anyone who was listening. He turned around and started gingerly back to the keep.
No one paid any heed, save Neil, who cursed him thoroughly for being an idiot.
Perfect.
He made it back to the keep within minutes, dismounted, and walked swiftly into the hall. Five men were there plus the keeper of the keys. He walked up to the latter.
“Unlock the prisoners,” he said.
The man looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll slit your belly open and strangle you with your entrails.”
The man’s mouth fell open. He looked at Patrick as if he couldn’t believe what had just come out of his mouth. Patrick grabbed the fool by the front of his plaid and reached for the keys.
The keeper of the keys shouted for aid. Patrick buried his knife in the man’s belly, removed the keys from his fingers as he fell, then turned to meet the other five he was certain would be hard upon him.
They were.
He drew his sword and took out three swiftly, and one not so swiftly. The last, who looked to not want to be done in at all, he shoved across the hall so he could toss the keys at the piper.
“Free yourself and the woman!” he shouted.
He didn’t wait to see what would happen. The last Fergusson standing threw himself toward Patrick, his sword bared. Patrick glared at him.
“I’ve no time for this,” he said, backing up a pace. “Be off with you.”
“Are ye daft?” the other bellowed. “Who’n the bloody hell are ye? A MacLeod?”
“You’ll never know,” Patrick said. He fended off a moderately skilled attack, received a scratch or two, then ended the man’s life with a sword through his belly. The Fergusson clansman fell, then lay perfectly still.
Patrick took back his sword, sheathed it, then leaped over the table to where the prisoners were being held.
The piper was trying unsuccessfully to use the heavy key.
Weakness from being captive, no doubt. Patrick took the key away and freed the man.
He hauled him to his feet, then knelt and quickly opened Madelyn’s cage.
He pulled her out and swung her up into his arms. She weighed nothing.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He was halfway across the great hall before he realized she’d said it in Gaelic. He left that as a mystery to be solved later. For now, he had to get them out of harm’s way.
He turned toward the door.
And then he froze.
He let Madelyn slide down. The piper took hold of her and helped her sit on the ground. Patrick pulled his sword free and looked at Neil Fergusson.
“I knew it,” Neil said triumphantly. “I knew you couldn’t be telling the truth.”
“Congratulations. Now, move aside.”
“Bloody whoreson,” Neil Fergusson spat. “You’ll never set foot outside my hall.”
“’Tis your brother’s hall, you fool,” Patrick said, “and this is my woman your brother caged there—”
“MacLeod whore,” Neil rumbled.
“She’s a MacKenzie, but I’ll make her a MacLeod soon enough. And I’ll make you regret everything you’ve done to harm her. Now, either you die or I do. Shall we get to deciding whom it will be?”
“Won’t be me,” Neil said.
And that was the last thing he said for quite some time. Patrick supposed the whole thing didn’t take more than three or four minutes, but when every minute meant possible discovery, those were four minutes too many.
He didn’t kill Neil. He cut him, broke his nose, and stomped him quite vigorously in the bollocks before he plunged him into unconsciousness with some well-placed weight on a pair of vital pressure points, but he left him alive.
Why, he didn’t know.
Maybe there was no sense in leaving the Fergussons with another soul to avenge.
He put up his sword, then gathered Madelyn up into his arms and ran out the front door. The piper followed silently.
His sturdy MacLeod steed was standing where he’d been left. Patrick paused, then had his first good look at the piper.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. The other man seemed to think nothing of seeing Patrick, at least nothing untoward. Then again, the other man wasn’t looking at Patrick after having known him almost eight hundred years in the future as a ghost.
“My thanks for the rescue,” the piper said with a smile.
“Robert MacLeod, in your debt.”
“Patrick MacLeod, and I wish I had come sooner,” Patrick said. He had something else quite pithy to say, but he made the mistake of looking down at the man’s hands.
Not a finger occupied its proper angle in the man’s hand.
By the saints, the Fergussons were a thorough bunch.
Patrick took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about your hands.”
The piper shrugged. “I’ve played enough for one lifetime.” “You’ll play again,” Patrick said. Years from now, he added silently. Then he hesitated. “I could reset your fingers, if you like. There are herbs that could repair the breaks properly, if I can find them.”
Robert looked like a man who didn’t dare hope. “Not at the moment, you won’t,” he said gamely. “Later perhaps.” He tilted his head and smiled. “You do look quite a bit like a MacLeod. And you certainly don’t carry yourself like a lowly bastard.”
“Long tale,” Patrick said. “Let’s find a horse for you—”
Robert shook his head. “I’ll be safer on my own two feet.” He put his hand on Madelyn’s head. “Until later, my lady. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
“Thank you, Robert,” she said, her voice shaking. “Thank you with all my heart.”
Robert turned back to Patrick. “There’s a hut, north of the keep, if you’ve a mind for privacy.”
Patrick lifted one eyebrow. “Aye, I know the place.”
“Haunted, they say. Deserted, always. And you know these Fergussons. A very superstitious lot. Doubt they’ll make any forays up there.”
Patrick nodded. The spot where Moraig’s house would stand centuries from now had been rumored to be haunted by all sorts of bogles, ghosts, and foul woodland creatures, even in his day. It was perfect for his purposes.
He put Madelyn up on the horse. By the time he had mounted as well, Robert was slipping out the gate like a shadow. Patrick didn’t like leaving the man without a horse, but perhaps he would be all right. He took the reins and pulled Madelyn back against him.
“This is going to hurt,” he said.
She coughed. “Just go.”
And so he went. The horse leaped across the courtyard and was at a full out gallop thirty feet outside the front gates. The beast should have been a racehorse. It was tempting to take him home and see what could be bred from him.
Assuming he could get himself, Madelyn, and a horse home.
It was not something to be thinking about now.
He turned east, away from the battle, away from his own ancestral lands. He would double back when he was well out of the way of any battle. He knew very well where the clan borders were and could avoid any other unpleasant encounters.
He bent over Madelyn, to shield her some from the wind, but mostly to offer her some sense of protection. Something he should have continued to offer her in the past. The future.
Damnation, whenever it was he should have offered it, he should have offered it properly.
He rode hard, hoping his mount would forgive him for it later, and forced himself to disallow any reflection on his situation.
He had made his decisions, Madelyn had made some of her own, and the forest had seen to the both of them in its own way.
They found themselves in the past and that was all that mattered.
He could survive quite readily, even though it had been almost a decade since he’d had to.
He focused his attention on his surroundings, on observing the countryside, scanning the terrain for potential foes.
The morning passed. Two hours later, he was walking his mount across his own land. It sent chills down his spine to see it, empty as it was of even a hint of any kind of dwelling.
He negotiated a nonexistent path through Moraig’s forest. He could only hope he didn’t plunge them into a century they weren’t prepared to live in by stepping on a bit of unassuming moss.
The thought of being transported to those mid-1700s was enough to give him chills.
He thought he had problems now with a difficult laird in charge back at the keep in the late 1300s.
He paused. There, up ahead in what was now the depths of the forest, was something that might be mistaken as a hut. Patrick sighed in relief.
“Almost there,” he said to Madelyn.
She nodded. Or perhaps she shook. It was hard to say. She clutched the arm he had wrapped around her and said nothing.
He closed his eyes briefly, grateful beyond measure for having found her.
Desperately, profoundly, thoroughly grateful.
He would never let her go again.