Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rolled in her blanket and far too upset to have a hope of slumber, Katrin worried her way through the night.
The encampment, if it could be called such, was far from quiet.
Men shuffled about and mumbled in their sleep.
Despite orders, they spoke to one another.
They got up and went off up the hill to relieve themselves. They snored and farted and…
If their army’s safety ever relied upon silence, they were doomed.
Somewhere back in that seething mass of men lay Finlay. Frustration swamped Katrin every time she thought of him. Frustration and anger and—och, helpless longing. Terror so bright it set her heart to pounding.
Nay, she had no hope of sleep.
After they’d paused for the night, she’d moved back through the troops, hoping not to see him, dismayed at finding him clad like an ordinary clansman with a bundle that could only be his harp on his back.
The man was mad.
After she’d failed at convincing him to turn for home, she’d gone to her father. “Mayhap ye can persuade him, Da. He does no’ belong here.”
Da had given her a long look. She could almost hear him thinking, Nor do ye. But he had gone on a round of their forces, speaking encouraging words to all the men, only shaking his head at her after.
So she’d gone to Reagan.
His troops alone had camped in marvelous order, each man seeming to know his tasks and none making a fuss about it. Katrin found him speaking to one of his captains and drew him aside.
“He is here,” she said.
He fixed her with a tawny eye.
“The harper. He is back among the footmen.” She swallowed hard. “He has a sword. And his harp.”
Emotions flickered across Reagan’s face. He asked, “Wha’ am I to do about it, lass?”
“Speak to him. Go and tell him he has time to turn back.”
He sighed. “We ha’ already spoken o’ this. He is not under my command, any more than ye be. I ha’ no cause to tell him anything.”
“As a friend, ye do. Ye know war. He does no’.”
Reagan shifted his weight. “How about this? I will bid him go, if ye will go wi’ him.”
Katrin set her jaw.
“Ye be a stubborn woman, Katrin MacMurtray. D’ye want your way more than ye want his safety?”
“This is no’ about me having my way.”
“Is it not?”
“Nay. And if ye canna see that, though I ha’ tried and tried to explain—”
“I cannot see it, nay. Ye say ye are here for the sake o’ yer brother and your father, but neither o’ them would want ye here, and it would ease your da’s mind hugely for ye to go. And mine.”
Katrin said nothing.
“None o’ us, lass, needs the distraction o’ having to protect ye.”
“I need no one to protect me!” Did he not see that was the point?
War was loss, and loss was unbearable. Loss on her behalf, that she might prevent, worst of all.
She marched off, angry now with both men.
The next morning, she did not see Finlay at all. They were on the move early and she could not take the time to go back through the ranks. But she swore she could feel him back among the men, his presence a spark of light in her mind.
Or in her heart.
That day, they began to feel the forced pace. Not the Gallowglass troop at their head—they, so it seemed, might have marched on forever. But the rest of them began to struggle, the long miles being covered with weapons and packs upon their backs.
Katrin eyed her da with concern. He marched by her side, at the head of the men, having refused to take a pony if his clansmen could not ride, and she noticed when he began to flag.
There was a reason Geordie had offered to face battle in his place. She distinctly remembered her brother talking him into it. Let me, Da. I am ready and ’tis my place.
Did Da feel guilt as she herself did, for letting Geordie go away without him, only to fall? Did he too wonder if his presence might have kept his beloved son alive?
She didn’t know, and she could not ask. She watched helplessly as he began visibly to tire, and she thought of all the rough and lengthy miles ahead.
To the meeting place with Earl Randolph and thence across most of Scotland and on to England.
By God, after all that, would these men have the strength to fight? Would her da?
Her mind numbed beneath the weight of it, and she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, on easing Da’s journey in whatever way she might, making certain he had water during the stops, which Reagan called as he thought best.
Reagan O’Hanlon had unquestionably taken charge of their party. Katrin had no doubt his troop could have moved with much greater speed and ease. Strong men all, and she could see they made little of this journey that began to tell on the rest of them.
Frequently, he glanced back over his charges. Sometimes his eyes met hers with what might be a glint of reassurance.
Yet there was little true reassurance to be found. Rather than calming as they went, the fear in Katrin’s belly grew claws and raked at her. Not for herself so much, though mayhap she should fear for herself. But for those she loved.
Love. Did she love Finlay?
Nay, and nay. It was not love but something else that lay between them.
Something powerful, aye, possibly more powerful even than love.
After those nights they’d spent together, every detail of which her mind insisted upon reliving until her poor body throbbed, she could not deny that desire made up a component of what she felt for him. But nay, not all.
She loved her father. She had loved her brother and did still. What drew her to Finlay was of a different order. Fundamental, as if it had always been there and merely reawakened when she encountered him, spoke to him, learned of him.
Lay with him. Deep, and ancient.
It terrified her, did that feeling. Because it was tied to her soul and to the possibility of loss. And because they marched toward a perfect opportunity for just that.
For that reason, she avoided going back among the men to find him, even though she longed to.
She ached to set eyes on him, touch his hand, hear his voice.
Da did frequently circle back, and she asked him at every opportunity, “Did ye see the harper?” Trying to sound careless about it and, in reality, aching. Aching.
“Aye,” Da would say. “He seemed to be in good spirits.”
Did he?
He’d followed her. It became an agony and a reassurance.
After days of hard journeying, they reached Rannoch Moor, where they were to meet not only Earl Randolph’s troops but those from much of Western Scotland.
Campbells from Argyll, MacLeods from the islands, and MacDonalds from a wealth of places, all loyal hearts sworn to King David and willing to fight for Scotland’s freedom, waiting to be collected.
Many other troops were there before them.
Indeed, the Murtray warriors, who had seemed so many on the move, now appeared a mere drop in a vast bucket as they trickled in.
Much confusion reigned, and Murtray’s men stood staring about stupidly as if dazed, like people coming out of darkness to broad daylight.
Da sent Robran forward to find instructions as to how they would be disposed.
Katrin noticed that Reagan moved forward also.
It took an inordinate amount of time before anyone returned.
Katrin was left to see her da settled and to move back among the men, who had all gone down to sit where they stood, without direction.
She thus, after working diligently to avoid him, came upon Finlay face to face.
He was one of the few marchers still on his feet, still in the act of unloading his pack from his back, when she came upon him. He looked around and their eyes met.
Everything within Katrin’s body leaped. She could explain it no other way.
Emotions swamped her, relief that he had managed the journey and looked well.
A deep and fervent level of longing for his presence, for the scent of him.
For his smile. And aye, desire. A desire not of the flesh so much as the soul.
A hundred things she might say to him. Fully half of them fluttered through her mind. Instead, she nodded at the harp. “How is Brada standing the journey? Is she all right?”
“Aye.” He gave her his rare smile, the one that warmed her so wondrously. “She is used to bouncing along on my back o’er track and brae.”
All too much like the tale he had told of Adair and the defiant, determined Bradana at loose in the wilds of Scotland—called Alba then—with her deerhound at her side. Love had been enough for them.
Or had that also been more than mere love?
In that moment, standing facing Finlay there upon the breast of the land, her heart yearned to inhabit the tale.
She wanted to be bold and fearless, to be Bradana to his Adair, the man she adored.
Only, the way Finlay told it, Bradana had not been entirely fearless.
More than anything else, she had feared losing the man she loved and had attempted more than once to sacrifice herself for his sake.
Katrin’s mind stuttered there and tried to shut down. Concern flickered in Finlay’s eyes.
“Katrin. Wha’ is it?”
Katrin. The sound of his voice, the music of it flitting into her ear while she lay in his arms. As he became one with her. Bradana.
She shook her head. Most definitely, she was not all right. Something grave and terrible moved in her life. This was no time for it.
She stepped up to him, close enough that she could see the freckles marking his skin, golden in the autumn light.
“Be safe,” she whispered, and never had she uttered so heartfelt a plea.