Chapter Thirty-Seven
Panic clawed at Katrin’s belly and up through her throat, threatening to choke her. She needed to keep calm, to think clearly, but she had never been so frightened or so sick to the heart.
She gazed around from the place where she knelt on the broken moorland. Behind her, the battle still raged like a seething, flailing creature somehow intent on destroying itself. The ground between lay strewn with dead and injured in every unspeakable condition.
The things she had seen.
She gulped down her sickness and blinked her eyes. Men were streaming away from the battle, leaving it just as they had, in twos or threes. Some helping or carrying others of the wounded away. Some clearly in flight.
Despair most terrible touched her heart. She did not know how they were to get her da safe away.
What of the rest of their men? Men she had known all her life and liked full well. Many no doubt dead. Some still back in the horror that was the battle. Was she to desert them?
She represented her brother, here. With Da down, she supposed she now represented her chief. Should she return to the battle?
How strong was she?
All her life she had rebelled at not being given leave to train as a warrior, that she might stand and defend herself and those she loved. Now she had that chance, and duty rose before her—her duty to get Da away—while men continued to die for her. For them.
Reagan.
Her heart bled for him. With his great strength and his quiet amusement, his calm patience and forbearing. The consummate warrior he was, and she grieved, grieved for him.
If such a man had fallen, they were lost.
That realization got her to her feet. She looked around again.
Their little band of five made a pitiful sight, wet to the skin and bloodied. The two young clansmen who had carried Da out from the thick of battle looked exhausted and white with fear. Finlay…
It would live in her mind forever, that moment when she’d seen him emerge from the fighting like a dream come from the past. Aye, she’d had her miracle and could not expect another. All she could do was reach for one.
She turned to the two young men hunkered beside their chief.
“I am sorry to waylay ye, but ye will no’ be able to return to the battle. I need ye to carry him awa’ out o’ here. I believe that is our duty now.” Da had no heir. He must, so, return to Murtray.
Rabbie climbed to his feet. “Mistress”—his blue eyes, wide with shock, looked earnest—“I do no’ doubt that pullin’ us fro’ yon battle has spared our lives. Any service I may perform for the chief or ye—I stand ready.”
“Aye, so. Davey, your shield”—for that young man had it yet upon his shoulder—“can we use it as a litter for him?”
That had been done in the old days, as she knew. Had not Finlay told of it in his stories? But that had been in the days when shields were larger. This one bore a crack right across, and they had to yank several arrows out of it.
And the chief was not a small man. As they tried to load him onto the makeshift litter, the shield came apart.
“Here, use Brada’s wrappings. Fro’ my pack.”
Finlay’s cheek had resumed bleeding. Trails of blood trickled down as he shrugged off his pack and swung it to the ground. Something within gave off a mournful sound, and when he unwrapped the harp, they all stared.
The beautiful instrument’s back had broken in two, now held to the bow only by the strings.
“Och, Finlay!” Katrin cried.
“Nay matter,” Finlay said, placing the shattered instrument into the pack once more. “The wrappings are strong.”
Katrin wept as they spread the leather on the ground and lifted Da onto it. Carrying him so would not be easy. And they were so very far from home.
Two men came slogging through just as they prepared to lift their burden. One of them was the drummer who had walked beside them for a time. He still had his drum, not burst, and his face was gray with strain.
“The battle is lost. Lost!” he called to them. “The English knights are coming after us, killing all they can find. Best flee!”
Katrin’s panic threatened to choke her again. She dared not take the time to look back down the hill, but aye, she fancied she heard hoofbeats and screaming.
“Come, hurry,” she told her group.
Finlay shrugged his pack onto his back. With one of them at each corner, they lifted Da and started off following the drummer and the others who fled.
A hard and arduous process. Da’s weight was such that he dragged the sling to the ground.
At last, Davey said, “Let us fold the cloth and try again. Rabbie and I will hold the chief higher. Mistress, ye lead the way. Harper, keep watch fro’ the rear.”
They shifted Da and tried again, the two strong young men hefting him to shoulder height. Better yet, how long could they continue?
Others fleeing the battle now streamed past them. When Katrin heard hoofbeats pounding, she paused and turned in terror, expecting to see a line of English knights bearing down on them.
What she saw instead gave her a sudden rush of hope. Their own men. Not only that—a face among them she recognized for that of Laird Robert Stewart.
One of their own commanders.
Abandoning her group, she ran toward him.
“Laird Stewart, Laird Stewart!”
For one terrible instant she thought he and the horsemen with him would not stop. Perhaps it was her voice—a woman’s voice—that made him draw his mount to a halt in the soaking turf.
He streamed with wet, a combination of sweat and rain, but he appeared untouched. He gazed down at her with incredulous amazement.
“The battle is lost!” he bellowed.
“Aye, but my father—” Wildly she gestured behind her. Rabbie and Davey had laid their burden down. They made a piteous sight. “He is the chief of Murtray and sworn to John Randolph, Earl Moray—he answered Laird Randolph’s call and now is sore injured.”
“The Earl of Moray is dead.”
“Oh! But my laird, surely ye—If ye can only help us get him awa’—”
Sir Robert shot a withering look at their group and a second at Katrin. “Nay time. Ye must make yer own way.”
And he spurred his mount, which bore a grievous wound across the chest, away. The other riders followed, throwing up sodden clods of turf and muddy water as they went.
Anger arose in Katrin’s heart. Anger and a sense of betrayal so terrible it felt bottomless. Their own commander had abandoned them—abandoned her father in all his loyalty—to the aftermath of this terrible battle.
“Come.” Someone touched her arm. Finlay. “We canna tarry here.”
The screams behind them grew louder. Nay, they could not tarry.
After that, they walked. The rain had mostly stopped, but the world was a sodden place without refuge. Night came on, which, as Finlay said, speaking softly and steadily into her ear, was a good thing. It would lend them cover.
They needed it indeed, for the English army, the knights for the main part, were in hard pursuit.
Katrin had heard—and seen—them riding down any number of her countrymen.
So far, her little group had escaped notice, but she knew it could only be a matter of chance, and not a good chance. They walked a narrow blade of danger.
Please, she beseeched every power she knew, in her mind. Though she did not know precisely what she requested. Just please.
Her two stout bearers tired and often had to lower Da to the ground. Whenever they heard the sound of horses coming behind they all dropped and cowered flat in the bronze heather, Katrin throwing herself over Da’s body.
He did not regain consciousness, not once, and blood soaked her makeshift bandage. They dared not stop to care for him.
She did not know what she would have done without Finlay’s voice in her ear, soft and steady, lending reassurance. Without his hand at her elbow when she faltered. Without the sheer strength of his presence as they moved off into the unknown darkness of the night.
And then—
And then.
She should have known they could not escape notice forever.
They moved so slowly with their burden that many had outstripped them.
Most of the English knights had fallen away, but now, just at nightfall, squads of soldiers came hunting, their orders no doubt to find and kill any Scots stragglers.
Screams behind them increased in number. Always distant enough.
Then not distant.
A hoot, a cry like a hound sighting its prey.
They had been seen.
The English soldiers howled after them, and somehow Katrin’s stunned mind managed to count them. Five. Aye, so, they themselves were four strong if Rabbie and Davey laid their burden on the ground. All exhausted. Spent.
They would not leave this patch of ground, this piece of English moor, alive.
She drew her sword and turned with the litter and its two bearers at her back. Instinct made her do so, and determination. She would die here, aye. Far, far from her home. Perhaps that had always been meant—she, the warrior.
With a hard shove, Finlay bumped her aside. He too drew his sword, moving not at all like a harper but like a man who set himself to fight.
For her.
“Nay!” she cried.
It came from the heart, that cry. From the soul. From a place so ancient she could no longer remember it.
“I will hold them,” Finlay told her. “Go. Go.”
“Nay.” She could not. She would not.
“Yer da needs ye. Yer clan needs ye. Go.”
“I need ye!” she wailed. The soldiers already bore down on them, rushing in. She swiped at one, and he leaped back. Finlay engaged another, a man with an already-bloodied head and a terrible smile on his face. Finlay, not like a harper at all but a—
“Katrin!”
Her da’s voice calling to her. He’d come awake and reached for her through the falling gloom, reached with one hand and with his eyes.
“Go!” Finlay shouted at her again, and threw himself into the fray.
Threw himself to the wolves.
Weeping, she went.