Chapter Three #2
The crash of underbrush behind them was sudden and violent, wholly out of place on so mild a spring day.
Elena turned at once, heart leaping, and caught only a rush of movement at the orchard’s edge—horses bursting through the trees, driven hard and fast. Leaves and branches flew aside as the riders broke into the open, their approach wild with speed and intent.
There was no mistaking what they were.
The men were armed, mail glinting beneath rough cloaks, faces shadowed by helms or wrapped in cloth.
No colors marked them, no badge or device she recognized—nothing to place them as friend or clan.
They rode low and forward, bent to their purpose, and the ferocity of their charge crushed what little calm remained in her.
For a stunned moment, Elena searched Thomas’s face, expecting—hoping—for explanation, some sign that this violence belonged to him, that it could yet be named or commanded. Instead she found his color draining, disbelief giving way to fear as he stared at the riders bearing down on them.
“They are nae yours?” she asked, her voice tight, recalling his words from moments before.
Thomas shook his head. He reached for her hand, his grip unsteady—an instinctive gesture that struck her, absurdly, as seeking reassurance rather than offering it.
“We must get inside the gate,” she said at once, pushing him toward the path that led back toward the castle. “An alarm must be sounded.”
For an instant—before she remembered that her father was likely still out with the hunting party—she thought only of reaching him.
Of being near him. She trusted no one in this world as she trusted Liam MacTavish—not the Lowland lord whose hospitality she enjoyed, not the guards who patrolled the grounds, not even her brothers so fully as she trusted her father.
And she trusted least of all the young man running beside her now, whose expression showed more panic than resolve, more fright than she herself felt.
Her father was safety. Near him, nothing truly terrible could happen.
Fear coiled hard in her belly as the thunder of hooves grew louder, closer behind them, but she could almost hear her father’s voice in her mind—stern, steady—telling her to keep her wits, to watch and listen, to run when she could and hide when running was no longer an option.
The pounding suddenly veered, cutting across their path.
A rider broke from the chase and swung down ahead of them, blocking their flight even as the others thundered past. Thomas stumbled backward as the man dismounted and advanced.
Elena retreated with him, but the slope betrayed her—roots twisted beneath her shoes, the ground uneven—and before she could regain her balance, the man’s shadow fell across her.
She saw Thomas take a single step, as if to intervene, but the moment stretched and snapped: hesitation seized him, an instinctive recoil.
In that brief pause, the raider’s hand closed around her wrist.
She heard her name called, but couldn’t make sense of it as Thomas still stood gaping, frozen with fright.
The world lurched as she was yanked off her feet.
Her breath was driven from her lungs, and for a heartbeat she grasped at nothing but air, trying uselessly to steady herself as she was dragged away from Thomas.
The man swung her up and across his shoulder with practiced ease, the movement brisk and efficient, as though he had done this before.
She struck at him, fists useless against his bulk, and he only adjusted his grip, shifting her weight as one might a sack.
Her hair spilled across her face as she twisted, desperate to see Thomas—to see him running, shouting, doing anything that might summon help.
But he was not running.
He stood frozen, mouth parted, shock written plainly across his features.
Elena saw the indecision flicker through him—whether to chase, to raise an alarm, or to flee—and something small and vital gave way inside her.
She had hoped he would at least turn and sprint for the castle, that he would do that much, because that alone might bring her father.
She screamed—once, sharp and piercing—but the sound was cut short as the man struck her brutally.
The next instant she was flung across a saddle, the impact knocking what little breath remained from her lungs.
Leather pressed against her cheek; she tasted sweat and iron.
Around her, men spoke in clipped English, their voices low and urgent.
The horse surged forward.
The orchard tore past in a blur—branches scraping at her legs, sunlight flashing in broken patterns through the trees.
She forced her head up enough to see the ground racing beneath her, then the long sweep of the slope ahead, falling away into unfamiliar woods.
Every instinct rebelled against the widening distance between herself and the castle.
She counted heartbeats. Breaths. The harsh rhythm of hooves. The arm locked across her body, holding her fast.
Through the pounding terror, she clung to a single thought: her father would come. Liam MacTavish would hear of this and ride with every man at his command. Thomas might have failed her, but her father would not.
The trees closed in around them, the light thinning as they plunged deeper into the woods. Elena shut her eyes against the violent motion, drawing what strength she could for whatever lay ahead.
JACOB HAD NOT TRULY left the hunt early, not when Lord Hamilton had already called it a day—a successful one that had netted several red deer and dozens of grouse.
But while the others lingered, content to draw the morning out, Jacob turned his horse onto a quieter track, choosing the ground that curved back toward the castle by way of the lower yards and the slope that ran adjacent to the orchard.
It was not the shortest route, but it was the one he preferred, where the land opened and the noise fell away.
The afternoon light had mellowed into a warm gold as Strathfinnan came into view. His gaze drifted absently toward the orchard as he neared.
Between the pale blossoms he caught the faint movement of a woman’s gown, the flash of pale fabric threading slowly through the trees. It took only a moment for him to recognize Elena—and the company she kept, her betrothed.
A lovers’ stroll, then, he realized, his jaw tightening automatically.
The sight of her lingered—sunlight catching in the dark fall of her hair, her pale kirtle brushing lightly against her legs as she walked, unhurried, graceful in a way that had never sought notice and yet always found it.
A memory stirred, wrinkling his brow—Elena at nine or ten years old, turning on him with great offense when he called her wee, insisting she wasn’t done growing.
He had laughed then and smiled now in recollection.
“Dinna call me wee,” Elena had said, planting her hands on her hips and lifting her chin, filled with a laird’s daughter certainty and indignation. “I’m nae finished with growing.”
“Nae,” he’d teased. “Ye’ll grow nae more. This is it. Ye’ll be the wee MacTavish all yer life.”
“I dinna ken you’re as clever as ye think ye are,” she’d shot back, already turning away, always pleased to have the last word.
It had meant nothing—only words tossed back and forth, no weight to them at all—so Jacob found it interesting that the memory had come to him, had remained with him at all.
He shook his head to clear the memory and focused his attention on the castle, still several hundred yards away.
The unease came quietly, settling rather than striking.
His horse shifted beneath him, ears pricking, the muscles along its neck tightening.
Jacob listened past the ordinary sounds of the day—the hush of open ground, the soft rasp of grass brushing his horse’s flanks, the steady, familiar cadence of his horse’s breath.
Somewhere farther off, birds called and answered one another, the sound carrying cleanly across the fields.
It was the birds that caught his attention first. A sudden burst of wings rose from the trees that flanked the orchard, startled and sharp, their cries breaking the easy calm of the afternoon.
Jackdaws lifted in a dark scatter, wheeling hard before vanishing beyond the rise.
The sound lingered only a moment before falling away, but in its wake came something worse, a thinning of noise, an emptiness where there ought to have been movement, small creatures rustling, birds settling back into the branches.
He leaned slightly in the saddle, listening harder now, and felt the ground answer him, not with sound, but with a faint, steady vibration that traveled up through the soles of his boots.
Horses, he thought, moving swiftly.
Jacob straightened in the saddle, swinging the steed around to face the south. Even before the first shout rang out from the watchtower, he knew something was wrong.
“Riders!” The cry carried sharp and clear on the afternoon air.
Jacob’s attention snapped back to the orchard. “Elena,” he said under his breath, already turning his horse in her direction.
The open field rushed past beneath him, grass flattened and dust lifting in pale bursts as he drove his horse forward.
Ahead, the orchard marked a dark line against the lighter ground, the space between the fruit trees offering goo sight.
Then the riders broke into view—hard and fast at the far side of the orchard.
They wore no colors he recognized, no single mark to claim them.
Their armor was ill-matched, some mail, some leather, weapons carried loose and ready.
They rode low and urgent, scattered rather than ordered, and did not take the open road to the gates as any welcome visitor would have done, but came hard through the trees instead.
Jacob pressed the mare onward, urging her faster across the narrowing distance.
He saw Elena clearly then—stepping back from the sudden rush of riders, her hand lifting in startled instinct, her fiancé caught frozen beside her like a man who had been stripped of thought.
There was a moment, painfully suspended in time, when she hesitated, seeming as if she waited for Thomas Hamilton to do something.
Jacob shouted her name.
One of the riders dismounted, moving toward Elena with chilling confidence.
Thomas stumbled backward, his breath visibly catching as he looked first at the raiders, then at Elena, and then toward the castle as though searching for someone else—anyone else—to intervene.
His hand wavered between reaching for her and retreating toward safety, and in his uncertainty, he did neither.
Jacob drove his destrier harder, folding low over her neck as he closed the distance. The orchard rushed toward him in a blur—branches lashing his shoulders, the uneven ground jarring the saddle—but his focus narrowed to Elena’s cry as a raider seized her about the waist.
He had his sword in hand before the first rider cut across his path.
Steel flashed as the raider swung to block him, horse thrown sideways in a deliberate attempt to slow pursuit.
Jacob met the move head-on. He leaned into the saddle, blade already up, and turned the man’s strike aside with a hard, ringing clash that shuddered through his arm.
He drove his horse forward at the same moment, shoulder to shoulder, forcing the other mount off balance.
The raider cursed, scrambling for control. Jacob did not give him time. He struck again—short, brutal—and the man pitched from the saddle into the churned earth.
It bought him only seconds.
“Elena!” Jacob shouted, already wrenching the reins, searching for her through the chaos of horses and men.
He watched in furious horror as Elena was seized and flung across a saddle, carried off at a gallop.
Jacob spurred forward at once, but another rider cut hard across his path, steel flashing.
There was no room to pass, no angle to slip by.
Jacob wrenched his reins and met the charge head-on, the shock of impact jolting up his arm as blades rang.
The man pressed him hard, hacking wildly, driving Jacob back step by step, horse screaming beneath the strain.
Jacob parried once, twice, feeling the weight of each blow, knowing he could not break away without giving the rider his back.
A the same time, he was counting seconds, measuring the growing distance between him and Elena.
“Thomas—ride!” Jacob shouted to the shrinking, bloodless face man, while locking blades and shoving the rider off balance. “Sound the alarm!”
As if in answer, the long, urgent note of a horn rose from the direction of the castle—thin at first, then clearer, carried across the open ground.
Jacob swore and fought for balance, hacking down to break the raider’s press, but the man stayed tight, crowding him, trapping him.
Jacob tore free only by brute force, wrenching the man sideways and sending horse and rider crashing together into the mud.
He hauled his horse around at once, scanning the orchard, but the bulk of the raiding party was already breaking for the trees, Elena lost among them.
Jacob drove his horse into the trees after them, the orchard already falling away behind him.
The destrier’s sides heaved beneath him. He tightened his grip on the reins and drove toward the gap between the oaks where the raiders had disappeared. Branches clawed at his arms as he entered the trees. No path existed—only torn leaves, snapped twigs, and churned soil climbing toward the ridge.
Shouts rose from the castle in his wake. Jacob ignored them. By the time help organized, the raiders would be gone with Elena. He would stay close on their trail. He would catch them or die trying.