Chapter 8 #3
“The rest of the lads are in a ravine,” he said after he satisfied his thirst. “They chased the doe down there. ’Twas too steep for me to climb down.”
“And they didna have enough sense to know they’d have to haul her back up if they got her?”
“We wounded her,” Kyle said. “’Twas our responsibility to dispatch her so she wouldna suffer.”
“Good lads,” Calum said, praising them for following a deer they’d injured rather than let it die slowly and in pain.
Ella shook her head, her gaze on Kyle as he returned her water skin to her, then she looked up at Calum. “What should we do?”
He didn’t want to leave Ella alone out here, but her expression told him she didn’t want the lad to wait much longer for the healer, either. “A ravine, ye said? How far is it?”
“I dinna ken. I’ve been limping along for a while.”
“Let’s find it, then I’ll take ye back to the others. One of them can take ye to Mhairi and the rest can help us with the other lads.”
He lifted Kyle onto his horse while Ella mounted hers, then he mounted behind the lad and followed the trail of broken brush and blood smears he had left. Before long, they got to the ravine.
“Georgie,” Ella called out.
“We’re down here,” he answered. “Ye found us! We kenned ye would.”
“Thank the saints,” she said and traded a relieved smile with Calum.
“Do ye need help getting out of there?” Calum dismounted and walked to the edge, but it was getting too dark to see much down the slope.
“Aye,” another lad answered. “We’ve got a deer.”
“And enough blood, I’ll wager, to attract every predator within miles,” Calum muttered. “Move away from it,” Calum told them, then turned to Ella and asked quietly, “Can this lad wait for Mhairi while we get these lads out of the hole they’re in?”
“I dinna think so. He’s lost some blood, Calum, and he’s exhausted. I’m worried for him.”
He huffed out a breath, torn between Kyle’s safety and Ella’s. But Ella’s frown told him Kyle’s need was more urgent. “I’ll take him back to the others. I want ye to stay here.”
“Very well.” She glanced down the ravine.
“Right here,” he repeated. “I dinna want ye going down there in the dark. If ye fall and hurt yerself, ye’ll no’ be able to help anyone else, and some of the other lads may need ye.”
She gave him a distracted nod but didn’t answer.
“Ella.”
She frowned. “I hear ye. Stay here.”
He rode back to their campsite as quickly as he could in the growing dark, ducking branches and folding his body over Kyle’s as needed to keep him safe through the trees. “We found them,” he announced when he arrived.
“Thank ye,” Muireall told him, coming forward to grasp his hand before he could dismount. She frowned at the lad whose head slumped onto his chest, then up at Calum, who still used one arm to hold the lad upright. Then she looked around. “Where are the rest of them? And Ella? Is Georgie well?”
“Aye, so far as I ken, but Ella wants this lad sent back to Mhairi. Nora, ye will take him. He fell asleep on the way here. Or passed out. He’s lost some blood. Tell Mhairi, and that Ella rinsed and checked his wounds before she wrapped them. The rest of ye will break camp and come with me.”
Calum dismounted and transferred the lad to Nora’s horse. Kyle didn’t stir, which told Calum he’d passed out. Ella had been right to send him back to Mhairi and not wait for the others.
Nora mounted behind the lad and got a good grip around him to keep him from falling, then, wasting no time, told Calum, “Good hunting,” before she rode away.
Calum was pleased to see that while he and Nora dealt with Kyle, the others had smothered their small campfire and gathered the supplies they’d set out to pass the night. Before long, they were ready.
“With me,” Calum said, and led them back to where he’d left Ella at the edge of the ravine.
She was gone.
His heart dropped into his belly. Where was she? He called out, “Ella!”
When she didn’t answer, he swore and let his horse find its way down the slope into the ravine. The others followed.
At the bottom, the scent of blood hit him first. The deer?
Or were others hurt? Another thought stopped his breath.
What if Ella had obeyed him and stayed on the rim?
Alone up there, if anyone else found her, she’d have had no defense but to try to escape down here.
Had raiders taken Ella and killed the lads?
His whole body went cold. He should have taken her back to camp with him. He shook himself. Find the lads first.
When they found the deer, he realized the lads had done as he ordered and moved away from the carcass. They were alive, and God willing, Ella was with them. She had to be.
He would have been relieved to see her if she had followed his order to stay on the rim and wait.
If she weren’t so damned independent. But knowing her, since she knew one lad had been hurt, she probably couldn’t resist the urge to come down to check on the others, and was with them now.
She’d better be. He needed to get these lads out of here, not spend the rest of the night searching for her.
He shook his head and pushed the thought aside as he followed the lads’ tracks, and the trail of broken branches they’d thoughtfully left behind.
Eventually, he came to a halt. He could hear voices, and the smells on the breeze told him the lads were near. And Ella, damn her. As glad as he was that she was safe, his temper rose, too. She wasn’t supposed to have risked the descent into the ravine in the dark. By herself.
He found them in a lean-to built from pine boughs stacked around a thick-girthed tree.
Had she come up with that idea? “All right, everyone out,” he commanded, still irritated with Ella, but proud of the foresight someone had used to protect the lads from the cold night air.
Their initiative and skill impressed him.
“We kenned ye would find us,” the first one out announced. Georgie. He spotted his sister behind Calum and ran to her horse.
“Who’s idea was the shelter?” Calum asked as the rest crawled out after Ella. She stood, brushing pine needles from her clothes and pulling a few from her hair.
Calum was so relieved to see her safe that his fingers twitched with the need to help her. To touch her. Even better, to kiss her.
“The lads and I helped, but it was Georgie’s idea,” she told him as Muireall dismounted and wrapped her brother in a fierce hug. “We just did some of the work.”
“Ye were supposed to stay on the rim,” Calum reminded her.
“Georgie said one of the lads was hurt, so I let my sure-footed mount pick its way down,” she told him, one eyebrow raised in challenge. “Liam has a twisted ankle, but he’ll be fine in a fortnight or so.” A happy smile lit her face as she let her gaze travel over the lads around her.
He hadn’t expected he could be even more attracted to her than he already was.
She wasn’t afraid. She was glad to be here.
Satisfied that she’d been able to help the two lads who’d needed her.
She was showing him there was even more to sweet, shy Ella than he’d already given her recently revealed stubborn side credit for. She’d surprised him again.
“Then let’s get them home.” He gestured for the lads to mount up with the rest of his searchers. Georgie rode with his sister. Ella insisted on taking Liam with her.
“And dinna forget our deer,” Georgie said.
Calum sighed. “Aye, and yer deer.” His horse was largest, so the doe wound up tied behind his saddle, dripping blood the whole way back to the Brodie keep since he didn’t want to take the time to tie it up in a tree, gut it and let the blood drain away.
They were lucky that it started to rain as the Brodie keep came into view.
The blood trail they left behind would soon wash away.
That evening, Ella told Mhairi about the boys’ adventure and Muireall’s pride in her brother’s heroic actions.
And how she’d probably confine him to the keep for the rest of his time fostering here.
Or the rest of his life. He hadn’t argued against tracking the doe they’d wounded, but he was the one who directed the lads to start breaking branches so they left an easy trail for Calum to follow. They knew he’d be out looking for them.
“How did Calum like having ye along and in his charge?”
Ella snorted. “No’ very much at first. I think he saw me more as a burden than someone to help.
Until we found poor Kyle, or he found us.
” She glanced around at the sleeping lad.
Mhairi insisted he stay in the herbal overnight so she could watch for fever.
“And after Kyle led us to the rest, I discovered Liam had twisted his ankle.” She crossed her arms. “I turned out to be useful after all.” Liam was with his parents, his ankle wrapped and with orders to stay off it for the next few days.
“How did ye feel about being there? And caring for the lads away from the keep?”
Ella closed her eyes, thinking back over what happened since she’d joined Muireall and the others on their quest. “Terrified. At first. I thought Calum would insist I stay behind. But I wanted to be with him, in his world, so he’d see a different side to me than he did in here.
” She gestured at the space around them.
“I worried that I would have to use my bow and arrows against raiders, and I wouldn’t be good enough to protect myself, much less anyone else. Thankfully, that never happened.”
“Nonetheless, ye are a brave lass to risk it,” Mhairi told her as she finished putting the herbal to rights after taking care of Kyle’s wounds and Liam’s ankle. “Few would be able to do what ye did.”