Prince of Danger

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Here now, who untied ye?” the man asked as he loomed over Isobel, holding his torch high, its flaring brightness making her shield her eyes and hope he would not put it too near her.

“I untied myself,” she said, lowering the hand shielding her eyes and smiling at him. He was the one who had caught her in the woods. “I don’t like being tied up.”

“Faith, but ye’re a beauty,” he said. “I’m partial to flaxen-haired wenches. Come here and see if ye can persuade me to speak to Waldron on your behalf.”

“Would you do that for me, sir?” she said as she put her free hand to her breast and leaned slightly toward him, her years attending the Court of the Isles making it almost natural to let him see a flirtatious gleam in her eyes. “I surmise that Waldron is your leader’s name?”

“Aye.” The glint in his eyes was predatory as he reached for her.

She stepped back, still smiling, fluttering her lashes as she held his gaze with her own, the dagger clenched ready in her right hand behind her back.

He followed her, grinning in anticipation of what he meant to do, but what that was exactly, she would never know, because as she braced herself to raise the dagger and strike, a silent shadow loomed out of the blackness behind him, a dull thud sounded, and the man collapsed toward her without another word.

She jumped out of the way, and when he hit the ground, he lay still. She looked up again and saw to her amazement, as Michael stepped forward a pace, that he had somehow managed to grab the torch as the villain fell.

“Now what?” he asked, gazing down at his victim. His tone was as casual as if he had inquired about the weather.

Isobel grimaced. “The others will not be far behind him. We must hurry.”

“I agree that haste is warranted, mistress, but as neither of us knows precisely where we are or, for that matter, where the others are—”

“Faith, sir, we know we are in a bad place and must remove ourselves from it forthwith. We must at least take advantage of his torch whilst we can, to see where that narrow passage yonder leads and how much farther the main route will take us.”

“We cannot do both at once,” he said. “May I suggest that you let me hold the torch aloft for you whilst you inspect that narrow passageway? I’m thinking it looks utterly impassable for a man of my size.”

“What about him?” Isobel said. “Is he dead?”

“Would you mind if he were?”

“No. He is a vile creature.”

“So I thought, but I own I’m relieved that he seems still to be breathing.”

“That only means he may awaken at any moment. We should tie him up.”

“An excellent notion,” he said, handing her the torch. “I shall do so if I can find enough uncut rope.”

“Tie some bits together if you must.”

Nodding, he gathered the longest pieces and quickly trussed the other man up. Then, taking the torch again from Isobel, he gestured toward the narrower passage.

A brief glimpse inside revealed that it was no more than a shallow alcove.

“We could bundle him into it,” her companion suggested diffidently. “They won’t see him straightaway, and if they have to look for him, untie him, even revive him, the delay will occupy them for at least a few minutes. If we are lucky, they may miss him altogether and thus even mistake the exact spot where they left us.”

“Can you lift him?” she asked. “I shan’t be much help to you unless I put down this torch, and if it falls over, we may be plunged into darkness again. I’m not sure how much longer it will burn as it is. It’s already dimming.” She fought to speak calmly despite her fear that the pitch blackness would swallow them again, but she was not sure she had succeeded. Her voice had seemed to tremble a bit.

He had begun wrestling their captive into the opening, however, and if his method of shifting him about was rough and ready, it stirred no sympathy in Isobel. She hoped the villain sustained at least as many scrapes and scratches from banging into the rock walls as she had in her graceless contortions to free herself.

The task was soon finished, and Michael said, “If you will lend me your dagger again, mistress, I can cut away a strip of his shirt to gag him.”

She gave it to him, straining her ears for any hint of the enemy’s approach, fearful that she would not hear them in time to extinguish the light before they saw it.

Though he worked quickly and in relative silence, her impatience stirred. “Mayhap I should just go a little way on whilst you finish with—”

“Nay, lass, I’m done. I’ll take that torch again, shall I? I can hold it up and light the way for us both if you lead the way—although I cannot help but believe they will simply follow us.”

“Which is why we must hurry,” she said, reaching down to snatch up her cloak. “The more distance we can put between us, the safer we will be.”

“But I cannot think how we can escape them unless we do find a side tunnel. Even then, they have only to divide their party to search both routes.”

“True,” she said. “We would therefore be wiser to seek a hiding place.”

“An excellent notion, if you can conjure up such a place.”

She sighed, biting back a sharp comment, certain of its futility, as she donned her cloak. Grateful for its warmth, she led the way carefully along the passage. Aware that she was not going as fast as she had hoped, she said apologetically, “We must tread warily, sir. I know little of caverns, and the flickering light of that torch creates odd shadows that obscure the path. I’ve no desire to find myself suddenly plunging toward the center of the earth.”

He made no comment, but a few moments later, he said quietly, “Look up to your left, mistress. Does it not appear there may be a ledge of some sort up there?”

He raised the torch higher, and she saw what might have been some such thing, but it was well above even his head and much too close to where their captors had left them to suit her notion of a refuge. “It is too high,” she said. “We could not climb up there, and even if we could, they would surely see us.”

“Not if that ledge is deep enough,” he said. “If I can manage to lift you to my shoulders, I believe you can scramble up there. Are you stout-hearted enough to try?”

“I think we should move on as quickly as possible and put more distance between us and those dreadful men.”

When he did not reply but only waited with a nearly tactile air of patience, she said, “Oh, very well, but I do not see what my getting up there will accomplish.”

“You can at least judge for yourself whether we both can fit up there.”

“But do you really think you can lift me? Only a few moments ago, you said that you could barely stand.”

“Now who is the naysayer?”

“But you did say that!”

“Aye, sure, but I find myself astonished at how much strength fear can lend one at a time like this,” he said. “Come now, and we’ll see if we can do the thing.”

With startling ease, he lifted her to sit on his right shoulder and then steadied her as she braced herself against the wall and stood up, moving her left foot to his left shoulder. Standing so, she experienced a dizzying sense of the immodesty of her position, but he seemed unaware of it as he took the torch from the crevice in which he had jammed it while he lifted her, and raised it higher. Her chin was even with the ledge, and she saw that it was much deeper than she had expected it to be.

“The space is large enough for both of us,” she said. “Indeed, it is more crevice than shelf, for it slopes downward.”

“It doesn’t plunge to the center of the earth, does it?”

“No, for I can see its back wall, but I don’t think I can pull myself up onto it.”

“Hold onto the edge, and I’ll lift you by your feet.”

Almost before she realized what he meant to do, his thumbs slid beneath her arches, he grasped both booted feet firmly, and then lifted her straight up so that she was able to pull herself over the ledge into the space beyond.

No sooner had she done so than blackness swallowed them again. Gasping, she fought new terror as she squeaked, “What have you done?”

“Hush,” he muttered. “I’ve put out the torch because I hear them coming. “Move as far back from the edge as you can, and if you can manage to slip off your cloak, we’ll use it to cover ourselves.”

“But how will you—?”

“Shhh.”

Hearing then the distant thudding footsteps and murmuring voices, she scooted back from the edge. With her apprehension increasing, she strove again to calm herself, but so little success did she have that when a large hand grasped her hip, she nearly screamed. All that prevented it was a surge of terror so overwhelming that it paralyzed her vocal cords long enough for her to realize that the hand was his.

“How did you get up here?” she muttered when at last she could speak.

“I had ample opportunity to study the face of the wall whilst I helped you up,” he whispered back glibly.

“You climbed it?”

“Since I had no one to assist me, it seemed the only way. Doubtless the same fear that had lent me strength before lent wings to my feet then.”

His bewildered tone made her smile, but she could still scarcely believe that he had climbed the sheer wall. She had not even heard him doing so.

Louder voices and footsteps, nearing quickly, banished levity, and she pressed hard against the back wall of the ledge.

“Lie flat and give me your cloak,” he whispered. “Its dark fabric should help to conceal us, but it would do us no harm to pray that this tunnel draws them on for a mile or so before it ends.”

“Don’t be a noddy,” she retorted. “I’m already praying that the earth will open up and swallow every one of them.”

“The Fates won’t be so kind. Now hush, mistress, and keep very still.”

A heartbeat later, he had stretched out beside her, very close beside her, touching her, in fact, along her entire length—and he seemed suddenly much larger than she had thought him. He shifted, settling himself, then pulled her cloak over them both until she could barely breathe. She opened her mouth to tell him so but shut it when she heard a voice she recognized as the leader’s shouting in outrage. The villains had reached the place where they’d left them tied up, and to have recognized it so surely, they must have found the man she and Michael had left in the alcove.

Michael shifted slightly, then went still as she mused that their captive might have regained consciousness in time to hear his friends and, although gagged, could have groaned loudly enough for them to hear. He might even have come to his senses in time to overhear some of what she and Michael had said to each other.

That last thought increased her terror, but she dared not speak. She wondered what he had done with the torch. What if he had left it in the crack or on the floor?

Scolding herself for indulging in the same useless worries she had disliked so much in him, she decided he would not have been so stupid. Then, normal thought ceased altogether when she heard the voices again, so near that she could make out their words.

“Ye’re a fool, man!” one said. “How’d ye let one wee slip of a lass get the better o’ ye?”

“I tell ye, she were free when I got there, and I never saw him. Doubtless, he’d already fled, leaving her behind a-purpose to divert me.”

Another voice, the leader’s, said harshly, “You’re daft, Fin. Did her pretty face stun you so that you fell flat and hit your head? You’ve a lump on it as big as a pigeon’s egg.”

“I must ha’ stumbled,” Fin said. “I dinna recall exactly, but seems she did keep a hand behind her back. Mayhap she held a rock in it.”

One of the others laughed, saying, “Hoots, man, mayhap she cast a spell on ye, too, making ye bend a knee t’ her so she could reach that thick head o’ yours.”

“Be silent, the lot of you,” the leader snapped. “If one was free, they both were, and you don’t know our man, Fin, if you think he’d have left that lass to face us alone. He’s the one who hit you, so you’re damned lucky the blow didn’t speed you to your Maker. Now, hush your gobs, lads, and set your ears aprick. They’ll not be able to hurry along this passage without making some noise.”

Michael felt Mistress Macleod stiffen. Although, now that he came to think about it, if her father was a Councilor of the Isles, she was doubtless Lady Something Macleod rather than Mistress Macleod. But the less said of names at this point in the game, the better.

The lass had no notion of what she had bumbled into, but whatever occurred, she had given him respite from the whip and for that alone he owed her aid and protection. He would have felt obliged to protect her in any event because she was female and he had had it drummed into him from birth that defense of the weaker vessel was one of a knight’s primary duties. A lass as intrepid as this one, however, deserved safeguarding even when she na?vely courted trouble, even when she foolishly flirted, if only for a moment, with the likes of Fin Wylie.

He smiled at the memory of her fierceness but hoped she would have the good sense to ignore whatever Waldron and the others might say of her.

With the slightest movement, he touched the back of his near hand to her hip in warning. That she relaxed at once did not surprise him. Except for what one could only describe as her reckless behavior in being out without a proper escort, she seemed practical and sensible, and thus remarkably atypical of her sex.

He had taken the precaution as soon as he had stretched out beside her of using a finger to poke up a tiny portion at the edge of the cloak that concealed them, so that he could see down into the passageway. The cloak barely covered him from head to knees, but his breeks and boots were dark and well back from the edge. He was confident that if he and the lass could remain silent and motionless long enough, none of them would see him.

But Waldron had extraordinary instincts to match his extraordinary skills as a warrior. Where he was concerned, they could take nothing for granted.

Isobel scarcely dared to breathe. The men below had fallen silent at their leader’s command, and nothing they had said before then indicated that they suspected aught except that their quarry had hurried on ahead. Still, with no idea how far the passage would take them before it ended, she had no confidence that she and Michael would remain undiscovered.

When the footsteps below passed and faded in the distance, and her companion moved, a temptation to grab him and order him to stay still nearly overwhelmed her. She was glad she had resisted when he turned and murmured in barely audible tones, “There were five of them.”

Just as quietly, she said, “I heard only four.”

“Aye, but I could see them, Waldron and four others.”

“Then only one waits elsewhere.”

“They must have left him to guard their horses.”

“Whatever he is doing, we cannot get out of the cave the way we came in.”

“We don’t know that,” he said. “We know only that he’s not with the others.”

“So you think we should go back through that passage.”

“I would willingly consider any other suggestion, mistress, but surely leaving that way would be wiser than following them, or do you disagree?”

She could not argue that, but neither could she deny the instinct screaming at her that they were safe where they were. “We could just stay here until they leave,” she said.

“Nay, mistress, for as safe as it feels now, I ken Waldron fine, and he’ll not leave whilst he believes we are still inside this cavern. Once they reach the end of yon passage and return to wait outside, we’re sped.”

“But we’ve no light. And in any event, how can we get down again?”

“We’ll get down the way we got up,” he said.

And to her further astonishment, he shifted his weight as he spoke and moments later, she was alone on the ledge and could hear nothing to indicate that he had been anything more than a spirit beside her.

The blackness consumed her, weighing so heavily that she wanted to cry out to him to make certain he had not abandoned her. Her body felt as if it had turned to stone, so resistant that she feared she would be unable to move and wondered briefly if someone hundreds of years in the future would find her—or the mound of dust she had become by then—still lying on that ledge. When he hissed from below, he nearly startled her of her skin.

“I dare not show a light,” he whispered, “but if you slide to the edge and over, I shall hear where you are, and if you fall, I believe that I can keep you from suffering any injury. But try to find a foothold or two as you ease your way over the edge, until I can grasp your feet.”

“But I cannot see a thing,” she protested.

“The only other choice is for you to remain hidden here whilst I try to escape and summon aid for you,” he said reasonably. “If that is what you’d prefer—”

“No! I’ll do as you say.” She did not even have to think about it, because the decision made itself. She ached for sunlight and freedom.

Second thoughts assailed her as she inched to the edge, but knowing that haste was essential, she forced herself to lie on her stomach and dangle her feet and legs over the precipice into space.

Her skirts caught on the rough rock face but she ignored that detail, focusing on finding blind footholds until she rested on her forearms and elbows with only her shoulders and head still above the ledge. The rest of her felt perilously heavy.

“Just a bit farther, lass, and I’ll be able to reach you,” he said.

Wondering how on earth he could know such a thing, and muttering a brief prayer that the Almighty would not let her fall on him, and either kill or injure him, she pressed her toes to the face of the wall and eased herself lower. When her foot slipped, she gasped, but a strong hand caught and steadied it, and moments later she stood beside him on good, solid earth.

“Where’s the torch?” she whispered.

“Yonder, but ’tis useless to us, because we’ve no way to relight it. It would be too dangerous to do so in any event.”

“But how can we see where we are going?”

“You may follow my lead, lass. The floor of this passage seems even enough if we just trust ourselves. I’ll keep one hand on the wall to our right and hold your hand with the other if you like. Now, come.”

She did as he suggested, knowing nothing better to suggest and certain that at any moment they would hear their pursuers returning. His hand was warm and strong as it enfolded hers, and she gripped it tight, putting her right hand on his right hip a moment later, taking care to avoid the bare skin of his waist. He was right, she decided, in believing that fear lent one powers that one did not ordinarily possess.

He moved as though he could see perfectly, and although at first she found herself stumbling in his wake, resisting both his speed and direction of movement, after bumping against one wall and then the other a couple of times, she discovered an awareness in herself of their proximity even though she could not see them. After that it became easier to trust both his movements and her own.

Only once did she hear voices behind them, but the sound came from a considerable distance. She refocused her attention on her own progress and, in less time than expected, saw the dim, distant glow of daylight ahead.

Automatically, now that she could see, she let go of his hand and moved to walk beside him.

“Stay back, lass,” he said. “I doubt he’s standing at the entrance, but if he is, he’s more likely to see two of us moving toward him than one. And tread as lightly as you can. This passageway echoes noise, as you’ve heard for yourself.”

She almost argued with him, because the daylight was enticing and she did not want to plunge herself again into the shadows behind him, but she guessed that his warning arose from some masculine notion of protecting her. Experience had taught her that if that were the case, he would resist any argument she made, so she stifled her protest, did as he bade her, and they soon reached the arched entrance.

Moving slowly, barely concealed behind jutting boulders, he peered outside.

“Well?” she muttered. “Do you see anyone?”

“Nay, but it will take an act of faith for us to walk across that clearing.”

“Go,” she urged him. “You said he’ll be watching the horses.”

“He’ll be watching for approaching horsemen, too,” he said. “I’ll wager that he’s positioned himself near the entrance to the glen so that he can spot riders, if there are any, in Glen Mòr.”

Memory of the narrow entrance to the wee glen from the hillside above the river Mòr told her he was likely right. “How are we going to get out of the glen then?” she asked. “Can we overpower him, do you think?”

Amusement touched his voice as he said, “Do you mean to divert him the same way you diverted Fin Wylie, the lout who came to fetch us?”

“It might work,” she said. “But I’m sure we can climb a tree as easily as we climbed that cavern wall, and most trees hereabouts have summer foliage dense enough to hide us.”

“If it is all the same to you, I’d prefer to leave these men far behind us.”

“Aye, well, it will certainly be better if we can get to Chalamine,” she agreed. “We’ll both be safe there.”

“Are you ready to cross the clearing?” he asked.

“Aye,” she said, ignoring the shiver of fear that stirred at the thought. Then, as much to bolster her courage as for any other reason, she said, “Shall we run?”

“Better to walk briskly but quietly,” he said. “I reserve running for when speed counts more than grace or silence. Presently, extreme silence seems best.”

Again she knew he was right and followed willingly as he led the way across the clearing and into the thick growth of trees beyond.

“My horse is gone,” she noted. “Yours, too, if you had one.”

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “They are both fine beasts, and they’d not want them to wander off or bolt for home without us.”

“We should not talk anymore until we locate that watcher,” she said.

“Aye.”

Despite the danger, Isobel felt near euphoria at being in sunlight again. The woods offered concealment and thus safety, but it was not long before she recalled how narrow the passageway was that lay just beyond the second clearing. How they could safely pass the man who was likely watching there, she could not imagine.

As they crossed the second clearing, Michael bent his head close to hers and murmured, “If you’d like to take cover behind one of those trees, I’ll see what I can see before we go farther. No sense risking both our lives until we know where he is.”

“It might be wiser for me to go back and watch the entrance to the cavern for our pursuers,” she said.

“Perhaps so,” he said, looking at her directly for the first time since they had emerged from the cavern. “However, whilst I cannot deny that your reasoning has been perfectly sound from the outset, I’m thinking we may not have much time to make decisions. So putting more distance between us now than necessary …” His voice trailed to silence, but he held her gaze. She saw that his eyes were a clear cerulean blue, almost exactly the same color as the sky above them.

She said, “Go then, but hurry. We dare not hope that searching the passageway will occupy those horrid men much longer.”

He disappeared as she was speaking, and she turned to keep her eyes on the direction from which they had come. Realizing that any tree she might choose to hide behind would serve to hide her from one direction but could do no more unless she climbed it, she looked for a better hiding place and decided on a willow thicket alongside the burn. Near the gently murmuring water, she would not hear them as easily, but they would likewise be much less apt to see her.

He was away only a few moments before he reappeared and looked anxiously for her. When she stood, he motioned for haste, and when she joined him, he said, “He is on a rock some distance below the passage into the glen, staring off across Glen Mòr. Occasionally he looks right or left but never behind, so I’m guessing he expects trouble to come only from the west or from Glen Shiel. If we hurry, I think we can make our way uphill and away to the east without attracting his attention. If we can get over the ridge before the others come, we should be safe enough.”

“But what if they—?”

“They will waste a good bit of time searching that cave for us, I believe, because they will tell themselves that we had no chance of slipping past them and must be hiding behind a boulder or in some crevice. Eventually, though, they will sense the cave’s emptiness and will come to confer with their sixth man. So I suggest that we waste no more time before putting this place well behind us.”

Again, his logic left her with no argument to make, so she followed him warily through the narrow entryway until she could see the man on the boulder.

As Michael had said, the lout fixed his attention on the opposite hillside with only an occasional glance east or west. How she would have liked to see Hector Reaganach just then, leading an army of Lochbuie men!

As it was, she dared not say a word even to ask Michael what help he thought might come from Glen Shiel. They were too close to the watcher to talk, and had to move as silently as possible.

Michael moved like a cat, and a ghost cat at that, because his steps dislodged no stones and crackled no dry leaves or twigs. She exerted herself to move as silently, but her feet slipped from time to time on the steep slope, and she kept looking back over her shoulder, expecting the watcher to hear them.

He did not turn.

Michael moved with deceptive speed, too, angling higher on the hillside, away from the glen floor, and she wondered if he had any idea what sort of terrain lay beyond the ridge. Although not as imposing as the Cuillin of Skye or the Five Sisters of Kintail, jagged, craggy peaks that one could see easily from the ridge top, the landscape beyond was nonetheless forbidding, steep, and rocky. Surely, he did not think they’d be safe on a high crag, so where did he think they were going?

Following him easily enough, she held her tongue with uncommon patience until the uneven landscape hid them from the watcher below. But when she knew that her voice would not carry beyond the ravine they had entered, she said, “I thought we were going to make for Chalamine, sir. ’Tis only a few miles south of here, and we’ll both be safe there, I promise you.”

He stopped, looked beyond her, and then, clearly satisfied that the man below could neither see nor hear them, took a seat on a nearby boulder. Smiling ruefully, he said, “I will do what you think best, because this is country you know better than I do, but if you will recall, you did tell them where you live.”

The memory of that declaration struck hard, but even so, Chalamine had always protected its occupants.

“’Tis a sturdy castle, sir, and my father is a powerful man.”

“Where does Chalamine stand exactly?”

“On a promontory at the head of the loch in our glen.”

“Then it lies lower than ridges surrounding it, does it not?”

“Aye,” she admitted, her quick mind grasping the problem. “They’d simply make camp on one of those ridges and keep watch until you left, wouldn’t they?”

“Or until they devised a plan to get inside.”

She glanced at the sun, saw that it was past the meridian, and sighed. “They still have hours of daylight to search for us, too.”

“Aye, so we need to move on, but do we continue east or go over the ridge?”

“That man is watching the west end of the glen for men from Glenelg, but do you know why he keeps glancing east toward the road down into Glen Shiel, sir?”

“I have been staying with a friend on Loch Duich,” he said. “Mayhap the watcher fears my host will send men to search for me.”

Her eyebrows shot upward. “Who is your host?”

“Mackenzie. He was a friend of my father’s.”

Mackenzie of Kintail was a friend of her father’s, too, and of the Lord of the Isles and Hector Reaganach. His primary seat was Eilean Donan Castle, strategically located on an islet where Loch Duich met Loch Alsh and Loch Long.

“It may be even harder to reach Eilean Donan safely from here than to get to Chalamine,” she said. “Those men were clearly up to mischief at the cave, so what demon possessed you to follow them there?”

“I’m afraid you have that backwards,” he said.

“They followed you?”

“Apparently so.”

“But what were you doing there? This is my father’s land, and I have never heard about that cave, so how could a stranger learn of its existence?”

He shrugged. “Kintail mentioned it, and I have long had an abiding interest in caves, mistress. I’ve had recurring dreams about one in particular since childhood.”

“But if Mackenzie knows you came here, surely he’ll miss you and send …”

He was shaking his head.

She sighed. “You did not tell him you were coming here, did you?”

“No, and he mentioned the cave two days ago, so he may not recall that conversation. I awoke early and could not sleep, so I decided to see if I could find it. My … my man will eventually realize that I’m missing, but it may be a while before he does. Can you think of a good place hereabouts for us to hide until help comes?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I think you had better tell me just who you are, sir. Or should I be addressing you as ‘my lord’?”

“My name is Michael, lass, and so you should call me. The less you know about me, about all of this, the safer you will be.”

“Don’t be daft,” she said sharply. “I am anything but safe in your company, and as you say, you have small knowledge of this countryside, so you need my help. I suggest—nay, I demand—that you tell me the whole truth without further delay!”