Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
T he trap was buried.
It was there, hidden, where he had laid it on the deer trail between two oversized slabs of granite.
It was a simple but effective device that Gabhran had taught him to make from things found in the forest and a length of leather for a line strung between two piney trees.
An unsuspecting animal, or man, would snag the line unaware of the trap that waited as a branch of the tree was released and sprang up, slamming the unsuspecting prey to the ground. Another device waited there, sharp wooden pikes cut from the limbs of those same piney trees--strong enough to bear the weight of a man, sharp enough to pierce leather, flesh, and muscle, and any animal... or man, would be skewered like a guinea fowl for the cook fire.
That would take care of one of the hunters. He would have to take care of any who followed behind.
As for other traps, he'd tethered a limb back at another part of the trail, small branches stripped clean and sharpened. It was held back by another strip of leather secured to a limb buried beneath the snow on the trail. When one passed along the way--man or horse--they would trip over the buried limb and release the other. It would penetrate flesh as deep as a man's hand. There were three of these at other well traveled locations that he'd discovered.
Once come upon, there would be no doubt that he was there. He would have to move quickly, taking down as many of the other hunters as possible, leaving no man alive to carry a warning back to the fortress.
As much as the cold and the snow hindered the English as they hunted, making every step an effort as snow clung to boots and hooves, the horses often sinking belly deep in the snow, it was another weapon that he used. They would be clumsy in their heavy tunics and vests, their boots caked with it. Even now, in the silence of the woods, he heard their curses, and the snorts of the horses as they labored through the snow.
A hare darted past where he hid beside the trail. It sniffed the air, then bolted at the sound of the horses while overhead a single crow winged its way through the frigid air above the tops of the trees.
Ruari took several deep breaths. Patient, silent. His face smudged with mud, wearing the fur-lined vest of the same color, and concealed behind low hanging branches and thick gorse, he waited as before a battle, the sounds of the English gradually coming closer. He knew them, their ways from Calais and other places--attrition by numbers, swarming over an area. They had not been trained to fight in the forest and woods, or in the forbidding crags and mountain peaks of the Highlands. This was not Calais or a beachhead to be taken by sheer numbers. This was his land, where he had been born, raised, trained, and now left others in their own blood. The hunters were now the hunted.
There were two soldiers afoot, the others split off on the trail when they had entered the woods.
The first trap was just beyond the two slabs of granite where he waited, hidden, energy moving through his blood, every muscle tight. Then, the sound of surprise, an exclamation, and the sharp snap of a branch.
The man in the lead had tripped the line, snagging it with his boot. Before he could call out a warning to the others the line had released the branch. As big around as his arm, it sprang back and slammed the man to the ground.
He lay there, mouth gaping, eyes wide, a half dozen bloodied pikes protruding from his chest. He gasped, bloodied spittle appearing as a crow winged overhead, its raucous call slicing through the cold air as Ruari sprang from cover at the second soldier. Then that quiet stillness just after first snow except for the sound of the blade slicing to the bone at the man's throat.
Ruari eased the English soldier to the ground then wiped the blade at the man's tunic. He moved silently, dragging both bodies from the trail and concealing them in the thick undergrowth and branches. He pulled back the branch and secured it once more, resetting the trap, then moved off down the trail in the direction the other English had gone.
There were things that stayed with a man, things he had carried from Calais and other places. All of it was now pushed into the dark places he would always carry with him. All that was there now was the trail that lay ahead and the man at the end of it.
Ruari heard it before he came upon the second set of traps. It was like the last death struggle of a buck or wild boar, hunted, cut down, its lifeblood pumping out, yet still it struggled against the inevitable.
The English soldier was slumped at the base of a tree, the front of his tunic blooded at a dozen places where the branch of the tree had slammed against him when it was released by an unsuspecting footstep. Ruari glanced around, but there was no other soldier in sight. It appeared the man had set off alone, a gloved hand now pressed against the front of his tunic as if he could stop the flow of blood. He didn't know it yet, in that way when the mind is slow to realize the truth of it, but he was already dead. It was only a matter of how long it would take.
Ruari crouched down in front of him. He wanted the man to see him as his life left him, to know who had killed him. But before that happened, there was information he needed.
"Blackwood."
It was enough that the man looked up at him with an expression of stunned disbelief.
"Is he at Cu Lodain?"
There was a faint nod of acknowledgement, along with something else--fear, regret, or something else that haunted most men as they were about to die.
Ruari angled a look at him, void of all expression, any emotion, with only one purpose.
"How many more at the fortress?"
The man slowly mouthed the word-- thirty.
It matched the numbers Marshal had mentioned.
" Where does Blackwood make his bed?"
The man's eyes slowly closed. Ruari shook him.
"Where?" he demanded.
The words caught on a last breath, the soldier's head slumping to his chest.
The old chapel.
There was no time to consider the cruel irony that Blackwood had chosen the chapel at the old church, as a sound came from farther back on the trail, the unmistakable sound of a horse. He saw the flash of color at the man's tabard, the bold red on black, worn by Blackwood's personal guard.
The metal hand at his left arm clamped around the handle of the bow. He brought it up at the same time he set the arrow. On a slow, deep breath he drew the arrow back as the mounted soldier appeared at the trail.
Silent, as if the air about him held its breath, then like a quickly drawn breath the arrow split through the morning cold and buried deep at the soldier's throat. Stunned by the blow, he dropped the reins as he clasped a hand at his neck, then tumbled over backwards into the snow.
The Englishman was alone. He retrieved his arrow, then dragged the soldier from sight. The man's horse had stopped a short distance away. Ruari spoke softly, quieting the startled animal.
He stepped into the saddle, and set the bow with notched arrow before him. He listened, then he turned back the direction the English soldier had come.
He heard voices, then the sound of alarm followed by a curse. He came upon the other three soldiers at a bend in the trail where he had set another trap. Two of them stood over their fellow soldier who had come upon one of the snares. He been struck by the branch, impaled by sharp wood pikes.
They heard him approach, one soldier afoot looking up with a startled expression that quickly gave way to confusion at the sight of the horse.
Ruari used that moment of surprise to send an arrow into the chest of the man at the ground, then charged the other soldier who grabbed the reins of his horse in an attempt to escape.
He rammed the other horse, sprawling the last soldier into the snow, then vaulted from the saddle at the same time he drew the shorter blade from his belt. He clamped the metal hand around the man's throat, rolled, pinning him, then brought up the shorter blade and sank it deep. The man kicked out once, twice, then lay motionless. He pushed away from the dead soldier.
For long moments he lay there, every muscle aching, the cold burning at his lungs. He wanted to close his eyes, to leave that place and return to the tumbled stones of the old place with a bonnie lass with blue eyes and red-gold hair.
She came to him then, as she had in the past, an image in the mist, yet so real he could touch her...
The sound brought him back, back to that place of blood and death, the solitary call of the crow. He slowly opened his eyes, then rolled to his feet.
She was gone. There was only the cold, the endless white of the snow, and what waited inside the fortress.
At first light the call went out from a guard who stood the night watch atop the gate at the fortress at Cu Lodain. Soon other soldiers appeared atop the wall.
Expecting the return of the hunters, they gathered and stared down at the dark shape in the snow. The heavy wooden gate slowly opened and two soldiers appeared.
The dark shape was a slain deer. But as they looked closer they saw a boot that protruded from the hide. They rolled the deer carcass over, and both men jumped back at the sight of a fellow soldier staring blankly back at them, blood dark now with the cold staining that red and black image of the dragon at the front of the man's tunic, his lifeless body wrapped inside the carcass of the dead deer.
"Stand back!" Blackwood ordered, shouldering his way through his men at the gate.
"What the devil... ?" he demanded, shoving one of the soldiers aside who stood over the carcass.
He stared down at the frozen expression of the dead soldier, one of his personal guards, the deer's bloody hide wrapped around him. He took a sudden step back from the gruesome scene and would have stumbled if one of his men hadn't steadied him with a hand. He threw the man off and drew his sword.
"What is the meaning of this?"
He turned on one of the guards who had found the dead carcass, one of the men who had been there the longest.
"Tell me!" he demanded.
"Tis a death sign," the first man replied uneasily.
"Death? What death? Where are the others?"
"We saw no one," the second man replied. "Only this... " The soldier gestured to the dead man.
"His throat's been cut."
"I can bloody well see that, you fool! But who is responsible? Six men were sent out. Where are the others?!"
There was no answer in the cold gray dawn, only that bloodied carcass.
Blackwood whirled around, his expression one of cold fury.
"I want men prepared to ride out immediately. Find the others!" he shouted. "And do not return until you have found the ones responsible for this!"
Ruari watched from the cover of trees at the edge of forest as a column of English soldiers rode out.
That left no more than a dozen soldiers to guard Cu Lodain, and Blackwood.