Chapter One The Convoy and the Hollow #3
Two riders passed along the road below, moving at a steady pace that was not hurried. They wore cloaks drawn up, faces partly hidden. One carried a bow slung across his back, not openly displayed, but not concealed either.
Bandits, Morna thought, but not desperate ones. Or scouts.
She tracked their movement as they continued east, toward the ridgeline that led to the Black Burn. Toward the place a convoy might take if it wished to avoid the more obvious pass.
A pulse of anger rose in her chest.
This is what war does, she thought. It turns roads into traps. It turns herbs into risks. It makes a healer choose between helping her people and keeping her own skin intact.
She waited until the riders vanished beyond the trees, then stood and made a decision she did not like.
If the Kincaids were marching into danger, and if that danger spilled into the hollows, it would not stop to respect neutral borders. Morna could pretend otherwise, but pretending had never saved anyone.
She secured her basket and started toward the road, staying off the packed track and keeping to the brush, moving as she had been taught to move when she needed to be unseen.
She would not involve herself in Kincaid matters. She would not ride to their gate and offer warnings like some hopeful fool.
But she would watch.
And if the road turned red, she would not be taken by surprise.
***
Caelan rode out before the sun reached its highest point.
He preferred the earlier hours, when shadows still lay across the low ground and men’s impatience had not yet boiled into mistakes. The gate opened with a heavy groan. The wagons rolled through in pairs. The guards took their positions, horses stepping with controlled energy.
Caelan took the lead, with Ewan and another guard behind him. Kenan had insisted on sending veterans, men who understood silence and did not fill it with bravado.
The land beyond Kincaid walls looked deceptively calm.
The hills rolled gentle at first, dotted with heather and sparse trees, then sharpened as the road climbed. Mist lay in the hollows like spilled milk. The air smelled of damp earth and cold stone.
Caelan’s mind ran its lists anyway.
If rain came, they would slow. If they slowed, they would be exposed on the ridge.
If a wheel broke, they would need to decide whether to abandon a cart or repair under threat.
If they met MacFarlane patrols early, they would be safer.
If they did not, they would need to make camp in a place they could defend with too few men.
A man who thought in lists could be called anxious. Caelan called it responsibility.
He glanced back once to ensure the convoy held its spacing, then faced forward again. The road was empty, but emptiness was not comfort now. Emptiness meant unseen eyes.
He remembered the famine years, when roads were empty because there was nothing to move.
He remembered his mother’s hands, rough and cracked from scrubbing pots that held only water and nettles.
He remembered his father standing in a doorway arguing with a laird’s steward who insisted the stores were accounted for while children starved.
That laird had preached order while stealing grain.
Caelan had learned then that rules were not holy. They were only as good as the men who followed them.
That was why he followed his own, rigidly. He did not trust the world to enforce fairness. He enforced it himself, one count at a time.
A shout came from behind, sharp.
Caelan turned his head. One of the wagon drivers was waving, pointing at the road’s edge.
Caelan reined in and rode back as the convoy halted, the wagons creaking to a stop.
“What is it?” he demanded.
The driver pointed at a patch of mud just off the packed track. “Tracks, sir.”
Caelan dismounted and crouched, studying the ground. Hoofprints, fresh. Not the wide, careless prints of a farmer’s pony. These were the deeper marks of warhorses, shod for hard ground.
“Two,” Ewan said quietly. “Maybe three.”
Caelan looked at the direction they came from and then where they led.
The tracks ran parallel to the road for a stretch, then vanished into brush.
Scouts. Observers. The kind of men who did not wish to be seen but did not mind being felt.
Caelan straightened slowly.
The rules he lived by told him what to do. A convoy under threat should turn back. It should report. It should not risk supplies and lives.
But the supplies were not a luxury. They were a line of defense. If he turned back now, the border camp would ration harder. Men would go hungry. Hunger made allies brittle.
He could hear Donal’s warning. Do not let pride lead you into a battle you cannot win.
This was not pride. This was math, and the numbers were ugly.
Caelan mounted again. “We continue,” he said.
Ewan’s throat bobbed. “Aye, sir.”
Caelan raised a hand, signaling movement. The convoy started forward once more, the wagons rolling, the guards tightening their formation.
As they climbed toward the ridge, Caelan felt the first true weight of the day settle in his bones.
Someone was counting him.
And for the first time in years, Caelan wondered whether his careful ledgers could protect anything at all.