Chapter Two The Net Tightens #2
She saw wagons. She saw men with faces covered, moving in coordinated sweeps. She saw guards on the ground, bound. She saw a horse thrashing, rope tight around its legs.
And she saw the man from the convoy.
The quartermaster.
He was on his feet now, bound, shoulders squared despite injury. Even from this distance Morna could read the strain in him, the way his body wanted to fight and his mind forced it still.
Morna’s stomach clenched.
This was not a skirmish. This was a capture. An operation.
The men in dark cloth moved like a net, tightening, gathering. They did not glance into the woods. They did not scan for hidden threats. They were too sure of control.
That certainty was the most frightening part.
Morna backed away a step, intending to vanish into the trees, to go home and warn her clan to avoid the roads.
A hand clamped over her mouth.
Morna’s body jolted. She tried to bite, but the grip was iron. An arm locked around her chest, dragging her backward. Her basket slipped from her fingers, hitting the ground with a soft thud.
She clawed at the arm, fingers scraping cloth. She kicked, heel striking something solid. The man grunted and tightened his hold.
A voice hissed in her ear. “Quiet, or I cut your throat.”
Morna went still. Not from obedience, but from calculation. If she struggled, she would die here in the brush, unseen. If she stayed still, she might find a way to survive longer.
The hand loosened slightly as her stillness convinced him.
He yanked her hood back and shoved her forward into a small clearing where two more men waited.
They were not wearing Kincaid colors. They were dressed like the others on the road, dark cloth, leather, simple weapons. Their eyes moved over her like she was an object.
“Caught one,” her captor said.
One of the men stepped closer. “Who are you?”
Morna lifted her chin, forcing her voice steady despite the pounding in her skull. “No one.”
That earned a short laugh. “No one is in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Morna’s lips tightened. “I am a herbalist. I gather plants. I am not Kincaid.”
The second man crouched, picking up her basket. He rummaged through it, pulling out dried leaves, a small bundle of root wrapped in damp cloth, a tin of salve.
“Looks like a healer to me,” he said.
“A healer is not a soldier,” Morna snapped.
The first man grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm. Pain shot up to her elbow. “Healer or not, you saw us.”
Morna’s breath caught. She forced it out slowly. “I saw nothing that will help you.”
He tightened his grip until she felt the edge of something tearing in her wrist. Morna bit back a sound.
“You will come,” he said.
Morna’s mind raced. If she went with them, she might never return. If she resisted, she would be killed now.
Her sister’s face flashed in her mind, pale and sweating, eyes too large in a thin face. Morna remembered the helplessness, the fury at her own hands for not being enough.
Not again, she thought. Not helpless again.
She stopped fighting. She let her body go pliant in their hold, not because she surrendered, but because she needed time.
They bound her wrists with rope that burned against her skin. They tied the knot too tight, as if punishing her for being in the world.
Morna kept her face blank. She did not plead. She did not cry. Crying wasted moisture and energy. Crying invited contempt.
They dragged her toward the road.
As she stumbled through the brush, she caught a glimpse of the ambush site again. The wagons were being stripped, men working like ants. Captured Kincaid guards were being lined up, heads down, ropes linking them together. A few lay unmoving, and Morna’s stomach twisted at the sight.
Then her gaze found the quartermaster again.
He was turned slightly toward the brush, as if he sensed movement. For a heartbeat, his eyes met hers.
Morna felt something jolt inside her, not attraction, not warmth, but recognition. The look in his eyes was not fear for himself. It was sharp assessment, anger held tight, and something else underneath it.
Responsibility.
He looked at her like she was an unaccounted item in his ledger, something that should not be missing, something that now had to be calculated into an already impossible situation.
Then a captor shoved Morna forward, and the moment snapped.
They forced her to her knees among the prisoners.
A man she did not know, older, blood on his temple, glanced at her with a bleak kind of sympathy. “They took you too?”
Morna swallowed. “Aye.”
His eyes lowered to her basket, now in a captor’s hands. “You heal.”
“I know plants,” Morna said, careful. “That does not mean they will let me use them.”
He gave a humorless snort. “They will, if it profits them.”
Morna’s jaw clenched. Profit. That was the language of men who did not care about clans. Men who did not care about blood.
She lifted her gaze, searching for the commander, the one who seemed to move with calm ownership.
She saw him standing near the quartermaster, speaking in a low voice. Even at a distance, Morna could sense the difference between them. The quartermaster held himself rigid, as if refusing to bend even while bound. The commander stood loose, confidence in every line.
Morna’s stomach tightened. Confidence like that meant he had done this before.
The commander turned suddenly, gaze sweeping the line of prisoners. His eyes landed on Morna. He studied her for a brief moment, then walked toward her.
Morna’s pulse hammered. She forced her face blank.
He stopped in front of her, looking down as if considering the quality of a purchase.
“You,” he said.
Morna did not flinch. “Me.”
His mouth curved slightly, the same cold shape Morna had seen from men who enjoyed control without admitting it.
“What is your name?” he asked.
Morna hesitated. Names were power. Names were leverage. Names were how captors turned a person into a bargaining chip.
“I am Morna,” she said finally, because refusing would only invite violence, and because she could not think fast enough to craft a lie that would hold.
The commander nodded once. “Morna. You carry remedies.”
“I gather herbs,” Morna said. “For my clan. Neutral.”
He looked toward the quartermaster briefly. “Neutral is a word people use when they do not want to admit who they will kneel to.”
Morna felt anger flare, quick and hot. “I kneel to no one.”
He leaned closer. “You are kneeling now.”
Morna’s jaw tightened so hard her teeth ached.
The commander straightened again. “Captain Valerius,” he said, as if granting her the courtesy of his name.
Morna did not respond. Courtesy meant nothing here.
Valerius continued, “You will be useful. If you are useful, you will eat.”
Morna’s stomach lurched at the bluntness. It was not even cruelty. It was a rule, delivered as fact.
Valerius’s gaze slid over her wrists. “Bind her with the others. Bring the basket.”
He turned away without waiting for her answer, as if her answer was irrelevant.
Morna’s captor yanked her up and shoved her into the line. Rope was looped between her and the next prisoner, forcing her to match pace and direction.
She was no longer an observer.
She was caught in the net.
***
They made them walk first.
The captors moved quickly, urging the prisoners off the road and into the trees, away from any chance that a passing patrol might see the aftermath.
The wagons were abandoned where they sat, stripped and broken.
A few supplies were loaded onto hidden carts.
The rest was left scattered, like bait or insult.
Caelan stumbled once when his shoulder jolted. A captor shoved him hard. Caelan caught himself, refusing to fall.
Ewan, a few steps behind, was breathing too fast. Caelan tried to angle his head enough to see him. The rope between them tugged.
“Keep your feet,” Caelan murmured, low enough that the captors might not hear. “Breathe slow.”
Ewan’s answer was a shaky exhale.
They moved through thick brush and uneven ground. Mist clung to everything, soaking cloaks, dampening hair. Caelan’s wrists burned where rope bit in. His shoulder throbbed with each step.
He tried to measure time by the rise and fall of the land. They walked for what felt like hours, but fear made minutes stretch.
Valerius rode at the side, not leading, not following, simply present, watching.
He did not speak much. When he did, it was to correct a guard’s formation or to order a prisoner lifted when someone faltered.
Efficiency, Caelan thought. That was Valerius’s religion.
As the day shifted, the mist thinned. Pale light filtered through the trees. Caelan caught glimpses of higher hills beyond, sharp silhouettes.
They reached a narrow stream, shallow but cold. The captors forced the prisoners through it. Water soaked Caelan’s boots. The cold bit into his feet. Ewan hissed through his teeth.
Morna, ahead of Caelan now, stumbled on a slippery stone. A captor jerked the rope, yanking her upright. Morna’s face did not show pain, but her shoulders tensed as if swallowing it.
Caelan watched her, mind working.
Neutral herbalist, he thought. Captured because she was seen, or because she was useful. Valerius had looked at her like an asset.
Caelan’s ordered mind wanted to categorize her. It also wanted to keep distance. Caring about strangers made calculations harder.
Then he remembered Mairi’s voice in the courtyard. Bring my men back.
He looked at Morna’s bound wrists, the rope cutting into her skin. She was not Kincaid. She was not his responsibility by oath.
But she was here because of this convoy, because of Kincaid movement, because of war spilling across roads.
His chest tightened.
Responsibility did not always follow clan lines, his mind said.
His grief answered, bitter: It never did.
They pushed on until the light faded again. When the captors finally stopped, it was in a shallow hollow bordered by rock. A temporary camp, chosen for concealment.
Fires were lit small and low. The prisoners were forced into a tight cluster, ropes still binding them together. Guards stood at the perimeter, bows ready, blades visible.