34 A LONG WAY FROM HOME
“I HIRED HIM in Farnoch.” Ailsa wiped her bloody fingers on her skirts and deliberately avoided looking down at the gaping throat of the warrior sprawled just a couple of feet away.
“Let’s move,” Darach ordered. “There’s still one of them out there.”
Ailsa nodded, even as her heart started to pound like a hunting drum.
Aye. They couldn’t let him escape.
They left the corrie, weaving through the press of pines, before Darach came to an abrupt halt. “He’s gone east.”
“How do you know that?” Kayla panted.
“I smell him too,” Ailsa answered him.
Kayla’s confused gaze cut between them both, her bruised face pale in the moonlight. Her eyes lingered on Ailsa a moment too long, searching and uneasy.
Ailsa pretended not to notice.
They moved on, heading east now, toward where the corrie opened up into a narrow glen.
The moon had risen higher, breaking fully through the tattered mist that frosted the winter thicket. Their breathing steamed before them as they traveled.
“Wait!” Kayla gasped. She kept stumbling, her limbs clumsy and weak after days of being tied up. “Those warriors have enhanced tattoos. It’s their leader we’re tailing … he’s cleverer than the rest of them.”
“We’ll handle him,” Darach replied, his gaze never straying from the moonlit trees ahead.
Kayla let out a sharp, frustrated breath. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
Ailsa’s fingers tightened around the grip of her dagger at this warning, yet Darach didn’t answer. He merely cut Kayla an irritated look.
Ahead, moonlight filtered through the pines, indicating that a clearing lay before them.
Moments later, they pushed through branches and emerged into a wide glade. A glittering ribbon cut through the heart of it.
A burn—and standing on its bank was the man they’d been hunting. He’d stopped, his back to them.
Breathing hard, they halted too and raised their weapons.
“Turn around, Maol,” Kayla called. “It’s over.”
Slowly, he swiveled to face them.
Big and rawboned with braided black hair and deep-set eyes, Ailsa recognized him instantly. She’d never forget the bastard.
Kayla’s last customer.
His gaze settled on her too, dark eyes glinting in the moonlight. “You’re a long way from home, Brèagha.” His thick fingers flexed on the grip of his blade. “You should have stayed there.”
A heartbeat later, his eyes started to glow like starlight.
Darach murmured an oath under his breath.
Maol smiled.
“You won’t be smirking for much longer,” Darach said coldly. “You’re outnumbered and alone in the dark. No one’s coming to save you.”
Maol snorted. “You’re wrong about that.”
And then, warriors stepped out of the trees to the east.
There were over two dozen of them. They moved forward, boots crunching on frost, and formed a horseshoe at Maol’s back.
Ailsa went rigid, her confidence snapping like a dry twig underfoot.
Fuck.
Some of them carried torches, the ruddy light warming the darkness. Men mostly, with a handful of women amongst them; muscular and tattooed, and bearing iron blades that glinted dully in the moonlight.
And all their eyes glowed silver.
Ailsa cut Darach a sidelong look. “Can you take them?”
“No,” he replied. “There are too many … even for the beast.” He hesitated then. “And you know I can’t control it.”
Kayla stiffened. “What?”
Ailsa didn’t answer as she stared at the line of warriors.
The odds should have terrified her, but they didn’t.
The silver glow in their eyes no longer mattered either. All she could focus on was the thud of each heartbeat calling to her.
Right hand tightening around her new dagger, left hand flexing, she took a step forward, yet Darach’s hand snapped out, his fingers fastening around her wrist.
Meanwhile, a tall, broad man had stepped forward from the line.
The others stepped back, giving him space.
He was older than his companions, around Kayla’s age, and heavily tattooed with high cheekbones and a shaven head. Cool, dark eyes assessed them as he halted a few yards back.
Kayla hissed a curse. “Gregor?”
The warrior’s gaze narrowed, slicing into her. “So … the famed tattooist of Braewall is you, Kayla mac Muir.”
Ailsa cut her mentor a look, even as her pulse thundered in her ears. “You know him?”
Kayla’s lips pursed. “Aye, unfortunately.” She continued to stare the man down. “Last I heard, you served the High King … what happened?”
“After his daughter took the throne, she made choices I didn’t agree with.” He spat on the ground then. “Can’t abide the unnatural bitch.” His dark eyes grew hard and bright then. “So, I found myself people I could believe in … and here we are.”
Kayla’s fingers flexed around the dagger she still gripped. “Whatever you’re up to, I’ll have no part of it.”
Gregor gave a thin smile. “We’ll see. I’m bringing you to the man in charge. You can talk to him about that.” He nodded then to the warriors, who’d closed in on them while he and Kayla had spoken. “Bind their wrists.”
Ailsa raked her gaze over Gregor, marking a vein in his temple. Another in his throat. Plump. Pulsing.
She’d open his neck up, and hot blood would gush down his chest.
She lunged forward once more, forgetting that Darach still held her wrist fast.
He hauled her back against him, his fingers tightening.
Snarling a curse, she looked up, and their gazes locked.
“Know when to pick your battles,” he growled back. “This isn’t one you’ll win.”
The snow arrived as they walked north, iron collars about their necks, wrists shackled behind them.
Fat flakes fluttered down from a black sky, as crisp as apple blossom in the guttering torchlight.
Under other circumstances, Ailsa would have found it beautiful. Now, she barely noticed.
“That warrior … Gregor,” she said, moving closer to Kayla as they walked. “How do you know him?”
Kayla blinked and looked her way.
Her ordeal had left its mark on her. A bruise marred one cheekbone. Her lower lip was scabbed, and she was thin and pale. “We trained together,” she replied huskily. “Years ago … on the Isle of Arryn.”
Ailsa cut a glance ahead at where Gregor stalked just a few strides before Darach. The black mink cloak around his shoulders billowed, white flakes settling upon its plushness. “He’s a druid?”
“Aye, a sacrificer … like me.” Kayla’s expression changed then, her jaw tightening. “I can’t believe you came after me. It was stupid.”
Ailsa scowled.
Kayla’s reaction felt like a slap.
“I had to,” she shot back. “No one else was going to.”
“I would have escaped … eventually.”
Ailsa remembered the warrior with the tattooing knife embedded in his eye socket. Aye, she’d tried … and failed. “You didn’t though.”
“I just needed more time.”
Ailsa glared at her. “I’ve crossed half of Albia to reach you … the least you can do is show some gratitude.”
And give me some answers.
Darach had told her that she and Kayla needed to have an honest talk, and he’d been right. Her mentor had some serious explaining to do.
Aisla wasn’t the same lass who’d left Braewall. Once, the thought of surviving without Kayla had been enough to keep her awake at night. Once, she’d followed her mentor without question.
Not anymore.
She couldn’t interrogate Kayla now though—not at the risk of being overheard by their captors—but she would.
The two women locked gazes.
And to Ailsa’s surprise, Kayla was the first to look away.
Her throat worked, and when she glanced at Ailsa once more, her eyes glistened. “Sorry, lass,” she murmured. “It’s just … having you caught up in this … only makes a shitty situation even worse.”
Ailsa wanted to stay angry. She’d earned the fucking right. Yet the sight of tears shining in Kayla’s eyes made something twist painfully inside her.
Moments passed, and then she moved in closer to her mentor. “They want you to weave earth magic into tattoos, don’t they?”
Kayla nodded. She then glanced ahead, her gaze spearing the druid through the shoulder blades. “And if Gregor mac Hume is tangled up in this … we need to worry.”
“Does he—”
“Enough talk, Brèagha.” A rough hand shoved Ailsa between the shoulder blades then, making her lurch forward. Ailsa snarled at Maol, but he merely shoved her again.
Ahead, Darach whipped around, face twisting. He lurched toward the warrior, but Gregor caught him by his arm and roughly jerked him back. “Settle down.”
They walked for the rest of the night as the snow continued to fall. The world turned silent, and after a while, they were trudging, ankle-deep, through crunchy white powder.
Their captors seemed to know exactly where they were going though.
They were so deep in The Goatfells now that Ailsa wondered if anyone, save the hill tribes people and trows, dwelled in this bleak place.
Dawn finally broke, snow swirling around them. The sky was pale, the dark shadows of the mountains barely visible above. Snow frosted the pines and spruce that rose on either side of the path.
Ailsa no longer felt her fingers. Her feet had become blocks of ice.
Her stomach cramped then, growling loudly. Gods, she would have killed for a crust of bread.
The captors gave them occasional swallows of ale, but no food.
Ailsa fixed her gaze on the man’s boots in front of her. Left. Right. Left. Right.
The march seemed endless.
When she looked up, the bend in the path she’d been trudging toward was still impossibly far away. She reached it eventually, only to find another stretch of snow-covered track beyond. A groan lodged in her throat.
Her foot caught on a root hidden beneath the snow. She lurched, nearly falling to her knees. The effort of recovering her balance sent a wave of dizziness through her.
Keep walking. The command echoed inside her skull.
Her legs felt as heavy as anvils now. The wildness that had sustained her through the night was gone, burned away. In its place was a vast emptiness.
She wasn’t the only one suffering. Next to her, Kayla trudged on, lips tight, head bowed. A few feet ahead, Darach was weaving slightly now, his shoulders rounded.
All three of them were beginning to stumble like drunks when the narrow valley they’d been traveling through suddenly opened out.
A great fort rose above them.
She came to an unsteady halt, lips parting as she craned her neck, taking in the high wooden palisades ringing the fort where braziers burned like beacons. Snow frosted the beehive-shaped broch crowning it.
Ailsa blinked as snowflakes settled on her eyelashes. “I didn’t know there was a fort like this in The Goatfells.”
“There isn’t,” Kayla replied next to her. Her mentor’s face had drained of color.
“That’s because, until recently, Craeg Aonaranach didn’t exist,” Gregor said. The druid had stopped beside them, his eyes shining as he gazed up at the broch.
Craeg Aonaranach. Ailsa glanced back at the fort. ‘Lonely crag’. Indeed.
Kayla turned to him. “You built this?”
He smiled, enjoying her confusion. “Not alone.” He nodded to the warriors who’d halted behind Kayla, Darach, and Ailsa. “Get them inside,” he ordered. “The king will be waiting.”
Ailsa stiffened. The king? She shared a look with Darach as rough hands pushed them forward.
They stumbled down the path that led to heavy iron gates.
Heads turned as they passed inside. And the moment they did, it was clear this wasn’t a fort like Braewall or Farnoch.
No children were playing in the market ground.
No crones sat in the doorways of squat stone roundhouses with the aroma of boar stew drifting from open doorways, smoke wreathing from turf roofs.
Instead, long timbered buildings lined the wide space inside the gates.
Barracks. Lean-faced warriors, their muscled limbs tattooed with woad, trained in the snow.
The clash of iron blades rang through the crisp air, blending with the barked shouts of the bullish-faced female warrior with long black hair spilling over her broad shoulders training them. “Put some spleen into it!” she roared.
The woman glanced then over at where Gregor marched his captives toward the path leading up to the broch, her dark eyebrows drawing together. The druid ignored her stare.
It was a slog up the hill—past a stinking offal pit, smiths’ forges, and more long wooden buildings, some of them barracks, others ale-halls—to where the broch loomed above them.
Lightheaded with hunger, Ailsa followed the others through a second gateway and into the yard beyond.
More warriors trained in here too, although they stopped sparring when they saw Gregor and his captives.
Gazes tracked them as they were marched up the stone steps, the iron chains from their collar to their wrists rattling. Warriors hauled open heavy doors to admit them, and then they were out of the bone-chilling cold, their boots crunching on rushes in the entrance hall.
A curtain swept aside, and they entered the main hall itself.
A cavernous space yawned before them with two large stone hearths at its center. Galleries of at least three levels wrapped around the edge of the space, rising up to where woodsmoke drifted out from a hole in the high roof.
Warmth washed over Ailsa, and the aroma of oatcakes and pottage nearly made her knees buckle. Gods, if only a hot meal were awaiting her.
Stains darkened the rushes underfoot. Shields and spears studded the walls. Warriors lounged at the long tables, hands still wrapped around cups, trenchers before them, their conversations fading into a thick, uneasy silence as the prisoners were dragged in.
Everyone stared at them.
At the far end of the hall, a figure reclined at a table upon the high-seat. A trencher filled with bread, cheese, and fruit sat before the man. They’d clearly interrupted his noon meal.
Beside her, Darach’s sharp intake of breath made her glance his way.
His face had gone rigid. His tawny eyes glittered.
He looked as if he’d just seen the Ben Neeya washing his clothes.
But it wasn’t the Washerwoman sitting before them.
The man in the carven chair was in his early thirties.
His oak-colored hair was swept back from a handsome face.
Close-fitting leathers encased his strong frame, and a wolfskin cloak draped from his shoulders.
Firelight gleamed off the golden torque about his neck and the amber rings studding his fingers.
Ailsa stifled a gasp.
She’d caught glimpses of him often enough over the years—had watched from a distance as he’d taken his uncle’s place on the throne and then rebelled against the High Queen of Albia.
King Niall of Braewall was waiting for them.