Chapter Nine
Her hands trembled where they gripped the coarse horsehair mane.
The world swam before her, the landscape blurring into meaningless smears of green and gray as she tried and failed to focus on anything solid.
A bitter, coppery taste of bile rose in her throat.
Beneath the drumming of hooves and the rush of wind, a high-pitched ringing filled her ears, muffling Bram’s voice when he spoke close behind her.
She heard only the ghost of his words, distant and warped, as if he called to her from underwater.
It was all too much. The certainty that those men meant harm, the sudden, horrid violence, and—most alarming of all—Bram’s sheer deadliness, which had overwhelmed his enemies completely.
She thought of her quiet little life, and the most horrific thing she’d ever witnessed before today—a car accident outside a little boutique, where the squeal of brakes had drawn her to the window just in time to see a man ejected from his car and land upon the double yellow lines.
No one had died—miraculously, the man had stood again before the ambulance arrived—but she’d replayed the sight in her mind for weeks afterward.
But what she’d seen in the meadow... nothing in her life had prepared her for that.
She sat in silence, her mind reeling from what she’d witnessed.
But there was no time to process the horror; survival demanded all her attention.
She had never ridden a horse, and Bram had forced the gelding into a full gallop that hadn’t slackened.
With no idea how to move with the animal, she was simply jostled along, her teeth rattling.
Only Bram’s arm, a solid band around her waist, kept her from being thrown.
She gripped the coarse mane and the saddle, her knuckles white, and prayed not to fall beneath the pounding hooves.
They burst into the trees they’d not been able to reach on foot, branches whipping past on either side as Bram guided the horse unerringly between trunks and over uneven ground, the second horse having no choice but to follow, as Bram held its reins.
Within minutes the woodland gave way once more to open country, another broad meadow stretching before them, and without the slightest hesitation Bram sent both horses charging across it.
He glanced behind them often but never slowed.
At length the gently rolling meadow gave way to broken country.
Great slabs of pale stone jutted from the earth at odd angles, scattered among boulders and shallow gullies, forcing Bram to slow and allow the horses to pick their footing.
Eventually Bram reduced their speed to a careful walk as they picked their way through the rocky ground.
The sudden quiet seemed almost unnatural after so long spent listening to pounding hooves and her own racing heartbeat.
Anna became aware of Bram in a way she hadn’t while they’d been fleeing, not merely of the arm around her waist or the broad chest at her back, but of everything she’d seen him do with terrifying efficiency only minutes ago.
The same hand that held the reins had broken a man’s neck.
The iron chain still hanging from his other wrist had been wound around another man’s throat, and there was blood upon his sleeve and spattered across the front of his tunic.
She shifted forward without thinking.
Bram noticed.
“Ye neednae sit so stiffly, lass. Ye’ll only make yourself sore.”
“I’m fine.”
He was silent for a moment. “Ye are nae.”
Something about the certainty of that nearly brought tears to her eyes. “I’ve never seen anyone die before.”
Bram’s arm loosened slightly around her, though he could hardly remove it altogether without risking her falling from the horse. “I supposed as much.”
“The worst thing I’d ever seen was a man thrown from a car. I thought he was dead, but he got up.” Her throat tightened. “Before today, that was the worst thing.” Anna rubbed her damp palm against her skirt. “You killed them.”
“Aye.”
There was no hesitation in his answer, no apology or attempt to soften it, and despite everything she knew about what those men had intended, a shiver moved through her.
“So easily.”
“’Twas nae easy,” he said.
“But you broke his neck.”
“Aye.”
The image rose with horrible clarity, and Anna squeezed her eyes shut.
Bram was quiet for several strides before he said, “He would have killed me.”
“I know,” she whimpered.
“The other dinna mean ye well, either.”
“I know that too. I know you didn’t have a choice. I saw them coming at you, and I heard what that man said about me. I know what would have happened if you... hadn’t...” The words died in her throat. She swallowed hard against it.
Anna looked down at the arm still braced securely around her. There was a shallow cut across the back of his hand she didn’t remember seeing before, and dried blood darkened one knuckle. She knew that some of the blood might not be his.
“Are ye afeared of me now?”
She almost denied it automatically. Instead, she sat with it, because after everything else that had happened, what was the point of lying? “A little.”
She had tried to pile ordinary facts about 2026 so high they might wall out this new reality, but the wall had crumbled. William Wallace was dead. Bram had killed two men before her eyes. The horrors were no longer outside; they were in her, and she didn’t know which to face first.
“I keep thinking I’m going to wake up,” she told him.
“Ye ken ye dream?”
“I think I’m inside a nightmare.” Her eyes burned again.
For several minutes neither spoke. The gelding picked his way between the stones while the second horse followed behind, and Anna watched the uneven ground pass beneath them.
Eventually she asked, very quietly, “Is it really 1305?”
“Aye.”
Anna closed her eyes and waited for panic to come, but what she felt instead was something stranger and infinitely sadder: a tiny measure of relief. At least she wasn’t losing her mind.
“What is amiss?” Bram asked.
She shook her head slowly. “Nothing. Everything.”
Gratitude seemed a ridiculous emotion after the morning’s horrors, yet she couldn’t deny it. For two days, she’d feared either he was mad, or she was. That she’d suffered some catastrophic break and conjured this world—and this man—from nothing.
But she hadn’t. Somehow, impossibly, she had fallen seven hundred years into the past.
The truth was preposterous, yet it settled in her with more certainty than the fear of insanity had. This one terrifying explanation was easier to bear because it didn’t require her to distrust her own mind.
But... now what?
“Where are we going?” she asked after a time.
“Home.”
“And where is home?”
“Craig na Coille. My lands lie in Buckie, east of Elgin. North of here, beyond the great forests.”
She let the conversation end there, her mind racing with questions.
If this truly was the fourteenth century, every step north took her further from any landmark she might recognize, any clue that might lead her home.
For now, this inscrutable man was her only guide, but she knew her ultimate goal could not be his.
She was afraid, but not of him. Not really.
She feared his ruthless competence, the formidable scowl, the sheer size of him and the quiet intensity of his gaze.
But not once since they’d met had she truly feared he would turn that violence upon her.
From the beginning, his only concern had been her safety.
No, she concluded, resting a little more easily against his solid warmth. Bram MacCailin was not the danger. The fourteenth century was.
She sighed, watching the countryside slip past while trying not to dwell on the impossible conclusion she’d reached. After a time she glanced back over her shoulder, wondering whether the surviving Englishman—or a dozen others—might already be riding after them, but she saw no sign of pursuit.
Instead, her attention caught on Bram’s shoulder.
She saw it again in her mind’s eye—the flash of steel, Bram’s grunt of pain—and felt a fresh pang of fright, followed by shame that she had forgotten that he’d been injured until now.
“Oh, geez,” she murmured, wincing as she caught sight once more of the blood soaking the shoulder of his linen shirt. “Your shoulder,” she reminded him, only to realize in the next instant that he was hardly likely to have forgotten it. “There’s a lot of blood.”
“Aye,” he answered without looking at her. “I’ll need to address it anon, ere the riding worsens it.”
Still they rode another mile or more, Bram seeming determined to put as much distance as possible between themselves and whoever now might be chasing them before stopping.
Anna found herself wondering how one tended to a sword wound in the beginning of the fourteenth century.
She rather suspected—her insight gleaned from television and movies—that the answer would involve cold water, a strip torn from his shirt, and a great deal of stoicism.
She thought she understood just enough now to be relieved when they crested another rise and found a much denser forest spreading before them, where they might be concealed.
Without hesitation, Bram turned the horse beneath the canopy of ash and oak, where the shade swallowed much of the afternoon sun, hiding them from searching eyes.
The trees grew close together, their branches knitting overhead until the woodland felt almost secluded from the rest of the world.
Before long, the quiet murmur of running water reached them, and they came upon a narrow stream winding lazily between moss-covered stones.
Only then did Bram draw the horse to a halt.
He slid stiffly from the saddle, suppressing what looked suspiciously like a wince as his bare feet met the ground. He then turned and reached up to help her down.
“I can get down,” Anna said quickly, waving him off. “Don’t make it worse.”
A storm of irritation gathered on his face. Seeing his thunderous expression, she quickly clarified, “Your injury. Don’t make it worse.”