Chapter Five
As a healer, Katrina recognized the signs of shock in her own actions as the captain led her away from the corpse with nary another glance, his grip on her arm almost gentle as he returned toward the inn.
She was far too calm. She should be screaming. Running. Fighting, kicking, dragging her feet—anything to get away, to summon attention, to find some help.
Except, said that voice in her mind that was not panicking the way it should be, this man would kill anyone who tried to come help her, wouldn’t he? He’d killed his own ally, after all. He’d killed her bloody horse.
So, even though it was clearly a terrible idea, she followed behind him as he returned to his mount without kicking up a fuss. She couldn’t even really feel the pain of the cut on her arm. That surely was not good.
It had to have been the shock that caused one thought to bubble up through the morass of things she should have been thinking or doing.
“How are ye standing again so soon?”
It was a good question, all things considered. The mixture had not been as potent as the dose she’d given to the guard back at MacAllan Keep, but he should have been knocked out for longer than that with a dose of poppy and valerian directly to the face.
He ignored her.
“What do ye want with me?”
He ignored that, too.
“Who are ye?”
More silence.
They’d reached his horse, an enormous creature who waited patiently. The captain hadn’t even bothered to tether the horse, though Katrina pitied the man who tried to steal the mount. It was a proper warhorse, tall as the skies and probably at least as mean as its rider.
“Let’s get ye up.” The captain finally spoke.
His voice was a low rumble that went through Katrina, vibrating against where he still held her tight.
Apparently effortlessly, he transferred both of her wrists into one large hand.
She tugged experimentally against this new hold but found release just as unlikely as it had been when he’d gripped only one of her arms.
In a flash, he had a rope in his hand. She hadn’t even seen where he’d gotten it. And he bound her wrists together with brutal efficiency. He glanced peevishly at the seeping wound on her arm, clicking his tongue as if her injury inconvenienced him.
She supposed that was more attention than he’d given the man he had outright killed. She wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not.
Katrina was not a small woman, but it scarcely took the brute any effort as he hoisted her about the waist and lifted her onto the massive horse.
Her feet were far from the stirrups; all she could do was cling helplessly onto the pommel with her bound hands as he walked the horse a little ways back into the trees.
“Dinnae try to get down,” he commanded her when they reached the first cloaked man, the one she had dosed with her herbs. This one was still unconscious, she thought bitterly.
“I’d break my bloody neck,” she muttered as he bent to lift the unconscious man over one shoulder, as easily as he had lifted Katrina.
Her sour comment was little in the way of defiance, but she could not risk anything else.
With her hands bound, she would likely injure herself trying to get off this enormous horse, and she certainly wouldn’t manage to get away.
All she would accomplish was angering this brute with his monstrous strength.
The captain practically tossed the unconscious man onto the second horse, which had been tethered nearby. During her initial flight, Katrina had been too hasty to notice it there, and she cursed herself for the oversight. Would she have escaped if she’d seen it?
There was no sense in fretting over might have beens, she told herself sternly as the captain swung up behind her. All she had to do now was look for another chance.
But as she was looking, she saw something else—something that made her mouth go dry.
As he had mounted, the captain had revealed the colors of the plaid that he wore beneath his anonymous dark cloak.
Rich red and dark green.
MacFarlane. This man was a member of Clan MacFarlane. And with the height and his hair—she could see the red color all the more clearly now as the thin gray light of the coming dawn lit the space—he could only be one man.
Blake MacFarlane.
“Ye are the Bloodhound,” she whispered, too distressed to hide the tremble in her voice.
The Bloodhound laughed, and it was a hard, chilling sound.
“Aye,” he said. “I see that my reputation precedes me. I suppose that I dinnae need to tell ye again, then, lass. If ye wish to survive what little remains of the night, ye had best start cooperating a sight better than ye have done this far.”
Katrina swallowed hard against the lump of terror in her throat, but she said nothing more as the Bloodhound kicked his mount into gear and they vanished into the woods.
Arran kept his hand clamped tight over his wife’s mouth until Katrina and Blake were out of sight, until Kenna had stopped struggling against his hold, like she could not physically restrain herself from trying to go after her friend.
That was all right. He could be the restraint that she lacked. He had to.
Because chasing down MacFarlane like this? It would be tantamount to asking for death.
When Kenna went limp in his hold, he removed his hand, moving his arm to wrap around her waist, pressing her back to his front. His fingers were wet from where her tears had covered them as they’d watched Katrina be taken.
“We have to help her,” Kenna said, her voice hoarse with emotion.
Her clear agony tore at his heart. He knew that Makenna would struggle to forgive herself for their timing; they had arrived too late to help, but if they’d only been minutes earlier…
He put that thought from his mind. The guilt was his to bear, too. But he could not give that guilt power, not unless that power fueled his actions.
“Of course we will help her,” he vowed. He didn’t know why Katrina had come back to the inn.
He didn’t know if she had changed her mind about their cause or not.
But it didn’t matter, not when it came to helping her.
He’d spoken true when he said he would never forget the debt he owed her on Kenna’s behalf.
Besides, he wouldn’t leave any woman in MacFarlane’s clutches.
The last time that Blake and Arran had encountered one another, Blake hadn’t acted against Arran, even though he’d had the opportunity.
It was clear that Blake had recognized Arran when he was still living in hiding, under an assumed name.
That didn’t matter in the face of the man’s reputation, however.
Or the fact that Arran had just watched the utterly unfeeling way that Blake had murdered his own comrade. Perhaps MacFarlane had shown Arran one good turn, but he had shown the world his monstrous side too many times to count.
“We will help her,” Arran repeated, “but it’s clear that MacFarlane is using Katrina as bait. He has no quarrel with her, at least not as far as I ken. He wants to use her to make us reveal ourselves. If we do that, though, we doom Katrina as well as ourselves.”
Kenna nodded, her stance resolute even though her face was still ashen. Her gaze, too, remained fixed on the direction in which MacFarlane and Katrina had disappeared.
“So what do we do?” she asked quietly.
Arran set his mouth in a grim line.
“We follow,” he said. “We plan. And when the moment is right, we will get your friend back, Kenna. I promise ye that. We will snatch her from beneath the nose of the Bloodhound.”
Arran would do it. He did not intend to ever break a vow to his wife, let alone one as important as this.
But God help him, he did not know how he planned to do such a thing, not at all.