Chapter Seven
Catriona came down through the willows at a run. She did not slow when she saw them.
“The scouts are in,” she said. “Yer father’s callin’ for ye both, and he’s nae in a mood tae wait on it.”
Alexandra and Arran only looked at each other. Then they went up through the camp side by side and did not talk.
Her father had the scouts in a ring by the wagons and all of his council standing behind him. Liam’s men, mud to the thigh, one of them holding his horse’s head because the animal was blown and shaking. They had ridden through the night and it showed on all three.
The eldest of them had a folded paper in his fist.
“From Liam,” he said. “He wrote it out at the fire and had us away before the ink was dry. He’d nae let us stop for a bite, nae even the once.”
Finn McKenzie took it and read it. Then he read it again. Alexandra watched his face the whole way through and could not tell one thing from it.
Her father handed the paper to Arran instead, which told her more about the last two days than any conversation had.
Arran read it aloud.
Liam’s trackers had a group of Campbell riders on the low road going west, moving fast and in good order and not stopping to burn anything, which was the part that mattered.
Riders who burn are raiders. Riders who go past a standing village without touching it are going somewhere.
And in the middle of that column rode a figure in a good cloak that matched Ian Campbell’s description.
“That’s him,” she said. “Da, that must be Ian. He’s on the move, comin’ for us.”
Finn looked at her for a moment. Then he turned around and started giving orders. She understood that she had won something, that there would be no acknowledgement of it, and that this was as much as she was ever going to get.
The camp came down inside the hour.
She had never seen an army strike a camp in a hurry.
It was a thing worth watching once. Tents came flat.
Fires got water and then earth. The healers had their wagons hitched and their ponies strung before the tents were down, because Catriona had them doing it in a certain order and would not be argued with.
Alexandra rode near the front, a few horses back from her father, with Arran on her left.
They rode hard through the night, each of them silent, fighting their own demons in their head. The country turned against them by mid-morning.
The low road ran out at a burn. After that there was no road at all, only a track going up between two shoulders of rock, with a drop on the right that got worse the higher they went.
The mist came down to meet them. It came in from the west in one grey wall and swallowed the head of the column.
In the depths of the mist, a rider could barely see the horse in front of him and the ground under his own feet. Nothing else in the world.
The footing was slick stone under wet moss. Twice a horse went down on its knees and had to be helped up. Nobody spoke above a mutter. The sound of that whole army going up the hill was hooves and iron and men breathing. Far below on the right, water.
“Keep tae the inside,” Arran said.
“I am keepin’ tae the inside,” Alexandra answered, more tense than she needed to be. The terrain and the mist were getting to her despite her efforts.
“Ye’re a hand’s breadth off it and ye’ve been driftin’ out this last mile. Do ye ken what’s on yer right hand?”
“I ken fine what’s on me right hand!”
“Then drift tae the left, would ye, and I’ll say nae more about it.”
With a sigh, she drifted to the left. She would rather have been struck than admit that she had lost the edge of the track twice in the mist, and that her heart had climbed into her mouth both times.
They came out of the cloud at the top and the world opened in front of them. The head of the column stopped dead.
The track ran out onto a broad shelf of rock with the sky on three sides of it. Below the edge, a long way below, the river came down through a gorge in white water. All across that shelf were the marks of horses that had stood, and turned, and gone back the way they had come.
Her father was off his horse before it had properly stopped.
“They’ve doubled on us, me laird,” Hamish said.
“Do ye see it?” He was down on one knee at the churned ground with his hand flat in it.
“They came up here, milled about tae make a mess of the ground, and went away back down the east side. It’s two days old at the least. Would ye look at the moss on it?
I’d say nearer three, ken, and I’ve been wrong many a time but nae by much. ”
“There’s blood here,” one of the McGregors said. “A fair drop of it. Is that a man’s, do ye think, or a beast’s? I cannae tell it.”
There was. It went in a line across the rock toward the edge, black and dried into the moss. There was more of it than a man wants to see and less than a man dies of. Someone had been hurt up here and had been walked, or dragged. There was nothing at the end of the line but air.
Alexandra got down off her horse.
Her heart knew before her head did. She saw the spike before anyone had said a word about it. An iron spike, rusted through and driven into a crack in the rock a pace from the edge, with something tied around it that was dark with wet.
She was walking toward it before her father had turned around.
“Alexandra,” her father yelled.
She did not stop. She got down on her knees on the wet rock and put her hands out without touching it. Behind her the whole army came up onto that shelf and went quiet, the same way they had gone quiet in the burnt village.
It was a piece of cloak. It had been cut, not torn. Someone had taken a knife to a good cloak and cut a square out of it. Tied it around a rusted spike above a gorge for the McKenzies to find.
It was McKenzie weave. She had that at a glance and it meant nothing on its own, because half the country wore McKenzie weave.
Then she turned the wet cloth over.
There was a mend in it. A long tear, run from the hem up, closed with small even stitches in thread the wrong colour, brown thread in blue cloth, because it had been done in a hurry in a stable yard.
She knew that mend. She had watched her mother put it in.
Rory had gone over the paddock gate instead of through it, the way he had been told not to since he could walk.
The gate had taken his cloak from hem to hip.
Their mother had sat down on the mounting block and had stitched it there and then, and used the brown because the blue was in the Keep and she was not walking back for it.
Her brother had been wearing that very cloak when they rode south.
She had his other one in her saddlebag. She had carried it since the morning she left Murray Keep, folded, because there was nowhere on this earth to lay it down. It was his summer cloak. It had no mend in it and it never would.
This was the one he had died in. Someone had cut a piece out of it, and carried that piece up a mountain, and tied it where they would find it.
Her hands began to shake. She could not stop them. She put them down into her lap and held them there. Her throat had closed so hard that it hurt her to breathe.
“It’s Rory’s,” she said out loud, so that every man on that rock would hear her say it. “This is me brother’s cloak. This is the one he was wearin’ when Ian Campbell killed him.”
Behind her a man swore. Arran came past her shoulder and went down on his heels at her side. He did not touch her. He said nothing at all for a moment. She was grateful for both.
“Alexandra.” Very low. “Is it his? Are ye sure of it, lass?”
“Aye. It’s his and I’ll nae be told different.”
“Ye’re certain of it?”
“Me mother mended it.” Her voice came out of somewhere flat and far away. “In the yard, on the block, wi—” She stopped and started again. “With brown thread. She’d nae blue on her that day, so she…” Her voice went. “She used what she had.”
Arran let out a breath.
“Do ye see what this is?” he said. “He wanted us tae find it. He kent we would. That’s why it’s hung where a man cannae miss it. He’s been away ahead of us the whole while and we’ve been walkin’ where he pointed.”
“He was never goin’ west at all, was he?” Alexandra said.
“He wasnae, no.”
“He put men on that road so Liam’s trackers would see them.
Then he cut up me brother’s cloak so we’d stand here and be sure of it.
” Something was happening in her chest that had nothing to do with crying.
The grief was still there. It had gone cold at the edges and hard in the middle, and it frightened her more than the tears had.
“He’s laughin’ at us, Arran. Do ye nae feel it? ”
“Aye. He is.”
“Then let him laugh at us.” She got up off her knees. “I want him laughin’ right up until the moment it stops.”
Her father took the cloth out of her hands.
She had not heard him come. He stood there with it. He opened it out to its full size in both fists. Every man on that rock watched Finn McKenzie look at his son’s mended cloak, with the wind coming up off the gorge.
Nobody spoke. Alexandra watched her father’s hands on that cloth. Her eyes filled, and she let them.
“North,” Finn said. “We go north the night and nae argument on it.”
Arran stood up.
“Me laird—”
“North. Tonight.” He did not raise his voice, which frightened her far more than the shouting in the burnt village had.
“We go up the east side and we go through whatever’s on that road, and we do not stop at his gate.
I’ll have that castle down tae the foundation stone.
I’ll have it burnt and pulled and salted, and I’ll do it with this in me hand. ”
“And is that nae the very thing he wants of ye?”
“I ken fine what he wants.”
“Then ye ken he’s had two days on ye and he’s chosen the road ye’ll take!
” Arran had his hands out. “Me laird, listen tae me. He didnae leave that up there for ye tae grieve over. He left it so ye’d do exactly what ye’re doin’ this minute.
He’s turned ye north the way ye’d turn a horse and ye ken it.
If ye go up that road tonight, ye go at his hour and by his road, with tired men and nae ground scouted.
And he’ll be sat at the top of it waitin’ on ye, because he’s had two days tae get there! ”
“Then he’ll get his fight and he’s welcome tae it.”
“Aye, and whose fight will it be? His. Nae yers, me laird.”
Finn folded the cloth. He did it slowly. It took him three tries. Then he put it inside his cloak against his chest.
“Me laird, we need men.” Arran got his voice down.
“Send for the Murrays. Two riders, hard as they can ride. Seamus Murray can have men on that road in two days, and Rolland kens the country better than any of us. If we’re goin’ at Campbell’s walls, we go at them with all we have.
Nae the half of it that’s stood on this rock.
That isnae caution, me laird. That’s countin’. ”
“I willnae.”
“Me laird—”
“I willnae, and I’ll nae say it a third time.” Finn turned around on him. “There’s a man at that keep who is Alistair Campbell’s son and Ian Campbell’s own brother. He sits at Seamus Murray’s table and he reads Seamus Murray’s letters. And every one of ye tells me he’s tae be trusted.”
“Because he is.” Arran did not give an inch.
“Christopher Kincaid killed his own father in front of witnesses. He carried Morag Caindach out of that castle. He put a sword tae Ian tae get yer daughter and yer son out of a courtyard. He took a blade in the face for it. The mark’s on him yet.
He’s nae traitor, me laird. I’ll stake me name on it. ”
“Aye,” Finn said. “Ye will. That’s the trouble.”
“Me laird—”
“Ye call him brother.” Finn came a step closer.
“Ye were raised at the same table. Ye love the man. And I’m tae send the road I’m takin’ intae a house he walks about in, on the word of the one man in Scotland who couldnae see it if he were wrong.
” He shook his head once. “Yer judgement is nae good tae me on this, Kincaid. It isnae yer honesty I doubt. It’s yer eyes. ”
Arran said nothing. There was nothing to say to it that was not the same thing again.
“And I’ll tell ye the rest, since we’re bein’ plain.
” Finn’s voice dropped. “I’ve given for a fortnight.
I’ve given a son. I’ve given villages I cannae count and a valley of good men and a boy’s cloak on a spike above a gorge.
I’m done givin’. I’m the McKenzie, and I say we go north, and I say we take somethin’ back.
Ye’ll send nothin’ and ye’ll write nothin’. Do I have yer word?”
The whole shelf was listening.
Alexandra watched Arran stand there in the wind with the gorge behind him. She saw what it cost him. She saw him take the time to be sure of what he was about to say. And she knew, before he opened his mouth, that he was not going to give his word.
“Ye have me obedience,” Arran said. “Ye’ve had that of me since the courtyard and ye’ll keep it.”
“Is that what I asked ye for?”
“No. But it’s what I’ve got tae give ye, me laird.”
Then he turned and looked at her.
She understood exactly what he was asking.
He was asking her to say the thing she had been saying since she was old enough to argue.
He had been right about the flanks in the burnt village.
He was right now about Christopher not being a traitor, and he was asking her to stand where she had always stood.
But then she thought about a square of blue cloth with brown thread in it. And her brother lying motionless on the ground.
“Me father’s in the right of it,” she said.
She heard it come out of her own mouth. She watched it land on him, and the hurt went over his face before he could get hold of it. She was ashamed and furious, and she did not take a word of it back.
“Alexandra—”
“And what has he had, Arran? Two days tae plan for whatever’s careful?
” she said. “He’s had a fortnight. He kens fine what we’d do if we were bein’ sensible, because bein’ sensible is all we’ve done since Rory died, ever since this whole damned war began, and every day of it has cost us a village.
” Her voice was rising and she let it rise.
“We’re goin’ north. And I’ll nae sit on a rock waitin’ on Seamus Murray tae finish his supper and have a think about it! ”
Arran did not argue with her. That was the worst part of the whole day.
He looked at her a moment longer. Something went out of his face and did not come back. Then he nodded once and turned away to see to his men. Her heart went after him. She stood where she was.
As the riders changed their course, Alexandra rode near the front with her father, where she had wanted to be for a fortnight.
She didn’t look back for Arran, not once, the whole way down.
She knew exactly where he was. He was riding a quarter of a mile behind her with the Kincaid riders, in the same place he had ridden on the day he followed her out of the Murray gates, and she had known it every hour of that day without turning around.