Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (12 page)

“
My guess is Mugdock
Castle, or close to it,” Cassie said. “I’m surprised that Lord
Patrick is openly involved, but even if your friends aren’t there,
he’ll know where they went. This is his land. The MacDougalls are
his allies and they wouldn’t have marched across it without telling
him they were coming, even if they didn’t tell him why.”

“
Where’s the MacDougall
stronghold?” Callum said.

“
Dunstaffnage. Fifty miles
from here.” Cassie had been there. The castle had been built on a
prominent rock and was surrounded on three sides by the sea. Meg
and Marty, admittedly unbeknownst to them, had dumped Cassie in a
forest a mile to the east of the castle when they’d shifted
worlds.

“
Too far.” Callum’s chin
was set as he thought.

It looked like Callum was starting to
think like a soldier again. Just as long as he didn’t think he
could act like one too soon: that concussion was going to give him
trouble for at least a week.

“
There’s too much daylight
between here and there,” Callum said.

“
I think you’re right,”
Cassie said. “They had wounded of their own and would have had to
go to ground closer than Dunstaffnage, at least for what was left
of the night.”

Callum looked hard at Cassie. “Do you
really think they hoped to capture—or kill—King David? How could
they possibly have thought that would end well for
them?”

Cassie shrugged. She’d heard about the
Battle in the Severn Estuary nearly a year ago. The traitor,
William de Valence, was famous up here too, though more because his
daughter had just married a Scotsman than because of his plot to
kill King David. Perhaps Alexander MacDougall thought he was a
better man than Valence. Until now, the ins and outs of Scottish
politics had concerned her only when they threatened her
survival.

“
I can’t tell you,” Cassie
said, “except that the MacDougalls have never been known for their
timidity.”

“
Did you see what happened
to the prisoners?” Callum said. “Did you see who they
were?”

Cassie shook her head. “I don’t know
faces. It’s not like the rulers here traipse around to charity
auctions and get their picture taken. I saw twelve bedraggled,
blood-spattered, defeated men.”

“
What were you doing there
in the first place?” Callum said.

He had finally asked the question
Cassie had been waiting for since he woke up, before they got
side-tracked by the time travel thing. “I told you about warning
the clan chief about marauders on his land?” Cassie
said.

Callum nodded.

“
Lord Patrick and I have an
understanding: I let him know if I see something that might concern
him and he makes sure that nobody bothers me.”

“
So you spotted the
MacDougalls—when?”

“
I trailed them all
afternoon,” Cassie said. “Since the MacDougalls are allied with the
Grahams, I would’ve let them go once I found out who they were, but
then they went to ground at the ambush site and didn’t advertise
themselves in the way that they sometimes do. I decided I’d better
stay and see what they were up to—for my own protection if for no
other reason.”

“
You saved my life,” Callum
said.

“
Maybe …” Cassie said. “You
would have woken on your own. What would have been bad is if you’d
looked for help from the wrong people and blurted out what happened
without knowing who
their
friends were. My guess is that once the
MacDougalls realized that King David wasn’t leading the company,
they got out of there as quickly as they could. Do you remember a
man shouting for everyone to stop?”

Callum nodded.

“
That was Alexander
MacDougall himself.”

“
If they’re smart, they’ll
keep the prisoners until they can trade them for immunity from
prosecution,” Callum said.

“
Good luck with that,”
Cassie said. “Scots aren’t known for their forgiveness.”

“
At least Robbie got away,”
Callum said.

“
Who?” Cassie
said.

“
Robbie Bruce is James
Stewart’s squire,” Callum said. “It was his horse that bolted right
before the MacDougalls attacked.”

“
I saw that,” Cassie said.
“I’m glad. He looked awfully young.”

“
So … Lord Patrick,” Callum
said, switching topics without warning. “He never objected to your
way of life or your clothing?”

“
He objects, but he doesn’t
stop me,” Cassie said. “You have to understand that up here,
everyone who isn’t a lord lives in remote hamlets or isolated huts.
People are vulnerable to raiding parties. My information saved him
a herd of cattle. He repays me by ignoring me.”

Callum made a gesture that took in the
whole of the room. “And by the loan of some tools?”

“
That too.”

“
He’s not going to like it
that this time you’re coming in on the other side,” Callum
said.

Cassie gave him a long look. “Is that
what I’m doing? Has King David already decided in favor of
Bruce?”

“
He hadn’t when I left,”
Callum said.

“
Then I’m on the side of
peace,” Cassie said. “The MacDougalls killed a bishop. They
captured your friends. It may be that Lord Graham doesn’t know what
really happened.”

“
And if he does and
condones what the MacDougalls have done?” Callum said.

“
Then we’ll see,” Cassie
said.

Chapter Seven

Callum

C
allum got off the bed and didn’t immediately feel like falling
over, which was a good sign. “How far do we have to walk to get to
Mugdock Castle?”

“
Three miles,” Cassie
said.

“
I can handle three miles,”
Callum said. “My only injury is to my head, along with some bangs
and bruises from the fight.”

Cassie looked at him, skepticism
written on her face. “You have a concussion.”

“
I’ve had one before,”
Callum said. “I’ll feel terrible for a few days and then I’ll start
to feel better.”

“
From what I saw at the
ambush, you fought well. Have you been in battle before?” Cassie
said.

“
Not here,” Callum said.
“In Afghanistan.”

“
I didn’t know you
guys—Brits, right?—fought there too,” she said.

“
Our forces fought there
especially,” Callum said.

Cassie picked up the padded shirt that
Callum wore under his mail and held it out. “I know you need help
getting dressed so don’t bother to pretend you don’t.”

Cassie had taken the mail off him by
brute force, but putting it on again correctly was more difficult.
Together, they managed it. While nobody was going to confuse Callum
for a Highlander, he once again resembled a knight in the service
of the King of England. The men who’d attacked his company had worn
armor over shirts and pants, though of a different style than
Callum was used to: shorter pants, longer shirts which were more
like tunics, and no kilts like he might have expected. Instead,
they had worn blankets wrapped around their shoulders and torsos
like cloaks, and pinned.

While Callum belted his sword around
his waist and slung his cloak over his shoulders, Cassie pulled off
her sweater and stepped into a dress, tugging it up over her shirt
and pants. Cassie saw Callum watching her and she wrinkled her nose
at him. “The lord prefers it.”

She put the sweater back on, a cloak
over the sweater, and then snapped her quiver onto a heavy
backpack, the contents of which she didn’t share with Callum. She
slipped the straps of the backpack through slits in her cloak
before buckling them across her front. Callum pulled an arrow from
the quiver. It was shorter than the yard-long Welsh longbow arrows,
but then her bow was shorter too.

“
Why were you hunting with
a recurve bow instead of a compound one, a crossbow, or even a
gun?” Callum said.

“
My grandfather is a
traditionalist,” Cassie said.

She picked up her bow and Callum
picked up his gun from where he’d left it on the bed. He slid it
into its holster at the small of his back.

Cassie watched him, her lips pressed
together. “You haven’t fired it.”

Callum turned around. “You
checked?”

Cassie nodded but didn’t ask
forgiveness for meddling with his things. Callum gazed at her for a
few seconds before he realized she wasn’t going to.

He shook his head. “Too many
complications would ensue if I used the gun. It’s not worth
it.”

“
Not even during the
ambush?” Cassie said.

“
Especially not during the
ambush,” Callum said. At Cassie’s raised eyebrows, he added, “David
and I talked about this. He’s been here since 1282, and while I’ve
only lived in the Middle Ages for six months, I can see that what
he says is true: you can’t fix everything, even if David is going
to try. If I’d opened fire on the MacDougalls when they attacked
us—what then?”

They both thought about that for a
moment. “The noise alone would’ve brought everyone up short,”
Cassie said. “You could have given your company time to sort
themselves out.”

“
True,” Callum said, “but
after my clip was empty? The MacDougalls would have seen I was out
of bullets and attacked. And then, if I survived, just by its very
existence the gun would have called attention to me, to King David,
and to everything that we are.”

“
Saving the bullets
wouldn’t have done you much good if you were dead,” Cassie
said.

“
That is the weak point in
this argument,” Callum admitted. “My death isn’t the worst thing
that could happen, though. And I didn’t feel like I was going to
die. Not on that road.”

“
What if using the gun was
the only way to save someone else?” Cassie said.

Callum sighed. “I don’t know. I guess
I’ll decide what to do when the time comes. If it
comes.”

They left Cassie’s cabin
with darkness falling, but a warmer breeze filled the air and the
rain had stopped completely. It was May, after all. It couldn’t
rain all the time.
Or could it?
After they’d traveled a mile, a pitter-patter
started on the leaves above their heads. Callum tried not to groan.
Cassie’s lips twitched, but she said nothing.

In fact, she said nothing about
anything, even when Callum tried to draw her out with questions.
She wouldn’t elaborate on her life in Scotland or the possibility
of leaving it behind. In fact, she didn’t say more than three words
the entire walk to Mugdock. She appeared completely comfortable
with no communication at all, didn’t ask him anything about
himself, and held her face so still, Callum couldn’t begin to
discern what she was thinking.

After a while, he let it go. He didn’t
know her or her circumstances, other than that she’d done pretty
well for herself, considering that she’d been dumped here with no
warning and with no one to help her. By rights, she should be dead,
or at the very least, should have had to sell herself to survive.
But she hadn’t, and that meant it wasn’t his place to press
her.

Callum took Cassie to be somewhere in
her twenties, which meant she’d been less than twenty-five when
she’d come to the Middle Ages. At twenty-five, all of Callum’s
needs had been taken care of by the army and his personal life had
alternated between nonexistent and screwed up.

He glanced at Cassie, wondering if
anything he’d said or done so far was right. He was out of practice
with women, having spent most of his time with men since he’d come
to the Middle Ages. Peasants and whores aside, no unmarried girl
was ever allowed to spend time alone with a man, so he hadn’t yet
figured how to get to know one. Until now, he’d had no land or
money of his own to offer anyway. While Cassie seemed unconcerned
about her reputation, they were violating all sorts of medieval
rules by spending so much time alone together. Callum hadn’t yet
figured out what, if anything, he was going to do about
it.

The rain squall didn’t last long,
stopping by the time Callum and Cassie came out of the woods onto
lower ground. Cassie pulled up before they reached the small
village, above which rose Mugdock Castle, which was situated on a
rocky outcrop on the western end of Mugdock Loch. Towers lit by
torches shone above a stone curtain wall. A wooden palisade
extended around the whole of the mound, encompassing a much larger
space below it. The sneer forming on Callum’s lips told him that
he’d spent too much time in English castles. He’d already adopted
the English prejudice against the primitiveness of Scottish
settlements.

Cassie hadn’t seen his expression so
Callum quickly rearranged his face before she could. “Do you think
the MacDougalls are here?” he said.

Cassie studied the castle. “See how
many men patrol the battlements?” And then she answered her own
question. “Dozens. It’s too many compared to other times I’ve been
here.”

“
Is it safe for you to be
here?” Callum said. “For us?”