Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (18 page)

“
I’ll say I was at the
latrine,” Robbie said. “No one will gainsay me.”

Callum held out his hand to Robbie and
they grasped forearms, man to man. “Thank you,” Callum
said.

“
I’m not helping you
because I don’t believe my grandfather should be the king of
Scotland,” Robbie said.

“
It may still happen,”
Callum said.

“
I intend to be king of
Scotland myself one day,” Robbie said, “but I don’t believe in
this. I don’t want our rule to come about this way or for people to
say we murdered our way to the throne like Macbeth. I won’t take
the throne over your dead body. Or James’s. I will fight the
MacDougalls, and the Comyns, and Balliol, but I don’t believe that
King David means us ill.”

Callum held his arm a second longer.
“Why don’t you?”

“
Because you don’t.” Robbie
released Callum, sketched a wave, and ran off into the darkness,
leaving Callum looking after him, speechless.

“
I never saw myself as a
horse thief,” Liam said as he climbed over the split rail fence
into the field.

Cassie ducked between the top and
bottom rails. “I’ve done worse.”

Callum believed her, if only because
there was so much about her he didn’t yet know. But he thought he
understood more about her than she knew. The two of them shared a
past and an old world. If Callum had arrived here as she had, he
might have done worse too.

When Callum had first come to the
Middle Ages, the shock of it had left him reeling for weeks.
Slowly, he’d come to himself and resolved to make the best of the
life that was left to him. At the same time, with nothing to tie
him in one place and no way to get home, it was as if he’d died and
been reborn. Callum saw that same attitude in Cassie. Without a
past other than what was in her own head, the freedom from it had
turned to recklessness, as if she didn’t care whether she lived or
died. Callum had seen that before too, in Afghanistan.

Cassie moved among the horses, patting
a nose here and there. Callum didn’t know what she was looking for,
but when she found it, she waved him over. “This one is for you,”
she said as Callum reached her. “Some of the others are too much
like ponies. You’re too big for them to carry as far as we might
need to go.”

The horse was black against a black
night and wore a blanket, saddle, and bridle, though it carried no
saddle bags. About a third of the horses were still kitted out with
their gear. As Callum took the reins, he glanced around, looking
for the boys whose job it was to watch the horses. He didn’t see
them.

Liam wasn’t as large as Callum, so
Cassie had less trouble finding a mount for him. Then she picked
out one for herself. “You’ve ridden a lot, have you?” Callum
said.

“
I grew up in Eastern
Oregon,” she said. At his quizzical look, she added, “I realize
that means nothing to you, but suffice to say, it’s cowboy
country.”

Callum almost laughed, not
at what she’d said, but at her choice of words:
suffice to say
coupled with
cowboy
. She was speaking
American and her vocabulary told him yet again that if she was a
cowgirl, she was an educated one. “Cowboys—as in cattle ranches?”
Callum said. “Like the wild west?”

“
Exactly like the wild
west.” Cassie smiled. “Although with fewer saloons and brothels
these days.”

“
I thought Oregon was all
rain and trees,” Callum said.

“
That’s only on the west
side of the state,” Cassie said.

She led her horse towards a far gate
and Liam and Callum followed. The horse boys had finally appeared.
They blocked the gap in the fence as Cassie approached.

Liam spoke in a low voice from just
behind Callum. “How are we doing this?”

“
Just follow my lead,”
Callum said, with every intention of bluffing his way out of the
paddock, but it was Cassie who had it well in hand.

“
Hello.” She spoke in a
tone Callum had never heard her use before. Lower, a little sexy,
and definitely out of the boys’ league. “It’s a beautiful
night.”

The two boys straightened and stepped
back as Cassie and her horse crowded them out of the exit. Neither
of them could have been more than sixteen and both were shorter
than Cassie. Even so, keeping her attention was all they could
think about. Liam and Callum kept on going, past Cassie’s horse and
into the woods that bordered the camp to the north. They were out
of earshot by the time she came hurrying up, leading her
horse.

“
They won’t forget you,”
Callum said.

“
Being memorable was worth
it to get away with no trouble. Daddy Bruce is busy.” Cassie shot
Callum an amused glance and then swung up onto her horse. The move
revealed the pants beneath her dress and she made a half-hearted
attempt to pull down her skirt. “It will be a while before he
remembers us, and then longer still until those boys are
questioned.”

“
How are you doing, Liam?”
Callum said, after boosting him onto his horse. With a damaged arm,
Liam couldn’t have managed it without help.

“
Well enough,” he
said.

Cassie tsked through her teeth. “Both
of you are suffering the aftereffects of a concussion. If either of
you feel like you’re going to fall off your horse, let me know
before it happens. You’re both too big for me to catch or
lift.”

“
Deal,” Callum
said.

They headed east. At a junction, they
could have turned south and connected with the Glasgow-Stirling
road, but Callum turned his horse’s nose resolutely north. He
couldn’t abandon the captives. At Killearn, six miles north of
Mugdock Castle, he would have passed up another opportunity to turn
east, but Liam hesitated at the crossroads.

“
What is it?” Callum
said.

Liam still hesitated and Cassie said,
“He didn’t say anything earlier, but he’s wondering if we shouldn’t
ride to Stirling Castle and warn William Fraser and the other
Guardians what is afoot.”

“
Perhaps that would be the
best course, but I feel an obligation to James,” Callum said, “and
to Samuel if he’s alive. However much Bruce might admire James, I
don’t trust him to care about the hostages when he catches up with
the MacDougalls.”

“
I’m not asking you to
change course,” Liam said. “I will go alone.”

Cassie and Callum exchanged a look.
That wasn’t a good idea either.

“
I have family in the
area,” Liam said. “I won’t be alone once I reach their holdings to
the west of Stirling.”

“
What is your clan?” Callum
said.

“
MacLaren,” Liam said, and
then he grinned. “We support the claim of Bruce and hate the
MacGregors, MacDougalls, and Grahams.”

“
I can see why you didn’t
mention that earlier,” Callum said.

“
I didn’t want to muddy the
waters,” Liam said. “Besides, my uncle knows my father’s family. He
would have told Bruce my allegiance if he thought it was
important.”

“
Maybe he didn’t think your
loyalties mattered,” Cassie said, and then spoke the hard truth
they couldn’t deny: “He meant for you to die along with everyone
else.”

Callum nodded. “She’s right. Liam, we
do need you to ride to Stirling and make sure that the remaining
Guardians know what’s happening. Presumably, someone will have
reported the massacre on the road, but they won’t know who led it
until you tell them.”

Cassie put a hand out to Liam. “Don’t
say a word about your uncle, though, or Bruce and Kirby’s
accusation against John Balliol for that matter. We don’t know who
to trust or who else might be involved in this plot.”

“
I won’t,” Liam
said.

Callum held out his hand to him. “May
God go with you.”

“
It’s only ten miles to
safety,” Liam said, clasping Callum’s forearm with his good hand.
“I won’t stop until I reach help, no matter the cost. Where should
I tell Bishop Fraser you’re going?”

“
North—but don’t have him
try to track us down,” Callum said. “We’ll come to him when we can.
The Black Comyn should have been headed to Stirling Castle already
for the gathering with Parliament. Now he will have his burned
castle on his mind. Hopefully, he hasn’t already started his own
war against Bruce in the south.”

Callum longed for a fast car and a
good road. Ten miles was nothing in the modern world—ten minutes of
your time, no matter how heart-stopping the danger. But here in the
Middle Ages, the twenty miles from Glasgow to Stirling had proved
their undoing.

He consoled himself with the knowledge
that Liam, as a lone rider, could travel the distance in less than
three hours—two if the roads were good and his body didn’t fail
him. For the thousandth time, Callum wished for a cell
phone.

“
Good luck,” Cassie
said.

Liam rode away, heading east into the
lightening sky. Callum and Cassie watched until he disappeared into
the morning mist.

Chapter Ten

Cassie

“
D
o you know where you’re going?” Cassie said to Callum after
Liam had ridden out of sight.

“
No idea,” Callum said. “I
was hoping you did.”

That was another thing that was
different about Callum: his ability to admit he didn’t have an
answer to every question. It spoke of a deep and abiding confidence
in himself and what he was that he didn’t feel threatened by his
own ignorance.

“
I ranged all over this
area at one time,” Cassie said. “My memory isn’t perfect, and
sadly, what I can’t tell you is where the MacDougalls would have
hidden their captives. The problem, as I see it, is that much of
this land is hostile territory. The Grahams and MacGregors exist in
little pockets between here and MacDougall land in the
west.”

“
In the course of my work,
I memorized maps of Britain on the off chance that I would ever be
stuck somewhere without one,” Callum said. “I traveled this part of
Scotland by car a few years ago, but the world looks completely
different from the back of a horse. Most of the main roads don’t
even follow the medieval roads anymore.” He shook his head. “I’ve
even been near Dunstaffnage, to that castle that juts out into the
water at Loch Awe. Do you know it?”

“
Maybe.” Cassie wrinkled
her nose at him. “I think I know where you’re talking about. If you
search for ‘Scottish castle’ on the internet—or at least if you
searched back when I could—it’s the most photographed one ever. But
I don’t remember seeing it when I passed by the loch. I don’t think
it’s been built yet.”

“
I thought you didn’t know
anything about Scottish history,” Callum said.

Cassie stuck out her chin in an
attempt not to blush. “It doesn’t mean I don’t like
castles.”

Callum laughed. “I’m not touching that
one.” Cassie glared at him, but he just shrugged. “Regardless, if
we’re going anywhere, you’re going to have to lead us.”

“
I wouldn’t have said
growing up as I did in Oregon would better prepare me for living
here than growing up in England,” Cassie said. “It’s
your
history.”

“
I actually spent a lot of
years in Washington D.C., since my father worked for the U.S. State
Department. After my parents’ divorce, my mother and I lived in
London, and then I went to university at Cambridge,” Callum said.
“There’s not a lot of call for trapping rabbits there.”

Cassie couldn’t help but laugh. Callum
smiled too, with a flash of white teeth. His eyes glinted at her as
she met his gaze, and she realized that this wasn’t the first time
he’d made her laugh—far from it. Cassie looked away, her insides
churning.

“
How far could the
MacDougalls have marched the prisoners in one day?” Callum
said.

Cassie was thankful that he’d changed
the subject. “If everyone was healthy? Thirty miles? Much more and
they’d not walk another step the next day.”

“
They went in daylight,”
Callum said, “so they must not have been worried about being
seen.”

“
Or they didn’t have far to
go.” Cassie tapped a finger to her lips as she thought. “You know,
Callum … do you remember Donella saying something about
Dundochill?”

“
No,” Callum
said.

“
She said it when we first
found Liam, something about you carrying him all the way to
Dundochill.” Cassie said. “It’s an island in Loch Ard, ten miles
north of here.”

“
I know that loch. Doesn’t
it belong to the Earl of Lennox?”

“
I think so,” Cassie
said.

“
He supports Grampa Bruce,”
Callum said.

“
He does.” Cassie gazed
north, not that there was much to see but the dark shape of the
hill in front of them and mountains beyond that. “I was up there
once. Nobody lives there. It would be a good hiding
place.”

“
It might be worth checking
out,” Callum said. “Donella
was
holding something back.”