Highland Healer (4 page)

“How long ago did that happen?”

“Summer, two years gone.”

“The summer after the massacre at Flodden Field, aye?”

Aileana shook her head. “Flodden Field?”

“Surely ye heard of it? James IV died along with most of his nobles and lairds at the hands of the Sassenach…the English. ’Tis why there’s a bairn on the Scottish throne.”

“Oh, aye. I’ve heard Colbridge say that the Highland clans have been ripe for the picking with none left but women and children. That must be why.”

Quiet settled into the tent, but the peace was illusory. Aileana had seen the result of the events Toran described. Wherever Colbridge went, Highlanders joined with him or died. So far, he had taken many lives, warriors and innocents alike. She feared the struggle would leave them all too weak to repel the English who harried the borders from the south.

The wind had begun to shift out of the north, a bad sign. This summer, Colbridge’s army had cut a swath into the Highland mountains, but winter threatened in the chilly mists and the mellowing color in the leaves. Colbridge was running out of time to return to the Lowlands for the winter.

Nothing good ever came of haste in war.

Toran straightened and moved away from the entry, taking small, careful steps that had to be difficult for a man his size. But it was that or trip over the leather cord between his feet. He moved around the table, inspecting the paltry furnishings in the tent—the table and chair. And her. She saw him eye the tatters of his shirt on the table. He must be looking for the tool that she’d used to cut his linen.

“Colbridge?” he said as he picked up his crumpled plaid and tossed it over one shoulder. Bound, he could not wrap his belt around himself without lying back down on the table. Aileana moved to assist him.

“He leads this army,” Aileana answered as she buckled his belt over the ends of his plaid. Her breath caught as her knuckles brushed against the heat of his belly. For a moment, he froze, then he exhaled and picked up the claymore strap, staring at the dangling sheath as if expecting his sword to appear within it.

“So, Healer,” he said, calmly, making a simple statement of fact, “it was yer task to question me while I lay half asleep and less likely to govern my tongue.”

Aileana blanched. She’d had no business asking him his name, but her curiosity often got the best of her, just as it was doing now. If Colbridge knew she’d been talking to his prisoner, he’d be furious.

“Nay,” she admitted, head down. “I only wondered. You seemed…different.”

“Different?” He bunched the leather strap in his hand and dropped the whole thing back on the table, as if dismissing it when it failed to produce his weapon.

“Aye,” she murmured, not daring to say what about him was really different—his ability to attract and ensnare her. “Your tartan…”

Toran began his hobbled pacing again, making a circle around the table and her, getting better at moving, his bonds affecting his balance not at all. “How many men does he have? How big is this camp?” He stopped in front of her, not touching her, but effectively trapping her between the table and his large, intimidating self. He held his hands out toward her, as if asking her silently, so as not to be overheard, to cut his bonds with the knife or scissors that he thought she must have. But she’d left them in her sleeping tent. She could do nothing to help him. But would she, if she had them? Did she dare defy Colbridge so openly?

She shook her head and held out empty hands in silent response to his unspoken entreaty, then answered his spoken one. “I don’t know. The number changes every time he fights.”

He dropped his arms and stepped back, but she doubted he would give up so easily. With a shrug, he ran his bound hands down her skirt until he located the pocket low on her right hip. She held herself still as he searched even though heat lightning shot from every place he touched. She knew the pocket was empty. Now he did, too. She suspected that he regretted it no more than she did.

She loathed Colbridge for his brutality toward his prisoners and his men, but she stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go. And because she believed that she was safer under his protection than she could ever be on her own. But she also depended on more than Colbridge’s orders to his men to leave her alone for her safety. Out of his sight, they could be tempted to try anything. So she allowed the misunderstanding be taken as truth: that her Healer’s talent depended on her remaining untouched. Colbridge and his men believed that once taken, she would lose the healing powers that they depended on to restore them to health and strength if they were injured in battle. Those who thought to try her quickly learned their lesson, usually at the hands of their comrades-in-arms who believed that having her skills available outweighed any momentary lusts, or any fears that she might truly be a witch.

Aileana took a deep breath. It was a mistake. With Toran so close, his scent surrounded her, filled her lungs, and the longing within her intensified. She struggled to focus on what she needed to say to him.

“And the MacAnalens?” he continued, as if nothing had happened, and she had not just denied him some measure of freedom. “The clan he fought yesterday. They’re prisoners?”

“Aye,” she answered, seeing no harm in telling him that news. “If they join with Colbridge, they’ll live.” But that was not enough information. He needed to know. “He’ll kill any who refuse.”

That set him on his heels. Frowning, he began to pace again. “Where is Colbridge?”

“I don’t know.” She fought back the tears that threatened to spill as she realized that the same choice would likely not be offered to a laird, no matter his clan, whose presence might undermine Colbridge’s authority. She barely had time to digest that disturbing idea, when he continued.

“Ye were able to make me answer ye, though I fought against it,” he said, a hard, undeniable statement of fact. He allowed her no chance to revise his recollection. “What else did ye make me do?” As he rounded the table behind her, he stopped pacing and settled one hip on the edge of the table. “What else did ye do to me?”

She had to lie. She refused to look at him as she said, “Nothing save soothe your headache.” She prayed he would not ask her how she’d accomplished these things.

“Ye’re his healer. Why should I believe ye?”

Her earlier phrasing mattered little, it seemed. This laird was too clever by far. “Because I’ve told you all I can.” She hoped he would accept that and stop interrogating her.

“Or all ye should?”

“All I can,” she repeated, suddenly wondering why she risked telling him anything at all. She owed this man nothing. She was attracted to him, true, but it was also true that Colbridge would not be pleased if he found out about this conversation. She risked much, and for what?

Toran fell silent after that, thinking, glancing toward the entry, then back at her, then back to the entry, as if concocting some plan to escape. That, she knew, was not possible. Too many of Colbridge’s men camped nearby, a guard outside the tent and others not far away.

“And what’s to be done with me?” He stood and splayed his hands on the table, leaning toward her across its suddenly much too narrow top. He locked his gaze on her, and refused to let her look away.

“I don’t know.” She answered truthfully if not completely, disturbed by the odd mixture of vulnerability and confidence she saw in his eyes. “That’s up to Colbridge.” Colbridge would surely want to get all the information that he could from this prisoner, but it was not Aileana’s place to discuss that. She feared that with Toran’s innate strength of will, it would go hard for him. Colbridge would not be denied any information that he wanted. She had seen the results of his efforts to break a prisoner who wouldn’t talk. Toran would be back for more of her care, with wounds much more serious than she had treated yesterday, before Colbridge finished with him. And when Colbridge did finish with him…no, she would not think about that.

Saddened by Toran’s prospects, she moved away, trying to put distance between herself and the fate she saw before him. She paused in the doorway of the tent, out of his long reach. From there, she could duck outside where the guards would see her and come to her aid if he tried to restrain her again. She no longer trusted that she could control him with her Voice. “Now that you’re feeling better,” she told him, “the guards will put you with the other prisoners.”

When he didn’t react, she took pity on him and added, “I’ll send food and drink before they do.” With that, she ducked through the entry, the urge to run warring with the urge to stay and give the doomed man the one thing he’d not quite asked for: herself.

****

Cool morning mist pooled in the valleys and steamed off the burns of Colbridge’s new holding. The fog hid most of the landscape, but he followed a path, little more than a cattle track, as it wandered upward over a ridge and into the hills. Trees grew in dense clumps in the deepest glens, but thinned out quickly at higher elevations, leaving no cover save the mist. The call of a golden eagle on the hunt pierced the stillness.

The scene was eerie enough to make him wary and he ordered his men to silence, suddenly fearing that the fog could hide an entire army. They rode slowly and cautiously on their way back to camp, alert to any sound their horses did not make. The level of concentration that he demanded was beginning to take its toll on men not yet rested from the contest the day before. A badger returning late to its burrow crossed their path and growled a challenge that startled the horses. Soon after, they came to a small burn in a ravine and he called a halt.

“Water the horses and stretch your legs.” Colbridge swung off his mount and reached into his pack for some of the bread and cheese he carried. “Keep your eyes and ears open. We’re getting closer to camp, but scouts from other clans could be anywhere.”

Leather creaked as the men dismounted. Relieved of their burdens, the horses sank their noses in the cold water.

“Dorton, head downstream on foot. Carey upstream. Keep an ear out and signal if anything moves.”

“Aye.” Dorton hooked a thumb at Carey. “We’re off.” He picked up his horse’s reins and led it off at a steady pace into the fog. Carey soon disappeared in the opposite direction.

Colbridge allowed himself to take his ease. With two scouts flanking the main party, one or the other would make it back to give warning if needed. He began to regret not waiting for the sun to rise far enough to burn the mist away. In the clear, they would be able to see from ridge to ridge and spot riders while still well away. Of course, his own group would be more visible, too, but he was confident that they could overcome any challengers they could see.

The observers on the ridge had been identified and the route to their holding described, under some duress, by one of the surviving MacAnalens. It always pleased Colbridge to demonstrate his dominance over these Highland savages. As for the observers, he’d let them dither for a few days before giving them the choice to join him or die.

Settling his back against a rock a few steps from his horse, he studied his men while he ate. They looked tired but alert, and he saw more than one watching the mist while they rested. He heard little conversation and that at a whisper. He had turned this rabble into seasoned warriors. Pride suffused him at this accomplishment, small though it stood against his greater goals. He had subdued every challenger. He deserved to be laird of all the Highland clans and he would be. It mattered little whether the title was bestowed upon him by the regent or by that infant on the throne to the south. After all his victories, they would have to acknowledge him.

He heard the thunder of rapidly approaching hoofbeats—many of them. He surged to his feet, dropping the remains of his meal. This was not a single rider, Dorton or Carey, returning. This had to be trouble.

As the first stranger on horseback broke through the mist, he cried, “Up, men, up!” and swung into his saddle. He wrestled his mount around to face the oncoming horses. His men moved quickly to their mounts, but just as quickly, five more men on horseback charged out of the haze after the first, swords drawn and swinging.

Despite the surprise, Colbridge’s pulse ignited with sheer exultation. He lived for battle, for victory. This small band would be no challenge to his men, who had defeated an entire clan the day before. It mattered not if his forward scouts were already taken or would circle back to join the fray. He would prevail.

Shouts and ringing blades on blades broke the silence of the mist. Horses screamed and hoofbeats drummed on the rocky ground. He thrust and parried, drawing blood from an adversary whose horse carried him away into the melee. He whirled in his saddle as some sixth sense warned him of a foe at his back. A large Highlander swung his blade, and Colbridge jerked his mount to the side. The impact slammed into his shoulder and back, and then his attacker was set upon by another of his men, and disappeared into the mist.

Suddenly, it seemed that men and horses moved in surreal silence. Blades bounced off blades without ringing. Mouths opened in soundless screams. Colbridge didn’t notice the blood streaming down his arm until he saw his sword drop from nerveless fingers. He retained enough presence of mind to know his danger. Abandoning his men to the fight, he rode as hard as he could back toward his camp. He felt his horse increase its pace and he held on, his vision wavering.

Aileana would fix this.

Chapter Three

“Aileana!” Ranald’s urgent call brought the Healer running from her sleeping tent where she’d returned with her breakfast after sending food to Toran. The camp had gone dead still and silent. When she saw who Ranald led toward her Healer’s tent, she knew the reason. Colbridge, covered in blood, slumped, cursing, over the neck of his lathered and blowing horse.

“Get him down,” she ordered the men who stood frozen in place by the spectacle. She ran to the Healer’s tent, intending to lay Colbridge out there, but remembered Toran as she reached the door flap.

Entering quickly, she was relieved to see him on his feet facing her, claymore sheath in hand. He nodded, clearly aware of the commotion.