The Bard

by Greyson, Maeve

  She twisted and hit her injured shoulder. Even in the bleak blackness of her prison, she saw stars from that agony. Sagging back onto whatever she had been laid upon, she groaned. “Shite, shite, shite!”

  Wouldn’t Sutherland be shocked? She closed her eyes and almost gave in to tears. No. He would not be shocked. Her beloved man would shout obscenities right along with her. “I know ye’ll find me,” she whispered into the darkness. A faint scraping echoed from somewhere far off, in the direction her feet were pointed.

  Vermin scurried. Snakes slithered. Men trod. The scraping repeated itself, sounding closer this time. She knew that sound. From her childhood, when she and Mama had pretended to be smugglers hiding in the passages honeycombing the keep. The scraping was stone against stone, the opening and closing of the tunnels. That’s where she was. Someone had hidden her somewhere between the walls of the castle.

  She frowned, trying to sort through the last few hours so hard it made her head throb fiercer. Only a select few knew the entire passage system. Even Da didn’t know the whole of the maze. He had once remarked it would take a lifetime to walk them all and remember where each hidden hallway started and ended. A lifetime. That thought made her heart pound so hard she felt it knot in her throat. God help me.

  How would Sutherland ever find her? Who had brought her here, and where in the grand scheme of all the escape tunnels had they placed her? All she could remember was her own bed. Warmth. Comfort. A caring touch. How had she gotten here without knowing it?

  A long strip of light appeared in the darkness just past her feet. The glowing column slowly widened with the sound of stone grinding against stone. With her unblinking gaze locked on the light, Sorcha swallowed hard and held her breath. Whoever held the light would either be executioner or savior. She prayed it was the latter.

  “Sorcie!”

  The tenseness of her body released so quickly, she nearly wet herself. She held out her freed hand. “Heckie! Thank God above ye found me. I canna tell ye how happy I am to see ye.”

  Dearest Heckie, brother by bond if not by blood, rushed to her and knelt at her side. He took her hand and held it. “How are ye, my Sorcie? I was afeared when next I saw ye. I was afeared ye might surely be dead.”

  “I’m grander than grand now that ye’re here, my hero.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s just like when we were wee ones. Ye would always find me no matter where I hid.”

  Heckie smiled down at her, his happy look rivaling the brightness of the lantern he held. “I know every tunnel. Every single way to match the doorways. Ye know that.” He kissed her forehead. “I shall always keep ye safe. Ye will never be in danger with me around.” Setting the lantern on the floor, he removed his cloak and covered her with it. “It’s cold in here, but ’twill warm soon enough. Spring’s a coming for sure now. Soon, summer’ll keep this side of the keep heated up just fine without a fire.” He untied a cloth sack from his belt and pulled out a crust of bread. “I brought ye food to break yer fast. I’ve got some water here for ye, too, if ye thirst. The bag’ll always be on the table with the rest. Thought a bag be better than a crock to keep ye from drinking down too many bugs.” He made a face. “Lots a bugs down here. Fearsome lots.”

  The more he talked, the more ill at ease Sorcha became. Heckie had been known to have spells of strangeness where he wouldn’t make sense, but nothing as odd as this. Jenny had once confided that she had witnessed him fly into a rage that had frightened her for her life. At the time, she had figured it to be one of Jenny’s exaggerations. The lass loved to tell stories that could sometimes be larger than life. But now, she wondered if Jenny’s stories about Heckie had been mild compared to the truth.

  He pressed the stale chunk of bread closer to her mouth. “Here. Eat.” Then he frowned. “Ye spit out yer medicine I made for ye so ye could sleep. Why did ye do that?”

  She took the bread and nibbled it to appease him. “I couldna breathe with the gag in my mouth. I’m sorry, Heckie.”

  “It wasna a gag!” he snapped. His angry scowl shifted to an even darker look. “I put a real gag in Jenny’s mouth after I hit her enough to shut her maw. Put enough medicine in it to make her sleep forever.” He suddenly laughed, but it echoed with a chilling sound. “First time I can ever remember that nattering hen being quiet. I shouldha cut off her mouth a long time ago with a good hit or two.”

  “Might I have a sip of water?” she asked as calmly as she could. “And thank ye for the bread.” She wanted to ask more about Jenny but was afraid to. What medicine? And he had struck her? Heckie had always been so gentle and harmless. But there was something unsettling about him now. The wildness in his eyes was the worst she had ever seen it.

  Heckie’s smile returned before he shuffled out of the circle of the lantern’s light and scrabbled about in the shadows. “I’ll light yer lantern now. I didna want the light to bother ye whilst the medicine I gave ye helped ye sleep. I didna give ye near as much as I gave Jenny.”

  Sorcha recognized the strike and spark of flint against steel. Then another light added its glow to what looked to be a small chamber stocked with crocks, cloth sacks, and a roughly made table.

  Heckie lifted a water bag from a hook embedded in the corner of the table and filled a small cup. “Just got water for ye to drink right now, but I promise we’ll have wine and whisky soon.” He held it out with a smile.

  “Thank ye, Heckie,” she forced out. Heckie was not her savior. She feared to imagine what he would become as he sank deeper into his madness.

  He pulled up a stool and patted the straw pallet on which she lay. “I’ll build us a better bed than this, too.” With a shy ducking of his chin, he stole a glance at her. “’Course we canna share it ’til ye’re all better, and we’re wed.”

  She chose to ignore that comment if he would allow it. “How long have ye lived here, Heckie? I thought ye shared quarters in the barracks with yer Da?”

  His look immediately darkened again. He stood so fast, the stool beneath him tumbled across the floor. “I only go to the barracks when I must.” Both his hands closed into fists. “If I dinna do as they ask, they’ll tell Da all sorts a lies about me. Lies like they told him about me before. Da threatened to have me locked away. Just like he did to my mam before she birthed me.”

  “Who makes ye do things, Heckie? Who threatens to tell lies about ye? I’ll have them hanged for picking on ye.” She had no idea what the lad might have suffered. But in his state of mind, who knew if what he said was true? She had never heard of any cruelty in the barracks, and the worst thing she had ever heard that MacIlroy had done to his son was ignore him. Mama had never told her anything about Heckie’s mother. She would just shake her head and say it was something they shouldn’t speak of.

  “Tell me their names. Ye know neither Da nor I want ye mistreated.”

  He made a face and shook his head. “I willna trouble ye with such rot that isna fit for my sweet betrothed’s tender ears. Dinna fash yerself about what will soon be made right. I swear I’m gonna make this world the way it’s supposed to be just for ye.” With a thump of his fist against his chest, he gave a curt nod. “I’ll be killing the ones in need of killing. All ye have to do is stay here and heal. Once I’m done, then ye can be the wife for me that I knew ye would always be. Once I get our world all set, I’ll bring ye out into it.” With a stern look, he lifted up his lantern from the floor. “Ye’ll not be troubled with the outside until I have it all fixed up just right for ye. No’ a moment before, mind ye.” With his awkward, long-legged gait, he walked back over to the table where the second lantern burned and blew it out. “Sleep now, aye? I’m off to fetch more blankets and try to get ye some wine.”

  Sorcha held tight to the water cup, struggling against the urge to scream. “Aye. I shall rest. And heal.” It took every last ounce of self-control she possessed to go along with Heckie’s insanity. She hated the thought of being submerged back into the darkness, but she feared going against anything he said. No
t yet. Not until she was stronger and could escape. For now, she would drink her water, eat her bread, and do her damnedest to figure a way out of this mess.

  Heckie kissed her on the forehead again and smiled down at her. “That man is in the tunnels. Him and his friend. They’re a looking for ye, but they’ll never find ye.” He winked. “Dinna worry. Soon ye’ll be a widow and free to marry me just like ye always wanted.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Every guard, servant, and clansman here at the keep has been accounted for.” Greyloch stared down at the table covered with diagrams and plans used in the construction of the keep, the chapel, and the building inside the skirting wall.

  Sutherland inked the quill and blacked out yet another tunnel inside the walls. He turned and looked across the great hall at the sectioned-off corner guarded by four of Clan Greyloch’s most trusted warriors. Within the wall of muscular men, Jenny lay on a cot. Aderyn sat beside her on a stool. They had feared placing the lass in her own room, afraid she would disappear just as Sorcha had. “And still no change in Jenny?”

  “None,” Magnus said. “Aderyn hopes by morning—”

  “Nay!” Sutherland slammed his fist on the table. “My love has been gone since who knows when last night. There has to be something that old woman can do to bring the girl around so she can help us.”

  “Such things cannot be ordered or forced, Sutherland. Ye know that as well as I.” Magnus leaned over the maps, wearily propping himself against the edge of the table. “We’ve covered a good bit of the maze, and the others should report back to us soon.”

  “The problem is…,” War Chief MacIlroy paused, tapping a finger on the north side of the map, “this system was designed to change at the will of the person traveling the tunnels. If whoever did this knows the passages well enough, they can connect and close off the halls, changing the maze completely.” He fixed Sutherland with a grim look. “And if they’re smart enough to obliterate the markings we’ve made to keep track of our progress…”

  “Help me with him!” shouted a guard from an archway at the head of the hall. Another Greyloch warrior lay at his feet with an arrow sticking out of his chest.

  “Aderyn!” Greyloch bellowed as they sprang into action to help carry the injured man to a table.

  “Steady now, lad,” Sutherland encouraged as they settled the young clansman down. “We need to prop his upper body higher so he can breathe easier.” Sutherland had vast experience when it came to such wounds. If they didn’t place the lad in a somewhat upright position, he could drown in his own blood. A maid came running with a pile of folded linens, and they wedged them beneath his head and shoulders.

  “Lift me up onto the bench,” Aderyn ordered with a hard yank on Sutherland’s sleeve.

  Sutherland did as she commanded, keeping hold of her waist to steady the crone as she examined the guard’s wound.

  “Luckily, it hit bone instead of heart or lung,” the old woman said. “Hold him so I can pull it out.” She yanked the arrow free of his chest before anyone could follow her orders. With a pleased with herself clucking, she patted the lad’s shoulder. “’Tis better to rip it out when ye least expect it, so ye dinna tense and make it worse.”

  “They thought I was ye,” the wounded guard said in a pained whisper. He grimaced at Sutherland. “Yelled yer name right before they let loose the arrow that hit me.”

  “Did ye recognize the voice?” Sutherland asked, his hopes rising.

  “Nay,” he responded, bucking as Aderyn poured whisky in the wound. “Screeched it out like a feckin’ banshee, they did, but it was yer name. Raibie heard it, too.”

  “Aye,” the other guard, Raibie, agreed. “They yelled ‘MacCoinnich’ plain as day to make us turn. Then the arrow whizzed right by me and hit Kiff.” He turned to MacIlroy. “We need to find Heckie and Godfrey and warn them that the bastard we’re hunting has a bow. They were helping us cover the south tunnels. Kiff caught the arrow in the passage closest to the kitchens.” He shook his head with a doubtful look. “I called out to them to come help me carry Kiff, but neither of them answered. I hope it isna too late. The fiend may a already got to them afore he attacked us.”

  “There’s Heckie now,” Sutherland said. “And he’s covered in blood.”

  The lad staggered out from the same direction as Raibie and Kiff had just come. A narrow crimson stain splattered up the front of his tunic from his belt to his throat, and one of his hands was bloody. “Godfrey’s dead,” he said, pinning a sorrowful look on his father. “I couldna save him, Da. Blood everywhere. They sliced him open like a felled deer.” He shook his head and stared down at the floor. “Died while I held him. Couldna even understand his last words. He was drowning so.”

  “Did ye see who did it, son?” MacIlroy asked.

  Heckie shook his head. “Just heard Godfrey call out. By the time I got there, was just him on the floor, nearly dead.”

  “Come, Raibie.” MacIlroy waved the guard away from his friend. “We must fetch Godfrey.” He turned to his son. “Lead us to him, boy.”

  “Wait!” Sutherland called out. Something about Heckie’s account didn’t ring true. He glanced over at Magnus, and his friend dipped his chin in the slightest of nods. Good. It wasn’t just him who doubted what they had just heard. They both had been in enough battles to know how things looked after the sort of incident Heckie had just described. The wounded. Those who tended them. Blood patterns and signs of struggle. Raibie and MacIlroy stopped, but Heckie kept easing back toward the archway.

  Sutherland walked toward him, picking up his pace as the man continued edging away. Panic and something else flickered in Heckie’s eyes. Sutherland smelled fear. Nay, not fear. A dark air surrounded the odd fellow. Darker and colder than he had ever noticed before. “Dinna fear me, Heckie, I just want to ask a few more questions about Godfrey, ye ken? Might help us find the killer and Sorcha, too.”

  “I am no’ afraid of ye,” Heckie snapped as though he had just been insulted. He opened and closed his hands, raising them as though about to fight. “I am no’ afraid of anyone. Never have been.” All the while, he backed away.

  “Oh, I know ye’re fearless, lad,” Sutherland said. “Sorcha told me of yer bravery often.” He nodded at Heckie’s left shoulder. Time to see if the man changed his story. “Yer tunic’s torn right there. Did ye tussle with the rogue before he gutted Godfrey? There’s no shame in not being able to stop a raging beast intent on killing a man.”

  Heckie came up short and yanked at his shirt with a nervous twitch, then shrugged. “I didna fight anyone. Godfrey must ha’ done it as he fell back to the floor.”

  “As he fell?” Sutherland repeated, all the while moving closer. He knew there was more here. The tear on Heckie’s shirt. The bloody pattern that looked like a splatter that would cover ye when ye stabbed someone rather than the smear of holding a poor fellow as they died. A poorly told lie stank like an overfull chamber pot. “I thought ye said Godfrey was already on the floor by the time ye got to him?”

  Heckie spun around and bolted, bounding down the hallway and heading for the open panel leading back into the tunnels.

  Sutherland charged after him. He had to catch that lying bastard. Had to catch him and force him to show them where Sorcha was. Heckie wasn’t a little slow, as Sorcha had described. The man had planted that image of himself to use it to his own advantage. Unfortunately, the fool was also as fast as a deer in this godforsaken darkness. The deeper Sutherland went, the more he relied on the touch of the walls and the sound of Heckie’s footsteps up ahead. But then all went quiet except for the sound of walls shifting.

  “Nay!” he shouted, moving forward in the darkness with his hands outstretched. A wall in front of him cut off his progress. “Heckie!” he roared, pounding on the stone blockade.

  “Sutherland!” Magnus shouted behind him. The soft glow of his lantern light grew stronger.

  “The son of a whore escaped me!” Sutherland punched the wall again,
wishing he had never been foolish enough to think the mad man too addled to be a threat. “It’s been that sneaky bastard all along!”

  “Come.” Magnus pulled him away from the wall. “Breaking yer knuckles willna save yer lady love. We’ll find out as much as we can about the wily fool, and then we’ll hunt him down, ye ken?”

  “How could I have trusted him?” He wished he could turn back time and snap the man’s neck instead of just knock him down the stable aisle. “I am a damned fool.”

  “Nay.” Magnus took hold of his shoulder and steered him forward, back through the passage, and down the hallway. “Ye are a good-hearted man who believed what the woman ye loved told ye.” He huffed out a deep sigh. “I imagine she’s regretting ever defending that man by now, too.”

  “If he’s hurt her…” He couldn’t bear to think about it.

  MacIlroy stepped forward as they entered the hall. “Is he…?”

  “Nay,” Sutherland snapped. “Yer damned son escaped. It appears he knows those tunnels like the back of his bloodied hand.”

  The war chief covered his face with his hands and lowered himself to a bench. “God forgive me,” he said. “He’s even worse than his mother was when I took her away.”

  “Ye knew of his insanity, and yet ye said nothing?” Sutherland barely held himself back from striking the man.

  Greyloch stepped between them, holding up his hands and shaking his head. “We all knew of his insanity but didna think him capable of such malice and cunning. Heckie has always been a kind, simple soul since the day he was born.”