With that uncomfortable thought to spur them on, they climbed down as quickly as they could.
“Which way?” asked Thorvald. Anne pointed inland, away from the sea.
“See the belt of darker trees over yonder? We should head there. We might find some cave or dell to hide in for a little while and rest before we carry on.”
He nodded to that.
The ground was rough, pockmarked with holes and hidden dips, and the woodland was further away than it looked, but eventually, they made it, shattered, wet, and scratched by last year’s brambles, to the edge of the treeline.
“Look,” Anne called back over her shoulder, “down here!”
He followed her down a slight depression in the ground where she was standing next to a huge, fallen tree, whose roots had torn up a massive hole in the ground. Sheltered as it was by the mighty tree-trunk above it, it was relatively dry.
“Come down,” she called, her voice reverberating dully in the sandy little cave. Thorvald bent and crawled in through the gap. It was not a cave as such, more like an animal’s den. He would not have wanted to spend too much time there, but it would do.
“Oh, man,” he exclaimed with feeling as he leaned back against the dry wall, stretching his stiff legs out before him. “It feels good to sit down.”
Their voices echoed oddly in the enclosed space. She squatted on the ground before him, rooting through her pack.
“Here,” she held out a handful of dried apples.
“There’s not much, but it’ll have tae do. We’ve not much water either – we’ll need tae be sparing with it.”
When they had eaten a little and drank as much as they could afford to, Anne settled herself beside Thorvald.
“We’ll rest a bit while the day is high, then press on at night, eh?”
Extending an arm, he invited her to lie against him. She hesitated, but only for a moment, a shy look on her face, but then she leaned in and accepted his companionable embrace, pillowing her head against his broad chest. His breathing had already mellowed into the slow, gentle rhythm of sleep.
They awoke stiff and cold and dreadfully thirsty. The rain was pouring down outside, the steady hiss masking all other sounds. Anne crawled to the edge of their little den and peered out. All was grey.
“How long were we asleep?” asked Thorvald.
“Not that long, judging by the sun. Four hours, maybe.”
Thorvald bent backwards, his hands raised up to where the wood of the tree trunk met the earth to form the ceiling of their hideout.
“What are ye doing?” she said, slightly amused.
“Look, water!”
He was right. There was a little channel between two flat stones where the rainwater, pooling in the rock above, poured over in a merry flow into their den. It was clean, and she put her mouth to it, just as he was doing. They were standing very close, laughing a little with relief as they slaked their thirst at the little runnel. Trying to drink at the same time, their lips met under the trickling water. Heat flushed through Anne despite her tiredness. Thorvald left off his drinking, kissing her carefully, his arm slipping around her waist, and his other hand coming up to caress her face.
He kissed her tenderly, gently but firmly. Anne’s experience of men was limited to her uncle and his crew, and woe betide any woman who got into their clutches. Thankfully, it had never happened at their hands – but the idea that a man could be capable of such a tender, gentle touch as Thorvald was entirely new to her. She felt herself responding to his mouth, kissing him deeper, putting her arms around him and trying to return his embrace with an equally firm and gentle touch.
After a little while, he broke away. Anne’s excitement had been rising despite their discomfort, and there was desire in her eyes as she looked up into his face.
“Let’s fill the water bottles,” was all he said, and after a moment she nodded, smiling. She thought she understood the meaning behind his simple words; now was not their time. Tired, wet and cold, in this miserable little hole in the ground, hiding out like hunted animals – this was no place to join themselves fully for the first time. So, they filled the water bottles together. But she felt closer to him than ever, and the anticipation sat hot within her.
They walked west – taking their direction from the position of the pale sun, just visible through the grey, rainy clouds – but eventually, the ground became so rough and rocky they both agreed to make their way back to the road, at least for a little while.
“Aye, it’s near impassable,” said Anne dejectedly. “At least on the road, we’ll put more distance between us and the castle.”
Thorvald nodded gloomily. The flaw in her logic was all too obvious; on the road, Neil’s men were almost certain to catch up with them sooner or later.
“Could we not just hole up out here for a while? Find some sheltered spot...?” She shook her head, briskly.
“No good. Think it through. It’s cold. We have no more clothes, no blankets, barely any supplies. No, and quite apart from anything else, we don’t know who else may be after us. This land may seem deserted, but there are bands of wild highlanders out here, and the Earl’s men, too, who may be in league with my uncle. Don’t forget ye were kidnapped. Until we know who gave that order, we can’t rest easy anywhere in this land.”
There was a long silence as Thorvald digested Anne’s words and the two weary travellers wandered back in the direction of the tree-lined road, picking their way carefully along the rocky and uneven ground. Ever deeper on the landward side of the road, gullies and little glens cut away the moor, making the ground treacherous. Both were keenly aware that a twisted ankle here would be disastrous.
When, eventually, they made it back to within sight of the road, they lay in the heather and observed for a while, all their senses prickling for a sign of pursuit. But as the evening deepened toward dusk and the clouds began to disperse, revealing a few cold stars, they finally became confident that the road was empty.
“He won’t travel by night,” whispered Anne. She sounded sure. “I know him. He will set up camp by the road and move on again come the dawn.”
They walked toward the road again, and after a little debate, decided to risk jogging along on the road itself. The chance of making up for their slow progress on the moorland was worth the risk.
“If we come upon him, he will be camped by the road, trust me. We’ll hear and see them before they see us.”
Reassured by this, Thorvald took the lead, jogging at just a slightly faster pace than a brisk walk. Anne fell in beside him, and soon they were both breathing heavily and sweating despite the cold. The road spooled out before them under the dark sky. On their right-hand side, northward, the cliff dropped away in a sheer drop to the sea, while on their left, southward, the moorland steadily changed into a landscape of many tree-lined gullies and glens winding away into the dark.
They had been going for about an hour and just beginning to think of resting when they ran right into the arms of the scouts.
Chapter Seventeen
“What’s this?” cried one of the men. There were three of them, and their blades glittered in the light of their small fire as they leapt to their feet. They had been sitting in the shelter of a large rock by the roadside, and neither Anne nor Thorvald had seen the light of their fire. One moment the pair had been jogging along, an eye on the road and occupied with their own thoughts. Now, they were faced suddenly with drawn swords, and one of the men held a cocked pistol, aiming straight at Thorvald’s chest. They stopped, hands raised, and Anne took a few steps backwards.
“Now ye just stay right where ye are!” cried the man with the gun, shifting his aim to Anne. “I don’t want tae shoot ye, but I will not hesitate if I need tae!”
“Who are ye, and what is yer business here?” cried another. In the light of the fire, Thorvald could see that he was the oldest of the three.
“We are... we are heading to the village,” Thorvald replied, lamely. “We seek a
boat north, to Orkney.”
“Oh, aye?” the man looked sceptical. “The village, say ye? What village would that be?”
“Uh...”
Thorvald did not know the name. Anne had thought there was a village or a town to the west of her uncle’s castle, but she had been unsure of the name.
“Awfully ragged-looking, ye both are.” The older man took a step or two forward and peered at them. “And well is it known that there’s nothing along this road but the old abandoned castle, the one that used to be the home of His Lordship the Earl.”
He looked them up and down, and his eyes hardened.
“Ye seek a boat, do ye?” he asked, sarcastically. “Well, I think I might have a boat for ye, but not the one ye are looking for. Know this, my name is Archibald Sinclair, and I am a scout and kinsman to his Grace, the Earl of Caithness, who owns these lands and who will not suffer any tae pass through them without his leave. Ye, my bedraggled young friends, look tae me like smugglers! Ye are awaiting a boat, I guess, at one of the inlets on this deserted bit of shoreline, and now ye have missed the tide, and missed the boat that would take ye away. Now ye seek passage north, but who are ye? That’s what I want tae know. What have ye? Are ye carrying some contraband, eh? Or are ye yerselves contraband? Escaped prisoners, or rebels against the King, perhaps? Well, thankfully, that’s none of my concern. We march west, back tae the Earl’s new castle at Mey, near Harrow, first thing in the morning. Ye will come with us.”
Thorvald was half expecting Anne’s sword to flash forth like lighting and see the men off, but when he glanced around, her head hung low as she swayed with exhaustion. On the boat, she had been well-fed and alert. Now she was at the end of her energy, and the three men were the ones who were well-fed and well-rested, and one of them pointed a pistol straight at her.
Moving carefully but efficiently, two of them walked behind Anne and Thorvald and herded them toward the fire.
“No tricks now,” said the leader. “Sit yerselves down on that rock, and we shall...”
A sudden yell from farther back, in the direction of Neil’s castle, broke into his words. Glancing back, Thorvald saw four men, their swords were drawn and running down the road toward them. He recognised at least two from his time of imprisonment; Neil’s men. The pirate must have sent out a scouting party of his own, not content to sit and wait by his camp.
“That’s them!” cried one of the pirates. “That’s Anne and the prisoner! Come on!”
They did not wait but charged forward. The Earl’s scouts took up fighting stances, and the man with the gun discharged it with a deafening bang and a cloud of acrid smoke. One of the pirates stopped in his tracks, clutching at his chest, but the other three came on, and in a moment all six men were fighting in the road.
Anne watched, in a daze as Thorvald took the initiative.
“Come on!” he grabbed Anne’s arm. “Not a moment tae lose!”
Waking from her daze, she fell in beside him as they plunged off the road and tore away through the grass.
“This way, this way!” she cried, leading him back to the road. “Use the road while we have it!”
He followed, and together they sprinted away as quickly as they could. The clash of swords and yells of the fighting men could be heard clearly behind them over the roar of the pounding waves against the sea cliffs. After a minute they both slowed, gasping for breath.
Back up the road, two of Neil’s men were running toward them. They had obviously got the better of the scouts, but now Anne had drawn her sword, and she charged back up toward them with a roar of anger, her weariness forgotten for a moment. Thorvald began to run after her, dragging clumsily at his sword belt. Anne pirouetted between them like a dancer, her sword rising and falling, sending one of the men stumbling backwards. The other’s blade went wide, but he raised it again for a killing stroke.
Anne’s battle fury had carried her through the first attack, but she was too slow to parry the second man’s blow. If Thorvald had not been with her, it would have been her end. As it was, Thorvald’s weight crashed into the second attacker, and they sprawled on the ground, the man’s sword clattering on the stones as it slid away from them. Thorvald had not managed to pull his sword from its scabbard, but as the man rolled, trying to get to his knees, Thorvald’s small boot-knife punched through the man’s leather armour three times before he could do anything about it. He gasped, jerked once, then lay still.
Thorvald rose. He was shaking.
“Are ye alright?” asked Anne, her voice full of concern.
“Aye, aye. I think so. I just... I never killed a man before.”
“Well, let us hope ye never have tae again,” was all she said. “Come on, let’s begone. We don’t know how many more there might be.”
Another two hours or so passed after the fight, and they had put a fair bit of distance behind them, and they had no option but to get off the road for a while to rest. He had been looking for a suitable place for a while when he noticed one of the many gullies that had a stream issuing from it. It looked narrow and steep, but he could see the tops of tall trees further in and reasoned it must open out past the opening.
“That looks like a likely spot,” he put a hand on Anne’s arm to steady her and pointed up toward the gully. She nodded wordlessly.
“Come on, it’s not far. We’ll get a rest and a drink then, eh? Come on.”
He could tell she was exhausted. When their pace had reduced from a run to a brisk trot, then to a walk and eventually to a beaten-down plod, he had realised that she would walk until she dropped, and that would be no use to anybody. Her spurt of energy at the fight had been the last of her reserves. Up to now, he had been used to deferring to her, but now he reached out and took control from her shaking grasp. She was more than happy to let him.
They turned away from the open heath, moving toward the darker spot under the moonlight where the gully stretched up and away south. When they first entered the trees, he wondered if he had not made a stupid decision, for the woodland floor was a mess of fallen branches entangled by last year’s brambles. He had been just about to propose going back when he spied a game trail through the chaos of the undergrowth.
“There!” he said, “come on, follow me. We’ll take that path.”
The trail led to a rippling stream, chattering over stones down a deep-cloven channel in the woodland floor. The water was icy cold, and he refilled his empty waterskin from it. Anne drank deeply, and that seemed to revive her a little. The trail led up and along beside the water, and, there being nothing else for it, he pressed on up the trail. Anne following mutely.
The sound of falling water became louder, until eventually, they came upon a small cliff, maybe fifteen feet in height, where the water dropped down a well-worn fall into a deep, vast pool, before flowing off down the river. They had gone at least a mile from the road, he judged and were as safe from pursuit as they could hope to be that night.
Beside the pool, and close by the cliff, a knot of ancient pine trees formed a natural roof beside the slightly overhanging cliff wall, and the ground was carpeted thickly with countless years of fallen needles. Thorvald stood as tall as he could and looked back, but the little glen had curved sharply and was heavily wooded. He was content that no one would be able to see the light of fire here, not unless they got very close, and the canopy of the pines would disperse the smoke enough that it would not be seen by trackers from a distance.
Anne looked around the hollow, then looked at Thorvald and nodded. A brief smile flashed on her tired face. “This will do,” she agreed. “Well done.”
With that, she rolled herself in her cloak and fell at once into a deep sleep.
Chapter Eighteen
She woke a few hours later to the light of a fire, and the smell of cooking meat. The rich scents of the pine-needles rose up around her, but the smell of food immediately caught her attention. Pushing herself up into a sitting position, she found that he had placed a blanket
over her while she slept.
She coughed, and patted around for her pack, finding it and fumbling in it for water before drinking deeply.
“Oh, I feel better for a drink and a rest,” she sighed, and Thorvald turned from the little fire he had kindled and smiled warmly. They regarded each other for a moment, then she shook her head and laughed, looking away shyly.
“Stop staring. What are ye cooking? It smells wonderful!”
“Rabbit,” said Thorvald. “That game trail we followed hasn’t been used by deer for some time, but I saw fresh rabbit droppings a little further down, and it wasn’t too difficult to catch a couple. They are dozy at this time of year.”
She was impressed. He might make little of it, but Anne knew that catching rabbits by hand was no small feat.
Fighting For A Highland Lass (Defenders 0f The Highlands Book 3) Page 12
