Fighting For A Highland Lass (Defenders 0f The Highlands Book 3)

by Kenna Kendrick

  She looked shaken by the memory and glanced around wide-eyed as she said, “He went down like a sack of potatoes. Blood everywhere. I’ve seen nothing like it before in my life, and I hope I never do again. May God forgive me...”

  Sickert, the first officer, stepped forward, putting a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder.

  “Ye did only what ye had tae do,” he said reassuringly. “They were preparing torches. I have no doubt that if the good lady here had not taken action, ye would be coming back tae burned homes and dead friends. As it was, her shot took down the leader, and when a few more of us began discharging pistols from the windows, one of them shouted, ‘we must bring the message back tae the captain!’ With that, they abandoned their attack and fled. There was only a few of them, eight or nine, maybe. They had gotten horses from somewhere, and no doubt they will be even now on their way back to tell their captain the news.”

  “Well,” said Alice, “it seems we must decide what tae do, and quickly.”

  It did not take them long to decide their course of action. The Earl sent men back to his castle, with orders to bring back a company of soldiers who would come to Harrow and reinforce it, in case of an attack by Neil and his pirates.

  “For my part,” he said, “I would go with ye, Mr Grant, immediately aboard yer ship and set off toward Neil’s castle tae see if we can intercept him, and that way perhaps buy Thorvald time tae reach Orkney in safety.”

  In a very short time, it was done. Outside, darkness had fallen, and it would be a few hours before the tide would be high enough for the Endeavour to get underway. They used that time as best they could, riding little boats back to the ship and trying as best they could to get a few hours sleep. When morning came, bright and clear with a brisk wind after the storm, Captain Morton gave the order to unfurl the sails and head east to where the Earl stated that Neil Gow-Sinclair’s castle lay.

  Alice Grant stood alone at the side of the ship, looking north as the great vessel heaved and surged out into the waves. She wondered very much what had happened to the two young people; the boy who had been kidnapped and the niece of the pirate captain. According to the folk of the inn, they seemed to be in love and deeply committed to each other. Alice wondered who she was, this fierce, pretty pirate woman who had deserted her captain for a lover.

  She hoped very much that they had made it through the storm.

  Chapter Thirty

  Thorvald regained his senses slowly. After the boat had smashed to pieces on the rocky shoreline, he had lain stunned for what had seemed a long time, but when he felt the surf pulling at him, dragging him out toward the deep water which lay not far away, he was stirred back to full consciousness. He gasped and groaned, then cried out as a blinding bolt of pain shot through him as he tried to lever himself upon his left arm.

  He flopped back to the stones and then rolled onto his other side. Pushing up with his right arm, his left dropped uselessly onto the rocks.

  Broken, he thought thickly, trying to crawl back up away from the insidiously pulling surf. Suddenly a firm hand gripped him under the right shoulder and hauled him partially to his feet. The most welcome sound in the world cut through the rolling boom of the surf and the clatter of the rain on the stones: Anne Gow’s voice. Thorvald felt a warm rush of love heat him and lift him up in that moment of desperation the way nothing else could have done.

  “Ye... ye are alive!” he gasped – or tried to. His voice came out as a choking gasp.

  “Get up, man, get up!” she called to him. “Come on, now, now!”

  Not understanding her urgency, but willing to obey, he lunged forward and up. Around him, there was a rattle as the surf dragged away at the round rocks of the beach.

  “Run!!” she screamed at him, and he ran, stumbling and slipping up the shore as quickly as he could, hanging onto Anne’s arm and, by some miracle, managing to keep his feet and not fall. Thorvald followed Anne’s lead right up the beach until they reached a bar of muddy, silty sand up above the deep stretch of rocks. Then he looked around and saw the danger she had pulled him from.

  The shoreline fell away, steeply down to the water, dropping steeper and steeper into a deep gulf of rocky darkness. There, exposed for a moment as the retreating water reached its turning point, Thorvald saw the rocky shoreline drop away almost sheer. He realised with a lurch of his stomach that he had been lying only meters away from that dreadful edge, with every wave dragging him closer to it. Now, as he stood leaning on Anne’s warm shoulder, he saw a massive storm surge with a terrible weight toward the shore. It was twice as tall as him, and it broke over the rocks with devastating force. He would never have survived, and the thought of how close he had come to certain death made him weak at the knees. He glanced at Anne.

  “Thank you,” he said, breathlessly, “the others?”

  Anne nodded higher up the beach. There, Hallam and Seamus lay among the wreckage of the boat.

  “Are they...?” he began.

  “I don’t know,” she replied tersely. “They were thrown much higher up the shore than ye and I didn’t have a chance tae check on them. As soon as I managed tae get up I looked down and saw ye, and the peril ye were in.”

  “Ye saved me...”

  “Aye, and ye saved me when we jumped from the cliff. I would have drowned then for sure. Come on, let’s get ourselves up the beach tae and have a look at them. What’s up with your arm?”

  Thorvald groaned.

  “I think it’s broken. It hurts...”

  She peered at it through the gloom.

  “Not broken, I don’t think,” she muttered. As she spoke, the rain began to come down fiercely, and the wind howled, and the lightning flashed again.

  “Not broken,” she repeated, with more certainty, “but I think it’s dislocated. Here, come up the beach a way.”

  Together they staggered up the sandbar toward the wreckage of the boat where their companions lay entangled in the mess of sail, spar, ropes and timber. Thorvald began to move toward them, but Anne stopped him.

  “Wait,” she said, “come here.”

  Obediently, he went over to her, and she peered carefully at his arm in silence for a long moment. Then she said, “brace yerself. This is going tae hurt.”

  He barely had time to brace himself. She grabbed his upper arm in one hand and his shoulder in the other, then shoved his shoulder down while yanking the arm back up. Thorvald screamed as red hot pain knifed through his shoulder, and white lightning flashed inside his head, blinding him. When he came to himself, he was on his knees, cradling the arm. It was sore, a deep, aching soreness, but the pain was gone.

  He looked up.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Yes, but where did you learn how to do that?”

  Anne laughed.

  “Oh, my uncle taught me many things, A dislocated shoulder is a common injury onboard a ship. Come on, let’s see tae the others.”

  Thorvald stood up. To his surprise, he felt much better. His head felt light but clear, and he found he could walk steadily. Still, Anne took his good arm as they made their way up the rocky, slippery shore toward the wreckage of the boat.

  As they got closer, they heard a groan, and after a moment they realised it was the priest, Father Hallam, who had got himself into a sitting position and was thrashing around weakly, trying to free himself from an entangling mess of rope and torn sailcloth.

  “Here,” said Anne, coming quickly forward and unsheathing the knife from her belt, “stay still, and I will get ye free.” As she knelt to her task, Thorvald walked unsteadily to the huddled form of Seamus, who lay a little away from the wreckage that had been his boat.

  “What… What happened?” the priest asked in a shaking voice as Anne worked with her knife at the ropes that entangled him.

  “We managed to land on the beach,” said Anne simply. “But the boat is wrecked. We were lucky to get off the water before the storm hit. Are ye alright? Are ye in pain?”

  “No, no, I am a
ll right.” The last of the ropes fell away, and the priest stood, looking around with despairing eyes at the bleak rocky landscape around him. Anne turned to Thorvald.

  “Is Seamus still with us?” she asked. Thorvald stood wearily. Then he looked at Anne and shook his head. When he turned the old sailor over he had thought for a moment that there was still life in him, but then saw where Seamus had hit his head on a sharp corner of rock as he landed heavily on the ground. There was no surviving that, and sure enough, when Thorvald put a hand to his cheek, it was cold as marble, the warmth of his life already stolen away by the chill rain of the storm. That noble, humble fisherman, beloved of his home village of Harrow, would never sail again.

  “Oh, God,” cried Anne as she looked down at his body. “He gave up his life tae get us away. So many deaths...” She looked up at Thorvald, and her eyes were bleak.

  Thorvald nodded.

  “He did. Too many have died on this journey. And I don’t even know what it’s all about. When I get back to Orkney, we’ll find out who is behind all this, and then perhaps we will have a chance to avenge his death.”

  “For now,” said Hallam, “we will have to find some kind of shelter.”

  Anne and Thorvald both looked at him. He was right, of course, but there was a cold ruthlessness in the priest’s eyes which had not been there before. He did not look at the dead man.

  “Yes,” said Anne. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. There is no point freezing before morning.”

  Together, the three of them made their way up the rocky incline away from the shore. The storm raged around the little island, and it was very dark, but the lightning flashed so continuously from the sky that they were able, with care, to find their way up to where a little rocky stack climbed up, blocking their way. In one side of it there was a shallow cave. They huddled in the dubious shelter, clutching together to keep warm.

  After a little while, Anne left and walked back down to the wreck. When she came back, she was dragging a big chunk of the sail behind her.

  “We’ll use this as a cover,” was all she said. They pulled it up over themselves and huddled there in the darkness. After a while, the combination of their breath and the warmth of their bodies warmed the space to some degree. It was far from pleasant, but they were no longer at risk of dying from the cold.

  No one spoke. One by one, leaning against the hard, cold surface of the wet rockface, they dropped off to sleep.

  * * *

  Anne woke shivering. Thorvald was lying with his head propped against her shoulder. Father Hallam was curled up on the ground beside them. In the night, the sail they had used as a blanket had slipped off them and now lay crumpled up against some rocks a little way away. It was cold, and the wind whipped mercilessly across the barren, rocky islet which was revealed to her as she prised open her gummy eyes and looked about. The storm had blown over, and it was no longer raining, but it was freezing, and the view presented a bleak prospect.

  She pushed herself up, trying to lay beside Thorvald but she bumped him. He grumbled and woke up.

  “We have tae have a look around this rock,” she said.

  “Aye,” he replied and groaned as he hauled himself to his feet. “Here, bring the sail over and cover Hallam again. He’s not used tae this kind of hardship.”

  Anne dragged the sailcloth back over and covered the priest, wincing as her cold, wet clothing slapped against her skin, caught up by the wind. Then she stood and looked around.

  “There’s nothing here,” said Thorvald bleakly.

  “I have tae admit,” Anne replied with a weak laugh, “in the back of my mind I’d been secretly hoping that we might wake tae find that this island was inhabited after all. But ye are right, there’s nothing, not a homestead, not a farm, not even a fisherman’s hut.”

  “And us with few enough supplies, even if anything that we had survived the storm.”

  “Well, we must explore the island, and we must have a fire, too, if nothing else. Do ye still have yer flint and tinder?”

  “Aye,” said Thorvald, seeming a little encouraged by her determination not to give up hope. “I suppose we’ll be able tae get a fire going from the wood of the boat.”

  “Aye, there’s timber enough there,” she replied. “Come on, we mustn’t give up hope, not just yet. At least we will not die of cold. I will have a fire out of it and dry my clothes if it’s the last thing I do.” As I suppose, it may well turn out to be, she thought but did not say that out loud.

  He laughed.

  “Very well. You go and explore the island while I make a fire.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, and despite the cold, the discomfort, and the danger, the sudden flowering of love between them brought warmth to their hearts.

  The islet was small enough that one could circumnavigate it in ten minutes. Anne proceeded to do so, looking for anything that might be of use to them, and finding nothing. The islet was shaped like a wedge, jutting steeply and abruptly out of the water, and weathered on the southern side into an other-worldly landscape of rocks and crevices. At the far north side, the sharp tip of the wedge reared up before plunging sheer down into the deep green water of the north sea.

  Anne scrambled up to the top of the wedge and looked about. Off to the north, the long, inhospitable cliff-scape which they had seen the night before was clearly visible, but there was no sign of human habitation there. In every other direction, there was only the sea. Perhaps, she thought, straining her eyes south, she could make out a distant blue haze where the mainland might lie, but it was so far away that there was no hope of making themselves seen from that direction.

  Anne picked her way back down the steep edge toward what she had already begun to think of as their ‘camp’ and looked around. Thorvald had already made some progress, dragging some of the timbers from the boat up toward the overhanging rock where they had passed the night. He was now engaged in shaving kindling from a piece of wood with his boot-knife. As she scanned the scene, she noticed that he had also taken some of the sailcloth and draped it over the prone body of Seamus McMillan, weighting it down at the edges with stones.

  He glanced up as she approached, then reached for his little striking stone and began to carefully strike sparks into his small pile of tinder.

  “Well?” he asked, without looking up.

  “Nothing,” she responded reluctantly. “Our only hope is tae catch the attention of a passing vessel.”

  “Well, a fire will help us do that,” he responded, “and we might use the torn sail tae make a flag which we could rig up somehow. We might catch the attention of a passing boat that way, or even folk on the cliffs.”

  “Did ye have a look at the supplies?”

  He nodded glumly.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing has survived the soaking. We had one bottle of fresh water, but it’s gone, I don’t know where. Washed away, most likely. The little food we did bring is spoiled by the salt water. What did ye see from the top of the ridge?”

  “Not much,” she replied. “Just the cliffs. No sign of any ships, nor any habitation. I’ve no idea how far we were blown off course last night, but I suspect we’re way off the main traffic route. If that’s so, the chances of anyone seeing us – unless they actually come looking for us – are slim.”

  “And if anyone does come looking for us,” said Thorvald, “it’ll most likely be someone we’d rather not see. Yer Uncle Neil, or Sir Magnus Bain.”

  Anne nodded.

  The thought grew on her that they would almost certainly die here, and die badly, too. Of all the ways to go, death by hunger or thirst seemed one of the least desirable.

  “Well, Anne Gow,” he said as if in answer to her thoughts, “at least if we die here, ye and I shall do it together. That’s good enough for me.”

  She felt for a moment that the smile he found would break her heart.

  “Oh, Thorvald,” she choked suddenly. “I’m so sorry. I wish we had escaped long before, th
en perhaps none of this would have ever happened – and poor Seamus! After all he’s done for us...”

  The shock, the grief at losing their friend Seamus, and the hopelessness of their situation suddenly threatened to overwhelm her, and she sank to her knees beside Thorvald, fresh and unexpected tears stinging her dry eyes. At that moment, however, a spark caught in the kindling, and the little curl of smoke made her forget her attack of grief.