The Highlander's Promise

by Heather Grothaus

  “Stay close to me, Edna’s son,” the man warned. “Sinkholes. Wet pits. Right behind me now, ken?”

  Lachlan nodded. “Aye, Geordie. Lead on.”

  They walked a narrow path that would have been invisible even in the daylight, its solid, zigzagging trail covered over by huge tufts of heather and brush. The buzz of insects and chirping of frogs were thick in the air, and Lachlan kept his eyes on the hunched and oddly loping form of Geordie Blair as he led unhesitatingly toward the line of the wood marking the top of the ben that could be seen from Town Blair and Loch Acras. This area had always been spoken of as a dangerous wasteland, useless for game because of the bog, but Lachlan reckoned if they went down the side of the mountain from here, the distance between the two towns was likely half that of the falls path.

  Again, something so far away, and yet closer than he’d ever known.

  The bog narrowed into a rocky ridge that disappeared into the black night, and the men veered south toward the edge of the wood. Geordie suddenly stopped near a seemingly out-of-place pile of rock and shell, mounded up in a little hillock at the base of a tree. He dug in his crude, skin sack for what appeared to be a small stone, but then he simply stood there, staring at the thing in his hand.

  “This is where I buried him,” Geordie said haltingly, as if the words were difficult, or the sentiment foreign. Lachlan reckoned that the man had never thought to have to explain the location’s existence to anyone.

  “Who?”

  Geordie turned his face toward Lachlan, his expression full of confusion. “Yer da, I thought it was.” He looked back to the pile of stone. “Dragged him up here meself after everyone stopping comin’ to gawp at him. They just stared and stared.” His breath was coming heavier now, and Lachlan couldn’t tell if it was with anger or sadness. He was a difficult man to read. “They talked over him like he was a hero. He was, to me. Edna, too. But they was so bad to him. So when they was gone, I took him. Brought him here.”

  Geordie straightened his shoulders as much as his bent posture would allow. “Visited him every day. I had nae tool to dig with, so I just brung him a few stones or shells or a little piece of something each time to cover him with. I thought one day, when the chief was dead, when Harrell was dead, I could bring Edna here to visit with him.”

  “That must have been hard,” Lachlan said, a catch in his chest taking him by surprise. “Seeing your friend like that.”

  Geordie gave a jerky nod. “I had to run off animals sometimes. ’Til he was covered up proper. But now…” His voice trailed off.

  “Now what?”

  Geordie turned his bulging gaze to Lachlan once more, and the look of puzzlement was greater than ever. “It isna him.”

  Lachlan shook his head. “I doona think so.”

  “Well.” Geordie gave his queer bird-head nod and then leaned over to place the small stone on the top of the pyre with the thousands of others. “He didna deserve what happened to him anyhow. And he’s been company for me all these years. A thing to take care of. Like I was for yer mam. I owed it to her, I reckoned.”

  Lachlan suddenly didn’t want to be here with Geordie Blair anymore. He didn’t want to be thinking the things he was thinking, feeling the emotions flooding him; opening his mind to the sinister conclusions that were taking shape from all the little bits and pieces of the past that were rolling downhill to come to rest against his feet in the shape of something dark and ugly and unfair.

  Geordie Blair turned away from the pyre and started down the hill.

  “Come on, Edna’s son.”

  Chapter 15

  Finley and Kirsten didn’t have to go far in the wood until they found Searrach Blair, and even if she hadn’t been directly on the path so as to have stumbled over her, her wailing would have given away her location had she been underwater. As it was, she was sitting on the path with her back to a tree, legs flopped out before her, and her hands in her lap, sobbing aloud like a wee bairn just learning to walk and having fallen soundly on its bottom.

  “What’s she doing?” Kirsten hissed in Finley’s ear. “She’s just stopped!”

  “I don’t know,” Finley muttered, wincing at the renewed wails. “But it’s obvious she’s not hurrying along like her da told her.”

  They carried on down the path and were almost on top of Searrach Blair before she noticed them approaching. She gave a sharp shriek of fright and struggled to her feet, stumbling from the path into the wood.

  “Get away!” she hiccoughed. “I’m go-going! L-leave m-me alone!” She stepped on the tail of her shawl and fell heavily into the brush.

  Finley loped along to reach her side, setting her foot between Searrach’s shoulder blades before she could rise fully to her hands and knees. “You may stay right where you are.”

  Kirsten came up behind Finley and planted her own foot with some force on the Blair woman’s full backside, sending Searrach face-first into the loamy forest floor with a yelp.

  “Traitorous coo,” Kirsten spat.

  The dark-haired woman turned her face toward Finley and Kirsten, blowing the leaves and hair from her wide eyes as best she could.

  “You two!” she said, her round face full of genuine surprise. She began to struggle, but for all Searrach’s greater size, she had little actual strength. “Get off me, you Carson whores.”

  Finley leaned onto her foot more firmly, until the Blair woman began to whine. “Who’s the Englishman whose dirty work you’re doing?”

  “Get off!” Searrach screamed again, flailing with her arms and legs. “You doona ken what you’re doing! He’s already killed two men!”

  “We know,” Kirsten said. “We saw it. And doona play at being in a hurry to warn anyone; it was clear you had nae other plans save for sitting on your arse and feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Searrach stilled, then. “Spies,” she hissed. “You’re spies! I knew it! I told my father—”

  “Shut up,” Finley said, pressing her heel into the woman’s back. “Who is the Englishman, and what does he want with Lachlan?”

  “And what have you done to poor Dand?” Kirsten demanded.

  “I’m nae telling you anything,” Searrach cried up at Finley. “You, who took my Lachlan. You ruined my plans! And you—”she craned her neck to glare at Kirsten—“throwin’ yerself at Dand. As if he’d have a Carson. The new treaty means nothing to us, you ken? Nothing! You’ll see!”

  Kirsten made a growl deep in her throat and started toward the woman with her fists clenched, but Finley threw out an arm to stop her.

  “Nay, Kirsten. It’s a waste of time. She’s nae going to tell us anything, are you, Searrach?”

  “I can tell you what Lachlan’s cock tastes like,” Searrach said triumphantly.

  Finley’s hands went to the belt at her waist. “Sit on her.”

  Searrach craned her neck again. “What?”

  Kirsten didn’t hesitate, drawing a pained “Oof” from the prone woman.

  Finley straddled Searrach’s legs first, to stop their dangerous kicking, securing her ankles together with the tight cording, then drawing up her lower legs toward her buttocks. “Now that she’s seen us, we can’t have her running back to Town Blair and telling Hargrave we know he’s there. Can you reach her arms?”

  Searrach screamed.

  “Thank you.”

  “Anything for you, Fin.”

  “You stupid bitches!” Searrach cried. “They’ll kill all of you! You have nae idea what you’re doing!”

  “I’ve had just about enough of that,” Kirsten grumbled, ripping a long, fraying strip from the edge of her shawl. She turned on her bottom on Searrach’s back and looped the strip around the woman’s wildly tossing head. Kirsten secured a double knot, and then a rather unnecessary bow, in Finley’s opinion, and then Searrach’s vitriol was reduced to muffled barks.

 
; The two women stood up from their prey.

  “We’ll tell someone where you are when this is all over,” Finley said.

  “Probably,” Kirsten added.

  Searrach writhed on the forest floor, her rage muffled and impotent.

  “But if ye ever think to go near Dand again,” Kirsten added, “I’ll be shaving yer goddamn head and usin’ yer hair to wipe my—”

  “Good lord, Kirsten.” Finley sighed, yanking her friend back toward the path. “It’s true what they say about the quiet ones, isn’t it?”

  * * * *

  Lachlan saw the bonfire lights from Town Blair’s green when they were still halfway up the mountain, north of the lake. Unlike the bay beyond the clifftop, Loch Acras seemed to suck what little light was in the new moon sky and hold it just under the surface of the water like a mottled looking glass, turning the vale into an ominous scrying tool.

  Lachlan remembered so many happy nights of his childhood before Dand was born, scouring the reedy shore of the lake with Marcas for the hardy, thick-skinned frogs that hid there. He could recall with crystalline clarity still the peace and security he’d felt then, although had anyone asked him at the time, he would have been unable to define the contented feeling he carried with him; it had been nothing more than his childhood. Looking back, he could see now that it had been a heaven of immeasurable worth, now gone forever.

  He had the sudden desire to run down the remainder of the hill to the shore of the brackish lake, as if he could dive headlong into his past, when he was Marcas’s only son and he was loved by his grandfather, by all of Town Blair.

  There was a foreign ring of lights on the road to the east of the town, and as Lachlan and Geordie traveled through the trees, Lachlan could see that it was a corral of sorts, roped and bordered with torchlight, holding what must have been fifty horses and several two-wheeled carts, mounded into black hillocks by whatever cargo they contained.

  Someone had indeed come to Town Blair. A wealthy someone, with many companions. Could it truly be the Englishman, Vaughn Hargrave?

  Geordie stopped suddenly, and Lachlan drew even with him, watching his old, misshapen profile, somehow already familiar to Lachlan. Geordie’s bulging eyes glistened.

  “Sure, it looks bigger,” he said gruffly.

  Lachlan turned to regard the town. “Aye. I reckon it is bigger since you left it.”

  “More houses.”

  “There’s a chapel now, as well,” Lachlan said. “A friar comes a few times a year.”

  “Aye. Uh-huh,” he said with his dipping nod. “Nae matter that. Still just as black.” There was bitterness in his hoarse voice.

  Lachlan felt a cold emptiness in his chest that mirrored the sentiment of Geordie’s callous words, and it unsettled him. “Geordie, you canna mean that. Isn’t some part of you glad to see it again, being so long away from the only home you’ve ever known?”

  Geordie Blair turned his eyes up to Lachlan’s face, and the pain and sorrow there was raw. “Nay. Nae a single part of me. Sure, that isna my home. I was a score-three, reckon, when Harrell sent me into the falls. I’ve spent more of my life away from Town Blair than I have in it, and I can tell you now that in all them lonely, hungry years, the thing I feared most was having to return,” he finished with a rasp. He blinked, and a tear rolled down his sunken cheek even as he lifted his chin.

  “You remember it, Edna’s son. You remember the leavin’. It stays with ye.”

  And, just like that, Lachlan forgot about warm summer nights on the loch with Marcas; forgot about the indulgent smiles from the town mothers, if not from Mother Blair. Instead, he remembered the look on his grandfather’s face when Archibald disowned him; remembered being sent from the town the night he’d married Finley Carson, and the palpable relief emanating from his own townsfolk at the wedding feast. Aye, Lachlan’s leaving had stayed with him.

  Still, he prayed Geordie was wrong.

  “Whoever has come to Town Blair has left their horses unguarded on the road,” he said to the man at his side. “Doesn’t seem like a decision made by one wishing to secure an easy escape.”

  “He doesna want to escape,” Geordie scoffed. He walked to one of the trees on the edge of the wood and sat down against it. “I’ll wait here.”

  “Geordie, this could be your time to be avenged,” Lachlan said, striding down the hill toward the tree. “I’ll stand by your side. We’ll both confront Harrell, and you’ll be accepted.” He crouched down with one hand braced on the tree trunk above Geordie’s head. “You can come home.”

  The old leather skullcap shook. “You’re nae the chief, Edna’s son. Harrell made sure of that, dinnee? Doona want any part of it. With none of ’em. You go on, if yer a’goin’.” He stared ahead stubbornly. “An’ ye shouldna stay. Like I told you, it isna my home. And it isna yours, neither.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll wait here,” Geordie repeated. “If I spy ye comin’ with any other than the lasses…” He gave his swooping nod. “Ye’ll nae be seein’ me agin.”

  Lachlan sighed and rose from his crouch. “I gave you my word. I mean to keep it.” He emerged from the edge of the wood toward the lake shore, staying back from the marshy margin to approach the town from the north. He had hunted this stretch with Marcas for years; he knew each dip and washed-out gully, each bleached boulder thrusting through the thistle and briars. They caught on his breeches like little hands clutching at him.

  Lachlan ignored them, thinking of the last thing Finley had said to him: You’ll never know home.

  Wasn’t this it, though? This place where he was born and raised? Didn’t he know each corner of every house? Didn’t he recognize the silhouette of each rooftop, know who lived where as sure as he knew the pattern of his own shawl? The acrimonious thoughts made his footfalls drop harder onto the earth, cause his fists to clench as his arms swung at his sides, turning into pendulums, then pistons, as he broke into a run.

  Home. This was his home, no matter what Finley, what Geordie Blair, what Marcas said. His legacy. Sure, they will have missed him. Someone…someone would be glad to see him. Even if it was only Dand.

  Even if it was only Finley.

  He wove his way through the maze of houses on the outer edge of the quiet town, heading relentlessly toward the blazing green. The blazing, quiet green. One more alley to traverse, and then there was a man blocking the end of the passage, facing the green, where obviously the town had been gathered for the festival, but it was quiet…so quiet.

  The man ahead had a sword, Lachlan saw, almost too late.

  But his brow lowered, his pace increased. No one was going to stop him from taking what was his tonight: Finley and Town Blair. No one would stop him.

  Lachlan blasted into the man blocking the way, taking the stranger so off guard that he lost his feet and skidded away into the dirt as Lachlan burst into the green. His pace slowed to a trot, then a walk, and then he stopped as the hundreds of eyes beheld him with shock and horror. There was sound now, he realized: weeping, and metal on metal. He turned in a full circle slowly, saw the two long, wrapped shapes lying on the green, saw the ring of armed men who now aimed their weapons at him.

  English armor…

  “I told ye!” came the ragged crowing voice, drawing Lachlan’s attention back to the center of the green, where Harrell Blair was pointing in Lachlan’s direction but staring up at the lone figure of a man standing atop one of the tables. “I told ye my Searrach would bring him back!”

  The stranger was tall, large, but without an abundance of spare flesh to allude to the suggestion that he was unfit. On the contrary, his fine velvet clothing fit him like a second skin, from his barreled torso to his thick arms. His graying hair and the aristocratic swoop of his jowls betrayed his age, but when he hopped down from the tabletop, it was clear that although this was a man of some years, h
e was in vigorous health and used to physical efforts.

  He was smiling, though there was no kindness there, no welcome from this outsider in the midst of Lachlan’s own town. It was a predatory grin, sly and delighted at once.

  “Lachlan Blair?” the stranger queried. “Can it be?”

  Lachlan caught sight of Dand behind the stranger, and next to him, Marcas. Lachlan’s foster father had lost all color in his face, his long gray hair pulled from its usual tidy queue into matted strands. And unlike the Englishman, who continued to advance on Lachlan, Marcas looked old—so much older than he had when last Lachlan had seen him. Dand shook his head frantically, his eyes wide.

  Lachlan looked back at the stranger, and despite Dand’s silent warning, began advancing to meet him on the green. “Who are you?”

  “You resemble him, you know,” the man said. “Your hair is darker, but the face—yes.” He came to a stop some ten feet from Lachlan and turned his head this way and that, then held up his hands for a brief, affected moment, as if to frame Lachlan’s countenance. “You could be his twin. I speak of Thomas Annesley, of course. Where is he?”

  Lachlan, too, stopped on the green. “I’ve never laid eyes on Thomas Annesley the whole of my life,” he said. “I’ve thought he was dead all these many years. I do wish he’d had the courtesy to have stayed that way.”

  To Lachlan’s surprise, the gray-haired man threw back his head in laughter. “Oh! Yes! I feel much the same, young man—much the same!” Like a dish falling to shatter on the hearth, the smile fell from the man’s face. “But we both know that he is not, in fact, dead. And so you will tell me now where he is. Or I will have everyone in this town killed, one by one, ending with you.” He paused, and his smile returned with a diabolical brilliance. “But I will start”—he turned and pointed to Marcas—“with the chief.”

  “Exceptin’ me, Lord Hargrave,” Harrell interjected, taking several hesitant steps forward. “Exceptin’ me and Searrach, aye? I told ye she’d find him.”