Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  Wondering about her whereabouts, or her safety, was useless. He found that he could stop himself from doing so. It took slightly more effort than had been necessary when he waited for reports back from scouts, but he had practice. He didn’t expect other reactions.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but Cathal missed her.

  He heard her voice in his head, commenting on or questioning everything that happened, be it the flight of an owl, the sunset, or the way pine felt beneath his knife. More than that, he found himself explaining such things, putting them into words as if she was there and he would interest her by so doing, making a gift of his observations and knowing that she’d appreciate them.

  He was not a man used to loneliness. From time to time he’d had companions, male and female alike, but he’d spent long stretches of his life fundamentally alone, and he’d never felt the lack of company. His family, like Loch Arach, was something to return to every so often, but he’d never wanted to stay there, nor with any of them, for very long.

  It was passing strange to feel an absence where he’d never even known there was a presence. He gave the carved figure two slim hands, clasped about a goblet with unknown contents, and wondered what Sophia would think of it.

  The sun was sinking behind the hills as Cathal finished the carving’s hands, and his own hands went still, along with the rest of him, when he heard men approaching along the nearby road. More than one came, he could tell, and their pace was too regular for peasants out hunting. These were soldiers. Quickly, he pulled himself upward to a branch that would give him more cover and still hold his weight, and then listened as three of the men came closer, until he could hear their voices over the light rain.

  “Damn well better have kept it up, if they know what’s best for them.”

  “And if they weren’t lazy buggers, they’d be here with us. Doesn’t matter. What matters is I don’t want his lordship coming down that road and getting stuck behind a deadfall…or his carriage overturning on account of a hole. And neither do you, if you like your skin.”

  “Then we take the road around.”

  “That’s not orders. Orders are we take this one, get back three days quicker, unless there’s reason to do anything else. Which means your orders are to scout ahead, smart-like, and let me know what’s in the way. Or I can tell the captain about that nice set of jewels you’ve got hidden in your saddlebags… Such a shame the house caught fire before we could loot it proper, aye?”

  Curses in several languages followed. The scout didn’t sound like an educated man, but he was a worldly one. His footsteps went forward down the road. The others stayed behind, and Cathal swore in a few languages himself, if only in the back of his head.

  Sophia hadn’t even been gone half the allotted time. She was quick, but he doubted she could find what she needed in two days. She was subtle, but Cathal didn’t like to think of her spending any more time in Valerius’s proximity if he could prevent it.

  The hours between sunset and full dark felt very long. He watched the glow of campfires a distance down the road, heard drinking songs and brawls begin, and then slipped down out of the tree, thanking God that the night was cloudy again. He stayed human for a while nonetheless, pushing himself to run for four hours into the forest—double that time for a mortal man on foot—before he changed and took to the sky, skimming low atop the trees.

  Before long he picked out the spot where he and Sophia had arranged to meet: midway toward the castle, about half a day’s journey for a lone man on foot, twice that for a group of soldiers—and who knew how long Valerius’s carriage and possessions would take? The village was still an hour or two off; the scout on the road ahead of him, making sure all was in readiness.

  Cathal folded his wings, dropped, and waited in the darkness, watching through slit eyelids so that even that light wouldn’t give his presence away. He saw the scout in the distance: a tall, skinny man with the hardened look of a man who’d killed a few times for pay—a look that, for the first time, it was disconcerting to recognize on himself.

  He grew old, perhaps.

  The man reached the edge of the village, turned, and headed back, unable to run but still keeping up a good pace. Cathal watched him round a bend in the road, then crept out and began the first part of his plan.

  Large as he was, and wet as the road was, it was no great challenge to scoop out a hole. Feeling a bit like a boy playing in the mud, he made it big enough and deep enough to truly ruin a rider’s day, then dragged branches close to it and smoothed down the nearby dirt. Valerius’s men would likely notice before the hole did any serious damage, but it did no harm to try.

  Sneaking away, he crept further back toward the castle, found an old tree, and gave it a shove—more of a determined lean, really, for that was all it needed. It crashed most satisfactorily to the ground. Sitting back and surveying it, Cathal was confident that no horse and none but the skinniest of men would be able to get around it.

  The soldiers could shift the log and fill the hole. That would take time, though—more perhaps than the three days of the longer road, if they ran afoul of either obstacle—and if Valerius had any magical means of travel, Cathal doubted he’d have subjected himself to a spring journey by road, even if it was in a carriage. Both obstacles could have come about naturally; the earth was wet, the trees were old, and one man on foot might miss a hole that would cripple a horse or break a carriage.

  Knowing Valerius even as little as he did, Cathal did wince for the scout and his likely fate—but that was war. He’d done worse, and more directly, to men a thousand times over in his life. Nobody lived forever, not even the MacAlasdairs. He’d bought Sophia half a week free of Valerius and his men, possibly more than that.

  That was, if she stayed so long in the village. She’d likely used the same road. If she came back early to their meeting place, she was likely to walk right into the arms of Valerius’s men.

  Cathal hissed, breath steaming in the night air. Going back further would mean crossing paths with Valerius himself, and Douglas might be right—the wizard might well be able to sense Cathal’s presence and to have planned for just such an occasion.

  Yet Cathal couldn’t stand by and wait any longer. He’d been resigned to Douglas’s instructions when the original plan held, in part because Sophia had seconded them. Plans changed when the enemy made contact. Any soldier knew that.

  He folded himself back into human shape and started running again—toward the castle this time, and at an angle away from the road.

  He had no idea where Sophia had ended up; nor was there a man or woman in this blighted land that he’d trust to send a message. He’d have to rely on his own senses—and hope he got to Sophia before Valerius’s men did.

  Thirty-three

  The human body was truly amazing. Sophia had thought she’d been used to working with her hands, and yet she’d gotten blisters after three days with Harry and Gilleis. Her arms and back ached too, but she’d expected that. While she’d done her fair share of sweeping and lifting in her youth, it had been a long time since.

  She’d slipped into the castle proper a few times and even made her way, under the pretense of being lost, to the upper floors, but she’d found nothing there that she could use. The man’s bedchamber was anonymous, his trunks contained only clothing, and he had no books, or had left none, other than household ledgers. What questions she’d managed to ask of the maids and men—though she’d left the soldiers alone as much as she could—had been met only with silence: tight lips, white faces.

  Much was wrong here. Sophia couldn’t see how to make it right.

  Harry had made good on his offers. She’d not lacked for food or safety, and the smithy was warm and clean at night. Sophia had left on as many errands as she could regardless, seeking to learn more about the castle, but by the evening of the third day she’d almost given up. When Harry sent Gilleis
to the kitchens instead of her—“They know her better, and the cook’s got a soft spot for her”—Sophia barely had the will to protest.

  Sitting on the bench, she opened a small jar of salve that she’d brought with her and began to smear it on her blisters. Her mind was more numb than her hands. Tomorrow she would consider the next path to take, but just then she couldn’t face the effort. She listened to Harry moving about, to the sloshing of water and the clanking of iron tools.

  All of a sudden there was silence, and when she looked up, it was into his solemn face. “You’re here for a purpose.”

  Caught out, she stammered. “Wha… I—”

  “You’d have left otherwise,” he continued, quiet and relentless. “You’ve no family here. This isn’t such good work as to keep you…not when there’s likely plenty of need for a good woman on any other land. And I know you’ve been talking to folk.”

  He was large. The wall was at her back. Sophia dropped her blistered hand to her waist, not sure she could reach any of her knives without Harry noticing.

  If he saw the movement, he didn’t show it. He raised his hand, and she flinched, but it was to pull at a cord around his neck, drawing out an iron cross. He closed his hand around it. “I swear by God and Saint Clement, I mean you no harm, and you know I’m not his man.”

  His was a jerk of the chin toward the castle, and a curl of the lip that Sophia had rarely seen from Harry.

  “You’ve never seemed to like him,” she said slowly.

  “No.” They hadn’t talked much, though Gilleis had ranted occasionally at the foolishness of this soldier or that dairymaid. Otherwise they’d kept quiet, and now Harry drew a hand across his mouth. “If you’re here… My father was his smith before me, aye? And he thought as I did, once. Your lord’s your lord, and if you get a bad one, well, mostly God sees to it in his time, and it may be the next one is better. Best just to wait, not upset things.”

  “That could be,” Sophia agreed. It was a cautious thing, this conversation: another bridge, perhaps, but this one made of ice. “And you stayed.”

  “I’m a skilled man. Hard to get another… And iron’s got its own kind of honesty, and its own defense against men like him. I thought…think…I can keep a few people safe, wait him out. Works often enough. But—”

  Sophia braced herself and spoke. “But it begins to seem, mayhap, as though there won’t be a next one?”

  Harry’s eyes widened. He nodded once, as if afraid to let his muscles move any more than that. Then he reached for a jug of wine.

  Silence was best, Sophia decided. Silence let the moment draw out, let him realize that she’d actually said what she had, he’d actually confirmed it, and the world still went on. She lifted her hand away from her waist and stretched it, feeling the pull of the skin on her blisters, but she didn’t look away from the blacksmith.

  “My father served his,” Harry said finally, “and his lordship was already a man when I was a boy. Here I’m old enough to have children grown, and he looks no older than me, nor acts it. In a good man, that might be all right.”

  She nodded. “He isn’t. And he’s not keeping himself to his own lands either. But you know that, yes?”

  “Yes. And that’s why you’re here?”

  “It is.” She wouldn’t lie to him, pretend that she’d come to rescue him and his fellows, or that she’d even have given them a thought if Cathal hadn’t run afoul of their lord. Now Sophia wished she could answer otherwise, honestly, but here in the yard of the smithy, she’d do Harry the courtesy of the truth. “Was your father here when he—”

  “—took the title? He was. In the village, not the castle. Most of the folk who lived here then died, my da’ said, or learned to hold their tongues and forget right quick. He…pretended he did, at least enough to keep our skins on, but he spoke his mind when he was training me, once I was old enough to know when to keep my mouth shut.”

  Sophia felt as she did when she looked over a crucible and saw the mixture start to change. This was working; this had potential. All she needed was the right ingredient at the right time. “Do you know… Did he tell you where Valerius kept his… Where he did his work?”

  “Dungeons,” said Harry, and Sophia winced, for she’d never even been able to get close to the stairs that led down beneath the castle. Adney and his friends might be distinctly second-rate, but about certain things they knew their jobs too well. “And I wouldn’t try it, lady. He’ll have left more guards than human ones there, and worse. Nobody opens those doors when he’s away.”

  Relief and regret just about balanced, or would have if relief hadn’t come with shame. Sophia was a mortal woman, and she’d do the sensible thing—get away, tell Cathal and Douglas what she’d heard, and put together a plan that included probably magic and almost certainly a man who could actually fight demons. Yet, thinking of the time and effort lost, she looked down at her hands when she nodded, not wanting to meet Harry’s eyes.

  “You weren’t sent here to kill,” he said. “I never thought that. One man alone wouldn’t come for that, except in the old stories. A woman never would.”

  “No,” said Sophia, then thought of Cathal’s sister and added as much of the truth as she could. “I wouldn’t. I’ve never fought a man, and…another creature…almost killed me. I came to learn. Please, if there’s anything your father told you, even if it doesn’t seem very important, about Valerius—”

  Harry snorted. “Valerius indeed. Doesn’t sit well on him, I can tell you that. He talks much about his forefathers being lords in Rome… Well, and so were half of ours, weren’t they? His father never spoke that sort of nonsense. My da’ said that he was a hard man, the old lord, but he was a man, and he’d no ambition to be anything more.”

  “Do you know his name?” Sophia asked. With the declaration of her goals, the mood had shifted. Now was the time for direct questions.

  “De Percy,” said Harry and scratched his chin as he thought further. “The old lord was John, as I recall, or mayhap James. It’s on the gravestone, if you could get into the chapel tomorrow.”

  “That might help,” Sophia said, “but—”

  Gilleis dashed in, arms empty and face pale, and kicked the door shut behind her. As the other two turned to look at her, she spoke in a hurried half-whisper, words falling from her mouth like water from a pitcher. “You, whoever you are, you’ve got to get yourself gone. I overheard the guards… You’ve been asking too many questions, and they’re coming back, all of them. They’ll want to talk to you.”

  The meaning of talk to you was as clear as the identity of them. Sophia rose from the bench on legs that felt as if they didn’t belong to her at all.

  “When?” Harry asked.

  “Tomorrow. Evening if the road’s bad, morning otherwise. And Adney’ll be by before very long to see that you’re stuck here until they come. They think you’re here. If you go out the back way, around the kitchens, you might make it. Keep your head down, and tell Peter at the gate that you’re Joan from the village. She’s about your build, and she comes to work the dairy and flirt with the stableboys. We’ll keep them here as long as we can when they come, and the order will take some time to get around.”

  Standing outside herself, Sophia felt her heart speed up. She knew that her stomach was clenching and churning and that her throat was tight, but she observed all of that as another process, this one with her body as the crucible. None of those things mattered, regardless. “Harry,” she said. “What was his name? Valerius’s, before…before he changed it?”

  “What? Why does it matter?” Gilleis was all action, grabbing Sophia’s cloak and wrapping it around her while she stood waiting for an answer, shoving loaves of bread into a sack, and all the time looking toward the door. “Go, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Alfred. Or Albert.” Harry closed his eyes, and a moment passed while Sophia grasped the sa
ck of bread. “Albert. Da’ used to call him ‘Little Bert’ when he was in a bitter mood, when he thought his lordship wouldn’t know of it. Albert de Percy.”

  “Thank you,” said Sophia. “Thank you both so very much, and I hope…I pray you’ll not suffer for this. I—”

  “Window,” Harry said and grabbed her by the waist, hoisting her up without any effort at all. “Closer to the way out. Luck to you, girl.”

  After that, there were no more words, only speed and the growing night.

  Thirty-four

  A short time after sunset, it started to rain. Mud sucked at Cathal’s feet as he ran, and his clothing was soaked before long. The wind picked up too; a storm was coming out of the northeast. He could only be glad that it was too early in the year for lightning.

  Wind, rain, and distance meant he saw the men before anything else. Three guards on horseback, they were large enough to catch the eye even with the storm, and they were galloping fast enough to get attention. A second later Cathal saw their quarry.

  The figure was wrapped in a heavy cloak and running, dodging between the trees on the side of the road with desperate speed but the clumsiness of one not at all used to fleeing.

  A hood obscured the figure’s face, the cloak its body, and Cathal wouldn’t have put it past Valerius or his men to send out a decoy, yet he was moving half a moment after he saw the traveler, and there was no doubt in his mind. Whether it was the way she moved, the scent of her, or another factor that he couldn’t shape in human form, he knew Sophia.

  As Cathal recognized her, one of the guards wheeled his horse to outflank her, leaned down, and grabbed her by the arm. She screamed, clear even through the wind.

  Cathal’s leap was more than human legs could have managed, more even than he’d equaled on any battlefield. He struck as he landed, sweeping his sword down across the horse’s haunches. The beast screamed and reared, throwing its rider clear of the saddle and breaking his grip on Sophia’s arm.