by Sondra Grey
As they reached the top of the small climb, Isla’s fear started to build in a slow and steady crescendo. There must have been thirty men camped on the hill, all in various stages of dishevelment, some snoring on the ground, some half-clad, some building fires, and tying horses. All with weapons strapped to their hips and across their backs.
Warriors. Her heart started pounding. Certainly, the Stewarts hadn’t called on the clans to find her. Certainly, they wouldn’t send warriors!
Isla tried to calm down as many eyes turned their way and silence descended. She had never been more aware of how she looked. Her beauty had allowed her to get away with what her mother called “a less-than-pleasing manner,” and she prided herself on her appearance. But she knew she looked terrible. Bruised and bedraggled and, probably, hopeless.
The men marched her up to a moderate sized cook fire in the very center of the small camp. Someone had cut up logs to sit on, and there were five kilted warriors seated around the fire. Isla’s gaze fastened on the largest, who wore no shirt at all. Even sitting, the man was impressive, large, thickly muscled, and swarthy, with dark hair curling across his chest. His deep brown hair was long enough to be tied back by a strip of leather. His face looked to have been hewn from granite: rough, and raw as the late Scottish winter. His dark eyes scanned their party, lingering on where Isla’s plaid covered her bosom, rising to her face, and then briefly dismissing her to land, impatiently, on the man older, round man who’d forced Isla into the encampment.
“Dundur,” said the older man, nodding deeply. “We came upon this lass in the woods. She seemed to be in some distress.”
“I see. Did you get what I sent you for?” His voice was deep and impatient as his gaze. Isla resisted the urge to shiver. She was having a hard time not staring at him, at the muscles starkly outlined against his dark, bare skin. There was a blatant manliness to his beauty that seemed to call to something primal within her. He was a specimen unlike any she’d met in Elleric: Broad shouldered, thick with muscle, and calmly furious. How terrible for these men, she thought, to be on the end of such obvious displeasure. Though he was still, Isla could sense the simmering of the larger man’s anger, could see it in the way his jaw flexed, but his hands stayed motionless on his bare knee, controlled.
“We thought it important to see to this lass’s wellbeing,” said the older man, hand now heavy on Isla’s shoulder. Isla could sense his wariness, but his voice was firm as he spoke.
“And while you wasted twenty minutes to fetch a stray, bedraggled villager,” the warrior’s gaze flicked to hers again and then off, dismissively “my nephew lies dying.”
He gestured to his feet, and Isla looked down and gasped. How had she not noticed the boy? Lying on a blanket beside the fire, his skin was pale with blood loss. His shirt was still on; someone had bandaged him over the shirt, and the bandage looked to be made of someone else’s shirt – this man’s perhaps. The shirt looked filthy, and it was clearly not tied on very well for the boy was still losing blood, albeit slowly.
“He needs help,” said Isla, before she could stop herself. She must have leaned forward, for the older man was gripping her by her arm, and the shirtless man was eyeing her with some alarm.
“Aye, he needs a healer. Or a miracle. Or the damned moss that I sent you two idiots for.” The warrior they’d called Dundur stood, swearing, and nearly kicking the poor boy at his feet.
“That needs to be cleaned,” Isla said, using her healer’s voice, hating that it came out sounding furious rather than assertive. But she was furious. Furious at being dismissed, furious at being disturbed, and furious that, after all she’d been through in the last few days, she had to deal with thirty idiots who couldn’t tie a proper bandage.
“Get off,” she snapped at the man holding her arm, and he let her go in surprise. “Move,” she barked at the shirtless warrior. “Get someone to boil water and find some cloth that isn’t covered in filth. We need moss and wild garlic and, if you can find it Shepherds purse and yarrow.”
The men were staring at her blankly. “For heaven’s sake,” Isla snapped, “does anyone here know anything about plants?”
“Geordie does,” said the redhead.
“Garlic, moss, shepherd’s purse and yarrow, and don’t come back until you have it,” she ordered, viciously. “Try not to get waylaid by women in the woods who aren’t any of your concern!” She didn’t have time to see if they obeyed her, but was on her knees besides the young man. The three men who’d been sitting around the fire were standing now, as if incredulous. “Water!” she snapped. “I need it boiling. You must have a pot somewhere. And a dagger.”
“You’ll not harm him.” Dundur growled. The man was scowling down at her, eyes furious.
“No I won’t, blithering idiot. I can’t do more harm than you have with this filthy bandage. I need to get this off before the wound sours. It needs to be cleaned!” She’d seen enough simple wounds turn foul and, if blood-loss was any indicator, this was not a simple one.
“I’ll not give a stranger a dagger this close to my nephew,” the man said, his voice low with temper. “Tell me what you want off and I’ll do it myself.”
“Cut him free of the shirt and the bandage. Get it off him and boil them both. If we must use those as bandages, they’ll be clean.”
There was a flurry of activity and in minutes there was clean water on hand and more boiling.
“I need the knife,” said Isla.
“I said you’ll not have it near him.”
“I need something to clean the wound with and the hem of my chemise is filthy. I’ll need to cut from higher up.” She stood and held out her hand. She was tall for a woman, but her head barely made it to his chin and she had to tilt her chin to look up at him. She held out her hand for the knife, and he stared at it a minute as it offended him. Then he snarled and gave her the knife he’d been holding.
“Excuse me,” said Isla, tartly. The fear of the past few days was turning quickly into anger. Back in a familiar role, Isla could channel her energy into something useful, and she was burning with fury.
Keeping her back to the men, she lifted her skirts and used the dagger to tear a strip of fabric from her shift. Then she turned back and held the knife out. Dundur took it and bent down near his nephew, gently cutting the fabric from the boy’s chest until the wound was revealed.
It was raw and nasty, and Isla hadn’t seen worse. Her mother had healed a fair few of the Stewart’s men in her day. But Isla had yet to see a war wound herself. This was vicious. It sliced deep across his side, armpit to ribs. Isla could see a flash of bone through the gaping edges.
She knelt down and rinsed the wound with clean water first. The boy was passed out and could feel none of it. That was good, Isla thought, for she’d need to wash the wound with the hot water, and that would hurt.
“I’ll need to sew this,” she said. Nobody answered, but one of the men left. She sat there in silence, dabbing at the wound, trying to clear the blood so she could assess how bad it was. Bad. But it wasn’t a mortal wound, and if they could keep it from getting infected, he might yet survive.
“This will hurt. He might wake up,” she said, taking the pot off the fire with the remains of the dirty shirt. The water wasn’t boiling yet – that might cause more damage, but it was piping hot. Deirdre always washed wounds with hot water before and after she stitched them. She’d taught Isla to do the same.
Dundur bent down near the boys’ head and placed two firm hands on his shoulders. The other man moved behind and held his legs. While Isla poured the water into the wound, the boy made noises but didn’t open his eyes and she thanked God. “Roll him onto his good side,” she said, holding out her hand for the needle and thread. “I’ll need access to the wound.”
Isla learned healing from her mother. Her father was a MacLeay, a cousin to the Stewarts of Auchinstarry, and he’d worked as a retainer to The Stewart himself. They’d had two children who lived past infancy:
Isla, and Connor, who had died at two years old. Her father had outlived his son by only five years. Niall Macleay had died in a clan skirmish, a fight between the Stewarts and the McPhersons where thirty men had been killed and scores more wounded. Deirdre had gone with the men as a camp healer, leaving Isla alone. When Deirdre came home she didn’t speak for a week – not even to her daughter.
After, they didn’t speak of Niall MacLeay, not even in reference. Isla’s memory swam with images of her father and her childhood, but she never said a word to her mother about it. She’d understood Deirdre’s grief, even though she’d only been thirteen, she didn’t blame her mother for not wanting to speak of her father. “Healers,” Dierdre had told her daughter, “Have cores of iron and silk. You must be a bit soft to care for those who can’t care for themselves, and you need steel nerve to do it.” Deirdre had steel nerves in spare, and Isla admired her mother’s strength. Strove to emulate it, always.
Steel was what was needed now. Not an ounce of silk. Isla sewed up the wound on the young man’s chest and managed to get the last stitches in before it became too dark to see. The men whom the Dundur had sent to find supplies had come back with another young man, this one wiry as a terrier with keen, close-set eyes and a long and inquisitive nose.
“There’s no shepherd’s purse grows in this area,” said the young man, “but here’s your yarrow, and your garlic, and a fair bit of moss…”
Isla rubbed at her eyes, tired from the concentration of placing the small stitches, and too tired to be angry and impatient. “We’ll need to bind this tight with clean linen. There’s none of that around is there?”
“Not a stitch,” said the young man. Isla liked his voice. It was mellow, comforting, and his hair was the same straw blond as Gavin’s. Gavin, the name tore through her chest like a dagger, and she took a deep breath to keep the pain from showing on her face.
“I’ve set the rags of the shirt he was wearing to boil. They’ll need to dry before we wrap the wound. My chemise is relatively clean.” Or at least it had been when she’d put it on. How many days ago was it now. It felt like a lifetime, but it must have only been two or three. “If you can mash the garlic and the yarrow into a poultice, I’ll see if I can make strips to hold it in place.”
She stood up and stumbled a bit, her leg cramping from so long held still. Hard hands reached out to steady her and she looked up into the dark gaze of the warrior called Dundur. In the dimming light, his gaze was unreadable, but Isla was woman enough to be impacted by his nearness. Her heart beat just a bit harder, and she wrenched away. Dundur. The name sounded familiar. It was dancing around the back of her head. Something about a boar, or a stag, or a…
Wolf. Wolf of Dundur. Dundur was a castle, or a keep to the north of Elleric. The Wolf of Dundur. Where had she heard the name before?
“Are you all right?” His voice was tired, concerned, and she realized she was staring into his face as if to find her answers there.
“I’ll need your dagger again,” she said. Her brain was growing foggy, but she couldn’t sleep yet. She still had work to do.
This time he didn’t question her, but handed her the dagger and let her walk off. He’d been there the whole time, she realized. He’d been sitting there, watching her sew up his nephew.
As she stepped away from the fire, she took a look at the landscape. From her position atop the hill she could see a good ways off into the distance. The land rose to the north and – to the south – descended into small rolling hills, shadows in the twilight. To the west spread the forests and the Red Hills, the mountains towards which she’d been heading before they brought her here. How far away were those peaks? A half a day’s walk? A day?
Isla untied her underskirt, pausing for a moment to selfishly consider if she shouldn’t give her underclothes to the cause. It was her only set. She thought about what Deirdre would have done, had she been in Isla’s position. Deirdre might have left her chemise on, furious at having been dragged before a stranger. Then again, Isla knew that her mother wouldn’t have let a boy die from a treatable wound.
Isla made short work of the skirt, slicing it and then tearing it to ribbons, cutting off the last few inches of fabric, which were wet with water and mud. When she had enough strips, she returned, aware that there was nothing between her and her skirts.
There was a small cadre of men around the fire now. But it was too dark to see any of them clearly. Isla looked for the yellow haired man, Geordie (she remembered), and was happy to see him nearby applying a garlic paste to the wound with gentle fingers.
“I expect this is what you want done with it,” he said, smiling at her as she approached. Isla nodded and sat down on the earth next to the still unconscious boy.
“What’s his name?” she asked the yellow-haired man.
“Hugh,” said the Wolf of Dundur from behind her. His voice was baritone, but deep enough now that it seemed to rumble through her blood, disconcerting her. Isla didn’t turn around. Wolf of Dundur. Where had she heard that name?
Ignoring Dundur and his identity, Isla worked with Geordie to press the moss atop the wound. They wrapped her linen strips around his chest tightly to keep the wound from bleeding further. When the bandages were tied, she checked his pulse and ran her hand across his forehead. “We will hope he doesn’t catch fever. Keep him on his back, and keep him near the fire.”
She sat back tiredly, a song floating through the back of her memory. Calum the Black, Wolf of Dundur. It was a refrain, she thought absently. From a song. Someone had sung about him, then. The Welsh bard from the Stewart’s hall, perhaps? But what was the song about?
“Leave us,” said Dundur, or should she think of him as The Wolf, from behind her, and Isla craned her neck to look up at him. Was he speaking to her? No, she thought. He was speaking to his men. One by one they stood from their perches on the logs and filed off into the camp beyond. Geordie, went with them, and Isla watched him go with some dismay. He seemed kind. This man before her did not.
The Wolf seemed an apt name. There was something – not predatory – but watchful about him. And there was something else too, something Isla couldn’t quite put her finger on. But she found herself resisting the urge to press against him, to let him cradle her tired weight in his arms. She thought, absently, that he looked like someone who might hold her the right way.
Isla stood, doing her best to stretch to her full height. The Laird of Dundur (for if Dundur was a Castle, then this was its laird) was tall, and while Joss Stewart’s cousin Owen was probably taller, Calum the Black was certainly one of the bigger men she’d ever met. But not black, she thought, distractedly. His hair was a deep, deep brown, not black, like hers.
Focus, she chided herself. She’d need her wits about her in dealing with this man, she could tell. The Wolf of Dundur was a full two inches taller than Gavin and with a warrior’s figure. Gavin had been in battle, and was lean and strong, but he’d a poet’s heart and a romantic dreaminess that appealed greatly to Isla. Dundur was imposing, radiating with a strong, compelling presence and staring down at her with the confident gaze of someone used to barking orders and being obeyed.
“I thank you for helping my nephew,” said the Laird formally. Without preamble, he picked up Isla’s hand and bowed over it. Isla nearly started at the suddenness of the gesture, but she stayed still, allowing her hand to be clasped in his large, callused grip. “And I owe you a debt as well.”
Isla licked her lips. “I’d be grateful for a meal,” she said, carefully. She might be able to save the food that Thomasina had given her for tomorrow. “And I need directions to…” she didn’t want to say Cairnie. The Stewarts might guess she was going to her mother’s people. They might have men on the road the Cairnie. “Haughs.” She named town that her mother had mentioned from her childhood.
“May I ask what event brought you to these woods and left you in such a state.” His voice was low, but there was an undercurrent of… something. Isla couldn’t tell
what. He was standing very close to her and, shirtless as he was, it was hard to keep from staring at him. He was very well made, and radiating heat. She resisted the urge to shiver.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. Her wits were addled; she shouldn’t lie any more than she had to. “My business is my own.”
“Were you running from something, lass?” he asked. His hands came up and lightly touched the cut on Isla’s temple. Isla stood her ground, resisted the urge to take a step back. The Laird’s touch was gentle, though his voice was hard.
“I require food,” said Isla, trying to ignore the warmth spreading from his touch to her cheek and down the side of her neck. What was wrong with her? “And directions. I require nothing else of you.” Be firm, be steel. Isla was proud of the steadiness in her voice.
“What’s your name, lass?”
“Thomasina,” she said, without thinking.
“I’ll ask one more time Thomasina… Are you running from something?” His hand fell away from the side of her face, and Isla felt cold.
“I am heading towards Haughs,” she said again, stubbornly. Her one hand was still firmly ensconced in his grip, and she gave it a tug. The Laird did not release it. He was quiet a moment as if contemplating something, and Isla felt herself growing more and more anxious. She resisted the urge to wriggle uncomfortably and tried to stem the tide of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She had felt safe a moment ago, but that frantic fight or flight she’d felt when she first entered the camp was back.
Dundur seemed to sense it for his grip tightened on her hand. “I’ll make you a deal, Thomasina. Be my guest at Dundur until my nephew is well. Geordie is the closest thing we’ve to a healer, and he mostly guesses. You stay, and when Hugh is healed I’ll give you a horse and men to escort you to Haughs.”
Isla blinked. It was a surprising offer and a generous one. He’d give her a horse? She’d probably have to give it back. But no. She didn’t want to stay at Dundur Castle. She remembered enough of the song to recall that Calum the Black was a Grant Chieftain, but she wasn’t certain if his clan was friendly with the Stewarts. Staying with him would be fool-hardy. She’d take her meal and then she’d go. It couldn’t be more than three days’ journey to Cairnie, even if she cut through the Red Hills.
