by Sondra Grey
There was nothing else for her to do, and the enormity of her situation finally sunk in. She could never go home. Her parents were no longer living and her betrothed had called her a witch before the entire town. Any moment, she might be found, brought back to Elleric for a witch’s trial the likes of which the town had not seen in fifty years. And she’d be burned, or drowned, or hung. An overwhelming tide of sorrow threatened to pull her under, but Isla struggled to master it.
Be strong! She chastised herself. You can get through this! At least you’re still alive. As a healer, Isla had to hone an iron stomach and an iron will. Her mother had always praised her stoicism. She tried then to summon Deirdre’s voice, to recall the hard resolve that always seemed to steady her mother’s green gaze.
But it wasn’t Deirdre’s voice she heard. It was father’s, clear as that time on the banks of Doire Lochan, after they’d buried her two-year old brother, dead from ague. Donald MacLeay had wrapped his arms around her, his hugs always longer than her mother’s brief embraces. “It’s all right to grieve.”
The sobs escaped for Isla could stop them, and although nobody was watching, she was ashamed of her tears. She pulled her brown and grey plaid over her head, and cried and cried. With her hair tangled, dried blood staining the side of her face from where the rock had struck, with her hands and knees scraped from two days spent scrambling through thickets, and now with her eyes puffy and streaming, Isla MacLeay knew looked a terrible sight. And knowing this made her cry even harder. She’d truly lost everything then, even her beauty.
“Ho, miss! Can we help you?”
Isla stilled, she hadn’t even heard footsteps, but she caught her breath on a sob and there they were, leaves crunching from about forty paces behind her. Two sets of feet.
“Miss, are you okay?”
Could she outrun them? No. And she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t there. She’d have to convince them she was all right. She was too close to Stewart lands to risk revealing herself, to risk asking for help. She took a breath and willed her voice steady. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“Are you sure we can’t help you? Are you alone?” The voices were closer now.
Was she alone? A dangerous question. Isla knew what happened to women who travelled alone. “Yes,” she called. “I’m travelling with my husband. He’s off hunting for our dinner. He’ll be back any minute now.” The lie to came to her so quickly, she was almost shocked at herself. Since her father has passed, Isla had rarely had to lie. There were a few times when, after telling Deirdre she was plant-gathering, she’d go strolling with one of the village lads. But because she always came back with her basket full, her lies had never been real ones.
Quiet descended behind her for a tense moment, and then the feet moved closer. Isla wiped at her eyes, licked her fingers, and tried to rub at the blood on the side of her face. Perhaps if she kept her plaid wrapped around her head like a shawl…
“Your husband’s a fool to leave you on your own.” The voice was light, non-threatening, and as he moved into view, Isla saw that the voice belonged to big man, older, with a rounded belly and thick, capable legs. His face was stern, graying hair trimmed short. He looked weary, she thought. There was another man with him, younger, and thin, with orange hair and a hooked nose.
“Jesus, Mary…” said the red head, staring into Isla’s face, eyes trained on the side where the scratch and subsequent bruising was visible beneath the plaid. “Did your husband do that, lass?”
Isla straightened, about to deepen her lie.
“She’s not got a husband, Colin,” said the older man, eyes narrowed shrewdly in her direction. “Come on then, miss. Up you get.”
“You’ll not take me anywhere,” said Isla, fiercely. The two men snapped to attention at the venom in her voice. Oh yes, Isla could bite like a snake when she wanted to. Her demeanor was what kept many of the village boys away, her mother used to say. “Be a little nicer, Isla, a little sweeter…” Deirdre had suggested often.
“I’m afraid we will,” said the older man. “I’ll not leave a distraught young woman in the woods to fend for herself. God would never forgive me. Up you get.”
He reached down and grabbed her by the arm and for a moment Isla almost fought him. But she stopped herself. There were two of them, and she was exhausted. She stumbled to her feet and jerked her arm away from the older man, who tsked at her but didn’t try to grab her arm again. Instead he crowded her, leading her from the copse in which she’d been hiding and east, towards where the trees thinned and the terrain steepened.
They walked for ten minutes in silence. Once, the redheaded boy tried to ask her a question, but Isla’s glare kept him from inquiring further. With luck, these men might feed her and set her in the direction of Cairnie and the Gordon lands. If her luck was bad, they’d have heard of the witch who escaped Elleric.
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 q
uestion 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?
