by Ken Hood
"Where did you go, my love? You have already traveled farther than I expected. I have searched and searched. But I have you now. Will you not return to me, my love? There is nothing to fear. Rhym cannot know."
The ghostly fingers stroked his cheek, his neck, his flanks, and their touch was almost, almost perceptible—swansdown, gossamer on his skin.
"So strong, my love! What shall we call you?" Scarlet lips pursed in a coy smile: "Shall I call you Longdirk? Why do you not yield to me? Do you not know what I have suffered these long years? Suffered to bring you back to me?"
Valda, glorious, irresistible, beauty to drive a man insane...
Triumph! "I have you now!" she cried. Her fingers caressed his cheek, and this time they were warm and smooth. His body came to life at her touch. His arms fell free, reached out to take her. She leaned her lips forward to his, her hair brushing his shoulders.
The apparition changed. It shrank, darkened, writhed. Hair became scant and silver, the skin shriveled, the breasts sagged. Wounds and scars and hideous...
He screamed. He awakened.
PART FOUR
Over the Hills and Far Away
CHAPTER ONE
The long, long night was over. Toby shivered as he adjusted the folds of his plaid. Daylight seeped through a swampy gray sky. A rising wind promised rain and combed a steady shower of leaves from the wasted foliage of the trees. The glen was less than a mile wide, its sides rising steeply to vanish in cloud, but dawn had told him which way was west, so he knew his road to Dalmally. He needed no further guidance from Master Rory MacDonald of Glencoe.
He was less sure of his way back to the shelter. After he had awakened screaming for the second time, he had stumbled off into the woods to sleep by himself. Now he had to find his way back—preferably without having to yell for help. He peered around at the trees. There could be more than one dwelling hidden here.
There could be a whole army. The haunted glen might be a major rebel base, and King Fergan himself on hand to extract Toby's oath of allegiance with a dirk under his chin, as Iain Miller had predicted.
He wanted breakfast, although long habit made him feel that he ought to milk Bossie first. He stamped his feet and blew smoky breath through reddened fingers. Which way to go? Northeast, probably. If he did not find the others in that direction, he would come to the bog very shortly. The hovel had not been far from there, although everything would look different in daylight.
Then he heard Meg laughing, surprisingly close. Relieved, he strode in that direction, crunching dead leaves underfoot and combing them out of his hair with his fingers.
His companions were picnicking outside the hut. They looked up as he arrived, but only two of them smiled. Their ears and noses were red. Meg was huddled in her cloak, and Hamish had pulled his plaid over both shoulders and was heaped like a tartan-wrapped parcel on the grass.
Rory sat on a boulder as if it were a throne. He was younger than he had seemed in the night, his sandy hair looked lighter, the stubble on his chin had a reddish tint, and his eyes were a pale, silvery gray. The permanent sneer was more evident; his failure in the bog had obviously caused him to lose none of his superior airs. With the sword on his belt and the dirk just visible under the fold of his plaid, he could probably be as deadly as he chose to be. The crow's feather still jutted from his bonnet.
Hamish had one, too.
"Toby!" Meg exclaimed. "Hungry?"
"Starving." He knelt down and inspected the fare. It had come from his bundle—Annie Bridge's offerings—and had been well looted. He chose a hunk of blood sausage and bit into it eagerly.
"Do you always sleep so loudly, Longdirk?" Rory inquired.
"No. I'm sorry I woke you all."
"A clear conscience is a great advantage. I did hear you letting rip a few more times. Will you tell us what troubled you?"
"No."
"Was it the bogy?" Hamish inquired solemnly.
Toby shook his head. He would not describe his visions of Lady Valda to anyone.
"I slept like a log!" Meg proclaimed. She seemed to be in very good spirits, considering the ordeal she had been through. Either she was still buoyed up by the excitement of the adventure or else she was one of those vexing people who came awake chirruping like birds. "What do we do now, Master Glencoe? Head on to Dalmally, I suppose? And then Oban?"
Rory chewed for a moment. "We wait here. I'm expecting a friend."
Or several friends.
But poor Master Rory had lost his shoes in the bog, and poor Master Rory was not accustomed to walking on bare feet.
"There's no need for you to trouble yourself further on our account, sir," Toby remarked with his mouth full. "We are grateful for all your help, but we can be on our way now."
"My friend and I are coming with you."
"No, that won't be necessary," Toby said sweetly. "We can manage by ourselves now. Of course, we do appreciate the way you guided us through the bog."
Amused to see Rory's silver eyes narrow at the gibe, he turned to Hamish. "How far to Oban, do you suppose?"
Unlike Meg, Hamish had noted the dangerous undertow. He glanced uneasily at Rory, then said, "Twenty-five or thirty miles."
"Then we must be on our way." Toby laid his sausage on the ground and began repacking his bundle. "Should make it before dark."
"I think we ought to wait for Master Glencoe's friend!" Meg declared firmly. "Traveling with company is more fun. Please, Toby?"
She smiled appealingly at him.
He was disconcerted. She was a distraction from deadly serious business.
Hamish was amused, Rory openly smirking.
Very funny! In the long sleepless ordeal of the night, Toby had realized that Fat Vik's accusations were not entirely baseless. Meg's presence at the castle that evening had been part of a pattern. He had been running into Meg Tanner quite often lately. He had not been pursuing Meg, but she had been pursuing him.
Stupid kid! His only asset was his size. A child might fall for a man just because he was big, but mature women knew that large Highlanders just made easier targets. Meg had been hanging around in his path for weeks, and the dramatic rescue from the fusilier must have confirmed all her romantic fancies. When he had met up with her the previous evening, she had expected him to kiss her.
Small wonder the other two were laughing. She was pretty enough in a childlike way, but by any standards she was small; she had a tiny, upturned nose, a pointed chin, and dark eyebrows. Muffled in her cloak, she seemed younger than ever: a starry-eyed kid with a juvenile crush on Strangerson, the big bastard.
He'd promised her father he would guard her like a sister. He must not encourage her romantic notions.
"No, let's go." Toby looked around—the others' bundles were in evidence, but not his broadsword. He rose to fetch it.
Rory sprang up and blocked his path. Moving with deliberation, he drew.
Toby tensed—here came the violence. Most likely, he was about to be given the choice of swearing to bleed for the rebels at some time in the future, or bleeding on his own account right now.
The rebel's silver eyes glinted. "You'll never make it to Oban, boy." He tossed his sword, hilt-first, so that it landed at Hamish's feet. "You'll never get by Dalmally. There's only three ways out of Fillan—think the English can't count?" Then he pulled his dirk. "I told you last night you wouldn't last a week in the real world, and I tell you now you won't live out the day without my help. From now on, you take my orders." Dirk followed sword.
Well! So it was to be fisticuffs was it? Toby folded his arms and looked down at Rory MacDonald with fresh confidence. "I'm not your man."
"You're nobody's man—at the moment. That makes you fair game."
"Not this way, sir. I'm bareknuckle champion of Fillan."
Rory smiled. "So Meg said. Show me." He raised his fists and put his left foot forward.
On the face of it, he was being suicidal. Granted he had fair shoulders, Toby had a full he
ad advantage in height and probably weighed half again as much. So there was some other game in play that Toby hadn't worked out yet. If Rory was trying to keep Toby here until his friends arrived, then why discard the blades? The smell of a trap was too strong—and in the background Hamish was shaking his head violently.
"No."
"Oh, you are a gentle giant, aren't you? Hit me. Try! Just try!"
"No."
"Won't you spare the maiden's blushes and even pretend to be a man for her?"
"She knows what I can do when it's needed."
Rory put his fists on his hips and sighed in exasperation. "I hate explaining! Let me put it this way—you don't know how to use your strength. If I had stumbled on that Sassenach getting out of line, he would have wakened up an hour later with a sore neck, and there would have been no further trouble. Now be your age, sonny. Get mad! Hit me!"
Again Toby said, "No. I might hurt a little man worse than I meant to."
The rebel did not enjoy being called a little man. "I order you!"
"I am not your man."
"Then defend yourself." MacDonald shot a couple of very fast lefts at Toby's face, followed by a right. Toby's arms blocked of their own accord. Rory came in under his guard, hammered him twice in the midriff, and danced back out of reach. He was fast, very fast. The blows stung, but that was all. A small man's speed might help compensate for a big man's strength, but nothing could counterbalance the bigger man's ability to absorb punishment. Toby could take fifty such blows and then win with one.
He had not had to move his feet. He frowned and scratched his stubbly chin. "If you're trying to rile me, sir, you'll have to hit me a lot harder than that."
"I will." Rory came dancing back and swung a deliberate low blow—one that Toby was certainly not willing to absorb. In blocking it, he put himself off-balance, feet wrong, hands too low. Rory grabbed his wrist and... flip! Caught by a cross-buttock throw, Toby hit the ground with his entire length. Ooof! The sky spun and steadied...
"I could kick your head in now," Rory said calmly. "Would that be hard enough? Ready for Lesson Two?"
Toby scrambled up and raised his fists, keeping a firm grip on his temper. He was a boxer, not a wrestler, as Steward Bryce had warned him. The glen followed the Fancy's Rules very strictly, and discouraged throwing. Like a fool he had been expecting Rory to fight as he did. Well, now he was ready...
Rory's bare foot shot up and struck his elbow, jarring his entire arm. "With a shoe on, I could have disabled you. Lesson Three?"
Toby blocked a fusillade of jabs, felt his wrist caught again and hit the ground again with his face in the dirt and his opponent on his back, holding him in a painful arm lock. He discovered that there were angles at which muscle made no difference.
"I could dislocate your shoulder, you understand," Rory murmured in his ear. "Ready for Lesson Four?" He broke loose.
The bareknuckle champion of Strath Fillan staggered up again and looked at the mocking silvery eyes through a red fog of fury. The desire to flatten that arrogant nose had become one of the world's most urgent concerns.
As his opponent came dancing in again, he ignored defense, feinted with his left, and threw a right cross that slammed into Rory's shirtfront like a cannonball demolishing a castle. Against an opponent of equal size, it would have been a wasted blow and possibly costly. Perhaps its very clumsiness caught Rory unprepared. Certainly poor wee Rory could never have been swatted like that before. He struck the grass spread-eagled and skidded before he came to a stop; he lay there, dazed, gasping, and comically astonished.
"I could jump on your guts now!" Toby bellowed. "Lesson Five... Get up!"
"No!" Meg screamed, rushing between the two of them. "That is enough! I won't have it! Put your fists down, Toby Strangerson!" She knelt to help poor Rory.
Toby forced his hands to his sides, quivering with fury. He wrestled his anger back in its cage, took a couple of very deep breaths, and turned on his heel. He stalked away into the trees, boiling. So he was the stronger—who would have questioned that? Rory was the better fighter. The uppity little runt had beaten him three times. The real world would offer no fourth chances. His one talent had betrayed him. He needed lessons in fighting.
CHAPTER TWO
He might have stormed off and fallen into the bog, or become lost in the woods, had he not come face-to-face with another man heading toward him. They both halted, staring at each other with mutual surprise.
He was small and plump, of middle years. The top of his head had been shaved, leaving bare scalp surrounded by a black-and-silver tonsure. He wore a heavy wool robe, ostensibly white, although now bedraggled and smeared with grass stains, and he held a cloth-wrapped parcel under one arm. On the extreme end of his pudgy nose perched a pair of glass lenses in a contraption of gold wire that hooked over his ears. Toby had heard of eyeglasses, but never seen any before.
The newcomer peered up at him over them and demanded urgently, "Was she wearing any jewelry?" His voice was high-pitched and squeaky.
Toby blinked. "Who?"
"The Valda woman, of course, the one you think was Valda."
"Er. No. Well, she had a sort of crown thing on her head at table. It was sparkly, so I suppose—"
"But no rings? No pendants?"
"No... A big gem on the pommel of a dagger?"
"Ah! What color?"
With distaste, Toby concluded that the older man was either drunk or mentally deranged, and the only thing to do was humor him. "Yellow."
The little man shook his head as if that was a wrong answer, then quickly raised a finger to push his glasses higher, although he continued to peer over them instead of through them. "Black crescent emblem? You're sure? Curved left or right?"
"Um. No. Hamish saw it."
"Tell me everything you saw, then."
"Why?"
At Toby's back, Rory laughed. "You'll have to take it slowly, Father. Short, simple words. Toby of Fillan—Father Lachlan of Glasgow."
Toby noted that the robe had a hood and remembered what Hamish had told him. "You're an adept?"
Father Lachlan twitched angrily and again caught his spectacles before they slipped off. "I prefer to be described as an acolyte, although I am on leave from my office at present. I am also a friar of the Galilean Order. I must hear all about this Valda woman."
"Why?"
The little man seemed to find the question incomprehensible. "Because she is dangerous, of course! And evil, if she is who you think she is. Now sit yourself..." He peered around as if looking for a chair. "Right here will do, I suppose." He flopped down on the loam, adjusted his spectacles again, and addressed Toby's sporran. "I must hear everything you saw, everything you heard."
"Why?"
Rory laughed again. "He's trying to help you, Baby Beef."
Toby almost asked, "Why?" again. What reason could a total stranger have to aid him? On the other hand, he had a demon in his heart and had resolved to seek out a sanctuary. Although he distrusted any friend of Rory's on principle, he would have to ask help from somebody. He stared down uncertainly at the shiny bald scalp.
"You can talk on the way, Father," Rory said. "Are those my shoes?"
"Oh... yes, of course."
Rory helped the little man rise and took the parcel, which comprised a pair of silver-buckled shoes wrapped in thick tartan socks. "You don't need that, Man Mountain!"
Meg and Hamish had arrived also, and Hamish was solemnly offering Toby his broadsword.
He said, "Thanks!" and put it on. Then he accepted his bundle also. Meg looked cross, Hamish uncertainly amused.
"I said, you don't need it!" Rory repeated angrily. "It makes you stand out like Beinn Bhreacliath. It's liable to get you shot on sight."
"I am not your man!" Toby snapped. "Go away. We don't need your help to walk to Oban."
Rory scowled, unconsciously rubbing his chest as if it hurt. "You need someone's help, Longdirk. All right—carry the horrible thing if y
ou want. Now tell Father Lachlan the whole story, everything you can remember, every detail. And don't forget your dreams in the night."
He waved for Hamish and Meg to accompany him and marched off through the trees in his shoes.
The acolyte had been ignoring the bickering, looking mostly impatient. He put a hand on Toby's arm to urge him forward. "Come along, my son. Tell me about the woman. Did you have dreams of her in the night—vivid dreams, I mean?"
"Yes, sir. Very vivid. I... I think she conjured..." He clenched his fists and said it: "I think I may be possessed."
The little man shrugged. "That's what we fear, of course. Tell me everything, and we'll see. It's possible, but there are other possibilities." He peered quizzically at Toby and then smiled. "I'm not about to stick a knife in your heart! Even if what you fear is true, there is still hope! But you must give me all the facts. Did you, um, couple with the woman?"
"Certainly not!"
"Even in the dreams?"
"No."
"That's good. I'm sure that helps. Now, begin at the beginning."
Trying to have faith that he was not dealing with a lunatic, Toby began at the beginning, the hob's warning. Father Lachlan displayed a talent for asking penetrating questions and proved to be a concerned and attentive listener, despite his distracted manner. Much to his surprise, Toby found himself telling everything.
Rory seemed to know where he was going, although the woods were totally bereft of landmarks—it would be difficult to become seriously lost in a gorge like Glen Orchy. He strode on confidently, chatting with Meg and keeping Hamish at hand, so he did not linger and eavesdrop on the conversation proceeding in the rear.
Toby's tale had progressed only to the laird's dinner when he saw that the others had stopped. Rain had begun to fall, a fine misty rain sifting down from the brooding morass of gray clouds. Meg was arranging her cloak over her head. Hamish and Rory were similarly adjusting their plaids. The waxed wool would resist the rain, at least for a while.
Toby began to follow suit and at once ran into difficulties with his broadsword. Rory watched his struggles with open scorn. "Throw it away, Longshanks! It's worse than useless!"
