Call of a Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Arch Through Time Book 8)

by Katy Baker

  “Dinna I?” Irene said kindly. “I know what ye are running from, my dear. I know the pain that awaits ye if ye return to yer homeland and what caused it. I know the fear that hides deep in yer heart. It sits there like a worm in an apple and will consume ye if ye let it. Ye must confront it, my dear. Walk the path ye were meant to walk and mayhap ye will nay longer be afraid.”

  Her words pelted Beth like stones. She suddenly remembered that cold January night when there had been a knock on her door and everything had changed.

  “No!” she said fiercely, shaking her head and pushing the memories away. “You’re wrong and I won’t listen to you!”

  Irene squeezed her arm. Her dark eyes shone with compassion. “Yer choice is here, lass. What will ye do? If ye wish, ye can turn around, return to the guesthouse and continue with yer life. But there is a second choice. Ye can step under the archway. It will lead ye down a dark, dangerous path but one that, if ye have the courage to walk it, will also lead ye to the light. To yer destiny.”

  She looked up at the archway. It seemed to beckon her closer like a promise.

  Turn around, a voice whispered a warning in her head. Turn around and walk away. This is insane!

  But a deeper, more insistent voice whispered that this was right. It was where she was meant to be. Beth didn’t understand it but found herself taking a step towards the archway. Then another. The images disappeared, to be replaced by a shimmering curtain, like heat-haze over a bonfire. Her skin tingled and a tugging sensation flared in her stomach, drawing her closer.

  Taking a deep breath, Beth stepped through the arch.

  Chapter 4

  As he rode Camdan tried to put the meeting with Irene MacAskill out of his mind. It was hard. The strange old woman’s words had unsettled him, making the rage rear up inside. It burned through his veins, the bite of a hundred tiny flames. Anger surged beyond his ability to control it.

  Sensing his master’s mood, Firefly stamped and shied and Camdan reined him in savagely. From up ahead he heard the sound of shouting. Setting his heels to Firefly’s flanks, he sent the horse charging forward.

  He burst into a clearing where two foresters had been cornered by a band of ragged-looking ruffians. One of the foresters held a staff as he defended his comrade who had blood dripping down his temple. Facing them across the clearing were five men, all lean-looking and well armed. Camdan, with his soldier’s training, assessed the scene in an instant. With a surge of fury he drove Firefly between the two groups, forcing the brigands back a pace.

  “Go!” he bellowed at the foresters. “Flee!”

  The one with the staff grabbed his comrade and they fled into the woods. Camdan turned to face the brigands. Their leader, a large man with a scar down his face, spat on the ground.

  “Damn ye,” he growled. “Ye will pay for that.”

  Cam jumped from his horse and slowly drew his sword. He grinned manically at the men as they fanned out around him, weapons drawn.

  “I hoped ye’d say that.”

  Camdan waited patiently, the tip of his sword resting in the dirt. The five men circled him like a wolf-pack stalking its prey. Camdan didn’t move. His senses tingled with awareness. He could hear every rustle of their clothing, smell their sweat, feel the soft pad of their feet on the ground. They thought they had him trapped. They thought five against one were good odds.

  They were wrong.

  The first man lunged in, a heavy thrust aiming at Cam’s heart. Cam swiftly side-stepped then swung his own blade. The rage surged in his veins, the fury, the bloodlust he struggled to control, and he felt his lips pull back in a feral smile.

  Cam brought his sword up, blocking the stroke and the two blades met with a squeal of metal. Cam’s grin widened. The outlaws were better than expected. This would be a good fight.

  BETH FELT A STRANGE sense of falling even though she could still feel the solid ground beneath her feet. For a second her vision went black and dizziness swamped her. She slumped to her knees and her hands came down on cold, wet earth. The smell of leaf litter filled her nostrils.

  With an effort she climbed to her feet and looked around wildly. Ahead of her stretched an expanse of woodland, the leaves a sea of gold and red which swayed gently in the breeze. Where was the field? Where were the ruins of Fingal’s Castle?

  She turned. The archway reared behind her and jagged ruins poked through the leaf-covered ground. But they looked different to the ruins of Fingal’s Castle and the landscape had totally changed. There was no sign of the guesthouse. Instead, trees marched into the distance for as far as she could see.

  Beth pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. “Shit,” she murmured. “What the hell is going on?”

  Her heart thumped in her chest and the beginnings of panic fluttered at the edges of her mind. She turned around, looking for Irene, but found no trace of the old woman.

  “Irene!” she yelled. “Where are you?”

  There was no response but the whistling of the wind through the branches and the faint echo of her call against the stones of the ruins. Taking a deep breath, Beth marched back through the archway, waiting for the sense of falling that she’d experienced before. It didn’t come. Rather than stepping back into the field in Banchary, she found herself walking inside what might once have been the main hall of whatever this place had been. It had crumbling walls and no roof but even so, there was far more left of it than the ruins of Fingal’s Castle in her time.

  Beth froze. In her time? Where had that thought come from? She pushed it away. No. She would not follow that thought. There must be a logical explanation for this. There had to be. She just had to figure out what.

  Wrapping her arms around herself, Beth turned around slowly, examining the hall. An old fireplace stood at one end and she saw that the stone was carved with a series of strange markings. A swirling pattern of interlocked coils covered it, and as she looked closer, Beth saw the same pattern repeated throughout the room, carved into the walls and even the floor. She shivered. There was something about that pattern that made her decidedly uneasy.

  The shadows suddenly seemed ominous and Beth hurried back outside into the sunlight.

  “Irene!” she bellowed with all her strength. “Where the hell are you? This is not funny!”

  Her shout faded into silence, muffled by the thick foliage. Beth pressed a shaky hand to her forehead and forced herself to think.

  My cell!

  She fumbled in her coat pocket and pulled out the phone. She flicked it on and immediately dialed 999 for the emergency services. Right now the sight of the flashing blue lights of a police car would be the most welcome sight in the world. But the cell gave out a shrill beep that had her snatching it away from her ear. Examining the screen, she saw an icon flashing in the corner that indicated no signal.

  Great! Absolutely fantastic!

  Keep calm, she told herself. Think. You need to figure out where you are and then find your way back to Banchary. This is Scotland. It won’t be hard to find a road or a house or someone who can give you a lift.

  “Come on, Beth,” she said. “You won’t figure anything out just standing here.”

  She set off, making a circuit of the building, searching for an access road or a trail that might lead to a bigger thoroughfare. She found nothing. The site seemed to be completely surrounded by woodland.

  “Curse ye! Ye’ll pay for that!”

  The sudden bellow had Beth spinning around in alarm, her heart pounding against her ribs. The clink of metal and the sound of a commotion echoed through the woods. Without thinking Beth took off towards the sound. There were people out there! They could tell her where she was and maybe give her a lift home!

  As she picked her way between the thick trunks, the sounds got louder. She heard the thud of booted feet and the huff of exertion, mixed with the ‘clink, clink’ of metal on metal. Then she stepped into a clearing and halted in shock.

  This wasn’t some group of ramblers s
he’d stumbled on, or some tourists on a jaunt. It was a fight. In the clearing six men were engaged in a brawl. Although, brawl wasn’t really the word, Beth realized. This wasn’t some bar room set-to. The men were clashing with swords. Swords! Where the hell had they gotten those?

  Beth gritted her teeth against the sudden panic that tried to claw up her throat. Five of the men had encircled the sixth and were attacking him mercilessly. The man spun and parried, keeping his attackers at bay with lightning reflexes, seeming to be in many places at once. The man dived under a swinging blade, went into a roll, and hammered his fist into his attacker’s face as he came to his feet. The attacker staggered back, clutching at his nose, and the man laid him out with a crack to the temple that echoed like a gunshot through the wood.

  The man sprang away and whirled to face the remaining four men.

  “Go,” he growled at them. “And I might just let ye live.”

  One of the attackers, a big man with arms like tree trunks, spat into the dirt. “Didnae I tell ye ye’d pay? Well, now I owe ye double. I’m gonna carve ye into chunks and leave ye for the wolves.”

  With a bellow the big man ran at the other, hammering him with blows so fast that Beth could hardly track them. The ring of steel on steel filled the clearing, setting Beth’s teeth on edge.

  The two men traded blows, moving backwards and forwards across the ground. Beth ducked behind a tree and watched in horror. The sight of such violence made her stomach churn. She abhorred violence. It was so senseless. There was always another way. There must be, surely? Otherwise they were no better than animals. It was one of the reasons she’d decided to become a lawyer.

  The men in the clearing didn’t seem to share her convictions. Even from this distance Beth could hear their grunt of effort. They weren’t fooling around. As soon as one of them found a way through the other’s defense, there would be serious injury—or worse.

  Beth dug her cell out of her pocket again. This was definitely a matter for the police. She cursed under her breath as she saw she still had no signal. Damn it all!

  In the clearing the big, roughly-dressed man was pushing back the other. Inch by slow inch, the lone man edged back towards the trees at the clearing’s edge. Now that he’d come closer Beth saw he had red-blond hair that curled onto his collar and was she imagining it or was he smiling? Was this guy totally crazy?

  The other attackers had been watching the fight but now they broke away, peeling off to the perimeter of the clearing. Two moved to support the big man who Beth guessed must be the leader of the gang, but the other melted into the trees, moving slowly and stealthily behind their victim.

  With a growl, the blond man suddenly darted forward, allowing the big man’s sword to slice through the fabric on his shoulder. The big man, surprised by this sudden change in tactics, paused and the blond man rammed his elbow into his attacker’s ribs and then head-butted him hard enough to make the man’s eyes roll back in his head and send him crashing to the ground.

  The others closed in, stabbing viciously. Beth’s hands flew to her mouth in horror but at the last moment the blond man swayed out of the way with all the reflexes of a cat, knocked the men’s blades from their hands and delivered three swift upper-cuts to the men’s jaws that sent then cannoning into the trees before falling to the ground, unconscious.

  The blond man pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder and in that instant the remaining man—the one who’d been sneaking through the woods—struck from behind. He raised his sword high and swung it at the blond man’s unprotected back.

  Beth reacted instinctively. The injustice of five men attacking one made her hackles rise. The blond man might be a violent thug but that didn’t mean he deserved to get skewered from behind.

  “Behind you!” she bellowed.

  The man’s eyes flicked to Beth peering from behind the tree and widened momentarily in surprise. Then he pivoted, ducked out of the way of the sword swinging at his neck, and lunged with his own weapon, plunging it into his attacker’s chest halfway to the hilt. The man’s eyes widened and his sword fell from nerveless fingers. He slid off the sword that impaled him and lay lifeless in the dirt.

  The blond man spun, pointing his sword in Beth’s direction. “Come out.”

  Beth wiped a shaky hand across her brow. Oh god. He’d just killed that man! What had she walked into? She cursed her foolishness. Why had she warned him? She should have kept her mouth shut, made a run for it, and found the police. Now the blond man was staring right at her and there was nowhere to run.

  She held up her hands and slowly stepped out from behind the tree. “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” she said, her voice a little shaky.

  “Come forward.”

  Beth took a few steps and halted, not wanting to go any closer. His sword was smeared with blood. Beth’s legs began to shake.

  “Who are ye?” he demanded. “Are ye in league with these vagabonds?”

  In league with them? Was he joking?

  Outrage overcame her fear for a moment. “What? Are you serious? I got lost in the woods and stumbled on this...this...mess. I’ve never seen any of you before in my life!”

  The man relaxed a little. His eyes scanned the trees. “Ye are alone?”

  Beth swallowed thickly. “Yes, I’m alone.” She glanced at the sword in his hand. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  A strange look crossed the man’s face. He sheathed his weapon. “Hurt ye? What do ye think I am? I dinna hurt women.”

  Beth pointed at the downed men. “You hurt them all right.”

  “They were outlaws.”

  “Outlaws?”

  He looked her up and down. “Bad men. Men that would hurt a lass wandering the woods alone. What are ye doing here? Where are yer kin?”

  “My what?”

  “Yer family,” he replied with a flash of annoyance. “I suggest ye get back to them. This isnae a safe place to go wandering. The laird’s patrols rarely come out this far.”

  Beth drew in a deep breath. She struggled to follow his words. The man, she noticed, wore traditional Scottish dress: tartan plaid over a linen shirt, high boots and a sash across the chest.

  He whistled and a horse came trotting out of the woods, walking up to him with a snort of greeting. The man took rope from the saddlebags and used it to bind the four unconscious men’s hands then dragged them into a line in the clearing’s center, along with the dead man.

  “What are you doing?” Beth asked.

  He glanced at her. “Would ye rather I left them free so they can attack someone else?”

  “They attacked you? Why?”

  “Nay, they attacked some foresters—easy pickings for men like this. I just happened to interrupt them.”

  “So they’re criminals?”

  He tested the bonds on the last man’s hands and straightened. “Aye, as I’ve already told ye. They are outlaws. Lawless men. We are a long way from the king’s protection up here.”

  Beth struggled to catch up. “So you’re some kind of lawman? You were arresting them?”

  He snorted. “Hardly. I’m a sell-sword. A mercenary. I just happen to take exception when a gang of vagabonds chooses to throw their weight around.” He frowned at her. “And judging by the fact ye dinna know an outlaw when ye see one, I reckon ye are a long way from where ye are supposed to be.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Beth thought.

  She pulled in a deep breath and tried to think rationally. He’d been acting in self-defense and she knew from her training that with forensic evidence and her witness testimony, the defense would probably stand up in court.

  He’s not a psycho, she told herself. He’s not going to kill you. He’s just a man defending himself. It’s okay. Breathe.

  “Do you have a cell?” she asked. “We need to call the police.”

  He looked at her as if she’d said something ridiculous. “Cell? Police?”

  “A mobile phone? I can’t get a signal but if you lend me
yours I’ll call the police and explain what happened. I saw it all. I can tell them you were acting in self-defense. You’ll be arrested of course but you might get bail until your trial.”

  He planted his hands on his hips. “Lass, I havenae the faintest clue what ye are going on about. Have ye taken a whack on the head? I dinna ken what ye mean by ‘mobile phone’ or ‘police’.”

  Beth stared at him. Was he messing with her? Was this all some sort of sick joke? “You are going to report this aren’t you?”

  “I’ll inform the Sheriff’s men in Cannoch if that’s what ye mean. Then these bastards will be his responsibility.”

  Beth jumped on the name. “Cannoch? Where is that?”

  “Tis the nearest settlement to these parts.”

  Beth breathed a sigh of relief. There was a village nearby! A place where she could find a phone, call the police, and get this whole mess sorted out.

  “Could you tell me how to get there?”

  He wiped his sword blade on the tunic of one of the unconscious men then re-sheathed it. “I’ll do better than that, lass. I’ll escort ye there myself.”

  Beth baulked. “No, that’s okay. Just give me directions and I’ll find my own way.” Did he really think she would go anywhere with him? After what she had just seen him do? She would not spend any more time near this man than she had to.

  “Did ye not hear what I told ye?” the man said with a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Ye think these men are the only vagabonds to hide out in these woods? I canna allow ye to remain here. Ye will come with me.”

  Beth looked around. The wood lay still and quiet but the shadows beneath the boughs suddenly seemed menacing, as if they might be hiding enemies. Oh god. She really had no choice.

  “Okay.”

  The man took a few steps closer and Beth resisted the urge to back away. He was tall and broad-shouldered and maybe a handful of years older than herself. A strange, swirling tattoo covered his forearm and red-gold hair framed a face of sharp cheekbones and eyes as blue as winter ice. A light dusting of stubble covered his chin. With a start she realized he was shockingly handsome.