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Iain MacLaren threw down his musket and roared like a lion. Prince Charles, the king Charles Edward Stuart, the rightful king of England and Scotland, the man Iain wanted to fight for, the man he was willing to die for, had forsaken the Jacobites.
Cumberland’s troops had outmanned and out-armed the Jacobites. The perpetually wet Drumossie Moor had become even more sodden by the blood of his clansmen, countrymen, and their allies.
Had Bonnie Prince Charlie known the enemies’ numbers? Had he sent his army into battle on this dreaded moor knowing that the enemies vastly outnumbered the Jacobite forces?
Iain second-guessed his decision to leave the best of his warriors at the castle to safeguard his sister as he gazed over the bloody battle. Not all the bodies were warriors. Some were impoverished tenants forced to fight by their clan leaders with threats of imprisonment, death, or the burning of their homes, and some were hardly more than children.
He was thankful that at least his people were safe on the island of Dorpol, but he would not leave the rest of his fellow Jacobites.
Murray, the commander of the right wing, shouted his war cry to rally his men. His brigade hollered in reply before running into the oncoming English army in a final attempt to hold them off. Other Jacobite warriors saw the charge and hurried to join, their war cries adding to the swell of shouts as men cascaded toward the English line.
With sword in hand, Iain rode his horse into the fray with the certainty that he would be killed this day. All the men alongside him had the same grim knowledge reflected in their eyes, but even so, the Highlanders surged into battle. Iain glanced to his far left. Why was the MacDonald Unit not moving forward? Had they not heard the command?
With no time for further thought, Iain charged. It felt as though he were possessed as he fought. All conscious thought disappeared from his mind as he focused only on surviving. At some point, the MacDonalds’ battle cry sounding behind him pierced through his haze.
At the sound of their cry, adrenaline coursed through Iain, renewing his vigor. He continued to swipe at every English soldier he could until a cannon sounded so close to him, his horse reared, and having given the horse his head, Iain lost his loose grip on the reins and fell onto his back. Wind gushed from his lungs. A moment later, he was gasping for breath. Sweat dripped off his brows into his eyes, and with shaky hands, he wiped the wetness away.
His head spun as he fought to calm his breaths. He needed to stay alert, ignore the aches and pains from the many cuts and gashes covering his body, and choke down his fear if he wanted to keep fighting.
All Jacobite units were falling fast, and Cumberland’s forces pressed their advantage until the Jacobites fled the field, fighting like madmen as they coursed through the lines of English forces to their freedom.
A voice shouted the command to run them down.
The Irish picquets moved across the moor, bravely intercepting the English so the Highlanders could flee the battlefield.
Iain, dazed and limping from his injured ankle, tried to follow his allies, but before he could make much progress, the government cavalry intercepted and herded the Highlanders south. He could just barely make out flags flying and pipes playing as government soldiers descended on them.
As he fought his way to the edge of the moor, he could no longer hear the screams or see anything other than his next quarry, his mind riveted on the fight and nothing else.
Abruptly, his sword found no more purchase, and he paused to look around. He stood alone in a muddy field of death. Shouts rose behind him, and he turned, prepared to fight anew, before slightly relaxing his stance. There were small pockets of fighting, but none were within a few hundred paces, and it was clear the battle was dwindling.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead but couldn’t calm his frantic heart as he trudged after his countrymen still trying to escape the field, but a movement at the edge of the forest caught his attention. Sir Thomas, one of the enemy knights, had young Duncan to rights.
Iain sighed, remembering the season at Glasgow University when Thomas always picked on those weaker and smaller than himself.
Iain fought his way to where the men were standing.
Thomas glared at Iain and, kicking Duncan out of the way, raised his sword. “Laird MacLaren.”
“Run, Duncan,” Iain growled at the lad, but kept his eyes glued to his enemy.
Thomas laughed and waved his sword about. “I have dreamt of the day I finally kill you and your countrymen.”
Iain’s blood felt like ice as he took his chance, lunging at Thomas to try to strike him with his broadsword before he recovered his balance. The other soldier saw him at the last second and flung the flat of his sword against Iain’s blade, blocking the blow.
The treacherous Scot cursed, “Jacobite horse dung, you can all go to hell.” His cold gray eyes narrowed, and he launched at Iain, raining down a frenzy of blows in quick succession.
Iain blocked and jabbed, thrust and parried, but he couldn’t find a break in the Redcoat’s training. It had been wrong of Iain, wrong of all of them, to think they could match the enemy’s skills.
Iain tried to draw in a much-needed breath, but his throat was dry, and his tongue was swollen. He had to make do with his painful pants, the air rasping in his throat. His arms ached, turned to slabs of great heavy stone, as his sword grew heavier by the second. The adrenaline he had felt earlier that day had fled him as quickly as his strength had, and he could sense his body was ready to give out.
Thomas parried Iain’s half-hearted strike and pivoted, the point of his blade whistling through the air straight toward Iain’s chest. Iain drew on every last bit of strength he possessed and raised his blade. Too weak to completely block its trajectory, he only managed to change its direction, and he felt the cold steel rip through his side.
He didn’t know if the injury was serious; he couldn’t feel the pain. He stared at the Englishman who came to Thomas’s aid—the Sassenach, whose gleeful cry floated out over the field of slaughter. With one last effort, Iain raised his sword, knocking Thomas’s weapon free, and brought his blade down on Thomas’s head. Thomas ducked but not quickly enough, and Iain’s blade cleanly sliced his ear from his head.
Thomas’s howl attracted the attention of one of his men, and he hastened toward him. The Redcoat Sassenach clubbed Iain over the head, and he plunged face-first into the mud. An image of his sister filled his mind. Maeve was smiling at him with love-filled eyes.
Be strong. He sent the thought out to her, willing her to live a long and happy life.
A strange sense of well-being enveloped him. He knew he was going to die half-buried in the cold Moor, but that brought no fear. Instead, his heart ached for all the other dead, the young men who should still have had a lifetime to enjoy.
Darkness claimed him before he could say one final prayer.
***
Abby’s heart beat against her ribs so vigorously, she thought it would bounce out of her chest at any moment. Her eyes took in a strange vista, but her shattered mind could make no sense of it. Where was she? As if her hearing had caught up with the rest of her vision, a crack blasted through the stillness of the night. She jumped and screamed, but more blasts covered her shrill voice. She pressed her hand over her mouth; she had to stay in control of her fear. She couldn’t be sure another scream wouldn’t be heard.
Drizzly rain fell on Abby’s head and on the open land before her. The lush marshland was objectively beautiful, but it sent a spike of dread through her nonetheless, and she shivered from the cold or shock—she wasn’t sure which. Where was she? She should have been with her sisters and brother, warm and cozy, not freezing to death in the great outdoors of who only knew where. Her head ached, and burning tears fell from her eyes.
Abby squeezed her eyes shut as more blasts vibrated through her body. Guns. The blasts were from guns. Her eyes snapped open, and with her other hand over her heart, she twisted her head in all directions. Definitely gunfire, and there were a lot of them. Louder booms sounded. Her eyes widened, and she froze. Cannons? It sounded like cannons. Stifling another scream with her hand, she dove for cover, and an icy fist of fear tightened around her chest.
She silently thanked the lone pine tree now in front of her for giving her some cover as she huddled under low yellow-flowered shrubbery.
As her gaze flitted around her, she discovered she was on the edge of a battlefield. Realizing her breathing had become pants, she tried to slow her breaths.
She inhaled deeply and forced herself to exhale slowly, but her heart kept pounding against her ribcage and cold sweat beaded across her forehead. She peered through the foliage, frantically scanning the chaotic scene before her. Thankfully, she was some distance away from the battle, but as she watched men fall to the ground, a retch escaped her throat. It quickly blended with the cacophony of battle cries, gunshots, and clanging swords echoing across the field.
If there had been any doubt about her predicament, the screams and anguished cries coming from all directions made it perfectly clear that she had been thrust into a situation of life and death. She covered her face with her hands. “I want to go home.”
She dragged her head up. Wishing wasn’t going to get her home. The orb. That was the last thing she’d touched at home. She stared at her shaking hands. Where was the orb?
Careful not to make any sudden moves that might bring attention to her location, she bent her head, shook out the cloak, and patted down her clothes. Her heart picked up its pace as she felt the surrounding ground. She needed the orb to go back home.
More gunshots and cannon blasts out-roared an army of men’s screams.
She looked over her shoulder through the back of her hiding spot to a couple trees and more low shrubs. She should go there to try to distance herself further from the battle, but the overwhelming noise had her rooted to the spot, and she stared once again at the battlefield.
Her every nerve trembled with fear. Her eyes bulged as more combatants became visible. Men in tartan were on foot and on horses. Scottish men, some holding long muskets, some with axes, scythes, or pitchforks, fighting mounted Redcoats. The English. She tried to think of places in the American Revolution that looked like her surroundings. She couldn’t think of any, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. She didn’t want to believe it, but she was smack dab in the middle of a crazed battle during the American Revolution.
A bullet whizzed past her ear, breaking her stupor.
She pushed the cloak into her mouth to stifle a scream. She had to move as far away from the battle raging in front of her as she could. She pushed through the back of the shrub and crawled as fast as she could around and behind a bigger shrub.
Once she was behind the foliage, she kept her head down. The guns and their reports echoed in her head, and she jammed her hands into her armpits in a self-embrace. Now and then, a mortar would fire and have her heart nearly jumping out of her chest.
Blinking and trying to make sense of the sensory overload, Abby wanted to scream, but she knew once she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She had to keep control, think of what to do, but the only choices that came to her were fight or flight. She couldn’t fight, and she was too scared to try flight.
The ongoing fire from the guns made her constantly jump, and the boom from the cannons shook the ground under her. The swords clashing and the chorus of screams sounded like a dreadful song. With every noise, her temples throbbed and her whole body shook. Keeping the cloak over her nose and mouth, she stretched out on her stomach, hoping no one could see her there.
Abby forced her brain to grasp for more information about the men, but she couldn’t make out what they were yelling. Their shouts weren’t in English. A loud crash of cannon fire had her snapping her head up. She hugged the damp ground and inched to the side of the brush just far enough to peer through the outer leaves. The contraption had no wheels. It wasn’t a cannon; it was a mortar. Mortars had smaller ammunition than cannons, but to Abby, they were just as loud.
The details of what she was seeing made her heart flip.
To her right was what was left of one side of an army and a lone man still valiantly holding a flag. It was emblazoned with a thistle and St. Andrew’s cross, with Latin script in a ribbon above. She murmured the rough translation without conscious thought. “No one provokes me with impunity.” Or something like that. It was definitely a Jacobite flag.
Men in kilts, the English army, and a wet, bloody field. No, it was a moor. A moor in Scotland.
Battles of Scotland and England flitted through Abby’s mind as she realized she wasn’t in America anymore. She was in Scotland. She didn’t know what battle it was, and she didn’t care. All she wanted was to get as far away from the death and destruction as possible.
But without meaning to, her thoughts raced even faster at the possibilities of her location. The names of the combatants filled her mind.
Charles Stuart, also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, otherwise known as the Young Pretender, and he had wanted the throne of England.
She was certain she was right on the edge of the Battle of Culloden, but that would mean she had gone back in time. She wiped her hands hard down her face. Had she really time traveled, or was she asleep and all this was a dream? Or maybe she was in a coma. She couldn’t remember having an accident, but she recalled the feeling when she touched the orb. That could have been her fainting.
Abby pinched her clammy cheeks. Surely it wasn’t possible. Her parents’ faces emerged in her mind. Had they really spent their lives traveling throughout time, collecting artifacts, and seeing history as it was being made? The orb. She scanned the area where she’d first arrived, hoping to see the slightest glint of the device in the few sunbeams that managed to hit the ground. Her chest tightened. Had she dropped the orb when she passed out?
No. Through the cacophony of horror around her, her logical mind surmised the orb had to have traveled with her. How else would her parents have returned home?
The ground was wet and muddy. Maybe she dropped it when she landed and fell on it. Maybe she pushed it into the mud. She had to go back and look for it. She had to get it.
More gunfire, mortar blasts, and screams broke through her thoughts, and shivering, she wrapped her arms around her chest. Whether the chills were from the cold or shock, she didn't know. A sob hitched in her throat.
She was really in the middle of the Battle of Culloden. The Jacobites’ last stand against the English army, led by the Duke of Cumberland. And to make matters worse, judging by her surroundings, she was behind the already-defeated Jacobite line. As the English pressed forward, the Jacobites were being pushed to the upper edge of the moor. If they came further her way, someone would see her.
She cautiously squirrelled into the shrubbery.
Forcing her breathing to deepen and slow, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound of the air passing through her nose. That relaxed her somewhat, but the fighting continued to make her jump with its ferocity, and her body shuddered at each horrific sound. Silently, she willed herself to keep still.
She hissed out a breath. Part of her mind screamed none of what was happening was possible—there was no such thing as time travel—but the other part, the more logical side, calmly told her she had truly time traveled and was now on the sidelines of one of the most famous battles in history.
She had no choice. She couldn’t go home without the orb, so she decided to wait the battle out and stay safe, and then she would get the time device and go back home.
Not more than an hour later, she watched as the English chased their enemy from the battlefield, and at long last, all was quiet except for a stray gun firing or a shout here and there.
She squinted out over the many prone bodies. Something moved. No, someone. One of the soldiers was still alive.