It should not have come as such a surprise that Clyde’s horse was so very large.
“The thing’s a monster.” Tyrone scratched his head, making his red hair stand up on end before he pulled a blue tam over it, covering him to the ears. “I didna know they made horses so… massive.”
“He needs a larger horse than most, I suppose,” Rufus shrugged. “I’d expect to find this beast pulling a cart.”
“Or a house,” Tyrone posed. “He could likely pull a house.”
“Likely. Do ye know him? Clyde?”
Tyrone shook his head. “Drew said he does not talk much. He doesn’t need to, I would imagine. He lets his size speak for him.”
This was hardly a problem in Rufus’s eyes, as he had never cared for people whose tongues were hung in the middle and swung freely all day. They would ride together for at least a fortnight, perhaps longer, if MacFarland and his kin managed to avoid capture.
The thought of listening to nonstop talking made his skin crawl.
“We need to move,” he reminded Drew, who stepped out of the tavern with bags loaded over both arms.
“Do ye fancy the notion of riding out with no food, lad? Or drink?” Drew chuckled as he hung the bags from the saddle of his gelding, whose hooves pawed impatiently at the ground.
“Dinna pretend it’s the food ye care about,” Rufus smirked. “And it isn’t as if we canna hunt.”
“Perhaps ye can,” Drew shrugged, swinging his compact body up onto the gelding’s back. “Ye know I was never much with a bow. And this is only a day’s worth, perhaps two. I didna see reason for us to start with nothing. A few extra minutes will not make a bit of difference.”
Rufus bit back a sharp reply. Perhaps it meant nothing to his cousin, but he had all but counted the minutes since he’d received word of his parents’ death and his brother’s removal from his rightful place. Every minute more was like an eternity.
What must it look like to Drew, and especially to the others? They were not of his blood, they had no reason outside of the gold which Rufus had promised in return for their services to endanger their lives. And their lives would indeed be in danger if Ian MacFarland had a chance to make it so.
The pitiful excuse for a man would murder a pair of old people in their very home. He was capable of any sort of devilry.
Yet none of them seemed concerned in the least about the possible danger. In fact, they welcomed it.
“Come on, then.” Alec’s obsidian eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m longing to sink my dirk into the flesh of a murderous bastard or two.”
“Aye,” Tyrone agreed as he hauled his considerably powerful body onto the back of an equally powerful horse. Nothing compared to Clyde’s draft horse, but still impressive.
His eyes widened when he took note of the tartan half-hidden beneath Rufus’s cloak, wrapped across his chest and torso and tucked into his kilt. The dim lighting inside the tavern accounted for his not having noticed earlier. Now, in full daylight, the sun nearly overhead, it was plain to see. “Ye believe it’s wise to wear that?” he murmured.
Rufus looked down at the colorful sash. His family’s tartan, green on a field of red. “Aye. I do. Let any man challenge my right to do so.”
“Ye know it’s against the law now. Unless a man’s a member of the army.”
“I know it.” Rufus met his gaze with an equally steady eye. “And as I said, let any man challenge me.”
“I merely wished to be certain,” Tyrone shrugged. “Ye know such matters have never mattered much to me.”
Rufus looked around at the other men. “If any of ye have a concern over my wearing the MacIntosh tartan, speak now. I would not wish to put any of ye in danger against your wishes.”
Drew snorted, bringing his gelding about. “Come on, then. I thought ye were in a rush to get moving.”
“I’m selling my sword in your service,” Alec reminded him. “Do ye think it matters to me what ye wear?”
Clyde spoke not a word. He merely grunted, nodded, and took the reins in hand.
“All right, then.” They started off northwest, where Brodric reported that the MacFarlands would ride after returning to their ancestral land to gather supplies. They’d ridden straight back to Moray Firth, back to the home in which Rufus had spent his earliest days.
It would be where the MacFarlands spent their last.
It was near dark, only the faintest beams of struggling sunlight sliding through overhanging birch branches, when Rufus spotted something in the woods to his right.
He’d been riding at the front of the group for half the day by that point, clutching his cloak closed against the chill which grew more pronounced the lower the sun sank. It would be a damp, cool night, with a fire necessary to keep the men warm while they slept.
He was considering this while Alec and Tyrone compared tales of the various lasses they’d bedded between battles and was just about to bring up the fact that they’d need to make camp before long when another, different noise caught his attention.
His head snapped around in that direction in time to catch sight of a moving lump against a gnarled old trunk.
Rufus brought the horse to a halt and held up a hand to stop the others, his gaze trained on the spot where he’d observed the movement.
“Ye saw something?” Drew murmured when he reached his side.
A slight nod of his head before dismounting, eyes still directed to the place where someone or something watched them. One hand on the hilt of his claymore, he took a few steps in the direction of the moving mass, nothing about it giving him the impression of it being human.
Until it coughed.
“Who are ye?” Rufus leveled his steel at the hunched figure while he was still several steps away. “Speak. Tell me who ye are and what ye happen to be doing here.”
The figure moved. “That’s two questions. Which of the two would ye prefer I answer first?”
The voice was not that of a man.
“Who is it?” Alec shouted behind him.
“I canna say as yet,” Rufus called back.
“I can say.” The figure shifted again, the hood of the brown cloak sliding down to reveal a mass of loose-hanging auburn curls just visible in the dim light. “Though I won’t, because it happens to be no business of yours.”
A woman. She would not be alone. Rufus looked around, sword still at the ready—the lass could easily conceal a weapon beneath that cloak of hers, and it would hardly be the first time a group of cutthroats used a woman as a lure to attract foolish men.
The woods appeared empty and sounded that way, too, but it meant nothing for a group of skilled thieves or murderers to remain silent and still.
“Who are ye with?” he demanded, still speaking to the back of her head.
“Myself. No one else.” She turned, glaring at him with what looked like two blazing coals set in a face devoid of color. “And I’ll thank ye to get that sword out of my face. Do I look like I’m in any position to attack ye? Or are ye just that afraid of a woman, on her own and injured, in the middle of the woods with no horse or food or anything to sustain her that ye feel the need to threaten her? Is that it?”
He stared in frank, open-mouthed surprise. Yes, she appeared to be weak, in spite of the fire in her voice. Hungry—those blazing eyes of hers were sunk deep into her face, ringed in what looked like bruises but was likely the result of starvation.
It mattered little. Not at all, in fact. What mattered was keeping his men safe. Not to mention himself.
“I’ll lower the sword when I’m certain ye have no weapons, lass, and not a minute sooner. Can ye walk?”
“What is it to ye?” she challenged. “Unless ye intend to help me, I have little cause to work my way to my feet and prove myself to ye.”
“For one who looks as though she is in need of help, ye have a wicked tongue. If I were to offer ye assistance, ye would need to get up. I don’t much fancy the notion of crouching alongside ye.”
Two bright red spots of color flamed on her cheeks. “It’s just as well, as I don’t recall asking for assistance.”
“Ye obviously prefer to starve, then,” he sneered, growing more confident by the moment that the woman was indeed on her own and indeed no sort of threat to him. This hardly meant that he would fall before her and offer her his protection—especially when she had such a nasty manner.
“Perhaps I do, if my other choice is to spend so much as a minute with the likes of ye,” she snarled in return, going so far as to bare her teeth.
“Enjoy starvation, then.” He backed away rather than turning his back on her, still wary of what she might be concealing. She scoffed, seeming to curl in on herself, tucked inside the cradle of gnarled roots.
Alec still waited for him. “Who is it?”
“A beast from hell, if ye want the truth of it,” Rufus growled. “A woman.”
Wide eyes beneath the brim of his tam. “A woman? Alone?”
“She appeared to be. Also appeared to be injured. Would not rise from her position and wouldn’t accept assistance when I offered.”
“Ye offered? Truly?” Alec fixed him with a gaze that could only be described as skeptical. “From where I stood and what I overheard, ye hardly sounded helpful. Ye sounded threatening.”
“Was I supposed to carry her to safety?” Rufus scoffed as he sheathed his sword. “That’s not going to happen, my friend.”
Alec looked over his shoulder, a frown creasing his forehead. “I dinna much like the thought of leaving an unarmed woman to the mercy of whatever comes along. I know ye dinna, either. Tis going to be a cold night, and that’s a fact. I don’t much like the thought of my conscience plaguing me.”
“Nay, but there’s nothing to be done for her if she’s too daft to get up and come along.”
A rustling noise caused him to spin in place, and his surprise at finding himself face-to-face with the thin, pale, fierce woman with eyes the color of steel that somehow burned into him, saw through him, and did not like what they found. “I can stand. Here I am.”
Yet she leaned against the nearest tree, and her left leg was slightly bent to allow her foot to hover over the ground. The soft leather boot she wore on her right foot was not present on her left.
“What happened to ye?” Alec asked, nudging his way past Rufus that he might have a better view.
“Fell from the saddle,” she grunted. “Something spooked the mare. She threw me.”
“She ran, then?”
“Aye.” In that single word was a world of disappointment, frustration, exhaustion.
“And ye were alone out here?” Rufus asked.
She shifted her weight somewhat, that she was standing upright—if still only on one foot. “What is it to ye whether or not I was alone? Why must ye keep asking? I’m alone now. That’s what matters, is it not?”
He opened his mouth, ready to challenge her, but Alec spoke first. “It’s right ye are, lass. Dinna worry. I suppose ye have not been able to tend to your injury, then.”
She softened, shaking her head with a resigned sigh. “I dinna think it’s broken, as I can move my toes, but it swelled so, I had to remove my boot, and there’s no chance of getting it back on.”
Alec glanced at Rufus. The two of them held an entire silent conversation over the course of a few moments.
Rufus sighed his frustration, then looked about in all directions. “I suppose this is as good a place as any to make camp for the night, though I would prefer we work our way further from the road.”
“I’ll tell the others,” Alec announced, leaving Rufus with the woman.
Exactly where he didn’t wish to be.