Estate
thirst. What happened? The wind and sleet had blown through. Smoke from blazing
canons no longer choked him. He no longer heard the deafening din of battle.
Silence hung around him, slit at times by weak cries of wounded men.
a breath. Fingers dangled in his face. He felt the hand. Cold and stiff. He
jerked back his own. Slowly he realized three clansmen crushed him against the
frozen earth.
sound of approaching voices alerted him to lie still. He dug numb fingers into
blood-dyed ground to keep from springing up and using his dirk.
pain bit into his chest. He gritted his teeth. And Angus? Brody’s stomach heaved.
Only a protecting angel could have spared Angus. Darkness, black as the smoke
of gun powder, descended deep inside Brody’s mind. For certain his favorite
brother lay dead, too.
door, and disciplined his thoughts into calculated coolness. He was a warrior.
light to see heaps of bodies, twisted limbs. The voices grew close. Two scarlet-clad
English soldiers stalked among the kilted bodies.
him through with his bayonet, strangling the Highlander’s weak voice into silence.
and counted his heartbeats. English voices spoke so close that hair on the nape
of his neck spiked. As the awful sound of a bayonet slashed into a nearby body,
he fought back bile rising into his throat. “I say, I do believe we’ve
dispatched all the wounded Scots.”
Letting all these bodies rot.”
rusty hinge, infused him with courage. Somehow he lived. He must fight his way
to Ma and Fiona. Protect them before the English hunted them down. A piper’s
family proved precious booty for scavenger soldiers. With Da and his brothers
dead, his duty lay in protecting Ma and Fiona.
lay half-frozen to the ground beneath his cheek. He gripped the handle of the sgian-dhu,
worked it free, and jammed it into the sheath on his right leg. Panting, numb
hands planted on frozen earth, he pushed to his knees. The scent of bog-myrtle
and blood clogged his nostrils. He gazed over the silent battlefield.
strength and youth of Scotland’s Highlands sprawled in heaps across the great
expanse of the battlefield. Pale twisted limbs gleamed in the cold light.
Bloody clan banners lay beneath bodies already stiff.
him? If his brothers hadna sent him to the rear, there would not be a male
MacCaulay left alive. Mayhap that was why he found breathing so unnatural. He
shook his head. Dizziness. His pulse pounded, increasing the thundering pain.
Touching his bloody left temple, he closed his right eye. The carnage before
him went black.
no’ as hard as Angus insisted.”
brother. For Ma’s sake, for Fiona’s sake, he must escape before English
sentinels spotted him. Hunched double, hiding among the bodies, he retrieved
his targe and pipes and strapped them atop the claymore on his back. Despite
the cold wind, sweat beaded his forehead. Belly pushed into frozen dirt, he
crawled south toward the line of trees growing by the river Nairn. He’d head
for high country. Find a place to hide.
between bodies of family, friends, acquaintances drawn close in the heat of
battle. Bodies, clad in blood-drenched tartan stared wide-eyed at the waning
moon.
he’d be murdered.