Was he up to the task, to secure the first victory of the King of Scots, the victory that might lead to winning the whole war?
“Aye,” he said. “I wilna let ye down.”
Chapter 4
Amy tried everything. Kicking, moving the bed, yelling, which essentially was moaning, and therefore, useless. Nothing helped. The heavy wooden bed didn’t budge a bit. Finally, she decided to save her energy.
The only thing was, doing something distracted her from the terrible, suffocating tightness in her chest and the tension in her stomach.
The feeling that she knew all too well.
She swallowed, her mouth as dry as paper. At least it wasn’t an abandoned barn, she told herself. It was a castle, after all. There were people all around, and sooner or later, someone would come. Plus, there were windows. There was fresh air and light.
She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself.
Every single day, going out into the forest and the mountains in Vermont, she was running away from the feeling of being trapped. That was why she did what she did—rescuing people. Because she hated that there were people who felt abandoned and alone.
She wanted to give them hope. To show them that they weren’t alone.
Because once, a very long time ago, she’d needed someone like that.
And they hadn’t come.
As time went by, Amy sweated and breathed and repeated that this would pass.
From outside, the sound of a battle reached her. The clicks of something wooden hitting rocks. Arrows? People screaming in pain, in fury, metal clanking against metal. Then there was the scent of smoke. Then the sound of a battle grew louder, and it seemed it was right behind that door.
Her heart thumped, and her chest tightened more with every scream, with every clash. If another man with a sword came in… There’d be nothing she could do. She was completely helpless. Oh, how she hated that barbarian who’d tied her to the bed.
This hallucination or hologram was all too real. The sounds, the scents, the bindings on her wrists and legs—she doubted she could have hallucinated them. Maybe it was all a high-tech, super-advanced hologram experience. But a hologram wouldn’t be able to touch her like that man had.
And then a thought hit her. She hadn’t noticed it back then, because of the shock and the fear, and then fighting for her life—but when he’d talked to her, he hadn’t spoken English.
He’d spoken something else. Amy’s grandfather from the MacDougall side came to mind. He and Grandma had immigrated to the United States from the Highlands when they were young. Granddad had brought the ancient painting of the family tree going back to the Middle Ages. A MacDougall sword hung in the living room. And for as far back as Amy could remember, he had taught Amy Gaelic by telling her ancient Highland fairy tales and the stories of his ancestors in both Gaelic and English.
Yes, that warrior had spoken Gaelic to her.
And she’d understood it.
How? She’d never learned it to the point of fluency. She didn’t remember more than five or six words.
The door opened.
Speak of the devil—Amy’s captor loomed in the doorframe.
His dark hair was disheveled, and his face had cuts and bruises. Dirt and sprays of dried blood covered his skin and coat. There were also bleeding gashes on his shoulder and his ankle. The heavy quilted coat he wore was torn in several places. He slowly looked her over, his eyes dark and cold.
And smug.
Yeah. Self-righteous piece of garbage. Treating her like he could do anything he wanted with her.
We’ll see about that.
Ah well, he probably deserved what he got. Still, if he were any other man, she’d want to look at his wounds and see what she could do with her first aid kit.
“I came as soon as I could, lass.” He walked towards her and sank to his knees. “’Tis over. We won. I will undo yer ties now and remove yer gag. All right?”
She just gave him a heavy glance. She didn’t want to believe he was an all chivalrous knight. He also had some explaining to do about what the hell was going on around her.
He gently removed the gag, and Amy moved her tired jaw to ease the pain a bit.
“Are ye all right?” he asked. “I was worried someone else might have found ye.”
“Go to hell,” she spat.
Then frowned. She spoke Gaelic, too. How was it possible? Could she even speak English at all?
“Go to hell,” she repeated in English. It worked.
He laughed. “Dinna curse. I understood ye the first time,” he said in English, with that Scottish burr Amy knew from her granddad. “I shall release yer hands now, aye? But ye must ken, the castle is taken, it wilna help ye if ye try to resist. All I want is to take ye to yer family. The Bruce will likely release ye all. He dinna want more bloodshed than necessary. But the castle is his. Aye?”
He began undoing the ties around her wrists. Amy shook her head in disbelief.
“Do you think any of this makes sense to me? I have no idea what’s going on, and all I want is to return to my sister and her class.”
Her hands were free now and she rubbed them, enjoying the pure bliss of moving them, and the blood returning to her stiff muscles.
“Yer sister? She must be with the other Comyns in the courtyard.”
He started releasing the belt on her ankles.
“I’m not a Comyn,” Amy said. “My name is Amy MacDougall. My sister—”
He froze and stared at her, his moss-green eyes darkening, his high cheekbones gaining color. Amy shut up from the sheer intensity—no, hatred—in his gaze.
“MacDougall?” he hissed.
Amy swallowed.
“Did ye say MacDougall?” he pressed, one hand going to his sword.
Sweat broke through the skin on Amy’s back. “Calm down, buddy. I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re probably mistaking me for someone else.”
He looked her up and down, carefully, as though she was a predator he needed to assess. “I canna believe I have a MacDougall in my possession.”
“In your possession?” Amy gasped, then pulled her knees up to remove the belt herself.
The man’s hands covered hers.
“Free me right this minute,” Amy said. “I didn’t do anything to you or anyone in this castle. It was you who assaulted me, tied me up, and left me alone. I’m going home. In fact, I’ll do better. I’ll call the police and they’ll arrest you. I’ll press charges, you’ll see.”
He beat her hands away and removed the belt.
“Are ye trying to trick me, Amy MacDougall, with yer strange words? I wilna be distracted.”
He grasped her upper arm and yanked her to her feet.
“And now I shall bring ye to the King of Scots and he will decide what to do with a member of the clan that stabbed him in the back earlier this year. It seems ’tis all ye MacDougalls are good for. Backstabbing and betraying.”
Amy listened with an open mouth. He led her down the stairs onto the ground floor. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just on a school trip in the Highlands. This is absolutely ridiculous. This strange role-play—”
They passed through the storage room, outside into the courtyard, and Amy stopped talking. There were a lot of people there—men, warriors—walking around, carrying things. Many stood guarding about a hundred men who were sitting in the mud, their heads bowed.