After Mungo handed out a meager meal of apples and hard cheese, they remounted just as the sky turned, a low, heavy gray pressing down through the trees. Wind rustled the branches, thick with the scent of oncoming rain. This would be the kind of storm that lasted for hours. Lachlan tipped his head side to side, cracking his neck with irritation.
Rain would slow them down. Soak their plaids. Make passage treacherous for their horses. Ruin what little protection his bandages offered. When that happened, he was liable to get an infection or a fever. Heat slid down his spine despite the cooling air. Already a fever was threatening to return. He could feel it creeping in, slow and certain.
“Mo chreach,” he cursed under his breath, even as he prayed for the storm to push past them.
But his prayers for a light rain were not answered. A crack of thunder rumbled the air and the ground beneath their horses’ hooves. Lightning flashed and fat raindrops smacked into their faces through the canopy above. Within seconds, a hard, relentless downpour soaked them to the bone. He pulled his plaid over his leg, hoping it would offer more protection to his wound.
The horses faltered, their hooves sucked into the mud, making each step slower than the last. Lacklan wiped at his face, blinking against the sheets of water. He could barely see ten feet ahead.
They could not keep riding like this, but there was no village nearby for shelter, and the trees were swaying with the wind to allow the rain better access.
“Angus, James, scout ahead to see ye can find a place for us to settle in for the night.”
Angus and James nodded, skirting around the caravan and hurrying ahead. Lachlan called for the party to wait, letting the horses rest, and seeking mild shelter beneath the leaves of the trees.
“How de ye fair, my lady?” Lachlan asked.
Isabel gave a brief nod. “Better than the time I fell into the moat at my father’s holding.”
Lachlan chucked. “A story I must hear, if ye’re willing to tell it.”
Isabel grinned, a faraway look on her expression. “I was chasing one of our dogs, who was chasing a cat, who was chasing a mouse, who had stolen a bit of bread from the table.”
Lachlan could picture it. Hair flying behind her, calling after each of the animals.
“The mouse went through a crack in the drawbridge, the hunk of bread yanked between, and the cat stopped so short, the dog fell over top of poor kitty, and I tripped over my own slippers. The three of us tumbled into the moat, and the mouse got away with the bread.”
Lachlan’s head tilted back and he howled with laughter. Even Elsa looked less miserable laughing beside her mistress.
Isabel’s ferret popped out of her warm haven and peered up at her.
“I must know the story behind your wee ferret.”
“Freckles.” Isabel looked lovingly at the animal. “From one of our huntsman’s litters. She was the runt, half the size of the rest. They breed them to hunt rabbits. And they were going to toss her into the feed for the dogs. I saved her.”
Lachlan grinned. As much as she had a biting tongue, she had a warm heart, too. At least for animals.
“But I suppose she saved me too.”
“How so?”
But before she could answer, Angus and James returned, calling over the rain that there was shelter not far off. A ruined lodge, half standing, but it would have to do.
Lachlan gave the order to head toward the haven without hesitation, though every instinct in him balked at slowing their pace to Skye. Every moment they paused was a moment Longshanks’ army would grow stronger, get closer. They’d pushed the limit in waiting a sennight to leave, which made every second now more perilous.
Elsa shivered violently on her horse, he could see her nearing hysterics, sending pointedly upset glances towards him and the soldiers around her. And even though she was just as wet, Isabel sat stoically next to her, blinking droplets from her lashes. He could see her attempting to hold her muscles in check, seemingly to reject the tremors that should be wracking her body. It was as if by will alone, she would survive any force of nature.
They were all soaked through, and though he was loath to admit it, his bandages would not hold much longer, and worse still, he could feel himself growing more exhausted by the hour. This was new to him, this weakness, and he did not like it.
The structure loomed out of the storm, lightning flashing, his returned scouts at the front to guide their way. Broken and sagging, one half of the roof was gone entirely. What remained barely stood, but it offered cover, and that was enough.
He squinted through the dark, a stable stood off to the side, miraculously intact.
Wary of an ambush, the MacLeod warriors bedded down with the horses, keeping swords and daggers at hand. Lachlan, Isabel and her maid headed for the dilapidated building. He barely had to push through the door hanging partly on its hinges to get into the not very welcoming expanse. Dark, damp, and smelling of rot, it was better than getting whipped by the storm outside. He moved further into the interior, keeping Isabel and her maid at his back while he checked the corners for anyone his men might have missed. Although he trusted Angus and James to look well, his nerves were frayed. Seemingly safe, at least from brigands, maybe not from the dozens of diseases a place like this might hold, he let out a breath and fully entered the hovel.
Lachlan pulled his claymore from the scabbard on his back, setting it by the empty brazier, and sat heavily on a stool that he turned upright with a scrape, his leg throbbing. He pushed this leg out in front of him, lifting his plaid to see in the very dim light from the half-missing roof, that the bandages were drenched in more than water, blood was starting to seep.
“Let me clean that for ye,” Isabel said.
