Page 69 of Blood of the Thistle

“I said to Mam, I had a feeling,” cried Etta, still clutching Bram’s upper arm and leaning her head briefly against his shoulder. “I just knew ye’d come soon.”

“Ye are pale, luv, and so thin,” said his mother. “Naught a guid meal willna fix.”

Bram knew it was not required that he speak, but thought to confirm what his ready smile might not have entirely. “And pleased I am to be home, Mam.”

“Oh, my heart,” she said, laying her palm against his cheek.

“Were ye near Inverness?” Etta wanted to know. “We heard of a terrible rout down there. How long were ye—”

“We’ve time aplenty for all your questions, Etta,” Bram said, though the words had scarcely left his mouth when another voice reached him through the clamor of the courtyard.

“Mac Cailin.”

Bram turned sharply.

For the briefest moment, Harsain stood several yards away and made no move toward him. Bram had known the man most of his life and fought beside him for nearly half of it, and he had never before seen his captain look quite so stricken. Harsain was a broad, powerfully built man nearing forty, his dark beard now threaded with more gray than Bram remembered, a narrow white scar cutting from the corner of his left eye toward his temple. He looked leaner, harder, and the leather coat he wore bore a ragged repair across one shoulder that Bram did not remember seeing before the ambush.

Behind him stood several men Bram recognized at once.

The sight of them struck harder than he’d expected.

They were not enough.

Harsain had marched south with nearly six score men, and the handful gathered behind his captain seemed a pitiful remnant. There was Niall, favoring his left leg badly; Gilleasbuig with a fresh scar across one cheek; young Tòmas, who seemed to have aged years; and two others whose familiar faces brought with them immediate memories of men who were conspicuously absent.

For several heartbeats Bram and Harsain simply regarded one another.

“I saw ye fall,” Harsain said finally, his voice roughened. “Jesu, lad. I saw them take ye down.”

“Aye.” Bram swallowed. “They did.”

Harsain closed the distance between them, catching Bram by the forearm before hauling him into a hard embrace that lasted only a heartbeat but conveyed more than either man was likely to say before so many witnesses. Bram gripped him just as fiercely.

When they parted, Harsain kept hold of his arm. “We searched. What men I could gather, we searched until there was nae sense in it. Found bodies enough, but never yours.”

“Because I wasnae among them.”

Harsain’s gaze dropped to Bram’s wrist, to the ugly abrasion where the English iron had ridden his skin, and something dangerous entered his expression. “Nae. I see that now.”

There would be time for the rest—the names of the dead, the accounting of those who had escaped, everything that had happened in the three months since the ambush. Bram could not bear to ask for it yet. He clasped forearms with each of the surviving men instead, speaking their names, accepting their grins and rough words of welcome. Tòmas appeared on the verge of tears and plainly hated himself for it, so Bram clapped him hard upon the shoulder and said nothing of the shine in his eyes. Niall muttered that it had taken him long enough to find his way home, earning a bark of laughter from Harsain and, to Bram’s surprise, from himself as well.

Fearchar stepped forward next—the steward spare and graying, keys at his belt, his habitually composed face holding for perhaps two seconds before he seized Bram’s forearm with both hands. “God be thanked.”

“Aye, Fearchar. All is well here?”

The steward gave him a look that was almost reproachful. “Ye’ve been home scarcely five minutes. Such as that will keep a bit longer.”

“Aye.”

Bram might have answered, but Etta chose that moment to lean around him.

“And who is this... that ye’ve brought with ye?”

Bram turned.

Anastasia remained only a short distance from where he’d left her, though the swelling crowd had edged closer around her. She stood beside the gelding with one hand resting lightly upon the saddle, her expression composed enough that anyone who didn’t know her might have believed her perfectly at ease.

Anastasia stood rigid, her eyes locked on Mairead.