Page 91 of Luthias

The boy nodded toward the cliffs above the forest. “He and the war master rode up into the slopes again. When I went to fetch the cart, I heard the stable master say ’twas something strange found there after a rock slide yesterday. Something in one of the old caves, left behind by a demented intruder.”

That didn’t sound like fun, Emery thought. “Is there anyone else in the forest besides the woodcutters?”

The boy shook his head. “We vassals keep to the stronghold or our village, and strangers must beg permission from the laird before they cross the boundaries. You shouldnae go anywhere on MacRoss land alone, my lady, especially the high trails. The meltwater after the thaw washed away much of the earth on the slopes, and some of the paths there now crumble away.”

“Good advice.” She thought of how Callen had looked at her. “Those guys back at the camp, they seemed okay to you, didn’t they?”

“Lowlanders, they’re hard workers, but a rough sort,” Tom told her. “They dinnae ken how to treat a lady like you.”

Emery still hadn’t gotten used to being called a lady––something that would have been considered very old-fashioned in her time. Suddenly she realized what had been different about the woodcutter. All of the other woodcutters had addressed her and the maids as “lass.”

“Tom, do lowlanders call women from other countries ‘my lady’ or ‘Lady?’” she asked the scullery.

He chuckled. “No, my lady. ’Tis a title we use only for noble women, or a laird’s wife or daughters, or someone of importance, like you.”

“Huh.” Emery glanced down at her dusty linen shirt and wool pants, which while comfortable could hardly be called fine. Nothing else about her indicated she was anything but a maid wearing male clothing. “They didn’t know anything about me, so why did that guy call me that?”

Callum watched from the cover of the trees as Emery Parker went through the back curtain wall gate into the stronghold, and then silently retreated back down the trail. Overhearing her conversation with the lad and realizing he’d made a foolish mistake made him feel impatient; he’d had her within reach at the cottage. A few more sweet words and he might have arranged a tryst with her once the sun went down.

He hadn’t expected the wench to be quite so young, nor as watchful. From the moment he looked into Emery’s big eyes he’d felt taken aback. The light shade of green, so beloved by the Fae, seemed to sparkle like the rarest of pale beryl. Like some noble’s daughter she hadn’t a mark on her thin, soft fair skin. When she’d spoken to him, her voice with its odd accent had been just as alluring. He’d felt his cock swell as he’d given her small yet womanly body his full attention. Dressed like some stable lad, she should have looked ridiculous, and yet seeing the way the trews fit to her pretty legs and lovely little arse had made his mouth go dry. Not even Athdara had brought on his lust as hard and quick as this wench.

He would take Emery back to Dun Deigh, he decided. Now that he’d seen her in the flesh, he would accept nothing less than her small, lithe body naked and shivering in his arms each night.

In his memory Athdara smirked, as if she somehow knew his lust had turned from her. ’Tis how you’ll punish me, my lord? By taking another to your bed?

When Callum reached the camp he took a moment to survey the woodcutters from the shadows. The men had been passing around the perry and cider to celebrate their last free day before they began their work, and would soon be drunk. No one would miss him, and as long as he returned by nightfall he wouldn’t become blind in the dark. He couldn’t enter the stronghold, or risk crossing paths with the MacRoss patrols, so he decided to climb up into the slopes, which offered a bounty of hiding places. From there he could also see the castle’s present defenses and the layout of the land surrounding the curtain walls.

Once Callum left the woods and made his way higher, he saw the shimmer of a river and three small lochs to the west, and a long stone wall separating the trees from a wide swath of pastureland. He stopped halfway to the top to note the many, well-used trails leading from the stronghold into the woods and down to the river, which was when he heard voices from above. Slipping into a narrow space between two outcroppings, he pulled back his hood and listened.

“I’d burn the lot, my lord,” a deeply disgusted voice said, “but ’tis better to set watchers around the place, to seize the evil bastart when he comes again to use the cave.”

Callum went still. If Struan had betrayed him to the MacRoss he would already be in chains, he decided, so the man couldn’t be speaking of him.

“From the dryness of the blood and bones, ’tis been more than a moon since he came to kill here,” an equally grim voice replied. “With the patrols doubled and the sentinels watching for Carack, he’ll no risk a return now.”

“Reckon you ’twas a Carack?” the deeper voice asked.

As the two men passed Callum held his breath, for if either glanced back he would be seen. The pale, dark-haired MacRoss who came first wore on his tartan the clan badge of a war master, but the pin had been carved from light-colored wood, not cast in gold or silver. He also carried a long wooden spear, but no sword or daggers on his belt, making Callum smirk. It had been a long time since he had seen Taveon MacRoss.

The MacRoss war master’s strange weakness always amused him––in some ways it was worse than his own––but he had never let it stop him in battle. He fought as if possessed by demons, and his skill with a spear and wood-handled axe matched the depth of his ferocity.

The second man, who had remote, refined features and fiery golden hair, wore a simple flame-shaped pin on his tartan made from amber, garnet and onyx. He moved in complete silence, and carried himself like a king. Callum had only ever seen him at a distance, but the proud stance betrayed him. For a moment it was as if he had stepped out of the old portrait of the two princes fighting Callum had once seen before his sire had burned it in a fit of rage.

Luthias MacRoss, in the flesh.

“I cannae say,” the laird told his war master. “We ken so little of them since the truce after the last skirmish.”

“’Tis the sort of cowardly facking thing the Carack would do,” Taveon said.

The spiteful insult made Callum reach for his dagger, imagining for a moment jumping onto the laird’s back and cutting his throat before his war master had a chance to call the Carack anything more. Yet he knew only too well the fighting skills of the MacRoss laird, who moved like water flowed in battle, and the war master, who it was rumored had killed more men on the battlefield than any other in their clan. Surprise might give him a momentary advantage against Luthias, but Taveon would assure Callum died before he saw the laird’s blood soak the ground.

Even after the pair descended and disappeared from view Callum waited, and felt rewarded when a team of patrollers came down from the upper slopes, their hands and garments blackened with soil. He glanced at the horizon, where the sun had begun to sink, and then came out of the gap and quickly made the climb. Following the boot marks the MacRoss men had left, he saw signs of a new rockslide around an old cave, and checked the ledges above before making his way to the edge.

As Callum saw what lay inside the shelter space he felt his gut clench. With his night-blindness he couldn’t enter the cave, but with the illumination of the sunset he could easily see what had been built inside.

’Tis the bone cobbler.

In his boyhood Callum remembered the one time his sire had found butchered hares and voles, and smaller, ghastly assemblages of their remains in the woods near Dun Deigh. He and Struan had always accompanied the old laird when he went to the mines, but that day they had never reached them.