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He was still bare-chested, his skin pale and heavily scarred in the flickering orange light of the pitch torches. He wore no boots. His bare, freezing feet were jammed rigidly into the iron stirrups, the leather straps biting deeply into his skin, but he did not feel a single ounce of pain. The sheer, blinding adrenaline pumping through his veins kept the freezing Highland night at bay.

Ewan swung his frame out of the saddle, hitting the dirt with a solid thud. He stepped forward, shoving his blazing torch down toward the crushed ferns and jagged rocks.

“Here, Me Laird!” Ewan shouted, his voice rough.

Caelan did not dismount. He leaned heavily over the neck of his horse, his dark eyes locking onto the ground.

A thick, unmistakable splatter of dark crimson blood coated the broad green leaves of a broken fern. The trail continued in a clear, desperate line of heavy red drops, explicitly marking a frantic path straight through the dense southern treeline.

“The guard on the wall dinnae miss,” Ewan grunted, scraping two thick fingers through the fresh blood and holding them up to the torchlight. “The arrow took him deep in the meat of the thigh. The bastard is bleeding like a stuck pig.”

“Mount up,” Caelan commanded, his voice a flat, terrifying rasp of pure gravel. “We follow the blood. Daenae lose it.”

“They are moving fast, Caelan,” Rowan called out, bringing his mount forcefully alongside Caelan’s. Rowan had abandoned the western gate the absolute second he saw Caelan riding out, delegating the command of the shields to Duncan. The young captain was breathing hard, a nasty, jagged cut already bleeding freely down the side of his jaw from a glancing sword blow during the breach attempt. “But they are moving sloppily.”

“They are moving heavy,” Caelan corrected harshly, his eyes scanning the absolute darkness ahead of them. “Three horses. One carrying double weight and one carrying a severely wounded man. They cannae sustain a hard gallop in this brush.”

“We will overtake them before sunrise,” Rowan stated, his gloved hand resting on the cold pommel of his broadsword. “The wounded man is losing far too much blood to stay in the saddle for long. They will have to stop and bind the leg, or he falls dead into the mud.”

“They will nae stop,” Caelan said. The absolute, lethal certainty in his voice made Rowan pause. “Fergus Comyn doesnae give a damn if that man bleeds out in the dirt. He only cares about the girl. Keep yer eyes on the ground!”

Caelan slammed his bare heels into the flanks of his warhorse. The massive beast surged forward, tearing straight through the thick, thorny underbrush. The twenty riders fell into a tight, aggressive formation behind him, their torches casting long, frantic shadows across the trunks of the ancient trees.

They rode hard for over an hour.

The pace was brutal. The low-hanging branches lashed across Caelan’s bare shoulders, cutting thin, stinging lines across his chest and arms, but he refused to slow down. His entire world narrowed down to the rhythmic thud of hooves and the consistent, heavy splatters of dark blood leading them deeper into the untamed wilderness.

Mabel was out there. She was bound, terrified, and at the complete mercy of a ruthless opportunist. The thought threatened to paralyze him, but Caelan ruthlessly shoved the panic down, replacing it with a cold, absolute focus. He needed to be the warlord tonight. He needed to be the killer William Crawford had known him to be.

Suddenly, the dense treeline broke open.

The horses burst into a wide, sprawling clearing of flat, muddy earth and broken slate. It was an old, abandoned logging path that cut diagonally across the southern ridge.

“Hold!” Ewan bellowed from the front of the pack, aggressively reining his horse in.

The warhorses skidded in the thick mud, throwing up clumps of freezing dirt as the twenty men rapidly pulled up, boxing in the clearing. The men raised their torches, throwing a wide circle of harsh orange light across the empty mud.

“Spread out!” Rowan ordered sharply. “Find the trail!”

Four men dismounted, drawing their swords and moving carefully along the edges of the clearing, holding their torches low to the ground.

Caelan sat rigidly in his saddle, his chest heaving, his eyes tracking the frantic movements of his men. The freezing wind whipped his dark hair across his face.

“Nothing here, Captain,” one of the younger guards called out, kicking a pile of dead leaves aside.

“Check the far ridge!” Ewan yelled. “They must have crossed the slate.”

“There is nay blood on the slate, Ewan,” another guard shouted back, walking in a tight circle. “The trail is gone.”

Rowan swung down from his saddle. He walked directly to the center of the clearing, crouching low in the mud. He stared at the last set of hoofprints and the final, thick puddle of congealing blood soaking into the earth. He looked up, peering into the pitch-black tree line on the opposite side of the clearing.

“We lost the trail,” Rowan swore, slamming his fist against his thigh. “The bastard must have bound the wound tightly enough to stop the dripping. We are blind.”

Caelan did not say a word. He kicked his bare feet out of the iron stirrups and dropped silently from the saddle.

He walked slowly toward the center of the clearing. The freezing, wet mud swallowed his bare feet up to the ankles. He ignored Ewan and Rowan, walking directly past them to crouch over the final puddle of blood.

He did not look at the tree line. He looked strictly at the mud.