Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (25 page)

“
Maybe Martin doesn’t need
our help after all.” Callum picked up a weapon that resembled
nothing less than a goblin sword from
The
Lord of the Rings
. It was composed of a
thick, flat strip of metal with a leather grip wrapped around one
end.

Cassie eyed what Callum had chosen and
then picked out a similar weapon for herself, this one with a
wicked point. “This is one hell of a sword.”

Callum glanced to where Martin waited
with his villagers, whose numbers had grown in the last hour. Men
who lived in the surrounding countryside had come at Martin’s call.
Martin lifted a hand to Callum, who nodded, understanding that the
men were waiting for him to instruct them. First, however, Callum
put a hand on Cassie’s shoulder, focusing her attention away from
her weapon and towards the green.

“
Look at Martin’s pole
arm,” Callum said.

“
I’ve never seen anything
like it,” Cassie said.

“
That’s because it’s made
of steel.”

“
How is that possible?
Where did he get this stuff?” Cassie said.

“
My guess—and I think it’s
a good one—is that we’ve just found Meg’s friend Marty. These
weapons are the remains of his airplane.”

Chapter
Fourteen

Cassie

T
hey’d stayed up all night again, and Cassie had never been so
glad to see the sky lighten. Callum had left Cassie to give a pep
talk to the women, while he oversaw the men who would stand as
their first and only line of defense against the MacDougalls. While
all but a few of the villagers appeared to be shivering in their
boots, Cassie had to trust that they would find their courage and
do what had to be done when it came to it. The fact that they would
be defending their families helped.

“
We could have hidden
James, Samuel, and John and waited for the MacDougalls to pass by,”
Cassie said when she finally had a chance to talk to Callum again.
“Surely Marty could lie sufficiently to send them on their
way?”

“
Martin and I talked about
it while you were overseeing the setting of snares on the path,”
Callum said. “If we let the MacDougalls into the village, we lose
any advantage we might have gained by confronting them with a
strong force. They are fighting men and the villagers aren’t. They
could wipe the villagers out because they felt like it.”

Cassie had lived long enough to have
seen the casual brutality that was a way of life for some men. “I’m
rethinking those snares, then,” she said. “As soon as they see
them, the MacDougalls will know we’re here.”

“
I’m not rethinking them,”
Callum said. “To face fewer MacDougalls when they come—if they
come—is worth the the loss of surprise.”

Cassie and Callum reached the village
end of the bridge. Cassie looked across the river to the hill that
the MacDougalls would come down if they were coming. “I’m glad you
think so.”

“
You don’t have to be
perfect all the time, you know,” Callum said. “It’s okay to make
mistakes.”

Cassie found her hands worrying at the
fabric of her cloak and forced them to still. “Not in my
experience.”

“
Cassie—” Callum reached
out a hand towards her, but she took a step back before he could
touch her.

“
I should check on the
scouts again,” Cassie said.

Callum nodded and didn’t try to stop
her. As she reached the first turn on the trail, a tentative shaft
of sunlight broke through the mist and cloud cover that were
typical for a morning in Scotland. She glanced back to the bridge.
Callum stood where she’d left him looking after her, with a
half-dozen men guarding the river.

He noticed her attention and lifted a
hand. Cassie nodded, though he might not have been able to see the
gesture from that distance. She turned back to the trail and kept
walking, forcing herself to think about the coming fight rather
than her developing feelings for Callum.

Five minutes later, the ray of
sunlight was squelched by the rain that had been threatening from
the west all night. The first drops pattered on the trees above
Cassie’s head. She’d gone two hundred yards when two men who’d been
sent to watch the path came running back. The first one practically
leapt over her in his fear, while the second caught Cassie’s arm as
he passed her and spun her around. “They killed Rod!”

“
How many come?” Cassie
said.

“
Two dozen!” The first man
shrieked the words.

Cassie hesitated, listening, letting
the men get ahead of her. Even through the plopping noises of the
rain on the leaves in the path and on her hood, she could hear the
progress of the MacDougalls. Cassie wanted to doubt the man’s guess
at their numbers. If the MacDougalls had brought two dozen men, the
villagers would be outnumbered.

Cassie gave up on the idea of getting
an actual count. They’d know how many men came against them soon
enough. She ran back down the trail after the villagers, almost
losing her footing several times as she skidded in the dirt that
had turned to mud in the last ten minutes. The wind blew her hood
off her head and a wash of rain flew into her face. She didn’t mind
the coolness of it, since she was hot from running. It also helped
to calm that first rush of adrenaline brought on by the villagers’
panic. Cassie slowed as she reached the bottom of the hill and
jogged the last thirty yards to where Callum waited.

He moved off of the bridge to meet her
ten paces in front of the men who stood behind him. “You heard that
they’re coming?” Cassie said.

Callum nodded. “I heard.”

“
Do we know how far it is
to the nearest ford?” Cassie said.

“
The men tell me there
isn’t one.” Callum shrugged. “The MacDougalls could swim the river
and come at us from another direction, but if they really have
twenty-four men, they’ll have too much bravado not to challenge us
here.”

“
We could destroy the
bridge,” Cassie said.

“
I would do it if we had
archers and arrows,” Callum said. “You alone could decimate their
ranks. A few spears aren’t enough, and the villagers wouldn’t throw
them accurately anyway.”

Cassie glanced behind her. The
MacDougalls hadn’t yet appeared. “It would be easy,” she
said.

“
As it is, we may just have
to fight them with what we’ve got,” Callum said, “because at this
point, I don’t have a better plan.”

William, Martin’s captain, a man in
his middle thirties, stepped to Callum’s side. “We only have to
hold them off until the Stewarts arrive.” Martin himself was
staying to the rear, though Cassie gave him credit for being there
at all. He was neither a soldier nor built for war. Even so, he
still carried the giant pole arm.

“
Here they come,” Callum
said. “Get behind me, Cassie.”

Cassie obeyed, as did William. “We
need to survive this, Callum,” Cassie said.

“
I have every intention of
doing so.” Callum spoke softly, but Cassie heard the steel in his
voice.

She nodded, more to herself than to
him since he couldn’t see her and was focused entirely on the men
coming towards him. They bunched together in a tight grouping,
gathering in the cleared space between the bottom of the hill and
the bridge. Most of the MacDougalls carried round shields, two feet
in diameter, which they held in front of them. Even with the
shields, Cassie could have taken down half of them before they
crossed the space if she’d had arrows to shoot. The rain continued
to fall steadily, but it had become the more familiar Scottish
rain, a drizzle rather than a deluge.

The MacDougalls slowed and then
stopped. The way they huddled together made it hard to get an exact
count, but they didn’t have two dozen—more like fifteen—and three
injured: two in the rear were hobbling and a third had a
blood-soaked pant leg. Either Rod had done some damage before he
died, or the traps had done their work. Cassie would need to remove
them when this was over before an innocent person got
hurt.

The leader pushed between two shields
that had protected him and stepped to the front of his men. He
swept a hand through his red hair, brushing the wet ends out of his
face. He held a sword, but stood with it down, thirty feet from
from Callum. The MacDougall leader’s jaw was set and he appeared
angry more than concerned at the resistance that faced him. These
were MacDougall warriors. Peasants didn’t fight back.

Callum spoke first. “Turn around and
go home. You are not wanted here.”

The man’s nostrils flared and he
glanced behind him at a taller man who stood half a pace to his
right. He held his axe in the middle of the haft and was beating
time on his thigh with the end of it.

“
Give me the boy and we’ll
be on our way,” the leader said.

“
What boy?” Callum
said.

“
John Graham.”

Cassie pursed her lips, wondering why
John Graham was more highly prized than James Stewart.

Callum laughed. “I don’t think
so.”

“
Give way now and nobody
gets hurt,” the leader said.

“
It is not we who are
outnumbered,” Callum said.

The man lifted his chin. “You lead a
motley band of farmers and sheepherders. They are good men who will
die today if you resist us.”

Callum took three steps backwards.
William and Cassie backed up with him until all three of them stood
on the bridge. “You have only one way across this river,” Callum
said. “Do you think you can take this bridge from us?”

The man grinned. “I won’t have
to.”

He waved a hand at the men behind him.
They dropped their shields to reveal a girl with her hands bound
behind her back. A man held a knife to her throat.

A man behind Cassie, a farmer from an
outlying homestead, gave a cry and ran forward. “That’s my
daughter!”

William spun around and caught him
with a hand pressed flat to his chest before he could cross the
bridge. “Don’t.”

“
What do you say now?” the
leader said.

Callum’s hands fisted. “Let her
go.”

“
Give me my prisoner,” the
leader said. “As I said, I’ll let you keep the big man and the
Stewart. All I need is John Graham and I’ll let the girl
go.”

“
Why do you want him?”
Callum said.

“
That isn’t your concern.
Give me the boy or the girl dies.”

“
If you kill her, you will
have no leverage against us,” Callum said.

The girl was holding herself very
still, but now the man who held her ran the knife blade across her
neck, breaking the skin. The girl sobbed.

“
In a moment, all you’ll
have is a dead girl and a grieving family,” the leader
said.

“
John is near death
himself,” Callum said. “He can’t be moved.”

“
Let me take him and I will
determine that for myself, or bring me his body.”

“
Let her go,” Callum
said.

Tears streamed down the girl’s cheeks
and she gasped, breathless, while at the same time trying to hold
herself stiff and away from the knife. Cassie had thought her
captor would have only pricked the skin, but there was a lot of
blood on the girl’s neck and dress for a flesh wound.

The leader took a menacing step
forward. “You will obey me now!”

Callum’s shoulders went rigid. He held
himself still for a count of three, just staring at the man—and
then he reached underneath his cloak, drew out the gun, and shot
the man holding the girl through the forehead. Then he moved the
barrel six inches and double tapped the leader in the
chest.

Callum and Cassie sat together on
overturned buckets in the middle of Marty’s barn. The smell of farm
animal had Cassie wishing they’d found a different place to confer.
Callum held his head in his hands. The gun was hidden away again in
its holster. “I had to do it, Cassie,” he said.

Cassie knelt in front of him and took
one of his hands in hers. She understood that his war had taken its
toll on Callum. She’d grown up among veterans, since Indians had a
long history of service in the American military. The aching loss,
shame, and guilt, punctuated by intervals of pure fear, drained a
person. Like some of the other veterans she’d known, Callum was a
control freak and sometimes turned inward so far he stopped
communicating. Callum also seemed to have this thing about how
stuff smelled.

“
I know,” Cassie said,
worried about the bad memories Callum had awoken in himself. “What
were your choices, Callum?”

He just shook his head.

After Callum had killed the two men,
the girl had screeched and collapsed to the ground. Her cry had
released the men behind Cassie and they had surged onto the bridge
and then past her. The MacDougalls found themselves down two men,
one of whom was their leader. At the sight of twenty villagers
coming at them, screaming that banshee wail that the Highlanders
seemed to have perfected, all but a few turned tail and fled. The
men who hesitated were cut down where they stood, run over by the
anger and fear in the men they’d threatened.