Page 3 of Highlander’s Curse (The Daughters of the Glen #8)
Two
“Easy,” he murmured, giving the animal a pat on the neck.
He knew exactly how the horse felt. It was beyond him to understand why the Bruce had agreed to wait until tomorrow to take the castle at Perth.
In addition to being one of Comyn’s kinsmen, Aymer de Valence was wholly devoted to Edward and not to be trusted.
And camping their entire army here at Methven?
In the open like this and only miles from Perth?
The whole of it seemed a frustratingly foolish move to him.
Apparently his companions felt similarly vexed.
“I canna believe we’re no even to set guards for the night.” From his left, Simeon MacDowell’s mutter was the only sign that he felt as frustrated as Colin.
Alasdair Maxwell sat his mount on Colin’s right, unusually solemn. “I’m no at all easy in the chosen encampment. We’re too exposed down there. Our king is too trusting by far. Wallace would never have done such.”
“Wallace is gone. It’s Robert we follow now.” Colin agreed with his friend’s assessment of their situation, but he’d allow no criticism of their new king.
From their perch on the small rise it looked like the entire of Robert’s army was laid out across the rolling land, as if served up on a giant trencher, ready for the feasting.
In contrast, the larger hills looming off to the west held a promise of safety.
A promise of respite from the mass of men below.
“It’s because yer a Highlander, Dair,” Simeon offered softly, breaking into Colin’s thoughts.
“This place is home to farmers. The land here rolls with her hills. In truth it’s no so flat though it may appear so to yer eyes.
Yer spoiled by the hiding places offered up in the nooks and crannies of yer mountains. ”
“Mayhaps,” Dair murmured. “Or mayhaps I just prefer the tactics of Wallace. He’d no have laid us all out in the fields below like easy targets at tournament. We’d have been scattered among the trees, at the very least.”
“His tactics dinna fare so well at Falkirk.” Simeon spoke without taking his eyes from the troops below. “Though in this particular instance, I find I must agree with you. I’ve no love for what we do here.”
“It’s of no matter now.” Colin dragged his eyes from the distant hills to once again survey the army below.
“We’ve no course but to accept that Wallace is gone.
Longshanks has seen to that. We’ve pledged ourselves to the Bruce.
He’s our rightful king now and we’ll do what we can to aid him in his fight for Scotland’s freedom. ”
“So we shall,” Dair agreed, tugging his reins to turn his horse from the view below. “But that disna change the fact that this place echoes in my bones with foreboding. I’ll no lay my head to rest down there with that lot. No in the open like that.”
“And where do you think yer going?” Sim questioned, all the while urging his own mount to follow Dair.
“Into the trees, just off this direction. It will no be so far as to be left behind on the morrow, but I’ll feel better with a bit of cover around me. I prefer my eyes, rather than my back, turned toward Perth.”
With one last look over the army encampment, Colin followed along behind his companions. Overly cautious perhaps, to his way of thinking, and yet Dair’s sense of caution had rarely steered them wrong. The man had an uncanny ability to sniff out danger.
Besides, placing some distance between himself and all those men down below was more than desirable.
In the years since his foolish encounter with the Faerie Queen, he’d learned to erect the mental barriers that shielded his mind.
Even so, this many souls simultaneously crying out for their mates relentlessly battered even his best defenses.
Not to mention that, like Sim, he happened to agree with Dair’s tactical assessment.
There was something about this place that felt eerily wrong, like treading over sacred ground.
Even now a tingle of apprehension rose up his backbone and prickled his neck, as if every hair on his body stood on end.
When they entered the forest, his horse suddenly halted, pricking up its ears and pawing the ground nervously. A wave of dizziness swept over Colin and, as if the sun had settled below the horizon, the light dimmed to a pale, indistinct green cast.
Ahead of him on the path, Sim turned in his saddle to look back.
“By the saints!” Sim exclaimed. “What’s happening to you?”
Colin’s arms and legs refused to follow his commands as if he had turned to stone, and he could only watch as the faint green glow turned to a wavering emerald sphere surrounding him.
Like a swarm of angry midges on a late summer day, tiny dots of multicolored lights flashed and dived around his head, careening into one another and bouncing off the walls of the decidedly solid sphere.
They moved faster and faster until they were but a blur, their brightly lit tails streaking out behind them.
Sim strained in his direction but Dair held him back with an outstretched arm. His words were barely audible over the buzzing and hissing of the manic lights.
“Stay yer ground. It’s the Fae.”
The Fae! Dair must have the right of it. Nothing of this world could bring about such as he experienced now.
The walls of the sphere shimmered and solidified to the point Colin could no longer see through them. In the next instant, his stomach plummeted to his toes, leaving him weightless as if his body were being tossed through the air into a great, black chasm.
By the Fates, what more could the damned Fae possibly want of him now?