Page 8 of I Loved You Then (Far From Home #12)

Shards of Reality

––––––––

From the ridge, Ciaran Kerr narrowed his eyes at the sight below.

The English column stretched along the lochside track like a lumbering serpent—three thousand men, armored and armed, oxen bawling against their yokes, wagons groaning with their plunder.

The reek of leather and horseflesh, of men themselves—piss, sweat, and unwashed bodies— clung to the damp air, as foul as the men who made it.

He edged his destrier up until his stirrup brushed Alaric’s. Mist slicked his hair and plaid and was heavy enough to gather in the stubble of his beard.

Even as he stared down upon the enemy, his thoughts strayed.

It had been four days since the tinker’s cart had rattled through Caeravorn’s gate, bearing a stranger half-dead beneath in its bed.

Ciaran had told himself she was no concern of his, that the midwife and Ivy would see to her.

And yet, he’d found his steps turning back to that chamber again and again the day she arrived, as though pulled by an invisible cord.

The first time, he only cracked the door. The woman lay still upon the bed, her hair pale against the pillow, her breath shallow but steady. Ivy dabbed at her brow with a damp cloth, humming low under her breath. Ciaran had shut the door at once, unsettled by the odd weight in his chest.

Later, passing again, he paused. His hand had rested against the door’s latch for quite a while before he pushed the door open.

The fire had been banked low now, the chamber dim.

Ivy dozed in the same chair. The stranger stirred faintly, lips parting though no sound came.

His throat had tightened, and he’d turned away before Ivy might have woken and noted his presence.

By nightfall he’d looked in three times. Too many.

“What claim has she on ye?” he’d muttered to himself then.

She was naught to him. An unknown woman, fevered, found half-dead in the mountains.

She could be a beggar, a slave, a madwoman for all he knew.

Her attire was odd, he’d realized much later—he hadn’t given it thought in the first hours, too struck by her face.

Only later did he wonder at the cut and make of the cloth, unlike any he had seen.

Too often, though, his mind returned to that first moment in the yard, to the shock that had struck him like a crack across the cheek. He was tormented by her face, her hair, the angle of her jawline, and ultimately, by the echo of another woman’s dying gaze.

He’d been almost relieved when the message came, warning of a large English force moving steadily north—an army on the march, a campaign in motion, or a garrison bound to relieve another at one of the many English-held Scots castles.

Relieved, aye, because it put him back where he belonged, blade in hand, enemy before him.

Pleased, too, for the distance it would create between him and the woman.

Better to measure English steel and lose himself in the familiarity of war than to wrestle with the uncanny likeness of her face and the unease it stirred within him.

He wasn’t entirely surprised to realize that distance between him and her had not effectively removed her from his thoughts. Frustrated, Ciaran dragged a hand down his face now and forced himself to concentrate on the enemy below.

“We canna break that head,” he muttered, frustration tight in his throat after three days of trailing the beast. “But a tail that long—aye, it bleeds easy.”

Alaric’s gaze stayed fixed on the moving column. “Aye. But when? Where?”

As if on cue, a scout scrambled from the bracken, muck dried near to his thighs. “Laird! A choke half a mile north. The track pinches hard to the water, birch on the slope, bog to the west. Wagons’ll have to slow for a burn crossing—rotten planks, slick stone.”

“Guid,” Alaric said, and his eyes cut to Ciaran. “We make our cut there.”

Ciaran nodded once and gave a sharp whistle. Officers converged—Mathar and Mungan, the captains, and others who commanded individual units.

Alaric’s orders came crisp and spare. “Mathar, take your archers up through the birches. Arrows first, then steel when we spring. We break them at the crossing. Ciaran—ye want the wagons?”

“Aye,” Ciaran answered. “We’ll cut the traces, drive the oxen uphill into the gulley. They’ll drag the carts with them and bog the lot. Nae heroics. Ruadh will hold the far flank and cut down any who try to form lines.”

Neacal and Petrus were sent to circle with torches. Mungan was given the rearguard. Smearing their faces in peat, they made ready in silence, moving into position in the next half hour.

Ciaran checked his girth, then looked again at the column. The English marched with the arrogance of men who thought themselves safe. He curled his hand into a fist, raised it, and the signal passed like fire among his men.

From the birch stand above, Mathar’s first volley hissed down.

Arrows bit into shields, men stumbled and fell.

Stones followed, loosed with ropes and landing heavy among the enemy.

An ox bellowed and crashed sideways, tipping a wagon into the bog.

Mud sucked it down, oats spilling like grain for the birds.

Ciaran spurred forward with his Kerrs, blade in hand. Two slashes and the yoke split, oxen bolting wild, another cart upended in their wake. His blood surged. This was the work he knew best—cutting a beast down to size.

Alaric’s horn sounded, and the MacKinlays poured down the slope.

Steel met steel. The rearguard of the English tried to hold, but panic ran quicker than orders.

Torches flared in the trees as Neacal’s men came on, shadows turned to flame.

Wagons snarled the road, men slipped in the churned muck, and standards wavered under the assault.

“Dinna waste good steel on unarmored rabble!” Ciaran barked, cutting a man from the saddle, his words carrying over the din.

For a time, the glen rang with the clash of iron and the cries of dying men. Then three sharp blasts sounded from Alaric’s horn—the call to withdraw.

“Back! Back!” Ciaran shouted, dragging his men clear, forcing them uphill as the English floundered in fire and mud below. The forest closed about them once more, swallowing the patriots whole.

They did not stop until the ridge hid them. Horses blew hard, men wiped muck and blood from their faces. Mathar counted losses—two down forever, four hurt, Ruadh’s leg cut but not to the bone. Blair came grinning despite singed hair, boasting of English shrieks until his voice caught and sobered.

Ciaran listened, jaw tight, heart still pounding with the fight’s echo. He gave Mathar a nod, gave Blair another, let the men feel they had won. That was his place as laird.

But weariness pressed behind his ribs, a weight too familiar. Another raid, another skirmish, another night of blood. They bled the enemy, aye, but never enough. Never enough to end it.

Dissatisfied, another image flickered across his mind.

Not the men below, not even his own fallen—but the pale face of the woman lying fevered at Caeravorn, found by the tinker nae even a week ago.

A stranger, yet not wholly strange. He should not be thinking of her here, with the stink of English blood still in his nose. And yet he was.

He forced the thought of her aside, tightened his hand on the reins, and called to Mungan. “Count what we took.”

“Six carts ruined proper, two teams into the hills, a crate of crossbow windlasses smashed, three wagons’ worth of oats for our own,” Mungan reported.

“Guid,” Ciaran said. He looked to Alaric, who already watched the road below with that same unbending edge in his eyes. “We’ll cut them again when they think they’re safe.”

Victory, as in this quick strike, wasn’t enough.

Ciaran wiped his blade clean, turned his horse uphill, and shoved away the memory of the woman once more, as it came to him at the most peculiar times.

***

She hadn’t come to grips with it. Not even close.

Ivy’s words from the day before rattled around Claire’s skull like loose coins at the bottom of her purse, ridiculous and insistent all at once.

It’s the year 1305. As if anyone could say something so ludicrous with a straight face.

Claire had buried her head—figuratively—inside the four stone walls of her chamber, pretending that if she stayed put, she could block out both Ivy and the insane suggestion she’d made.

But silence was its own kind of torment.

The endless hours of staring at every corner in her room pressed on her until she wanted to bang her head against the wall.

The strange world beyond the chamber door didn’t go away just because she refused to face it.

And when it came to her—the maid bringing a meal—there was no relief.

Claire had asked the maid point-blank what year it was.

This was answered with shrugs of confusion, mumbled Gaelic, and what seemed a hasty retreat.

Two mornings after Ivy had delivered such preposterous and maddening news, Claire had had enough of her self-imposed confinement. She stormed down the corridor barefoot, intent pounding on doors until she found Ivy but having success at the first door she approached, next to hers.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Claire announced the instant Ivy opened the door, her tone brisk but sour, the words half-snapped, half-pleading. “I have to get out of here. I tried to go outside yesterday, but some kid told me I couldn’t leave.”

“That was my idea,” Ivy admitted quickly with a grimace, hands raised as if in surrender.

“Not because I mean to hold you hostage or anything, but because it isn’t safe to wander beyond Caeravorn.

But...” She hesitated, then offered, “would you like to get some air? We can walk the cliffs again. And maybe... we can talk. I know you must still have questions.”