Page 25 of Midnight Honor (Highland Wolves #3)

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" W hat's that godawful stench?” Robbie Farquharson asked, his nose wrinkled up almost to his eyebrows.

“The shite o' the forty horses ahead o' us, mixed with the muck an' slime o' every fish what ever died in this bluidy river.” Jamie, calf deep in the mire, struggled to free his left leg so he could sink it in front of the right. He'd lost his brogues a mile back--not clever enough or quick-thinking enough to have tied them on a string around his neck like most of the other men had done--and was barefoot. The wind that had blown earlier in the day was gone, its abrupt departure encouraging a heavy fog to creep up from the riverbank. The farther east they walked, the thicker the fog became, until it was difficult to see the man in front and impossible to know if there was better ground ten feet on either side.

Lord George Murray had led the first column of men out of camp at eight o'clock. With him were Lochiel's Camerons, his Athollmen, and the MacDonalds from Clanranald, numbering some nineteen hundred in all, guided by John MacGillivray and Gilles MacBean.

The prince and Lord John Drummond commanded the second column of two thousand, comprising mostly Lowlanders and French volunteers, and by the time they had struggled over the same trackless paths, marshes, and quagmires, the gap between the two columns had widened too much to ever hope to launch the simultaneous attack they had planned. By two o'clock in the morning they had covered only seven miles, and the conditions were worsening.

“Dear God!” Anne gasped as Robert the Bruce skidded in the mud for the fourth time in as many minutes. The valiant beast was doing his best to keep his footing, but she was afraid each time that the next slide would result in a broken leg. Twice already she and her cousins had prevented the column from following the wrong branch of the river in the soupy fog. Thus far, she had managed to stay on her mount, but now she swung her leg over with a final curse and slid out of the saddle, instantly sinking calf deep in the churned mud. The Bruce must have sensed he had failed his mistress in some way, for he instantly began to tremble.

“'Tis not your fault, my fine, brave boy,” she murmured, rubbing the velvety nose. “'Tis the fault of all that snow melting down from the mountains and the ground still too frozen to suck it up.”

“Weel, it's sucked me,” said a man nearby. He threw himself down by the side of the tract, his arms splayed wide like a crucifix. “I canna go anither step. I canna catch ma breath. I canna hear f'ae the bluid poundin' in ma ears. I'd crawl the way if I could, but I canna. I simply canna go further.”

An echo of his words rippled back through the ranks, some of the grumbles voicing sympathy, some anger. They were all exhausted and cold, and still as starving as they had been that morning when they had cursed over their ration of one small biscuit. The slowest clansmen, those who were lost well back in the fog and darkness, had simply stopped and turned around.

“It's no' possible, Annie,” said Eneas, gasping for breath like an old man. “It's taken us five hours to cover seven miles, an' we've anither five to go.”

She held her finger to her lips, for the prince's group was just ahead of them. “He will hear ye.”

“I dinna care who hears me," Eneas shouted. "The men are fallin' over on their feet. If they're expected tae go on, an' then tae fight, I can see disaster ahead even if he canny. An' if he was hopin' tae surprise Thomas Lobster, he's lost that chance too, f'ae we've already found one o' Willy's scouts creepin' along the bank watchin' us. Lomach MacDugal. Do ye ken the name?”

It sounded as if it should be familiar, but Anne shook her head.

“He an' his brither Hugh have been trackers f'ae the Sassenachs since Loudoun took command o' Fort George. They're as close as our Jamie an' Robbie, an' if Lomach were in the neighborhood, ye can bet yer kirtle Hugh is no' far ahind.”

“Did ye question him?”

Eneas frowned. “He'd've had a mout o' difficulty answerin' through a slit throat.”

Anne supposed she should react to the brutality, or at the very least ask if it had been justified, but she simply could not rouse either the effort or the sympathy. She could not find fault with Eneas's anger, or his sense of foreboding either. She was just as tired, hungry, and dejected as the men who struggled forward out of blind obedience. Her bonnet had fallen off somewhere back along the way and her hair hung over her shoulders in dark, tangled clumps. She had to speak through clenched teeth to keep them from chattering, and now she could swear she heard buzzing in her ears.

The buzzing grew louder; it was coming from up ahead. They walked without torches, but some of the guides carried hooded lanthorns and as she and Eneas strained to see through the mist, the dull glow cast by one of them appeared and swayed closer. The man carrying it was one of the guides who had been with Lord George's column and Anne recognized him as Colin Mor, the clansman whose bothy they had stayed at the night MacGillivray had oiled her legs to rid them of saddle cramps.

Colin recognized The Bruce and veered across the sucking mud. “We've turned back, Colonel. The general an' the chiefs decided it were f'ae the best.”

“Och, thank the good Lord above f'ae that,” Eneas sighed. “It's over, then, is it?”

“All but the shoutin',” Colin said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. Even before the words were out of his mouth, they could hear the prince's voice raised in high-pitched protests, screaming that he had been betrayed yet again.

“Where is Lord George?” Anne asked in a hushed voice.

“'Bout a mile ahind us. He'll only go as fast as the slowest man, though now they've been told they can go back an' find their beds, they're movin' a fair speed.”

“MacGillivray?”

“He an' The MacBean were no' very far ahind me. If ye stand here, he'll see yer horse, like as I did, an' he'll find ye.”

He saw another man coming past with a lanthorn, and gave his to Eneas before he set off back through the muck and trampled sod.

“Should we go forward an' wait?” her cousin asked.

“No. No, we can hear the fuss well enough from here. I would rather not enjoy it any closer.”

“Aye. I'll leave the lamp here, then.”

“Where are ye going?”

“Over ayont a bit where it's drier. I need tae sit f'ae a wee minute. Catch ma wind. It were seven miles o' hell gettin' here, it'll be seven miles o' hell gettin' back.”

Anne nodded, almost guilty she had ridden The Bruce as long as she had.

The feeling intensified a few minutes later when she saw MacGillivray and Gilles MacBean walking toward her. John did not notice her at first; it took a tug on his arm from Gilles for him to lift his head and look in the direction his clansman pointed.

They both looked terrible, splashed head to toe in mud. Anne had never seen big John MacGillivray with his shoulders drooping, and she caught only a glimpse now before he pulled himself straight and walked toward her. “Ye've heard, then?”

“Aye. We spoke with Colin Mor.”

“It was for the best. We got as far as Knockanbuie when the chiefs realized it was hopeless. As bad as this bit is, the river is flooded up ahead, an' the horses were sinkin' up to their bellies. The men, too, for that matter. Gilles here thought he felt a snake crawlin' down his leg, but it were just the mud hangin' off his willie.”

MacBean was too exhausted to even blush.

“Here.” John handed Gilles his musket and cupped his hands. “Give us yer foot: We'll give ye a leg back up.”

“No, I can walk," Anne insisted. "The Bruce is about done in anyway, and there might be someone needs the ride more than me.”

MacGillivray did not have the breath to argue; he simply took the reins and turned the gelding around.

When the sloping parkland around Culloden came into view, it was nearing six in the morning. Most of the men, filthy and exhausted, simply fell down in the grass and slept where they lay. Hundreds more never made it farther than the first point of the road where they could glimpse the roof of the Lord President's manor house. Anne stumbled as far as the same barn she had slept in the previous night. She and fifty other MacKintosh clansmen curled themselves into the hay. Most of them were asleep before their heads even touched the ground, but Anne found herself sitting with her back against the wooden slats, unable to close her eyes or even pretend to avert her gaze as MacGillivray stripped out of his coat and leaned over the water trough to scrub the mud and sweat away.

It seemed like months ago that she had stood in an upper window at Dunmaglass while he doused himself after a hard bout of practice with his men. Then his golden hair and muscled body had gleamed against the whiteness of the snow; there had been laughter and energetic camaraderie, and they had been preparing to set out on a great adventure to reclaim Scotland for their royal prince.

Now they squatted in dark, ugly places, most of the clansmen too tired to care about such mundane things as mud or how they might stink to the men lying next to them. She suspected that if she were not there, insisting unto the last on maintaining her role as colonel of the regiment, John might have flung himself down in all his glorious filth and been snoring as soundly as the others. Or he might even have been discouraged enough by the night's fiasco to keep going on to Dunmaglass, where his new bride would offer warmth and succor.

No, she thought, watching him as he flicked the water from his hands in a shower of bright droplets. John MacGillivray would never give up just because the odds were horrendously against any chance of succeeding. He had committed his men, his life, and his honor to fighting a battle he had been reluctant to join in the first place, but now that he was here, there would be no turning back. No compromising. No easy surrender.

Lord George had tried desperately to convince the prince to fall back beyond Inverness where they might rest, fill their bellies with hot food, and recoup the strength they needed to fight Cumberland's fresh, well-rested troops. The argument had overtaken Anne and MacGillivray where they trudged along the tract, and if not for her restraining grip on his arm, John would have taken out his gun and shot the Irishman O'Sullivan who, as soon as Lord George was out of earshot, began spouting more accusations of cowardice and betrayal.

But the prince refused to retreat again. He insisted his brave Highlanders would rally and fight, if only their leaders showed faith.

“The Scots,” O'Sullivan had been overheard to say, “are always good troops until things come to a crisis, then the only word they know is retreat.”

It was enough to send nearly every man's hand to his sword.

“Ye should be trying to get some sleep,” MacGillivray said, startling her away from her thoughts. He stood in front of the stall the men had set aside for her privacy, and fished his battered pipe out of his saddle pouch.

“I will. I am just… trying to work the knots out of my legs,” she said, rubbing the backs of her calves.

He watched the movement of her hands a moment, then lit a taper from a nearby lanthorn and held it over the bowl of his pipe. The smoke rose around his head and when he had puffed a good enough cloud, he sat cross-legged beside Anne and leaned against the stable wall.

“May I?”

He looked over at her and frowned. “May ye what?”

“May I try it,” she said, pointing at his pipe.

“No, ye may not. 'Tis bad enough ye dress like a man an' ride like a man; I'll not be the cause of ye horkin' an' spittin' like a man.”

“I have grown quite fond of the smell of tobacco and it would be a vast improvement over whatever occupied this stall before us.”

He smiled, but still hesitated. “Annie, I—”

“Yes, of course, how selfish of me. Ye need no blathering from me now, ye need to rest.”

“That was no' what I was about to say.”

She glanced, as he did, at the rows of sleeping men on the barn floor. The area was dark save for a few cracks in the boards where daylight sliced through in dust-laden slivers, but no one else appeared to be awake, or if they were, they were thinking of their own blistered feet, not the impropriety of a whispered conversation in a hay-filled stall.

MacGillivray exhaled another stream of smoke and seemed content just to sit beside her.

They were both silent with their thoughts for a few moments, listening to the patter of the icy drizzle that had begun to fall.

“I never had the chance to thank ye.”

“Thank me for what, lass?”

“For bringing Angus home to me that night.”

“Ah. That. An' here I thought ye were goin' to thank me for puttin' my name on that petition so ye could be here with us, freezin' off yer … well, freezin'.”

“Ye're an impossible man to flatter, John MacGillivray.” And before she could think about what she was doing, she leaned over and laid her hand on his cheek, turning his head so that his lips were a mere inch away. A kiss, given thus, would not have been interpreted by anyone as being anything other than a friendly, playful gesture, but there was suddenly a wealth of caution in his dark eyes.

“Ye've been a good and dear friend to me, John,” she said softly. “I never want that to change.”

“It never will, lass, ye have ma most solemn oath on that.”

She smiled and reached down, plucking the pipe out of his unresisting fingers.

When she put it to her mouth; it drew easily enough but she knew the instant the smoke was on her tongue that it was probably the least pleasant sensation she had experienced since the twins dared her to lick a toad when she was small.

MacGillivray grinned. “Dinna swallow it, lass,” he warned.

“Mmm?”

“Let it out. Blow it out afore it goes up yer nose.”

She expelled the smoke on a “Bah” and handed the pipe back quickly enough to earn an amused chuckle.

“I may no' take flattery well, but ye were always the one who had to hold her finger in the flame to believe it was hot. Are ye happy now that yer mouth tastes like the backside o' a scorched log?”

She smiled “yes,” but her eyes filled inexplicably with tears. They were hot, stinging two silvery paths down her cold cheeks and try as she might, she could not stop them.

MacGillivray swore and set aside the pipe. Heedless of who might or might not be taking notice, he opened his arms and drew her against his chest. Anne went willingly, even a little helplessly, and it was John, gently stroking the damp tangle of her hair, who went straight to the heart of the matter.

“He will make it through, lass. He's no' half so soft as ye think he is.”

She shook her head, keeping her face buried against his throat. “I wish I knew where he was this very minute, what he must have thought when we failed to attack the camp.”

“He like as no' thought the prince came to his senses. An' he's like as no' still warm in his bed, or havin' a good stretch an' tuckin' into a hot meal. Mayhap he'll also be thinkin' what a bluidy fool he was for goin' back; that he should have stayed here instead of leavin' ye in the care of a rogue like me.”

She made a strangled little sound that was half sob, half laugh, and he tried not to hold her too tightly, to give away too much of his own weakness as she curled herself gratefully against the warmth of his body.

“Forgive me,” she whispered. “Forgive me for being such a burden all the time.”

“Och, ye're not a burden, lass,” he said, pressing a kiss into the soft crush of her hair. “A trial, sometimes,” he added with a crooked grin, “but not a burden.”

Anne did not know how long she had slept. It was the pipes that woke her. Pipes and the paradiddle of beating drums that called the Highlanders to arms, warning them that Cumberland's army was approaching Drummossie Moor.

Anne shook herself awake in time to see MacGillivray strapping his great broadsword across his back and fastening the wide studded leather belts that held his arsenal of smaller, lethal weapons, including a brace of claw-butted pistols. Gilles was beside him, kicking awake some of the men who had not yet stirred.

“Wh-what is happening? What time is it?”

“Gone eleven,” John said, his voice as raw as his mood. “The first four brigades o' the duke's army are already on the field, with more comin' up behind. Half our men are still dead asleep; the others have wandered away in search o' food.” He looked at the barn door and bellowed, “Is my horse saddled yet? I only need him as far as the moor.”

Someone shouted back and he acknowledged it with a grunt.

Anne scrambled to her feet, earning an instant, ominous glare from MacGillivray.

“Ye're stayin' right here, lass, make no mistake. Try so much as to breathe a quarrel with me an' I'll have Gilles tie ye to the post.”

“He would not dare.”

Both Highlanders answered in unison, “He would!” and she knew they meant it.

When the last clansman was rousted, the last sword and musket retrieved from the hay, MacGillivray sent them out on the run. Unable to find his own bonnet, he snatched another from beside the trough and waved it at Gilles as a signal to go on ahead.

“If things go bad,” he said, cramming the bonnet over his blond hair, “I want ye up on The Bruce an' riding hard for Moy Hall. 'Tis where Lord George has said the clans are to rendezvous if we have to take the prince up into the mountains.”

“Promise me ye will be careful.”

“Ye could have five thousand men there by nightfall, so ye'd best make preparations. There will be wounded.”

“Promise me ye will not be one of them,” she said, shivering.

His gaze held hers for a long moment before he turned away.

He managed two long strides before a curse brought him sharply back. With his hands taking a fierce hold on her shoulders, he dragged her up and kissed her hard and full on the mouth. It was not a friendly kiss, nor could it ever have been mistaken as one. It was a kiss full of passion, exploding with the pent-up hunger of a man who understood he might never have the chance to do so again—not because conscience or morality might stand in the way, but because he knew the odds were not in his favor to leave the battlefield alive that day. He had already accepted the inevitability of death, and he was not afraid of it. He had lived his entire life expecting it to come at the end of a musket or sword and, as a fighting man, he would not want to cheat the devil by dying any other way.

What he could not accept, what he could not have tolerated, was going through all eternity knowing he had been too cowardly to take one last, glorious taste of life.

“Try to forgive me, Annie,” he gasped against her mouth. “But I do love ye. Know that I've loved ye all ma life, and know that I'll love ye long after ye've forgotten me.”

He released her then, his eyes being the last to relinquish their hold before he turned and ran out of the barn. His horse was saddled, waiting, and he swung himself up on its back, kicking it into a gallop before Anne could even find the breath to gasp his name.