Page 12 of Warrior of the Highlands (Highlands #3)
Campbell eyed the man at his left. Major Nicholas Purdon had spent time fighting on the side of the Parliamentarians and Protestants in Ireland.
Average height, average build, and flat hair the color of dishwater rendered him nondescript among men, and an unimaginative nature made him a tractable one too.
Two of the traits Campbell valued most.
He nodded at Purdon to swing the bucket, and cold water doused the blood and stupor from his clansman’s face. Shuffling tight past each other, they traded places.
Campbell looked down, intent on the sleeves of his ivory shirt, and creased a careful fold along each cuff. Finally ready, he looked back up and stared with disgust. The clansman’s head lolled, and the only thing keeping him upright was the rope that tied him to his seat.
“You’ll not die on me yet,” he snarled and slapped the man. The wet smack made a sharp sound that reverberated off the cellar walls. “Tell me who took her.”
“I-I told you . . .”
Another loud crack of skin on skin.
“Then tell it.” Campbell bit out his words, fighting to keep his patience. “Again.”
He’d returned to Inveraray only to discover that his prisoner had been rescued by MacColla with the aid of, of all things, a woman. “Tell me how it is you fools let MacColla in. Let him best you.”
He’d worked so hard to capture MacColla’s sister. The most valuable of all prisoners, gone like vapor in the wind. He landed another slap. “Then you let him escape. MacColla and . . .” The loose flesh of his jowls turned purple with rage. “ Two women.”
“ Unh . . .” A strangled sound escaped the man’s throat, and he stilled, seeing the terrifying calm steal over Campbell’s features.
“I will ask you just once more,” he said smoothly. “And then you will see what happens when my patience is tried.” He pulled a dagger from the belt at his waist. Candlelight caught the superfine blade, flashed up it like lightning.
Campbell smiled to see the man eye it nervously. “You like this? I call it the needle .” He flicked it down hard through the air, and the thin blade made a sound like a bird’s chirp.
He drew it to the man’s face, and the point kissed just below the clansman’s eye, tugging and misshaping the delicate skin there. “Now you’ll try once more to recall this other woman before you are the scrap in need of stitching.”
“It was the one.” The whisper came from the darkness behind him.
His hand slipped and blood trickled down his captive’s face like a lone red tear.
“Finola.” Campbell spun to face the witch. He’d forgotten she was there. She seemed to be always there now, watching. It chilled him. “What did you say, woman?”
“Forget not to whom you speak.” She stepped from the shadows, serene, her eyes dead pools.
Campbell glared in response, schooling his features into an impassive mask.
“I am not your clansman,” she warned.
Finola studied the bound man, walking a tight circle around him.
He was frozen in place, except for his eyes, which rolled and jerked between his chief and the sorceress.
She leaned in toward him, shutting her eyes and flaring her nostrils wide.
She wore her long hair loose, and a thick hank of it slipped from her shoulder and swept toward him like a great crimson veil.
The man’s whimper echoed through the chamber, and she smiled.
“I am not yours to speak to thusly.” She placed a bony finger on the man’s cheek. “Unlike this one.” She traced the track of blood with the point of her long, yellowed nail. “You would all be wise not to forget.”
The witch pursed her lips and gave the man a coy smile. A hollow tap-tapping filled the room. The sound of a thin trickle of urine dribbling to the ground. The witch shrieked a laugh and stepped back.
“He tells the truth, and I tell you, Campbell”—she spun to face him, her eyes suddenly glittering, alive with evil—“she was the one. This mysterious woman. It was she with the power to shatter the MacColla. The one I called forth.”
It took him a moment to register her words. Could she be speaking the truth? He bit the inside of his cheek to silence his anger.
“I bade you bring her through time to me .” The muscles in his legs trembled with bottled-up rage that he dare not spend on the witch. “Not to my enemy.”
“I did bring her back to you, Campbell.” Her voice was cavalier now, effortless. “And you were not there. I cannot pay the price for your incompetence.”
Campbell chuffed, fisting and unfisting his hands in frustration. He wanted that woman, whoever she may be. And now she was with MacColla. If she had the power to destroy his enemy, did she have the power to destroy Clan Campbell as well?
He stood once more before the bound clansman. Unsheathed his “needle.” Campbell scraped it lightly back up the bloody smear on the man’s face, and the clansman’s feet began to skitter, as if he could push his chair back and somehow flee his chief.
Purdon instinctively came to his aid and stood behind the chair, bracing it at his thighs, holding the man’s shoulders in his hands.
Campbell gave him a nod. The young soldier was eager to please. And better, he appeared to be enjoying the work. The days ahead would require such men.
He looked back down at his clansman. With one swift twist of his blade, Campbell sliced the man’s eye. “A reminder,” he growled over the breathy, erratic screams that filled the chamber, “to take greater care the next time you stand watch.”
He’d summoned this woman back in time to him . It was he who’d paid much. Risked much. Sullied himself with witchcraft. This woman was his property, like a misplaced weapon. And, like a lost item, he would find her and reclaim her.
And if he couldn’t control her, Campbell would kill her.