Page 24 of Warrior of the Highlands (Highlands #3)

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Haley cursed, and then let loose a chuckle, giddy with nerves and fear.

She’d crested the first hill and came to rest, concealed by a rocky outcropping on just the other side. Her chest was killing her. She was winded, and each heaving breath shot pain through her torso.

She thought she’d load her weapon, and wait. But she examined it now, turning it in her hands. Cursing again, she tilted it toward the sunlight. It was a pretty little pistol, made of a simple dark wood capped with steel accents that shone a dull gray in the morning’s watery light.

And of course it had to be unlike anything she’d ever fired.

It was a predecessor to the flintlock. She thought of Graham’s gun from the museum and gave another muted laugh. Here was her theory. Right here in her hands.

Not many flintlocks in the first half of the seventeenth century.

How the hell , she wondered, do you fire this thing? She’d shot plenty of black-powder weapons for her research, but she’d never laid her hands on something like this.

She was pretty sure it was an early snaphaunce . They were called dog lock pistols, referring to the catch that locked the cock into the safe position. As she recalled, it was a gun used by the English soldiers.

Of course. The Campbells had sided with the Covenanters in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. And the Covenanters often found themselves on the same side as Cromwell’s Parliamentary soldiers. It made sense Campbell would have access to guns used by the redcoats.

She retrieved a bullet from the leather pouch and, saying a prayer she didn’t blow her hand off, proceeded to load the weapon, carefully pouring in powder, dropping and tamping down the ball, then pouring a measure more powder in the pan.

She leaned back, and the rock at her spine felt cool. She realized she’d worked herself into a sweat. Shutting her eyes, Haley tuned her senses outward, listening for the Campbell clansman she knew would find her.

Campbell put his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun. “There.” He pointed to the steepest area of the slope. A narrow stripe of dark gray spoke to scree recently displaced.

His man had been searching for tracks along the low valleys between hills, but Campbell had suspected otherwise. If the woman was canny enough to smash in the head of one of his best men, she’d not scramble hysterically into a trap.

With them on horseback, staying to the lower elevations would corner her as easily as a hare in a hole.

“Do we ride up then?”

Campbell sneered. “Neither of us is riding up that.”

He puckered his lips in thought. Studied the terrain to either side, then up along the mountain.

“Off your horse,” he commanded. “I’ll cut her off low on the other side. You race and catch her above.” He wheeled his mount around. “And one more thing, lad?”

“Aye, sir?”

“If you don’t catch her”—Campbell gathered his reins in tight fists, the stout pony prancing anxiously beneath him—“don’t bother coming back.”

Campbell kicked his horse, galloping into the valley and toward his Inveraray Castle beyond.

He tracked the horses to the base of one of the steeper slopes. He studied the rise. The gravelly hillside told a clear story. One man hiked up and another rode off.

MacColla raised his hands to the grip of his sword and leaned his head back to stare up into the glare.

Her tracks were there too, in the scree, a thick line edged by two thinner ones. Her hands and feet scuffling up the hillside. Chased.

Hissing a curse, his eyes scanned the foot of the slope, following the tracks where they headed into the valley. They were fresh. The ponies had left a trail that was easy to read, cutting a wake of broken branches and trampled leaves in the brush.

Campbell. Campbell wouldn’t have climbed a mountain—not when he had a man to do it for him. It was Campbell who would’ve ridden off, riderless mounts beside him. Campbell who now headed in the direction of Inveraray Castle.

“By crivens,” he muttered. MacColla deliberated for a moment. Looked back up the hill and down again to the valley. “Damn it and damn it to hell.”

Campbell was close. Too close to ignore. And alone. That was what clinched it. MacColla could blindfold himself, tie both hands behind his back, and still he’d best Campbell in a fight.

Campbell was close, and he had to get him.

MacColla turned, looked back up the hill, staring up at those tracks as he began to jog backward toward the valley. Away from Haley. He tried to ignore the sharp twinge in his chest.

Haley. He had to hope she’d be all right. She was a fighter. Braw, but canny too, using her brains and her strength.

“Good Christ, lass,” he whispered. MacColla turned his back to her trail and took off after the Campbell. “Be safe.”

He broke into a hard run, willing his physical exertion to push images of her from his mind. But those gray eyes haunted him, and he ran harder.

He would catch the Campbell and kill him.

He could come back for Haley.

He was too close to stop now.

And then he heard it. A shot cracked high above. Trees grew scant in the hills, and there was nothing to stop the sound of gunfire from echoing down to where he’d stopped, panting, deep in the valley.

And this time, MacColla’s decision was an easy one.

Her eyes shot open. There it was. A distant snapping of a branch underfoot.

Haley rose, tried to force calm into her trembling hands. She studied the gun. She’d shot before. But never with intent to kill.

The tang of black powder clung in her sinuses. She held the pistol in front of her, testing its weight in her hands. How much would it kick back? Would it aim truly?

She thought of James Graham’s combination weapon, able to serve as a blade if the gun failed to fire. Haley quickly wiped the palm of her right hand on her dress, then brought it back to the butt. She feared her own gun might be better suited as a bludgeon than as a straight-shooting weapon.

Stepping out from behind the rock, she assumed her stance.

Another snap.

Here he comes.

She knew at once: There was no fooling this one. Haley saw his dirty-blond hair first, then the shoulders of his brown coat. He crested the rise and his eyes seemed already to be pinned on her.

The man saw the gun in her hands, and it was his laugh that stilled her trembling hands.

“Bastard,” she whispered. And shot.

He recoiled, fell, and his grunt of pain was swallowed by the wide-open sky.

Exhilaration thrummed through her. But then he rose to his knees, slowly wavered to his feet, and her elation flipped into panic.

They locked eyes again and the fury twisting his face chilled her. Haley quickly ran through her options.

Could she fight him? He was injured. A hole was torn in his left shoulder, blood already staining his coat black. His left arm was useless, clenched frozen at his side.

Or she could run. Her eyes skittered behind her to the hillside below. There was no place to hide.

If his injury weren’t that grave, he could catch her. Or Campbell eventually would. And then there would be two against her one.

She had to fight. He had his own pistol, but he’d never be able to load it one-handed.

Haley’s eyes went to his sword. A simple broadsword, hanging at his hip. He’d only need his one hand to wield it. If he were right-handed, and she had to assume he was, he could kill her in one easy stroke.

If she was really going to fight him, she had to act now. Get close enough to render his blade useless.

She charged the man, and felt a distant shot of pleasure at seeing shock on his face for a second time.

Just a few strides and she’d reach him. His hand seemed to reach in slow motion to his sword hilt.

She needed to give it her all, or give it up.

Bracing for the agony she knew was coming, Haley leapt. She slammed into him, and the blow to her ribs was like knives slicing through her torso, dizzying her. Wrapping arms and legs about him, she clung like a monkey to the front of him.

Haley clawed tight to his injured shoulder and he grunted his own pain in her ear, his breath coming short and hot against her neck. It was an obscenely intimate pose, but she had to hug herself close enough to render his sword useless.

His right arm wriggled from under her knee and he struck at her, trying to pull her from him.

Clinging even tighter with her legs, Haley let go her right hand and pummeled a flurry of short punches directly on his wound.

She was too close, though, and couldn’t get enough power behind her fist. Hooking her feet behind his back, she let go her other hand and went for his eyes.

Cupping his face in her hands as if ready to plant a kiss, she hooked her thumbs at the corners of his eyes and pushed back.

It was a trick her dad had taught her. Snag the fingertips in, crane your opponent’s neck back, and just as her father had promised, even the largest of men would fall at once, backward to the ground.

He slammed against the hillside, the impact sending rocks clattering down. She immediately scooted up his torso, bearing her full weight down to jab her elbow in his bullet wound.

Her hands clasped together under her chin, fingers interwoven for maximum force. Battering him had left traces of his blood etched in the wrinkles of her hands. It was tacky between her palms, the smell gamy and metallic in her nose and mouth.

His initial shout of pain was only a momentary triumph. She sensed him struggling beneath her, but was focused only on putting her all into grinding down on his injury, hoping he’d pass out from the pain.

She didn’t sense his fist coming, slamming into the side of her face. White sparks exploded in her vision as she reeled to the side.

He kicked out from under her, scrambling to his feet, and, hopping backward a step, plowed his foot into her chin.

Darkness swallowed her for a moment, and she came to sliding slowly down the hill. Sharp rocks and gravel cut into her shoulder, and she whimpered, forcing air into her lungs.

Haley dug her heels into the slope, stopping her descent. Swiveling her head back up the mountain, she placed his location. He hobbled toward her, right hand on his bloodied shoulder, murder in his eyes.

She got to her knees. Instinctively, she ran her tongue over her teeth. The taste of blood in her mouth sickened her, and she spat onto the rocks, wiping pink and red spittle from her chin.

He let go of his shoulder and pulled his sword from its scabbard. The motion was slow to match the smile that spread over his face.

“No,” she said simply. It couldn’t end like this. A sword on a hillside in seventeenth-century Scotland. More than her terror, it was the sense of unreality that froze her in place.

She heard a dull thunk. Metal crunching into stone. The man in front of her hadn’t moved, and it took her a moment to realize where the sound had come from.

She looked down. A dagger hilt quivered, stuck blade-first into the hillside, not one foot from her.

And then she saw him. MacColla, on a rise above, his claymore in his hands. He’d tossed her a weapon.

She saw him and she knew why he was known as Fear Thollaidh nan Tighean , why men feared him and called him Destroyer of Houses. He was a wild thing, in a tartan of dreary colors, his dark brow furrowed into a hard line of rage and revenge.

His sword was pointed at the Campbell clansman, but his eyes were riveted on her. Worry hardened his features and, wanting to reassure him, she pulled the dagger from the ground and gave him a small nod.

He’d heard the shot and flown up the hillside, dashing and scrambling up rocks until he saw them. He approached quietly, swiftly from the side, getting closer.

Haley was covered in blood. Alarm jolted him, pumping his heart and galvanizing his every muscle. He scanned her, looking for signs of injury, and when he found none, a knot deep in his core unraveled. Relief swelled through him, elated him.

His eyes returned to the Campbell clansman. He was bloodied; his trews were splattered with it, his face smeared. MacColla held his breath, scanning the man for some wound, then released it in a long sigh upon seeing the blackened hole at his shoulder.

His blood. Not hers.

He realized the man was wavering in his boots.

Haley. She’d done it. It had been she who’d fired the weapon.

So strong, so brave as she knelt there, her black hair lifting in the breeze. So beautiful. She’d stand and fight more; he was sure of it.

He smiled. She’d not have to.

He jogged straight for the Campbell, and the hollow clacking of stone on stone under his step had the man turning. But too late.

With a single, powerful swing, MacColla relieved him of his head.