Page 60 of Awoken
Lady Leanna was a survivor.
Duncan MacKinnon drew his courser to a halt, his gaze sweeping right and left. They’d rejoined the rutted highway that led into MacDonald lands, and had now reached a crossroads.
A weather-beaten gibbet marked the intersection of three roads. A gruesome spectacle hung from the noose—the rotting corpse of what had once been a man.
Duncan’s attention rested upon the body for a few moments, before his mouth thinned. An outlaw, most likely. In other circumstances, it would have pleased him to see that the MacDonalds were taking the lawlessness upon this isle as seriously as he was.
However, this morning, there was only one thing he cared about—one thing that consumed his thoughts.
Behind him, the sun rose over the edge of the mountains into the eastern sky, burning away the morning mist. MacKinnon felt sunlight warm his back as he twisted in the saddle and fixed Carr Broderick with a gimlet stare.
The warrior stared back at him, unflinching. Broderick’s face, however, was strained with fatigue and blood-splattered. They’d overtaken the village eventually, but MacKinnon’s bastard brother had somehow disappeared.
Duncan had searched the dead, but Craeg hadn’t been among them.
Worse still, Leanna and Campbell had also escaped.
“We need to widen our search,” Duncan informed his right-hand. “Ye take a group south and patrol the coast … while I go to Duncaith.”
Broderick frowned. “Do ye really think she’d go home?”
“Aye,” Duncan growled. “She’ll think the walls of Duncaith will shield her from me … but they won’t. Nothing will.”
“And if she’s not there?”
“Then I’ll ride to Kilbride.”
Broderick took this news in, before nodding. “And yer brother?”
Duncan’s face screwed up at the mention of the outlaw leader. He then leaned forward and spat upon the road. Craeg had been a fool to try and blackmail him. Did he really think Duncan was ever going to negotiate? Brochan had lasted the night. The outlaw’s arrogance had endured for a while, and Duncan had feared the man would hold his tongue—but before he’d died, he’d gasped the name of the valley where the outlaw camp lay.
“I heard Craeg took an arrow,” Duncan said after a pause. “He won’t last long.”
Broderick didn’t reply to that. They both knew injuring Craeg wasn’t enough. The bastard had survived terrible injuries once—he was capable of doing so again.
MacKinnon wouldn’t rest until he saw his half-brother dead.
His gaze returned to the decaying corpse hanging from the gibbet. Crows had picked out its eyes, and the mouth gaped horrifyingly.
I swear that will be Craeg’s fate, Duncan promised himself.One day that bastardwill swing.
28
Temptress
THEY REACHED THE village of Knock late in the day. The shadows had grown long, and a warm breeze blew in from the south, ruffling the water, as Leanna and Ross crested the last hill.
Halting upon the brow, Leanna held up her hand, to shield her eyes from the low sun, and took in the settlement below.
Knock was larger than she remembered—a sprawl of stacked-stone cottages with sod roofs that hugged the edge of a wide sound. A row of boats bobbed against a wooden pier. Squinting, Leanna could make out a promontory on the southern edge of the village, where the ruins of an old Pictish round-tower stood.
Arable fields spread up the hillside behind Knock. Folk worked tirelessly there with hoes and spades.
“At last.” The words gusted out of Leanna, and with them she felt the day’s exhaustion hit her with its full force. Her legs wobbled under her, her whole body ached, and her head spun from hunger. She glanced then at Ross, and saw her own tiredness and strain reflected in his face.
Despite his exhaustion though, he was smiling.
“What now?” Leanna asked. She was so tired she could barely think. Even though only around two furlongs lay between them and their destination now, it felt like a huge distance. She'd truly reached the limits of her endurance.
