Breath of Yesterday (The Curse Series) (9 page)

“
Bas maillaichte!
Ross! You should have warned us. Those flea-ridden bandits almost killed us in our sleep!” one of the dark-haired hunks hollered while simultaneously wiping his blade on the clothes of a dead man. The one he’d called Ross—my handler—shrugged and walked over to me.

“I saw that you noticed them the same moment I did. They weren’t particularly quiet about it, and, besides, the sun reflected off their weapons. Probably peasants who thought it’d be easy enough to mug some harmless, unarmed travelers. Had they succeeded in stabbing you in your sleep, Dougal, then that’s exactly what you would have deserved.”

He stepped up to me and held out his hand.

“Are you well?”

I only noticed that I was shaking all over when I tried to get up and my legs refused to work.

Was I well?
Hell, no! And things weren’t looking too well, either! Two dead bodies lay just a few yards away—killed before my eyes by dirty savages using broadswords! And as if that weren’t enough, those same murderers had kidnapped me. What were they going to do to me? I was very close to passing out. Ross’s friendly face—at least I knew his name now—was splattered with blood, and I found it hard to concentrate on anything but those shiny red specks of deadly violence.

“Woman, do you hear me? Get up, we have to leave.” He pulled me up and steadied me when I tripped.

“No, sir! Leave me be!” I snapped at him while trying to break free.

I couldn’t allow these savages to take me any farther away from the memorial stone of the five sisters. I didn’t want to spend another second in their presence. They were cold-blooded killers!

“Please, sir, let me go! What do you want from me?”

Meanwhile, the other two came closer.

“Sir?”
one of them mimicked my pleading tone before bursting out laughing.

The other one, the one Ross had addressed as Dougal, smirked and sank to his knees in a grand theatrical gesture.

“Please,
sir…
” He chuckled, pulling me up by my hair. “This lass seems to think she is at court with the Sassenach king. Just look at her hair! It’s like she brushes it every day just to make it shine,” he called out, and held up a strand of my brown hair. Even Ross, who had been nothing but friendly since I woke up, gave an embarrassed grin.

I had no idea what was going on. Why were these creeps laughing at me? Had I said something wrong?

“Stop it!” Ross said, trying to calm his dark-haired companions. But those two enjoyed pushing me around.

“Yes, maybe we’re wrong, and this is in fact the queen of England!” Dougal suggested.

Doubling over with laughter and slapping his muscular thighs, the other brother—they were twins, for sure—joined in the game. “You might be right, sir! Just look at her soft skin, and her teeth! Very royal.”

Ross pulled me away from them. He pushed me toward his horse, and even though I hadn’t wanted to come with him a moment ago, he now seemed like my only option and savior.

“Leave her alone, Duncan! She was just trying to be friendly,” he defended me.

“If she wants to be friendly, all she has to do is spread her—”

“We need to get out of here already!” Ross cut off the much bigger man and lifted me onto the back of his horse. “Or do you want to wait and see if the bandits decide to return with a few more of their peasant friends?”

After some hesitation, the twins each shrugged and turned to their own horses. They didn’t even waste another thought on the peasants they had just killed.

“
Ifrinn!
I should never have opened that shed,” Ross said as he mounted his horse and sat down in the saddle behind me.

For the next few miles, the men kept a watchful eye. We rode through a deep, dense forest, and I expected an attacker behind every little branch.

Never in my life had I been so afraid. I didn’t know how to behave, or what dangers lay ahead of me now that I’d been kidnapped and taken into the unknown. I felt sick to my stomach and was breaking out in a cold, shaking sweat. It was hard to say which was the greater threat: traveling with these warriors or trying to make my way back to the memorial
stone of the five sisters on my own. At least Ross didn’t seem to pose any danger to me—not after he’d punched me that first time, anyway. So I was glad for the support his chest gave me.

After riding for a good long while, the shock from the attack subsided, and I finally stopped trembling and dared to rest my head against my Scottish handler.

“Better?” he asked with concern in his voice.

I simply nodded. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing again.

Ross had noticed that I kept stealing worried glances at the two men in front of us.

“Try to get used to it. They’re always like that.”

“What did I do to them?”

“Nothing. You don’t need to do anything to set them off. Maybe it’s because you are different from the other women we usually meet. And then the way you were pretending to be all courtly and whatnot…maybe they thought you were trying to make fun of them.”

I couldn’t believe it. I had been
too polite
? My parents would be so proud!

“I just wanted—”

“I know. Just stop with all the pretense and tell me your name. Otherwise, I might start to believe you are the queen of England.”

I tried to figure out my safest bet. Should I tell him my real name, or should I make one up?

“Nothing? Should I call you ‘Cameron lass,’ then?”

I flinched. Cameron? They thought I was a Cameron? I shook my head. I remember Payton and his brothers being amazed at my close resemblance to my ancestors, but I always thought they were exaggerating. Was it good or bad to be taken for a Cameron? Was this the reason they had kidnapped me? Were these men mistaking me for someone else?

Because I didn’t give an answer, Ross stiffened behind me.

“All right, fine! You can go to hell for all I care. You’re nothing but trouble anyway.”

He spurred on his horse to catch up to the others. I imagined that the twin warriors probably wouldn’t appreciate our conversation. So I came to a decision.

“My name is Samantha. Samantha Cameron.”

My heart beat wildly, and I was anxious to see if he would realize that I’d lied. The strange thing was, it didn’t feel like a lie at all. And so I repeated it with more confidence—and also in order to convince myself, a little louder this time.

“I am Samantha Cameron, and who are you, sir—uh, I mean, what’s your name?” I remembered that I had to stop with the
pretense,
which I had taken to be the polite way of talking to people in this era. Ross was right. I mean, we were riding through the Scottish Highlands all dusty and sweaty, and the men’s hands were covered in blood, and they were unwashed and uncombed. Why should they worry about politeness? At least Ross didn’t seem to mind that I no longer addressed him as “sir.”

“Ross Galbraith.” He pointed ahead of us. “And those two gentlemen in front of us are my brothers, Duncan and Dougal. Twins, they are.”

I was glad that couldn’t see my surprise. His
brothers
? I had never seen siblings that showed so little resemblance. I wanted to seize the moment to learn more, so I asked, “Why were you attacked?”

He shook with laughter behind me, then replied in an amused tone, “Why do you attack someone? Because we were there, and they were there. Couldn’t you tell from their shabby clothes that they were peasants? They may as well have attacked us with pitchforks. They weren’t even wearing their clan colors. Men like that toil for their laird all their lives. They pay their tenth and at the end of the month don’t have enough left to feed their starving children. Winter is coming, and those poor sods have nothing to bite on. Desperation drove them to attack us.”

“But if you knew that, then why would you kill them? Why didn’t you just scare them off?”

I was shocked at how indifferent this guy seemed to the fates of those poor peasant men and their families. How were the women supposed to feed their children without the help of their husbands and sons?

“No, we couldn’t have. If we had shown them mercy, they would have run away, hidden in the woods, and ambushed us somewhere else along the way. And next time they might be more successful. I’m surprised you don’t know this. In fact, y
o
u seem to know very little about the ways of men. Didn’t your parents warn you? Or are all the women where you come from like that?”

I didn’t want to think about my parents now—it was just too painful. Instead, I focused on the horse’s steady movements. My back hurt from riding so long, and my butt was getting sore. “So, where are we going?” I asked.

“You don’t need to know that,” he said. He whistled for his dogs and quickly caught up to his brothers. That was his way of letting me know that our talk was over. And for the rest of our long journey, he made it a point to ignore me.

I couldn’t say how many hours had passed, but my whole body ached and I was doubling over with hunger pangs. It was almost dusk when we reached a clearing by the edge of the forest. Duncan stood up in his stirrups and scanned the vast plains that lay before us.

The scene was amazingly beautiful. No picture postcard could ever convey a better sense of the Highlands than this three-dimensional panorama. And despite my precarious situation, Scotland’s wilderness and rugged beauty took my breath away. I drew strength and encouragement from the breathtaking view as Duncan motioned for his brothers to dismount. The dogs scattered, trotting through the grass with their noses close to the ground and marking the saplings by the edge of the woods.

My butt was completely numb by the time Ross lifted me off his horse.

“All right? Are you able to stand?” he asked, raising his eyebrows skeptically.

Dougal slapped him hard on the shoulder and doubled over with laughter.

“Ross, you’re an idiot. Why are you courting her? If you want her, then just take her already! But for God’s sake, stop pretending you care about her well-being.”

Ross blushed to the roots of his hair and pushed out his chin as he glared at his much bigger brother.

“Shut up and leave the girl alone!” he defended me.

Dougal snorted and poked me in the shoulder. I inched closer to Ross, hoping for protection. The dark-haired giant raised his hands defensively and gave me a contemptuous look. Ross glowered.

“Calm down, little boy, I’m not getting involved. But if you are so desperate that you would actually do
her,
then maybe you should try to use your own hands. Did you not get a good look at her? Nothing about her body could please a real man.”

I knew what Dougal was trying to do. He wanted to humiliate me—and humiliate Ross—to show us who was in charge. And even though I was glad he didn’t find me the least bit attractive, I was hurt by his crude remarks.

“Dougal, I’m warning you.” Ross took a step forward and raised a fist.

Not a moment later, he went down with a moan, blood welling from his lip. His brother looked over him menacingly.

“I would think twice about your actions, lad. One more try and I will throw your bloodless carcass to the dogs. Now, go and get some firewood!”

With that, he turned on his heel and kicked one of the dogs that was growling to defend its master. This made the dog submit and crawl up to Ross with its tail between its legs.

I bent down and petted the dog’s head in empathy. Ross, on the other hand, refused my hand and got up without help. Angrily, he ran his sleeve over his lip and spat in the grass. Then he reached into his
sporran
—that fur pouch attached to the front of his belt—and fed a brown lump to his dog.

“What’s that?” I asked, so dizzyingly hungry that I was jealous of the dog.

“Dried pig’s ear. Come on, now. We’ll need what little daylight is left to gather firewood.” And he turned around and disappeared into the fir trees.

I trotted after him, and we quickly found what we needed. A storm must have uprooted a tree some time ago. It was so dry and sapless that Ross easily broke off a few branches for us to drag back to the clearing. With my bound hands and feet, I wasn’t much help, but there was no negotiating with him when I asked him to untie me.

We got a good campfire going, and Dougal and Duncan returned with several freshly killed rabbits. After skinning and gutting them, they hung them over the fire on sticks. My mouth watered as I took in the delicious smell of cooking meat. But it remained to be seen whether I would get any of it. Right after his return, Duncan had grabbed me by the arm and tied me up to a tree a few yards away. I noticed a long cut beside the sleeve of his shirt, and that it was covered in dried blood. Had he been hurt during the attack? Despite my experiences in the past two days, the level of brutality people routinely used with one another in this time period still seemed surreal.

So now, tied to a tree, I had to sit and watch the men gorge themselves on freshly grilled rabbit. I greedily watched a drop of meat juice run along Duncan’s finger and fall to the ground. The steaming-hot rabbit leg looked juicy, and I wished my teeth were tearing the tender meat off the bone. I swallowed hard. Duncan threw his clean-picked leg bone to the dogs, and they of course voraciously pounced on it.

I reached a point where I would have fought even dogs for the leftovers. I was just about to ask for some food when something stirred. The dogs pricked their ears and, yapping, tore into the forest that formed a protective barrier behind our backs. The men got up, too, reaching for their weapons. But compared to this morning’s attack, they seemed relaxed.

I panicked at seeing the horde of horsemen emerging from the woods. Their horses were just as magnificent as Duncan and Dougal’s, and some of the men wore the colors I’d seen on Ross and his brothers. The men greeted one another with booming laughter and shoulder slaps.

I tried to make myself invisible. Maybe this commotion would offer an opportunity for me to get at my
sgian dhu
and cut through my ties. Then I could escape and return to Payton. I had memorized every rock formation, valley, and stream on our path today—just so I could find my way back.