The Highlander. Heather GrothausЧитать онлайн книгу.
She was still two yards from the precipice when she fell through the very earth itself, and the darkness swallowed her scream.
Chapter One
December 1077
Conall MacKerrick trudged through the shin-deep snow of the wood, his eyes scanning the white powder for animal tracks, his heart heavy and weary in his chest.
Hopeless.
He glanced only briefly at the pronged indentations of a small deer track—the hoof mark was soft at the edges and half filled with fresh snow—that animal had passed hours ago. Pursuit would be pointless.
Conall slogged onward.
A howling wind whipped around the trees and seared his skin through his thin léine, prompting Conall to shrug his length of plaid tighter across his chest and tuck it more firmly beneath his belt and the straps of his pack. He hitched his bow and quiver higher onto his shoulder and then jerked at the tether pulling the small sheep behind him. The animal bleated and skittered to catch up.
Conall felt numb, and not entirely from the bitter cold blanketing his highland home. Here he was, the MacKerrick, chief of his clan, abandoning his town and the people he was to protect. And ’twas only for their own good.
Conall was glad his father was not alive to witness his son’s failure.
Conall’s wife, his newborn bairn, were dead. Was it only one turn of the moon since they had passed? Mother and daughter, both too small and weak to harbor life in this mean tract of Scotland.
It had been his brother, Duncan, who had grimly announced the birth, ducking out of Conall’s own house, his thin face gray and pained.
“’Twas a wee gel,” he’d whispered after a blink of mournful eyes. “Conall, they…Nonna didna—”
But Conall had not paused to hear the rest of his twin’s declaration. He had charged toward his low-roofed sod house and shoved open the door, going instinctively to the box bed at the far end. He chose to ignore the fecund smell of blood that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to bristle ominously. Perhaps it had not been too early; he’d heard no babe cry, but perhaps God would have mercy on him, just this once.
“Nonna,” he’d called gently. “Nonna.”
A plaid-wrapped bundle was snuggled against his wife’s side and even as Conall heard Duncan enter the house behind him, as he heard the wails of the townswomen gathered beyond his door—even as Conall reached out a trembling hand to lay it upon Nonna’s still bosom, he’d known.
They were both dead.
“I’m sorry, Conall,” Duncan had whispered.
God had no mercy for Conall MacKerrick.
The wind gusted again and the sheep bleated pitifully behind him, bringing Conall back to the present. He sniffed and swiped at his nose.
He’d left before dawn’s first weak rays crawled over the MacKerrick town this morn, despite Duncan’s and his mother’s protests. Nonna was gone. His child was gone. Conall would not burden an already sick and hungry people with their chief’s care throughout the remainder of the harshest winter he’d ever witnessed. If naught else, the MacKerrick was a skilled hunter. He would winter alone and seek out game in the deepest part of the wood. Should he prevail, he would return to the town.
Should he fail, he would starve.
In the meanwhile, he would use his self-enforced exile to mourn in private, and to decide once and for all what to do about the curse that plagued his town, the decades-old damnation set upon his clan name by a woman long ago passed from these lands. A curse that had grown more malevolent with each passing season. Their crops failed. They suffered drought, or flooding rains. Illness was a constant caller on the town.
And now Nonna and the bairn were gone.
Conall knew he would likely be forced to at last beg quarter from the clan to the south, as his father had refused to do, or watch his entire town die, person by person.
He knew each black word by heart, passed down to Conall with bitterness by his father, Dáire MacKerrick: Famine and illness are my gifts to you, you MacKerrick beasts, who have ripped my very heart from my bosom and fed it to the crows. So let those winged harbingers be aught that fills your bellies and let it be only their song that fills your ears until my return. For I will return. Only heartache and toil shall you reap until a Buchanan bairn is born to rule the MacKerrick clan. And when you are on bended knee, I will have my revenge.
By spring’s first thaw, should Conall still live, he would beg forgiveness from Angus Buchanan, for a wrong committed against the clan chief’s sister while Conall and Duncan still nursed in their mother’s arms. Although his people cried out against it as bowing to the Buchanan’s witchery, Conall knew ’twas likely their only chance for survival.
He traversed a narrow bog, tugging the sheep after him, and scanned the upper bank for the jumble of rocks that marked the path leading to Ronan’s old hut. He had not traveled this far to the edge of MacKerrick lands in months—mayhap more than a year—and he hoped that the long-abandoned hut in the vale was still habitable.
’Twas peace and solitude Conall so desperately needed, and he was certain to find it in his uncle’s hunting cottage, just beyond this bank…
He saw the weak column of filmy smoke from the roof before he smelled the smoldering peat.
And meat. He smelled meat cooking. Conall’s stomach growled.
With two more strides, the ancient sod house came into view, snuggled into the earth like a toadstool, its short wooden door standing slightly ajar.
Conall’s face darkened. He slid his bow and quiver and his pack from his shoulders and dropped the sheep’s tether, and reached for his sword.
Evelyn plucked the blackened strip of meat from the spit with forefinger and thumb, blew on it, shook it, then tossed it to Alinor, who snatched it from the air with an expert chomp. Two swift bites and the piece was gone. Alinor swiped a long, pink tongue over her pointed canines with obvious relish.
“Oh, I agree,” Evelyn said, retrieving another strip of meat. “Quite good.” She bit into the tough, half-burnt chunk, trying to rip off a piece small enough to chew. “A tad dry, though,” she amended around the mouthful of meat. She tossed the remaining hunk to the wolf lying nearby.
Alinor made quick work of the morsel and then set to licking the fur in front of the makeshift bandage wound around her middle.
“Itching, is it?” Evelyn asked, and then sucked her fingers clean before rising from the fire and limping the width of the hut to the ragged lengths of cloth dangling from the ceiling. She gripped several in her hands, testing their dryness, before choosing two and tugging them free.
She picked up the shallow bowl filled with melted snow and floating chunks of moss and returned to the wolf’s side, sinking to her bottom with a hiss. Her ankle, knee, and hip were improving each day, the swelling nearly gone, but each joint in her right leg was still painted with deep black and purple and green bruises.
Alinor flopped completely onto her side with a great sigh and stretched out her legs to either side of Evelyn. The wolf closed her eyes.
“You like this, do you?” Evelyn grinned, reaching for the knot and picking it loose. She slipped the bandage from beneath the animal and set it aside to be washed later, then reached for the gummy clump of moss pressed to Alinor’s ribs. She flung the soiled mass onto the fire.
The wound beneath had improved significantly. Although crusty, the skin around the long, ragged edges was no longer blazing red and emitted no foul odor. Evelyn could even see tiny black stubble in Alinor’s startlingly white skin where the fur was beginning to grow back.
Satisfied, Evelyn wadded up one of the clean strips of cloth and dunked it in the bowl, wringing the water from it before dabbing