The Ranger (Highland Guard #3)(108)

Arthur slumped in the chair, trying to force gulps of air through his watery lungs. He had at least one broken rib, perhaps more.

“They’ll kill you if you don’t tell them,” Alan said.

Arthur took a moment to respond, trying to pull together enough strength to speak. “They’ll kill me anyway,” he croaked.

Alan didn’t look away, although from the way he winced, Arthur feared his face looked as bad as it felt. “Aye, but it will be far less painful.”

And quicker.

But Arthur had failed in so many ways already; he was determined to salvage what he could of this cursed mission. If he could go to his death without revealing the names of his brethren, he would die with some semblance of honor.

Still, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best when his failures were so catastrophic. He’d lost everything. Anna. The chance to destroy Lorn and get justice for his father. And the chance to alert the king of the threat. Bruce and his men would be walking right into an ambush, and he wouldn’t be able to warn them.

He’d fail them, just as he had his father.

Being beaten to a bloody pulp, flayed to within an inch of his life, and having his fingers crushed one by one had kept his mind from wandering beyond the four stone walls of his prison. But in the small breaks, he feared the other consequences of his capture.

Lorn loved his daughter. He wouldn’t hurt her. But he had to ask. “Anna?”

Alan gave him a solemn look. “Gone.”

His stomach dropped.

Seeing his horrified expression, Alan hastily added, “She’s safe. My father thought it better that she be removed from the castle until—”

He stopped. Until I’m dead, Arthur finished for him.

Air filled his lungs again. She’d only been sent away. But then he remembered. “Not ... safe,” he managed. With the battle coming, Bruce would have war bands all around them, closing in.

The grim line of Alan’s mouth suggested he didn’t disagree. But like Arthur, he’d been powerless to stop it.

“My brothers?” Arthur asked. Dugald and Gillespie might be his enemies on the battlefield, but he didn’t want them to suffer for his choices.

“My father had no cause to believe them involved. They were questioned briefly, and appeared just as surprised as the rest of us.” He paused, his gaze confused. “Why did you save my life? You didn’t have to.”

Arthur shook his hair away from his face to meet his gaze. “Aye, I did.”

Alan nodded with understanding. “You really love her.”

He didn’t say anything. What could he say? It didn’t matter anymore.

The door opened and Lorn’s henchman came back in the small room, a rope in his hand.

Arthur’s heartbeat spiked, an instinctive response to the danger.

“It’s time to go,” he said. “The men are ready to march.”

Arthur steeled himself, knowing his time was at an end. He’d won. They would kill him now. One small victory in a bitter sea of failure.

“He’s to be hanged, then?” Alan said.

The henchman smiled, the first hint of emotion Arthur had seen on his ugly, grizzled face. “Not yet. The rope is for the pit.”

The relief that crashed over Arthur told him he wasn’t quite as ready to die as he’d thought. After what he’d just been through, the dank hole of a pit prison would feel like heaven.

“Maybe the rats will loosen his tongue,” the henchman laughed.

Or a living hell.

The blast of terror that shot through him gave him a primitive burst of strength. He thrashed against the steel of his bindings like a madman. His bruised, shredded skin crawled with the sensations of the rats covering him.

He had to get away.

But he couldn’t. Chained and wounded, he was no match for the guardsmen who dragged him from the guard house to the adjoining room. In the end they didn’t bother with the rope, but just tossed him in.

Dark.

Squeaking.

Falling. Reaching.

A hard, bone-shattering slam.

And then—blissfully—only blackness.

Twenty-four

“Ewen, I’m afraid I’m in dire need of a moment of privacy,” Anna said, feigning a chagrined blush.

“Already?” He looked at her as if she were five years old. They were deep in the forest, near an old burial cairn, not two miles from the castle. “Why didn’t you go before we left?”

She shot him a glare that told him she didn’t appreciate him talking to her as if he were their mother. “Because I didn’t have to go then.”

He scowled. “We’ll stop when we reach Oban; it’s only another mile or so.”

Anna shook her head. “I can’t wait that long. Please ...” She begged in a high voice, wiggling around in the saddle a little to emphasize the urgency.

Her brother muttered an oath, then turned to put a halt to the score of guardsmen who’d accompanied them on the roughly thirty-mile journey to Innis Chonnel—a journey that would be made much more swiftly by boat, but her father, before he’d sailed from the castle with his fleet, had decided it would be too dangerous.

“Hurry up, then,” Ewen said impatiently. “One of my men will accompany—”

“That won’t be necessary,” she interrupted hastily. It would ruin everything. “I ...” She didn’t have to fake the blush this time. “I fear I ate something this morning that didn’t agree with me. It may be a while.”