Chapter 18

Soldiers were not gentle people, Tearlach reminded himself, or they would not have become soldiers in the first place. When the redcoats burst through the trees towards him, he had no defense. They snatched his dagger and sword away from him before he could make a move to use either of them, and pushed him onto the ground so that he was absolutely helpless. He fell on his injured shoulder and cried out in agony.

"Now, young man," the officer in command, a lieutenant, came to stand over him as he lay, vulnerable and terrified, on the hard ground. He gave Tearlach a casual kick on his thigh, then knelt down on one knee beside him and stared into his eyes. Even in the dying light Tearlach could see that his eyes were a pale, almost colorless grey. Under his tricorn hat the man's hair was white, even though he looked to be quite young. He was tall and very skinny, and his voice was reedy and high-pitched. Tearlach thought he resembled a snake, and he shuddered.

"Now, you will tell me where your friends are." The officer said firmly. He stared into Tearlach's face with his dagger in his hand, waiting for an answer.

Tearlach spat on the ground and arranged his face into a vicious glare. "Friends?" he snarled. "They are no' my friends! They just left me here so that I could be found by you lot! What kind o' friends dae that? If I knew where they were goin' I would tell ye, but I dinnae know."

"What is your name?" the lieutenant demanded. "If you do not tell me I may have to beat it out of you." His eyes glinted as though he relished the idea, and Tearlach had no doubt that he did. He shuddered in revulsion.

For a moment, Tearlach looked as if he was about to refuse to tell the Englishman anything, but it was only to buy himself time to think of another name. "Duncan McMaster," he replied sullenly.

The Lieutenant looked at him suspiciously, then grinned slyly. "And where do you live, McMaster?" the lieutenant asked.

"Stirling," Tearlach lied. He had plucked the name out of his mind in panic. He had never been as far away as the city of Stirling in his entire life.

"Then you are a long way from home," the Englishman observed, narrowing his pale eyes. Tearlach half expected him to hiss. "But I don't think you are telling me the truth. I am chasing a tall, well built, red-headed man with -" He leant forward and looked closely into his eyes, and Tearlach instinctively cowered backwards. "With very distinctive green eyes. That in itself is unusual, because the more common combination in Scotland is red hair and blue eyes. So I will ask you again. What is your name?"

"I told ye my name," Tearlach said mutinously. His heart was thumping so fast and hard inside his chest that he could hear the blood roaring in his ears.

The lieutenant smiled, but it was a cold, cruel expression, no more than a thin curve of his lips that did not reach his eyes. "No," he growled. "You gave me a name, but you and I both know that it is not the right one. Now I will suggest a different name for you. Tearlach McLachlan, a criminal who is wanted for treason and murder."

The redcoat hauled Tearlach to his feet and pushed him backwards against the trunk of a big spruce tree so forcefully that his teeth rattled and he grunted with pain as his injured shoulder hit the hard wood. He was momentarily astonished that the skinny man had so much strength.

Tearlach decided that there would be nothing more to be gained by denying it. He nodded, but volunteered no more information.

"Do you know the only thing that is stopping me from executing you myself, right here and right now?" the lieutenant growled.

"No. I cannae read minds." This time Tearlach could not stop the sarcasm and contempt from tingeing his words.

"Because I have orders to bring you back for trial, where you will be made an example of before you are hanged." The lieutenant said the words with the same cruel smile as before. "We want you to survive, so you will be treated well on our journey, which means that you will be fed, and your wound will be treated. Understand?"

"I am not stupid!" Tearlach spat, enraged. "Of course I understand!"

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. "I would watch my tongue if I were you," he advised, then he changed the subject abruptly. "So you don't know where your friends are?"

Tearlach pretended to give up. He nodded his head in the opposite direction to that in which they had fled. "They went that way," he said bitterly.

The lieutenant stood up and looked down at him for a moment, wondering whether to believe him or not. At last he said, "I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you are lying to me, then you will be very sorry."

Tearlach nodded. The redcoats were going to search for his friends anyway, and he had pointed them in the wrong direction, but he had made himself sound hostile to them so that he would appear more convincing.

The lieutenant began to order his troops to spread out and search, leaving only himself and two other men in the camp, each armed with a musket. Having done that, he ordered his men to bind Tearlach's wrists tightly with thick, coarse twine. After that, they wound the ends of the twine several times around the trunk and Tearlach's body.

It was agony. Tearlach screwed his eyes shut and grunted in pain as the cords bit into the tender skin of his wrists, but he told himself over and over again that he would not scream. "I thought ye said I would be well treated!" he growled.

"You are being well-treated," the lieutenant replied. "I am not putting a gag around your mouth, although I could change my mind about that later, so you had better keep your mouth shut!"

For the next few minutes Tearlach tried desperately to undo the cords around his wrists, but the more he struggled, the more agonizing the pain became, until eventually he gave up. He could feel that he was bleeding, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Apart from tying him to the tree, the officer, whom Tearlach had found out was called Lieutenant Templeton, was true to his word. Tearlach was fed and unbound long enough to relieve himself and wash before being tied up again. The soldier who had been assigned to the task had a little bit more humanity than his senior officer and left the ropes a little looser. Nevertheless, they were still too tight for him to free himself.

Tearlach resigned himself to his fate. Sleeping standing up against a tree with raw, painful wrists and an aching shoulder wound was uncomfortable in the extreme, but he was determined not to be beaten down by it. There was only one thing that stopped him from giving up, and that was his love for Norah. She had fought tooth and nail for him, and he was determined that when - not if - he found a way out of his dire predicament, he would marry her and have her by his side forever. He would survive this ordeal for Norah.

He thought of her now, and closed his eyes so that he could see her image in his mind's eye. She was smiling at him, a great, glorious smile that lit up her whole face, and it made him ache to see her again.

The band stopped a few hundred yards from the redcoats' camp, then spread out so that they could approach from all sides. They had noticed that none of them was holding a weapon, but had cast them aside in a pile a little way away from where they were sitting.

Davie stayed behind Norah as they prepared to make their move. They counted to three, then Norah dashed into the camp while he followed her a few yards behind, but keeping out of sight.

Out of all of them, he was the best and most experienced hunter, and he knew exactly what a wild boar sounded like when it was on the attack. They were fearsome animals which could kill a human being with little effort, and the sound of their fierce, screaming grunt was enough to put the fear of god into most men, even armed ones. Davie, a seasoned hunter, could imitate the sound of a charging boar to perfection, and he did so now as he crashed through the undergrowth behind Norah.

The three redcoats jumped to their feet immediately as Norah emerged, screaming, into the camp shouting, "Help! A boar is chasing me!"

She glared around in panic for a moment, then dropped at the feet of the Lieutenant, who promptly tripped over her and fell to the ground. The two other men looked into the darkness for a sign of the wild animal, and tried to grab their muskets, but they were too far away. They were about to try to run away when at that moment all hell broke loose.

Alec, Murdo, and Tommy burst into the camp and ran straight at the backs of the three redcoats. Their muskets had no bullets, but they made very good clubs, and in less time than it took to tell the three were all on the forest floor, moaning and grunting in pain. The only one who was not was the lieutenant, who was completely unconscious.

Norah did not spare a second to look at them, but rushed over to Tearlach, who was still unable to move. "What have they done to you?" she breathed, cupping his face in her hands, before looking into his eyes anxiously for a second. "Did they hurt you?"

"I am well, Norah," he assured her. "Just set me free, please." His voice was irritable and impatient, but he had never been so relieved to see anyone in his life.

"Of course." Norah gave him a brief smile before she took a dagger from the belt around her hips and sawed through the ropes that were binding him to the tree.

He stumbled forward, almost knocking Norah down as the tension on the rope suddenly slackened, but although she took a step backwards, she stayed upright and wrapped her arms around him.

"I thought I might not see you again," she whispered. Her anxious gaze traveled all over his face. "I thought they might have killed you!"

It was on the tip of his tongue to put on a show of mock bravado and say, ‘those stupid redcoats could never kill me!' but he realized that this was not the moment for levity. He smiled at her grimly and held up his wrists. "They wanted to," he grunted.

"Oh, god, Tearlach!" she said tenderly. "I am so sorry! Your poor hands!" Carefully, she cut through the bonds on his wrists and kissed the raw and bloody surface of his flesh. "We had better take care of these."