Page 30 of Luthias

“I’m from another country. Ah, you wouldn’t know it.” This man definitely seemed too interested in her, but there was something about the way he was talking to her that wasn’t registering as correct in this situation. It actually felt a little menacing. “Excuse me, but I really do have to get on with the sweeping up in here.”

He nodded, touching his forehead, and then disappeared from view.

Emery let out the breath she’d been holding. “Wow. That was almost as scary as Cam kidnapping me.”

The maids came in with rags to help, and a short time later they finished and walked out of the last cottage. The woodcutters had built a fire in the big pit, around which they were sitting and drinking from leather bags. Emery smelled apple cider, which in this time she recalled was usually fermented into alcohol, and noted some flushed cheeks. She didn’t see Callen among them.

“Tom, bring the cart,” Magda called to him before she said in a lower voice to Emery and the other maid, “They’re drinking. We’ll be on our way.”

The woodcutters rose as they walked toward the path, touching their foreheads and calling out their thanks. Most of them gave Emery’s trews surprised looks, but no one said anything to her. As they walked back toward the stronghold Emery stayed beside the scullery, and talked to him about what his father did.

The boy seemed delighted to tell her about his father’s work at the castle tilling the grounds for the gardens in spring, and turning the soil after harvest in the fall. The tillers also helped distribute animal manure to nourish the soil, and cleared areas for new construction and other uses. The whole time they were walking, however, Emery had the strangest feeling that someone was following them. Yet every time she looked back at the camp all she saw were the woodcutters around the fire.

“’Tis something wrong, Mistress?” Tom asked her.

“Nothing at all.” Emery forced a smile. “I meant to ask you, do you know where the laird went this morning?”

The boy nodded toward the cliffs above the forest. “He and the war master rode up into the slopes again. When I went to fetch the cart, I heard the stable master say ’twas something strange found there after a rock slide yesterday. Something in one of the old caves, left behind by a demented intruder.”

That didn’t sound like fun, Emery thought. “Is there anyone else in the forest besides the woodcutters?”

The boy shook his head. “We vassals keep to the stronghold or our village, and strangers must beg permission from the laird before they cross the boundaries. You shouldnae go anywhere on MacRoss land alone, my lady, especially the high trails. The meltwater after the thaw washed away much of the earth on the slopes, and some of the paths there now crumble away.”

“Good advice.” She thought of how Callen had looked at her. “Those guys back at the camp, they seemed okay to you, didn’t they?”

“Lowlanders, they’re hard workers, but a rough sort,” Tom told her. “They dinnae ken how to treat a lady like you.”

Emery still hadn’t gotten used to being called a lady––something that would have been considered very old-fashioned in her time. Suddenly she realized what had been different about the woodcutter. All of the other woodcutters had addressed her and the maids as “lass.”

“Tom, do lowlanders call women from other countries ‘my lady’ or ‘Lady?’” she asked the scullery.

He chuckled. “No, my lady. ’Tis a title we use only for noble women, or a laird’s wife or daughters, or someone of importance, like you.”

“Huh.” Emery glanced down at her dusty linen shirt and wool pants, which while comfortable could hardly be called fine. Nothing else about her indicated she was anything but a maid wearing male clothing. “They didn’t know anything about me, so why did that guy call me that?”

Callum watched from the cover of the trees as Emery Parker went through the back curtain wall gate into the stronghold, and then silently retreated back down the trail. Overhearing her conversation with the lad and realizing he’d made a foolish mistake made him feel impatient; he’d had her within reach at the cottage. A few more sweet words and he might have arranged a tryst with her once the sun went down.

He hadn’t expected the wench to be quite so young, nor as watchful. From the moment he looked into Emery’s big eyes he’d felt taken aback. The light shade of green, so beloved by the Fae, seemed to sparkle like the rarest of pale beryl. Like some noble’s daughter she hadn’t a mark on her thin, soft fair skin. When she’d spoken to him, her voice with its odd accent had been just as alluring. He’d felt his cock swell as he’d given her small yet womanly body his full attention. Dressed like some stable lad, she should have looked ridiculous, and yet seeing the way the trews fit to her pretty legs and lovely little arse had made his mouth go dry. Not even Athdara had brought on his lust as hard and quick as this wench.

He would take Emery back to Dun Deigh, he decided. Now that he’d seen her in the flesh, he would accept nothing less than her small, lithe body naked and shivering in his arms each night.

In his memory Athdara smirked, as if she somehow knew his lust had turned from her. ’Tis how you’ll punish me, my lord? By taking another to your bed?

When Callum reached the camp he took a moment to survey the woodcutters from the shadows. The men had been passing around the perry and cider to celebrate their last free day before they began their work, and would soon be drunk. No one would miss him, and as long as he returned by nightfall he wouldn’t become blind in the dark. He couldn’t enter the stronghold, or risk crossing paths with the MacRoss patrols, so he decided to climb up into the slopes, which offered a bounty of hiding places. From there he could also see the castle’s present defenses and the layout of the land surrounding the curtain walls.

Once Callum left the woods and made his way higher, he saw the shimmer of a river and three small lochs to the west, and a long stone wall separating the trees from a wide swath of pastureland. He stopped halfway to the top to note the many, well-used trails leading from the stronghold into the woods and down to the river, which was when he heard voices from above. Slipping into a narrow space between two outcroppings, he pulled back his hood and listened.

“I’d burn the lot, my lord,” a deeply disgusted voice said, “but ’tis better to set watchers around the place, to seize the evil bastart when he comes again to use the cave.”

Callum went still. If Struan had betrayed him to the MacRoss he would already be in chains, he decided, so the man couldn’t be speaking of him.

“From the dryness of the blood and bones, ’tis been more than a moon since he came to kill here,” an equally grim voice replied. “With the patrols doubled and the sentinels watching for Carack, he’ll no risk a return now.”

“Reckon you ’twas a Carack?” the deeper voice asked.

As the two men passed Callum held his breath, for if either glanced back he would be seen. The pale, dark-haired MacRoss who came first wore on his tartan the clan badge of a war master, but the pin had been carved from light-colored wood, not cast in gold or silver. He also carried a long wooden spear, but no sword or daggers on his belt, making Callum smirk. It had been a long time since he had seen Taveon MacRoss.

The MacRoss war master’s strange weakness always amused him––in some ways it was worse than his own––but he had never let it stop him in battle. He fought as if possessed by demons, and his skill with a spear and wood-handled axe matched the depth of his ferocity.