“Spread out,” he ordered. “Check the stones, the glen, the western ridge. If somethin’ happened here, we’ll find a trace.”
They searched. Men dismounted and walked the frost-slick grass, boots sinking into the earth. The air smelled of rain and morning cold. Ravens croaked in the distance but did not approach—the clever birds knew real violence when they smelled it. Today, they seemed disinterested.
Nothing was burned. Nothing torn. The herds grazing far downhill watched them without fear.
Sten crouched near the standing stones, brushing his broad fingers over the soil. “Nay hoofprints. Nay torches dropped. Nay blood.”
Halvard dismounted beside him. The stones rose like ghostly sentinels, lichen-covered and older than any clan. “Someone sent us false word.”
“Aye. But why lure us this far?” Sten asked, his voice low. “What’s worth drawin’ the laird an’ half his fightin’ men away from the castle?”
The weight in Halvard’s ribs twisted into something colder.
Elsie.
He swallowed, his jaw flexing. “Perhaps the other clans seek tae test our borders.”
“Or perhaps someone closer seeks tae test ye,” Sten countered.
Halvard turned a sharp look on him, but Sten lifted both hands as if in surrender.
“I’m only sayin’ it because I ken ye’re thinkin’ it.”
Halvard exhaled slowly, the mist of his breath hanging in the air. He hated how right Sten was, hated the coil of dread in his belly. Hated, most of all, how easily he could picture one man bold—or desperate—enough to try such a ploy.
Harcourt is behind this. He must be.
But suspicion was not truth, and a laird who acted on mere suspicion risked growing tyrannical.
Halvard forced his shoulders back. “We’ll sweep the ridge. Then the marsh. If it’s all quiet, we return. I’ll nae assume the worst on a whisper o’ feelin’.”
“A whisper from ye tends tae be more accurate than most men’s shouts,” Sten said under his breath. But then he followed orders, gathering the men to search for more signs of struggle.
The ridge revealed nothing, the marsh only the distant croak of frogs and the rippling of water disturbed by wind. Every man returned to the meeting point with the same report—no raiders, no damage, no living soul who had seen anything.
It had all been false word, a lure. A trap—one sprung not to kill them there, but to leave something unguarded behind.
Sten guided his horse beside Halvard’s. “What now?”
“We ride,” Halvard said, already turning his mount toward the north. “At once. Nay stops. Nay rest.”
The soldiers exchanged tense looks but fell in line immediately. They trusted their laird’s instincts—even when he tried not to trust his own.
As they began their ascent toward the road home, Halvard cast one final glance at the empty, peaceful land around him. Mist rolled low along the ground, curling around the stones and drifting up from the valley like spirits rising from the earth.
Had he been too hasty? Should he have simply sent Sten in his stead? But after that fire in the village, he could not be too careful, not when it involved his land and his people. Besides, there was no place in his lands safer than the keep. His men were well-trained and Elsie was under their protection. No one could storm inside and harm her when all those eyes were watching.
And when he returned home, he would make sure to find out just who it was who had sent him on that pointless mission.
Elsie drifted through the corridors of the keep as though the stones themselves bore the weight of her worry. The morning light, thin and cold as winter milk, slid through the narrow windows, catching dust motes that swirled like thoughts refusing to rest.
Halvard had ridden out the night before and she hated to admit that she already missed him.
Now, with nothing but the hush of the castle around her, the worry grew teeth and gnawed at her, never once letting her rest.
She crossed the inner courtyard, her skirts brushing over cold flagstones, and moved toward the gardens. Perhaps the fresh air would ease her chest; perhaps the charmed hush of the hedges and winding paths would quiet her thoughts before they swallowed her.
The garden gate creaked softly as she opened it. Frost clung to the tips of the heather, and the bare branches of the apple trees arched overhead like interlaced fingers. The air smelled of damp earth and the last remnants of autumn.
