Elena was fully awake and had been for the last hour. She hadn’t spoken much, but her quiet was no longer brittle with fear. She watched the forest with a cautious attentiveness, as though trying to learn the difference between a harmless rustle and something worth paying mind to.
Jacob scanned the woods ahead, keeping his senses stretched to catch anything out of place. The forest felt more alive than it had in the night—birds calling, small animals stirring through the undergrowth. A good sign, though not one he trusted entirely. He had no illusions that they were fully free of danger.
It had been hours since they’d been routed out of their rock-wall hiding spot when the mare’s ears flicked sharply to the left, making Jacob alert. Within minutes, Jacob felt a faint tremor through the ground—a shift, subtle but unmistakable, as though something had displaced the natural quiet of the forest.
“Hold,” he murmured, drawing the mare to a stop.
Elena tensed.
At first the breeze carried nothing, but as he stilled himself and listened, a muffled cadence emerged—hoofbeats, slow and deliberate. Not close enough yet to force his hand, but near enough to matter. It was no full party, only a few riders at most. Trackers, then—men sent ahead to read sign and fix on their trail. Jacob weighed it in a heartbeat. If he could remove them here, the pursuit would slow and falter, and he and Elena would stand a far better chance of slipping away before the hunt was properly raised.
Jacob steered the mare off what was scarcely a path and into a thicket of young firs where the branches hung low enough to conceal them. He dismounted first, then reached up to steady Elena as she slid down. He positioned her behind the shelter of the firs, placing a hand briefly on her arm.
“Stay here. Dinna move unless I tell ye.”
Her nod was small but swift, her eyes wide.
Jacob stepped back into the filtered daylight and unsheathed his sword. As always, the blade felt good in his hand, comfortable and as that measure of a buffer between him and death. He moved quietly toward the direction of the hoofbeats, his feet finding the softest patches of ground.
The first rider appeared between the trees a moment later, fifty yards out, from where Jacob and Elena had just come. He moved purposefully, eyes on the ground, his body leaned a bit to the right just now, scanning the undergrowth. He was alone, but that meant little; a second would likely not be far behind.
Tucked low for a moment, Jacob watched as the rider guided his horse forward, and closed in, heading straight for Elena’s position and not Jacob’s.
Quickly but carefully, Jacob approached the man and horse, moving from tree to tree. He moved with a predator’s patience,keeping to the shadows of the boles and the hush of the underbrush.
He struck before his presence had been discerned, stepping out from the trees with a forceful swing meant to unhorse the rider. The man jerked in surprise, having no time to draw a weapon. Jacob’s blade connected with the scout’s shoulder and drove him half out of the saddle. The horse reared, panicked, and the scout toppled to the ground with a heavy thud.
Jacob moved to finish the fight swiftly, but the man scrambled backward, drawing a knife and flinging it with wild aim. The blade jabbed Jacob’s upper arm before falling uselessly to the ground. He pressed forward, pinning the scout with a blow that knocked the breath from him.
The noise of their fleeting scuffle hurried along a second scout, who charged from the trees at full speed as Jacob delivered a final blow to the first. This man had his sword at the ready, giving Jacob only a heartbeat to react. He wrenched his sword from the fallen scout’s chest, but the blade caught awkwardly against bone, refusing to come free, and Jacob had to abandon it for a moment.
He released the sword and dove aside as the first thrust came, tumbling and rolling back up onto his feet. The rider wheeled sharply, and Jacob brandished his dagger, closing the distance while the scout made his arc to turn. He came at him for the side, coming under the man’s sword, yanking the rider forward while landing a blow with his dagger that unseated the man entirely. The scout hit the ground, breath hissing through his teeth, and Jacob finished the fight with swift efficiency born of necessity, not brutality.
Almost immediately, the forest settled again, the brief violence absorbed into the quiet.
Jacob stood for a moment, breathing hard, his arm stinging where the knife had pierced skin. Jacob refused to look at thedead man's features, tucking his dagger into its sheath before turning to pull his sword free, able now to work it free from bone.
He scanned the trees for further movement, but nothing answered. There was no other man-made sound, no horn call, no distant cry. But he knew better than to assume they were safe.
Jacob marched to where he’d left Elena and his destrier and saw her emerge from the thicket with tentative steps, her face pale but composed. Her lips parted slightly, but the tight line of her jaw betrayed clenched teeth as her gaze settled on the fallen scouts. A swallow moved visibly down her throat, yet her eyes remained steady, neither widening in horror nor turning away from the bloodied scene before her.
Her voice was soft when she reached his side. “Jacob, your arm.”
He glanced down at his arm while sheathing his sword, seeing a plume of bright red blood on his sleeve. “A scratch,” he said as he reached her. “Nae deep.” He drew a deep breath, calming himself, forcing away a cruel, dark-edged vision of himself lying dead in the shadow of the firs, Elena left to the mercy of English raiders and whatever rough fates they might devise for a Highland laird’s daughter. He had seen enough aftermaths to know how rarely luck favored women taken in such skirmishes.
He could see now that she was trembling, though she tried to hide it by digging her fingernails into her palm, her fists clenched until the knuckles blanched pale beneath the strain. He wanted to offer comfort, but he did not presume to touch her—not after what she had just seen him do. Instead, he held her with his gaze alone, steady and intent, letting her see that he remained whole, still thinking, still capable.
“We canna go west yet,” he said finally, glancing back from where they’d come. “This says they’re still on our trail, and if the scouts were this close, the larger party canna be far behind.”
Elena nodded as she held his gaze. “Still east for a while, then?”
“Mayhap south for a spell,” he answered. “We’ll circle around the hills and backtrack when it’s safer.”
He gestured to Elena to return to the destrier, and she obeyed, moving mechanically, as if she had been wound up and could only unwind by following his commands.
He helped her back into the saddle and mounted behind her, adjusting the reins with steady hands despite the sting in his arm. The forest felt watchful again, but not silent this time. life had returned to the woods. Birdsong filtered through the canopy, and the wind that rustled the leaves seemed to whisper reassurance rather than danger.
THEY RODE HARD AT FIRST, the urgency of the confrontation still clinging to both of them. Jacob kept the mare at a brisk pace until the land began to rise and fall in uneven swells of forested ground, the trees thickening, the paths narrowing into little more than suggestion. Elena felt each adjustment beneath her—the shift of weight, the careful way Jacob balanced them when the ground dipped or slanted. Her body ached from the long day and so many hours in the saddle, but of course she did not complain.
