Bryce’s body beckoned to hers, warm and hard, and he nestled his head in her neck, kissing her at its nape and sending shivers up her spine. Maren gasped up at the sky winking through the tops of the trees and turned her head to let his lips roam, and then froze.
Her breath caught, and for a moment, she did not quite believe what she was seeing.
‘Stop. Bryce, get off me.’
‘What is wrong?’ He raised his head from her neck.
Maren was suddenly cold to her core. ‘There, in the ferns. Do you see it?’
Bryce turned his head and followed her gaze to the monstrosity sticky out of the ferns, nails blackened, stiff claws for fingers, shrivelled flesh a sickly grey-white.
A human hand.
Chapter Fourteen
Bryce held his musket in the air and fired. The crack echoed about the stillness of the woods. Maren clutched her arms around her chest. She was shaking and almost as grey as the corpse at his feet.
‘The others will come soon enough. No need to fear. Are you alright, lass?’ he said.
Maren nodded, wide-eyed and pale-lipped. Indeed, she looked most unwell. Strange, how she had been cool-headed at the deaths of the redcoats on the road from Balloch, yet she seemed terrified of the dead man in the ferns. Bryce looked down at the corpse. How on earth had the day gone from burning lust to this gruesome sight? No wonder Maren was frightened. Most females would have fainted away at the sight.
The man’s red hair was fiery against his chalky skin, which had shrunk onto the bone. His milky eyes were open, mouth a wide red gape as if frozen in a scream upon meeting death. It had certainly been a bloody end, for the man’s neckerchief and the lower half of his face were a black mess of dried blood. All around him, there was blood spattered over the ferns.
Callum was the first to come thundering up, followed almost immediately by Dunbar and Hew.
‘We heard the shot. Did you bring the fox to ground?’ shouted Callum.
‘No. I found this instead.’ Bryce poked at the corpse, still partially hidden in the undergrowth.
‘Good God. Who is it?’ cried Callum
‘I don’t know, but it has been here some time. It has fallen prey to scavengers.’
Other riders began to arrive and swarm around to see what the fuss was about. His father was one of them. Jasper pushed through the others and stared down at the dead man.
‘How did this come about?’
Callum knelt down. ‘Look,’ he said, moving the ferns aside, and everyone gasped. ‘I would say the fellow met with foul play seeing as one of his hands has gone.’
‘There…there was a wolf. It came at my horse,’ said Maren in a wavering voice. ‘Its jaws were bloody. Perhaps it chewed it off.’
Callum frowned. ‘No, lass. This is a clean cut. No ragged flesh. I would say a sword or an axe did this. As to the rest of him, it looks like the wolf started on the leg. See.’
Everyone grimaced in horror and looked at the man’s leg, which was a ruin of ragged flesh, the bone protruding, the foot almost gone. Then the comments came thick and fast.
‘The mark on his forehead is an old scar, I think, well-healed.’
‘It looks like a star or even a brand of some kind.’
‘Hard to tell.’
‘How did he meet his end do you think?’ said Bryce kneeling down and meeting Callum’s solemn grey gaze.
Callum frowned, fiddled with the man’s neckerchief, and peered into his mouth. ‘Same as the others,’ he replied, and Bryce knew precisely what he meant without any words being said.
‘What do you mean, the others?’ said Dunbar.
Callum glowered up at Bryce’s uncle. ‘I mean that he bled a great deal, but his throat is not slit. Look into his mouth. His tongue is gone.’
