Her mother’s already wide eyes bulged wider in fresh panic when she saw Cate over his shoulder. Cate heard the wordless plea to leave, to run and not look back, to stay safe, but she could not heed it. Her mother was the only person in the world she loved. She couldn’t let her die.
Cate’s fingers squeezed around the wooden handle, her muscles tensing with readiness. Not for the first time, she wished she were bigger. She’d always been small for her age, and the famine of war and English occupation had made her slender frame scrawny. But she worked hard, and what flesh she had on her bones was muscle.
Calling on every bit of strength she possessed, Cate lifted the hoe high and swung as hard as she could across the soldier’s head. But he must have sensed her approach and turned his head just enough to avoid the strike to the temple she’d intended. Instead, the iron of the hoe connected with the steel of his helm. The force was enough to make him stagger, knocking him off her mother, but unfortunately not off his feet.
He cursed and turned on her with a look of such rage and menace that she could live a thousand lifetimes and never forget it. His features—twisted though they were—fixed in her memory. Dark, flat eyes, a sharp aquiline nose, a thin mustache and neatly trimmed beard. He had the finely wrought face of a nobleman, not the thick, heavyset features of a brute she’d expected. Norman, she would wager. If not by birth then by heritage. But his refined looks could not hide the evil emanating from him.
He was cursing at her and shouting.
Her mother was crying, “No, Caty, no!”
Not hesitating, Cate lifted the hoe again. She was so focused on her task, she didn’t hear the two men approaching from the other side of the room—men she hadn’t even noticed—as she brought it down hard again on his shoulder.
He let out a grunt of pain. “Get the little bitch off me!”
One of the soldiers grabbed her arm. The other wrenched the hoe from her hand. The brute who’d been raping her mother lifted his steel-gauntleted hand and brought it down hard across Cate’s face before she could turn away. But she noticed with satisfaction the blood streaming down his arm. At least she’d done some damage.
Her mother screamed and lunged for Cate, trying to protect her with her body.
That was when the true nightmare began. The handful of seconds that would play over and over in Cate’s mind. It happened so fast, and yet each second ticked by in haunting precision.
Out of the corner of her eye Cate saw the flash of silver as the brute pulled his sword from the scabbard at his waist. She opened her mouth to scream a warning, but it was too late. The blade came down in one vicious stroke across her mother’s body, splitting her side to the waist in an instant. Her mother’s expression went from stunned to horror to pain, where it stayed for what seemed an agonizing length of time. “Love you…father…sorry…” Her voice faded; she staggered and slid to the ground.
Cate wrenched free from her captor with a primal scream and tried to catch her. But the second soldier stopped her before she could reach her mother. Cate fought like a wildcat, but he was simply too strong.
“What should I do with her, Captain?” he said to the monster who’d just cut down the only person in the world she had left.
The brute bent down to wipe his sword on her mother’s sark, leaving a sickly streak of red on the creamy linen. “Kill the mongrel’s bitch. I’d use her to finish, but I need a woman, not a pathetic chit in breeches. Find me one,” he ordered the first man.
The man who was holding her reached for his blade. He had his arm wrapped around her like a vise. Though she knew it was hopeless, she kicked and screamed, trying to free herself.
The captain watched her with a predatory smile on his face, clearly enjoying her terror. “Wait,” he said. “I want the rebel brat to pay for what she dared. Toss her in that old well outside.” His smile deepened, his white teeth flashing across his face like a wolf’s. “Let her suffer before she dies.”
That was hours ago. How many, she didn’t know. It had been morning when Cate had gone fishing, and the skies had been dark for some time. The last embers of the fires the soldiers set had burned themselves out some time ago.
Everything was gone. Her mother. The babe. Her friends. Her home. All that was left was ash and this hideous pit of death.
She’d given up trying to climb out. Though freedom was only a precious six feet away when she stood, what handholds and toeholds there were in the stone walls crumbled with her weight. She’d tried to wedge her back against the wall, but her legs weren’t long enough to exert enough pressure to inch her way up.
Tired, cold, and wet, she knew she had to conserve her strength. Someone would come for her. Someone would find her.
But how long would it take?
Every minute in this pit felt like torture. Her heart raced in her chest. She hated the dark, and icy fear had become a companion to her grief.
“There’s nothing to be scared of, Caty Cat. The darkness won’t hurt you.”
The laughing voice—familiar even all these years gone past—came out of the darkness like a ghost, haunting her with cruel memories.
What made her think ofhimnow? she wondered. The father—thenaturalfather—who’d soothed her nightmares when she was a child, but who’d left her and never looked back when she was just five? He certainly wouldn’t come for her.
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and she angrily brushed it away. He didn’t deserve her tears.
Her eyes burned fiercely. For a while her anger kept her fear at bay. But by the next night it had returned. By the following it had turned to panic. By the next it had turned to desperation. And by the fifth it had turned to the most horrible feeling of all: hopelessness.
Gregor MacGregor gazed around the charred shell of the village, a grim set to his celebrated features. The past year of war had shown him some of the very worst of mankind, but this…
Bile rose to the back of his throat. He had to fight to keep the contents of his stomach down. His companions—especially Eoin MacLean and Ewen Lamont, who’d been here not a month ago—seemed to be having the same struggle. When MacLean disappeared behind one of the burned-out buildings, Gregor figured he’d lost the battle.
