Air filled his lungs again. She'd only been sent away. But then he remembered. "Not ... safe," he managed. With the battle coming, Bruce would have war bands all around them, closing in.
The grim line of Alan's mouth suggested he didn't disagree. But like Arthur, he'd been powerless to stop it.
"My brothers?" Arthur asked. Dugald and Gillespie might be his enemies on the battlefield, but he didn't want them to suffer for his choices.
"My father had no cause to believe them involved. They were questioned briefly, and appeared just as surprised as the rest of us." He paused, his gaze confused. "Why did you save my life? You didn't have to."
Arthur shook his hair away from his face to meet his gaze. "Aye, I did."
Alan nodded with understanding. "You really love her."
He didn't say anything. What could he say? It didn't matter anymore.
The door opened and Lorn's henchman came back in the small room, a rope in his hand.
Arthur's heartbeat spiked, an instinctive response to the danger.
"It's time to go," he said. "The men are ready to march."
Arthur steeled himself, knowing his time was at an end. He'd won. They would kill him now. One small victory in a bitter sea of failure.
"He's to be hanged, then?" Alan said.
The henchman smiled, the first hint of emotion Arthur had seen on his ugly, grizzled face. "Not yet. The rope is for the pit."
The relief that crashed over Arthur told him he wasn't quite as ready to die as he'd thought. After what he'd just been through, the dank hole of a pit prison would feel like heaven.
"Maybe the rats will loosen his tongue," the henchman laughed.
Or a living hell.
The blast of terror that shot through him gave him a primitive burst of strength. He thrashed against the steel of his bindings like a madman. His bruised, shredded skin crawled with the sensations of the rats covering him.
He had to get away.
But he couldn't. Chained and wounded, he was no match for the guardsmen who dragged him from the guard house to the adjoining room. In the end they didn't bother with the rope, but just tossed him in.
Dark.
Squeaking.
Falling. Reaching.
A hard, bone-shattering slam.
And then--blissfully--only blackness.
Twenty-four
"Ewen, I'm afraid I'm in dire need of a moment of privacy," Anna said, feigning a chagrined blush.
"Already?" He looked at her as if she were five years old. They were deep in the forest, near an old burial cairn, not two miles from the castle. "Why didn't you go before we left?"
She shot him a glare that told him she didn't appreciate him talking to her as if he were their mother. "Because I didn't have to go then."
He scowled. "We'll stop when we reach Oban; it's only another mile or so."
Anna shook her head. "I can't wait that long. Please ..." She begged in a high voice, wiggling around in the saddle a little to emphasize the urgency.
