Duncan touched the ground with his fingers. The soil was still loose.
Recent, he thought to himself.
He followed the line of the prints for several yards, finding where they curved away from the wall rather than toward the gate. Whoever had taken her, would not dare to take the main road.
He straightened sharply and turned to the men behind him.
“This way,” he ordered. “And keep yer eyes open. They were rushed, which means they feared pursuit. That is our advantage.”
The trail led away from the castle grounds and toward the edge of the woods, not in a straight course, but in a broken one, cutting through rougher country and skirting the more obvious paths. Duncan followed the line of broken branches.
The thought of Elaina in their grip did not leave him for a single instant. It moved with him. It sharpened him and kept every sense painfully alive.
At the tree line he knelt again, studying where the earth gave way to roots and fallen leaves. Here the signs grew more difficult, yet not beyond him. A branch had recently broken. Moss was crushed under the careless edge of a heel. There was a faint drag of movement where none should have been. He saw enough to know they had entered the woods at speed, and not without difficulty.
“Iain,” he called without looking up.
His friend came at once. “Aye?”
“Take two men and hold this line. Let nay sign be lost.” Duncan rose, his gaze moving over the dark mass of trees ahead. “The rest with me.”
They went on beneath the cover of the forest, where moonlight filtered only in fragments and the air grew colder with every step. The deeper they moved, the more the ground changed beneath them. Yet, the trail did not disappear entirely. It reappeared in hurried fragments, enough to guide a man who knew how to read what others overlooked.
Before long, the land began to slope toward the river. Duncan recognized the low, ceaseless sound of water moving over stone, distant but distinct in the night silence. The trail bent that way,then turned again into thicker woodland, where the trees stood close and the undergrowth grew wild.
It was there that he found the first true proof, in a place where branches had been cut back too cleanly, where ash had been half-buried beneath damp leaves. He found the remains of a fire, not old enough to have been washed by dew. Also, a discarded strip of leather, and farther in, where the ground opened just enough to admit a clearing, there were the unmistakable signs of a temporary camp.
Duncan halted.
No one spoke. Even the men nearest him seemed to understand, from the change in his bearing alone, that they had come upon what they sought.
He moved slowly through the edge of the clearing, reading it as he would a battlefield. Tents had stood there recently, perhaps still stood not far beyond. Horses had been tethered nearby. Men had come and gone in numbers, but not in such quantity as to form a proper encampment. It was concealed, provisional, and chosen with care, close enough to strike at the castle, hidden enough to evade casual discovery.
MacKenzie was using the woods and riverbank as cover. He had kept himself out of sight while remaining near enough to move quickly when opportunity offered. Duncan felt, with a force so fierce it was almost physical, how narrow the distance now was between pursuit and reckoning.
He looked once toward the deeper stretch of forest beyond the clearing and knew, without needing another sign, that Elaina was somewhere ahead, in danger and terrified.
He turned back at once.
“Hold this place,” he ordered. “Nay noise, nay fire and nay movement beyond what is necessary. If they stir, I want word before a leaf falls.”
The men nodded. Duncan did not linger. All he had to do now was follow the signs they left for him, without even knowing. By the time he reached the point where the rest of his force waited, his course was decided in full.
MacKenzie would be found. There would be no delay now.
He gathered his men in the shelter of the wood. They stood ready, armed and silent, waiting upon his word with that grim steadiness which belonged to men who knew both their laird and the justice of the cause before them.
“MacKenzie is out there,” Duncan addressed them in a voice that carried through the night with unmistakable authority. “Hidden by the river, in the deeper wood. He took her under cover of this evening’s attack, and he has nae yet gone far enough tae place himself beyond our reach.”
A hard murmur passed through the men. Duncan let it die at once.
“We find them and we strike before dawn,” he continued. “Quietly, from all sides. Nay man breaks rank without order. Nay shot is loosed unless it must be. We close the perimeter first, cut off retreat second, and then we drive inward.”
He pointed as he spoke, assigning positions with the precision of long habit. Two parties were to circle east and west. One was to hold the line at the riverbank. Another was to cut off any movement toward the old path through the pines. Iain would take the men most accustomed to fighting in close quarters. Duncan himself would lead the central advance.
No one interrupted and no one questioned. His commands were received and obeyed with the speed that came only when men believed entirely in the man who gave them.
When all was ready, they moved. The woods received them in silence. They advanced beneath the branches in disciplined lines, with each man knowing his place. The smell of damp earth and pine lay heavy in the air. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called once and was still. The river moved unseen through the darkness, in a constant murmur beyond the trees.
