Page 17 of Highlander’s Haunted Past

Two of the Queen’s page boys, trailed by a trio of the Queen’s men, were approaching the fire, stern and humorless as always, though they at least had the sense to finally discard the heavy armor they tended to wear each day.

Rob jumped to his feet, eager to send them back from whence they came as quickly as possible. “What? What could ye possibly want from me at this hour?”

“The Queen wishes to break her fast with both ye and yer father before we depart in the morning,” one of the page boys said, putting on his best impression of an adult by sticking his chest out pompously and pointing his nose into the air a few degrees too high.

“Great. Excellent. We will be there. Is that truly all?”

“Aye, she will expect ye—”

Whoosh.

The arrow passed so close beside Rob that he felt the air rent around it. It thudded so cleanly into one of the guards that it took a moment for any of them to realize what had happened. They all seemed to stare at it for a second, the thin wooden rod extending from the man’s chest as a small red bloom blossomed around it.

The man looked to him, his eyes alight with confusion before a thin trickle of blood started to ooze from his mouth. One of the pages screamed as the man’s knees finally gave way, his blood already spreading across the ground. The other pair of guards began to yell, calling up an alarm that was immediately responded to by hordes of people shouting and rallying to them from the safety of their fires.

One of the guards set off in a sprint, his sword glinting in the moonlight as he plunged toward the line of trees from where the arrow had come. A few others were already following him, not a clue where they were headed or who they were headed toward but going all the same. And Rob couldn’t let them go alone.

Kenna still sat on his plaid, her hand clutched to her chest as she stared at the forest.

Rob seized her by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. “Get to the tent and stay there!”

She looked at him.

“Go!”

“Wait, Rob—”

“Christ, Kenna, please!”

He didn’t have time to force her to listen this time, so he simply let her go and ran. Let her set her arguments to the wind, maybe they would catch up with him, but it would be too late for them to mean anything.

The men in the forest hadn’t gotten far. Each of them had weapons held high, ready to strike them against any enemy that would dare to show itself, but the only thing that seemed to be in the forest were them and their shadows. Rob dashed past them. None of them was the Queen’s guard, the first man to enter the forest along the path of the arrow. If any of them were on the right trail, it would be him.

He found him deep in the forest, standing in a clearing and panting, his eyes so wide that the whites of them reflected in the moonlight.

When Rob approached, the man whispered, “I canna see him. He is close, but I canna see him.”

The two of them stood perfectly still, putting all of their strength and focus into their ears, tuning out the shouts and yells behind them. A larger force was coming closer, likely with torches that would expose the bastard no matter how dark the forest was. He would know that. He would have to run again before then.

As if on cue, a sudden dark figure made a break across the small clearing and into the thicket beyond. Rob and the Queen’s man took pursuit.

A speedy fellow he was, with momentum giving him a bit of an advantage, but Rob was fast enough to keep up. Branches tore at his clothes and skin as he cut through the bramble. His eyes concentrated on the dark figure as he cut this way and that through the trees. Rob squinted hard, hoping to at least make out a tartan, but he could hardly even gauge how tall the man was in the dark of the forest. The only evidence that Rob had to prove that he wasn’t chasing a ghost was the sound of leaves crunching under their feet as they ran.

Rob started to make out landmarks as the chase continued, large stony crags and fallen trees. He had ridden through this landscape only this afternoon with Hugh. He could have passed by the figure, hidden in some bushes, and not even comprehended.

With a crash, Rob suddenly found himself planted face first in the muck, his feet tangled in a knot of roots jutting up from the ground. By the time he was back on his feet, the assailant was gone without a trace. The crashing of men approaching muffled any noise that the figure may have made as he continued his escape.

Rob had been led here, over this patch of roots, on purpose. He was sure of it. Why hadn’t he paid more attention that morning? He could have seen it coming. He could have known.

The Queen’s man, who had fallen far behind Rob, finally caught up, now joined by a larger group of men, some carrying torches and other looking as if they had just been pulled from their beds.

“Where’d he go?” one of the men asked, a Munro, who had already pulled a knife and appeared ready to strike.

Rob grimaced, wishing he knew the answer. “I don’t ken. Spread out. He couldna have gotten far.”