Page 37 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

“I’m afraid not,” the man said.

“What’s yer name?” Eiric asked him.

“Henry Lynton,” the man said, and finally, Eiric had a name for that hideous face in front of him. He supposed that Lynton was handsome in a traditional way, but he exuded anger and superiority; it made him uglier than any physical trait ever could. “Captain Henry Lynton.”

“Aye, weel, I’d tell ye what to do with yer title, but I wouldna want to anger ye any further,” Eiric said with a grin, one that he knew would only serve to anger the other man even more. “And what do ye want with me, Captain Henry Lynton?”

“What else?” Lynton asked, as he walked towards Eiric, walking through the circle of his men that were surrounding them. He wasn’t holding a sword, just the letter, but it hardly mattered; Eiric couldn’t attack him, not unless he wanted to drop dead within seconds.

Seven brigands would have been a challenge. Seven soldiers in His Majesty’s service were impossible to fight alone.

“I’d rather die than tell ye anythin’,” Eiric said.

“Then so you will,” Lynton assured him. “But before you die, we’ll make sure to do our best to get every piece of information out of you. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll take your friend next. What’s his name?”

“Edan, sir,” one of Lynton’s men said.

“Edan,” Lynton repeated, and Eiric considered killing him for it. What did it matter if he died? At least he would have killed Lynton and spared Edan in the process.

But he decided against it in the end. Lynton was one of many, and if Eiric killed him, then someone else would take his place. The only thing that he could do was stall him and hope for the best.

“Take him,” Lynton said, as he turned around and walked away. The men began to approach Eiric, but he raised his sword, ready to fight.

The first man who swung his sword at him was met with a wild swing of Eiric’s own sword. Eiric blocked his attack, and then stepped back, blocking another man as he tried to hit him.

“You fools!” he heard Lynton say. “Don’t kill him! We need him alive.”

That gave him an advantage, and Eiric was happy to use it. He had no qualms killing the soldiers, and so he ducked and hopped to the side, dancing around them as he parried their blows and tried to deal his own.

Just as he had expected, though, seven trained soldiers were too many for a single man to defeat. Even though they had orders to not kill him, they were aiming to hurt, and soon, Eiric was exhausted as he tried to keep himself out of harm’s reach.

Before he could see what was happening, his vision went dark, and the last thing that he saw as he fell to the ground was one of the boots that a soldier was wearing.

When he woke up again, he was in a tent. He reasoned that they were still close to the castle, and that the tent was where the English had set up camp, and he could only hope that Edan or another one of his men would end up finding him there; though he didn’t know how that could happen.

No one knew where he was. Everyone at the castle would think that he was still heading to the MacAuley clan, and they wouldn’t look for him, not for several more days, at least.

Eiric assessed his situation. He was bound to a pole, his hands tied with rope behind his back. He had a throbbing wound on the back of his head from where one of the soldiers had hit him, with the hilt of his sword no doubt, and his vision was blurry at the edges. There was a sharp pain behind his eyes every time the sun shone through the fabric of the curtain, and the more he tried to assess the damage, the more his entire body began to hurt.

He was in no condition to fight, that much was clear to him. Perhaps he could try to outsmart Lynton, something that, to him, didn’t seem so hard to do, but in order to do so, he would have to get the right opportunity.

As it were, he could do little other than sit there and hope that his headache would go away soon.

“Rise and shine!” Lynton said as he walked into the tent, his voice deafening in Eiric’s ears, which began to ring as soon as the other man spoke. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

“Weel, I’m awake noo,” Eiric said. “Much to me disappointment. Ye dinna happen to have some wine, do ye?”

“Ah, no wine for you, I’m afraid,” Lynton said. “We want you to be in good shape to answer our questions.”

“I willna tell ye a single thing,” Eiric said. “Do ye take me for a fool? Why would I tell ye anythin’?”

“Because then I might spare Edan,” Lynton said. “And your mother . . . your poor mother. How do you think she’ll feel when she sees your body?”

Eiric all but growled at Lynton, rage coursing through him. The man was pure evil, it seemed, and it also seemed to Eiric as though he was enjoying it a little too much, as though he was the kind of man who liked to torture others, not just to get information, but also for the fun of it.

Eiric spat onto the ground in front of Lynton. “Ye can say whatever ye wish to me, but I willna tell ye a single thing,” he said. “Ye’ll never get anythin’ from me.”

“We’ll see about that.”