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The gate had been barred and the hall dark. He had beaten on the timbers with his sword hilt until his arm ached, and the only answer was a dog howling behind the walls. Now his men lay in their plaids beside the road, halfway back to MacVey Keep, where he had stopped to rest the horses on the ride home. He sat on a stone by the nearest fire with his sword across his thighs and could not keep still on it.

“He’s run,” Gavin said, squatting across the fire. “Taken his folk and run.”

“Torquil Dunmore never ran from anything in his life,” Alasdair said. “He waits. He sits in his chair and waits for ye to come to him.”

“Then where’s the chair?” Gavin asked.

Alasdair had no answer, and it galled him. He had left his wife behind his walls with hard words between them, and ridden off to break down a door that nobody had stayed to hold.

A shout came from the sentry down the road. Hooves on the stones, slow and uneven.

Alasdair was on his feet with the sword up. Out of the dark came a small brown mare at a stumbling walk, and on her back a figure in a hooded cloak, sitting so straight that it hurt to look at.

The hood fell back. Grey hair spilled loose from its pins.

“Mother?” Alasdair said.

He stared at her as if she had ridden up out of the loch. His mother had not sat a horse since they carried his father home, and here she was, alone in the black of the night, with her chin up as if she had come out to take the air.

He did not remember crossing the road. He lifted her down, and she weighed so little in his hands that something in his chest twisted. She swayed when her feet touched the ground and held on to him with fingers like ice.

“Ye rode,” he said. “You, on a horse, in the dark.”

“The mare did most of it,” his mother said. “We came to an understanding by the water. She doesnae hurry, and I dinnae fall off.”

Gavin made a sound that was nearly a laugh and choked it back.

“Are ye out of yer wits?” The fright came out of him as anger. “Alone, in the dark, with men in dun riding these hills? If one of them had found ye first, I’d no’ have known where to look for ye till the crows…”

“Hold yer tongue, Alasdair, and listen to me.” Her grip tightened on his arm, and it was the voice she had used on him when he was six years old. “It’s yer wife. A man came in at the north gate at dusk, wearing our plaid. He said ye’d a blade under the ribs and were lying at the shieling on the high grazing, asking for her.”

The fire cracked. Nobody around it moved, and for a breath Alasdair could not move either. Then the blood left his face so fast that the fire swam in front of him. A blade under the ribs. Asking for her. He saw her running out into the dark to a man who was not there, and his hands closed on his mother’s arms so hard that she flinched.

“I sent nobody,” Alasdair said. Then it tore out of him, loud enough to ring off the hill. “God’s blood, I sent nobody!”

“I ken ye didnae.” Her voice wavered and held. “He came off the moor, son, and you went out by the south. And I didnae know his face. She went anyway, with the old men and the lads, because she thought ye were dying up there and calling for her.”

Alasdair stood very still. It fell into place in his head piece by piece, cold and neat as a lock turning.

The barred gate. The empty hall. The boar in the raider’s coat. Dunmore Keep had been a decoy. Torquil had left his own door empty for the MacVey to beat on and drawn every MacVey sword out to it, and the MacVey had gone after it like a hound after a dragged scent, and left his own wife behind a wall for any liar to fetch.

“He wanted her out of the keep,” Alasdair said. “And me at the shieling, after her, with my blood up. He has her up there now, and some man of his is riding the hills to find me and tell me where she is.”

“Then he’ll no’ have far to look,” Gavin said.

“He’ll look all night,” Alasdair said. “We’ll be gone. I’m going after her, Gavin. I’ll have her off that hill before the sun’s up.”

She had begged him to let her go to her father, and he had ridden for blood instead. He had done the very thing she flung at him in the yard. And Torquil Dunmore had reached in behind his back and lifted her out of his house without once raising his voice.

The rage burned in his chest so hot that his sight swam. He was angrier with himself than he had ever been with any Dunmore.

And under the rage was something worse, cold and sick. He could lose her. Tonight, on a hill he could not see, while he sat warming his hands at a fire. His chest locked so tight he could not drag a breath past it.

“Mount up!” he roared down the road. “Every man. Now!”

Men kicked earth over the fires and ran for the horses. Alasdair went back to his mother, who stood by the brown mare with her hand on its neck.

“Ye’ll stay at the horse lines,” he said. “The lads will bring ye home at first light.”