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Gavan vaulted down from the bench despite the sharp pull in his injured shoulder. “Stop them!”

Munro guards fought through the confusion, but the Calder men were not trying to win the room. Only to escape.

By the time Gavan reached the rear doors, icy wind was already pouring through the opening into the hall. Hoofbeats thundered faintly beyond the snowstorm outside.

They’d had horses waiting.

Calder was gone.

The courtroom roared with confusion behind him while guards struggled to contain the fire and restore order. Smoke drifted towards the rafters. Merchants shouted over one another. Magistrates demanded calm that no one could yet give.

Yet beneath the chaos, something irreversible had happened. The truth had been spoken openly before the Highlands, leaving Hugh Calder to flee like the guilty man that he was.

*

Gavan stood in the rear corridor while snow and smoke swirled together through the open doorway. Beyond the courthouse steps came only the fading sounds of hooves disappearing into the streets of Dingwall. Calder was gone.

The realisation struck with a force that settled deep beneath Gavan’s ribs. Every instinct sharpened towards pursuit. He could almost feel the familiar pull of it in his blood—the urge to mount immediately, to drive hard into the snow with sword in hand until Calder was dragged back in chains or left broken beneath Highland pines. For one dangerous moment, the old part of him rose fiercely to the surface, the warrior who had once solved every threat through steel and relentless pursuit.

Then a shout rang through the courtroom behind him. “Water! Quickly!”

Another voice followed, strained with panic. A clerk coughed violently somewhere in the smoke while overturned benches scraped harshly across stone. The lantern Calder’s men had thrown still smouldered near the rear wall, sending frightened townspeople stumbling towards the exits while guards struggled to force order back into the chamber.

Gavan closed his eyes briefly. That, he realised with sudden bitter clarity, had been Calder’s final strike. Not merely escape, but chaos. Disorder. The deliberate hope that fury would drive Gavan from judgement into vengeance before the entire court.

His hand tightened hard against the hilt of his sword. Calder wanted the Highlands ruled by fear and reaction. He wanted men to believe clan justice meant nothing more than stronger swords and louder rage. If Gavan abandoned the courtroom now to chase blindly after him, Calder would win more than freedom. He would prove every poisonous accusation whispered against Highland lairds by merchants and Crown officials alike.

Slowly, Gavan forced himself to release the grip on his sword and turn away from the open doorway. “Get everyone to safety,” he ordered the bailies, his voice carrying sharply through the confusion. “You,” he barked at a group of men nearby. “Get water on that fire before smoke reaches the rafters.”

More movement followed. People were escorted safely from the chamber. Buckets appeared. Benches were dragged aside. The frantic energy of the room did not vanish, but it began, piece by piece, to bend back towards order.

Only then did Gavan allow himself one final glance back to where Calder had disappeared. Snow had already swallowed the tracks beyond the courtyard. Calder had prepared this escape carefully. Pursuing now in blind anger would gain nothing except more death.

The knowledge burned because Calder deserved pursuit. He deserved steel. Yet standing amid frightened clerks, wounded guards, and townspeople struggling against rising panic, Gavan understood something the younger version of himself never would have accepted. There were battles that could not be won by fury alone. Leadership demanded steadiness, where rage demanded release.

The old Gavan would have ridden after Calder without hesitation. He would have abandoned the chamber, the wounded and the frightened alike, for the certainty of battle. But the man standing in the courthouse now had changed. Not weakened. Changed.

Through the thinning smoke, he found Sorcha standing near the front benches. Her face had gone pale beneath the strain of the morning, but she remained upright, her gaze fixed upon him with a steadiness that cut through the chaos more sharply than any shouted command.

Gavan crossed towards her slowly while guards restored order around them. Calder had escaped justice today. The truth of it lodged inside him like a blade. Yet escape was not absolution. The Highlands had heard enough now. Calder could no longer hide behind respectable words about stability and reform. He had fled openly before witnesses like a guilty man, abandoning dignity for survival. Clan loyalties would shift after this. Old alliances would begin to fracture. Men who once hesitated would quietly start choosing sides.

The war Calder had wanted no longer hid itself beneath forged letters and merchant whispers. It stood exposed.

Gavan stopped before Sorcha at last.

His voice lowered, though the intensity within it remained unmistakable. “He runs because he knows judgement is coming.”

Sorcha searched his face carefully. “Will you hunt him?”

For a few breaths, the old answer surged hot and immediate through Gavan’s blood, but he tempered it.

When Gavan finally spoke, his voice remained steady. “I will bring him to justice.”

Not vengeance. Justice.

The distinction mattered now more than ever. Hugh Calder had escaped the courtroom. But he had not escaped the reckoning waiting beyond it.

Chapter Eighteen