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  The Hunters were after the woman, he suddenly realized. She was the one they looked for. It was her trail they followed. They had also only referred to one child, her child. There was a good chance they did not know about the others. If they did not see the child, they would just assume that she had hidden the boy away, as she had done this time. If he wanted to ensure that the children reached Cambrun safely, he had to lead the Hunters away from them. Alice Boyd was the bait their enemies would follow. He was just not sure if she would entrust the children to anyone else.

  “The children will ride to Cambrun with my cousins,” Gybbon said and was not surprised when Alice tensed and opened her mouth to argue his abrupt command. She had already done a lot to protect the children, only one of whom was her blood child. “Ye and I, Alice Boyd, will lead the Hunters away from them.” He repeated all his thoughts on the matter and was pleased when she only frowned in thought. After six years of being hunted like an animal, she obviously had the cunning needed to recognize the worthiness of his plan.

  “Ye think they will follow our trail and nay try to hunt down the others?” she asked.

  “I do. They hunt ye, nay the bairns. The bairns would be killed once found, nay doubt, but ’tis ye they hunt.” Gybbon heard his cousins mutter their agreement, but he kept his gaze fixed on Alice.

  Alice looked at the children. They were as weary and hungry as she was. It astonished her that they had all survived as long as they had. The very differences that condemned them were obviously what gave them the strength to survive. These men offered the children the chance of a better, safer life, one where the differences that had endangered them for so long would be fully accepted. It would be nearly a sin to deny them that. All she had to do was trust the men long enough to let her children go, to hand their safety over to someone else for the first time in years.

  Chapter Three

  Alice watched her children ride away with Lachann and Martyn until they could no longer be seen. Everything within her, heart, soul, and mind, cried to pull them back, but she fought the urge. Each time the Hunters found her, the lives of her children were put in danger. They were all so young. If something happened to her she knew they would suffer, could even die. Alyn was a clever boy but he was only nine. He would do his best to protect the younger children if she was captured or killed, but Alice knew he would fail. And each time the men found her, her chances of escape grew ever smaller.

  They were being taken to safety, she reminded herself. It was something she had done far too often to count since the moment Gybbon had announced that they had to separate. Her mind knew his plan was sound, that it gave the children the best chance to escape. Doubts came from her heart and she had to ignore them. The men were like her, like the children, and that had to be enough to warrant her trust. That, and the look of delight and wonder on the men’s faces when they had first seen the children. Holding that memory in her mind helped her still her doubts and fears.

  “My cousins will guard the children with their lives,” said Gybbon as he took her by the arm and led her to their horses.

  Gybbon had watched her leave-taking of the children and was astonished she had allowed them to ride away with men she did not really know. The bond between her and the children, not just her blood son, was a powerful one, forged in fear and danger. What troubled him was why she had let them go. Gybbon did not need to ask. He knew. Alice had sent the children away with his cousins because she believed she was losing her battle against the Hunters, that she was soon to die. It was an admirable thing to do but he could not allow her to hold fast to that air of martyrdom. If they were to survive the next few days, she had to believe in him, believe that she could win this fight and finally reach a safe haven with her children at her side.

  “Is that nay what we are doing as weel?” she asked as she mounted the sleek, black mare he led her to.

  “In many ways, aye.” Gybbon mounted his gelding Resolute, yet again pleased that they had had the foresight to bring two extra horses, for with both of them riding, it would be easier to lead the Hunters astray and stay out of their grasp. “We are the bait for the Hunters to follow, and when there are no more Hunters to plague us, we will ride to Cambrun.”

  “Ye sound so confident. The odds are heavy against us.” Nudging her horse to keep pace with Gybbon’s, Alice was pleased with the mare’s obedience. It had been a long time since she had ridden a horse and it was good to know she had been given an easily controlled one.

  “’Tis best to ride into battle with confidence, with a surety that ye will be victorious.”

  “No one can be certain they will win when they go into battle. E’en the best plans can go awry and e’en the most skilled of warriors can err or stumble.”

  “True, but thinking that, and only that, only increases the chance that such misfortunes will occur.”

  Alice suspected there was some truth to his words. If one expected the worst, one often got it. It was as if fate decided the worst was what you wanted and so gave it to you. She had begun to expect only the worst and had known it was a weakness, but each day it had gotten harder and harder to fight. Hope was what she needed to remain strong. Unfortunately, after running and hiding for so long her very bones ached with weariness, she had too little hope left within her.

  “Exactly what is your plan?” she asked.

  “To lead the Hunters far away from my cousins and the bairns and to lessen their numbers one by one until none are left or the survivors race home to their wee cottages to cower beneath their wee beds.”

  “Ye mean to kill them all.”

  “At least the ones who willnae give up. That troubles ye?”

  “A wee bit.”

  “Why? They mean to kill ye and your child.”

  “Aye,” Alice admitted, knowing that death was all that would shake most of the Hunters off her trail, for they thought they were doing God’s work. “Ye dinnae need to fear that I will forget that.”

  “And one of the ones hunting ye now is Donn’s father, aye?”

  “Callum, the tall one who ordered Geordie to leave. The fact that I escaped him and bred a son from his cruelty appalls him. He wants me and Donn dead, wants what he calls his shame buried and gone.” It hurt to even speak the words, to admit that her son’s father thought of him as an abomination. Some day Donn would understand that, would figure out the whole ugly truth even if she did not tell him, and she dreaded the pain it would cause her child.

  “Yet ye love the bairn, love a child born of rape.”

  “Rape only planted the seed. I grew and nurtured the child. He is mine. The fact that Callum can look at that small, sweet lad and see only evil that needs to be destroyed is nay something I will ever understand.”

  “The fact that he can look at his own bairn, his own son, and see that is but another good reason to kill him.”

  Although the chill in Gybbon’s voice made Alice shiver, she had to agree with him. One thing she had hated about being hunted was that it had forced her to kill. In the six years she had been running she had seen the life fade from the eyes of four men. It was a sight that haunted her dreams. She suspected a few of the men she had injured had died later but she had been able to shrug most thoughts of that aside. Watching death claim a man while his blood warmed her hands was not so easily ignored. Not even the reminder that those men had been trying to kill her, would have killed the children, eased the horror of what she had been forced to do to survive.

  The touch of a warm hand smoothing down her arm drew her from her dark thoughts and she looked at Gybbon. The understanding in his beautiful eyes eased the grip of her tortured memories. He probably did not suffer as she did over the men he had to kill, but she suddenly knew that he did not choose to kill, did not enjoy the necessity of it.

  “They hunt ye,” he said. “They hunt the children. The stain is upon their souls.”

  She just nodded, not sure she believed him. Despite the occasional nightmare, she had accepted what sh
e had done as necessary. She had killed to keep from being killed. What Gybbon planned, however, was not face-to-face fighting. He intended to strike in silence, to slip out of the shadows, kill their enemy, and move on. It was a brilliant strategy when they were so outnumbered. However, Alice was not sure she would be able to do that.

  The sun had been up for over an hour before Gybbon signaled a halt. The only other stop they had made had been so that she could wash in a small, rocky burn and change her clothes. Alice had been so desperate to get clean and change her clothes, even though her clean clothes were almost as ragged as her dirty ones, that she had been able to push aside the fear of being naked anywhere within a mile of a man. Gybbon had used the time to scout for any sight of their enemy and then take a quick bath in the cold burn himself. It still astonished Alice that she had accepted his word that he would give her privacy, but, even more, that she had actually been tempted to peek at him while he bathed.

  Gybbon dismounted, shaking her free of her puzzlement over why she should want to peer at a man bathing when all she had wanted to do for the last six years was stay as far away from men as possible. She quickly dismounted, caught up her mare’s reins, and followed him up a dangerously narrow rocky path. It startled her when he and his horse appeared to melt into the hillside, but as she drew nearer to where he had last stood, she saw the crevice he had slipped into. Wind-contorted trees and large stones plus a bend in the very shape of the hill had hidden the opening very well. It took a little coaxing to get her horse to pass through such a narrow opening, one that had a blind corner so that it looked as if she was trying to push the horse into a wall of stone.

  Once through the passage into a wider space, Alice stood very still until her eyes accepted the loss of daylight. It happened quickly and she knew she could see in the dark far better than any person without her cursed blood. When she realized she was suddenly seeing that skill as the gift Gybbon called it, she shook her head and studied their shelter.

  She stood in a somewhat spacious cave, the wood for a fire already arranged in a smooth hollow in the stone floor, and more wood neatly stacked against a wall to her right. This was obviously a MacNachton retreat, one of those places Gybbon had said his clan had found so that they could shelter from the sun when they traveled. In a strange way, the preparations this clan of his made to survive eased her fears about entrusting the children to them.

  “Your clan is truly weel prepared for all things, isnae it,” she said as she led the mare to the back of the cave where Gybbon already tended to his horse.

  “Aye. Unfortunately it does mean that we cannae always take the most direct route when we do travel.” Gybbon grimaced. “An inn or the hospitality of some laird’s keep isnae for us. Caves, weel-hidden shielings, e’en holes in the ground. There is even a crypt or two.”

  “Better to rest among the dead than to join them.”

  Gybbon laughed softly. “True enough. Tend to a fire for us, lass, and I will tend to Nightwind.”

  “Nightwind. A fine name,” she murmured, giving the mare a pat before turning her attention to the building of a fire.

  Alice made sure the fire would not go out the moment she turned her back on it before she collected the clothes she and Gybbon had rinsed clean in the burn. Placing the saddles close to the fire, she draped their clothes over them and hoped they would dry before the sun set. She fought down a surge of embarrassment over how poor, thin, and worn her clothes looked next to his. Six years of running and fighting for her life and the lives of four children did not give a woman time to fuss over the vanities of her appearance, she sternly reminded herself. She was alive and so were the children. That was all that mattered.

  When Gybbon sat by the fire and began to carefully portion out some food, Alice quickly sat down across from him. Her stomach ached for what he put in a wooden bowl but she fought to hide her desperate need. A part of her feared becoming accustomed to such bounty only to have it disappear, just as her fine comfortable life had been brutally torn away from her six years ago.

  As she ate, struggling to cling to the good manners her mother had taught her, Alice covertly studied Gybbon. The way she felt around him was a constant source of surprise. Since the night Callum had beaten and raped her, cursing her as a demon all the while, she had stayed as far away from men as she could. The repeated confrontations with Callum and his men had only hardened her resolve, driving her deeper into the wilder places. In the last two years, the only time she had approached even the most humble home was in the darkest hours of the night and then only to steal what she could so that the children could eat or stay warm. Yet she felt none of that constant, gnawing fear around Gybbon.

  She felt safe. She felt accepted for all that had previously condemned her. That frightened her. For too long she had trusted no one, depended upon no one, and felt no safety no matter where she was. Alice was not sure it was wise to feel safe now.

  Even worse, however, she liked looking at him. She had barely begun to feel an interest in young men when her life had been torn apart. Callum’s vicious attack had ensured that she never again felt such an interest in any man. Or so she had thought. Alice knew what stirred inside her now was definitely an interest in Gybbon, the sort a woman felt for a man she might want for her own. Everything about the man pulled hard at something deep within her, and she knew that ought to have her running away from him as fast as she could. Instead she sat there staring at him like some foolish moonstruck maiden. She prayed he did not notice. It was both a surprise and an embarrassment to her and she certainly did not want to be caught at it.

  Gybbon looked at Alice and caught her scowling at him. She had cleaned up well, he thought. Yet again the firelight made her eyes appear golden. In the early morning light he had caught one good look into her eyes and found them to be a rich, warm light brown. After she had washed her hair it had appeared more golden than brown and now the firelight touched upon hints of red in its thick length. Her small oval face, now cleaned of dirt, revealed clear, pale skin. Its delicate lines had been sharpened by hunger and tragedy but even those dark shadows did not mar its beauty.

  She was, he realized with an inner start, really quite lovely. He suspected a few good meals would return some womanly softness to her thin body, but he could not convince himself that she was unattractive as she was. His body certainly stirred with interest as he glanced over her body, its slight curves revealed all too clearly by her ragged gown. Gybbon tried to tell himself that it was just a result of feeling protective of her, even sympathetic, but he knew that was a lie. She was nothing like the sort of women he usually felt a lusting for, but something about her definitely drew him. Even when she looked as if she wished to hit him over the head with her bowl, he thought, suddenly amused at himself.

  “Are ye now regretting sending the children away with my cousins?” he asked.

  Even his deep, smooth voice stirred her long-dead interest, she thought a little crossly, but she fought to keep that irritation out of her voice. “Nay. They had to go. Ye are like us. If I cannae trust the ones who are like us, then who can I trust?”

  “No one. I wish I could say otherwise, but I cannae. As the Hunters gain strength ’tis even less safe for any MacNachton to let anyone outside of the clan ken what he is. There is a risk with each new Outsider who discovers how different we are. We have been fortunate so far, but the danger is there and cannae be ignored. Unfortunately, for ones like ye and your family, the need for such caution, for such solitude, only adds to the danger ye are in.”

  “Aye, true enough. It stirs questions when one keeps oneself apart from others.”

  “In the end, ’tis less dangerous than mixing too freely with Outsiders or letting too many ken our secrets.” He smiled his thanks as she took his bowl to clean it out. “We need to rest now. I can abide the late-day sun so we can leave here when the sun is low in the sky.”

  “And then we just ride about hoping the Hunters sniff us out?”

  G
ybbon shrugged as he collected their blankets and handed her one. “That and, when they creep close enough, I intend to cull their numbers whenever I can.”

  Alice wrapped herself in the blanket and settled down on the stone floor. She stared through the low flames of the fire at Gybbon as he did the same. It took only a moment for her to begin to miss the children, especially the way they had all curled up against her when they had slept. Alice forced that longing aside and fixed her thoughts on Gybbon’s plan. It could work to free them of any pursuit so that they could follow the others to Cambrun and she would see her children again. It would not, however, put an end to the threat men like Callum and his little army presented to all who were like her and Gybbon.

  “I can almost believe we will win this fight,” she said quietly, “but ’tis just one battle.”

  “Ah, ye dinnae think that beating these men will end the hunts.”

  “Nay, it willnae. And I suspicion there will be men quick to step into the hole left by any Hunter killed.”

  “And why are ye so certain of that?” Gybbon felt the same but was curious as to why she thought so.

  “Because whoever gathers these men makes them believe they do the will of God, that they are fighting demons and will be blessed by God for their sacrifice.”

  Gybbon softly cursed. She was right and he had no argument to give her. The MacNachtons had become a crusade for the righteous. His clan had long debated the reasons they now had men hunting them and come up with many, including some quest to gain the MacNachton longevity, but Alice had spoken the truth of it all, concisely. He had no argument that would refute her. Someone was leading a crusade against the MacNachtons. This war would be long and bloody.

  Chapter Four

  Gybbon used his sleeve to wipe the blood from his mouth. He stared down at the man sprawled at his feet. In deference to Alice’s unease about a stealthy culling of their enemies, he had given the man a choice. Fight and die or give up his quest, run home, and live. The man had chosen to die. Alice was right. These men believed they fought evil, that they fought for good and God. Others who had taken up the cause might have a few other plans of their own, but not men like these. It almost felt wrong to kill the fools.