Midnight Honor

first sheet contained a forged order to take no prisoners, to slaughter without consequence even those who fell wounded on the field. To an English soldier, this would giverise to the vision of a screaming hoard of Highland savages falling on them, hacking them to bits whether they had surrendered or not. If copies of these false orders were given to every officer, and he in turn read them aloud to every man in his company, they would believe the prince had issued a command to show no mercy on the battlefield. It would inspire them to return the favor in kind, without reservation.
    Angus withdrew his pocket watch. It was one-fifteen. He returned it to his sporran, along with the documents he had taken from Worsham's pouch, then rolled the body again, moving it to the far side of the tent against the canvas wall. Luckily Worsham had not been above average height and he fit beneath the camp cot with only a minor bending at the knees. When the blanket was draped over the side, it completely covered the fact there was a body beneath.
    It was not brilliant, but it was the best he could think to do on the spur of the moment. Something dripped on the blanket while he was still bent over, and he remembered the cut over his temple. A quick glance in the shaving mirror was met by a reflection of charnel horror, for his scalp had bled profusely, adding to the stains that were already on his shirt and coat from the neck wound.
    He stripped and cleaned himself as best he could, using the widest neckcloth he could find in the scattered contents of his kit, then winding it an extra turn around his throat to serve as both stock and bandage. The cut on his head was swelling by the minute, the skin was blue and ugly, but at least it was hidden by his hair. He fetched a clean shirt and donned his kilt and tunic. At the last, he remembered the white cockade Lord George had given him, and this, too, he tucked into his sporran after checking his timepiece again.
    One-forty.
    The Stuart army had to be close enough to smell the garbage burning behind the butcher's tents.

Chapter Twenty-Four
    W hat's that godawful stench?” Robbie Farquharson asked, his nose wrinkled up almost to his eyebrows.
    “The shite o' the forty horses ahead o' us, mixed with the muck an' slime o' every fish what ever died in this bluidy river.” Jamie, calf deep in the mire, struggled to free his left leg so he could sink it in front of the right. He'd lost his brogues a mile back, not clever enough or quick-thinking enough to have tied them on a string around his neck like most of the other men had done, and was barefoot. The wind that had blown earlier in the day was gone, its abrupt departure encouraging a heavy fog to creep up from the riverbank. The farther east they walked, the thicker the fog became, until it was difficult to see the man in front and impossible to know if there was better ground ten feet on either side.
    Lord George Murray had led the first column of men out of camp at eight o'clock. With him were Lochiel's Camerons, his Athollmen, and the MacDonalds from Clanranald, numbering some nineteen hundred in all, guided by John MacGillivray and Gillies MacBean.
    The prince and Lord John Drummond commanded the second column of two thousand, comprising mostly Lowlanders and French volunteers, and by the time they had struggled over the same trackless paths, marshes, and quagmires, the gapbetween the two columns had widened too much to ever hope to launch the simultaneous attack they had planned. By two o'clock in the morning they had covered only seven miles, and the conditions were worsening.
    “Dear God!” Anne gasped as Robert the Bruce skidded in the mud for the fourth time in as many minutes. The valiant beast was doing his best to keep his footing, but she was afraid each time that the next slide would result in a broken ankle. Twice already she and her cousins had prevented the column from following the wrong branch of the river in the soupy fog. Thus far, she had managed to stay on her mount, but now she swung her leg over with a final curse and slid out of the saddle, instantly sinking calf deep in the churned mud. The Bruce must have sensed he had failed his mistress in some way, for he instantly began to tremble.
    “'Tis not your fault, my fine hero,” she murmured, rubbing the velvety nose. “'Tis the fault of all that snow melting down from the mountains and the ground still too frozen to suck it up.”
    “Weel, it's sucked