Midnight Honor

me,” said a man nearby. He threw himself down by the side of the tract, his arms splayed wide like a crucifix. “I canna go anither step. I canna catch ma breath. I canna hear f'ae the bluid poundin' in ma ears. I'd crawl the way if I could, but I canna. I simply canna.”
    An echo of his words rippled back through the ranks, some of the grumbles voicing sympathy, some anger. They were all exhausted and cold, and still as starving as they'd been that morning when they'd cursed over their ration of one small biscuit. The slowest clansmen, those who were lost well back in the fog and darkness, had simply stopped and turned around.
    “It's no' possible, Annie,” said Eneas, gasping for breath like an old man. “It's taken us five hours to cover seven miles, an' we've anither five to go.”
    She held her finger to her lips, for the prince's group was just ahead of them. “He'll hear you.”
    “I dinna care who hears me. The men are fallin' over on their feet. If they're expected tae go on, an' then tae fight, I can see disaster ahead even if he canny. What's mair, if he was hopin' tae surprise Thomas Lobster, he's lost that chancetoo, f'ae we've already found one o' Willy's scouts creepin' along the bank watchin' us. Lomach MacDugal. Do ye ken the name?”
    It sounded as if it should be familiar, but Anne shook her head.
    “He an' his brither Hugh have been trackers f'ae the
Sassenachs
since Loudoun took command o' Fort George. They're as close as oor Jamie an' Robbie, an' if Lomach were in the neighborhood, ye can bet yer kirtle Hugh is no' far ahind.”
    “Did you question him?”
    Eneas frowned. “He would have had a mout o' difficulty answerin' through a slit throat.”
    Anne supposed she should react to the brutality, or at the very least ask if it had been justified, but she simply could not rouse either the effort or the sympathy. She could not find fault with Eneas's anger, or his sense of foreboding either. She was just as tired, hungry, and dejected as the men who struggled forward out of blind obedience. Her bonnet had fallen off somewhere back along the way and her hair hung over her shoulders in dark, tangled hanks. She had to speak through clenched teeth to keep them from chattering, and now she could swear she heard buzzing in her ears.
    The buzzing grew louder; it was coming from up ahead. They walked without torches, but some of the guides carried hooded lanthorns and as she and Eneas strained to see through the mist, the dull glow cast by one of them appeared and swayed closer. The man carrying it was one of the guides who had been with Lord George's column and Anne recognized him as Colin Mor, the clansman whose bothy they had stayed at the night MacGillivray had oiled her legs to rid them of saddle cramps.
    He saw The Bruce and veered across the sucking mud. “We've turned back, Colonel. The general an' the chiefs decided it were f'ae the best.”
    “Och, thank the good Lord above f'ae that,” Eneas sighed. “It's over, then, is it?”
    “All but the shoutin',” Colin said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. Even before the words were out of his mouth they could hear the prince's voice rising in protest, screaming that he had been betrayed yet again.
    “Where is Lord George?” Anne asked in a hushed voice.
    “'Bout a mile ahind. He'll only go as fast as the slowest man, though now they've been told they can go back an' find their beds, they're movin' a fair speed.”
    “MacGillivray?”
    “He an' The MacBean were no' very far ahind me. If ye stan' here, he'll see yer horse, like as I did, an' he'll find ye.”
    He saw another man coming past with a lanthorn, and gave his to Eneas before he set off back through the muck and trampled sod.
    “Shall we go forward an' wait?” her cousin asked.
    “No. No, we can hear the fuss well enough from here. I'd rather not enjoy it any closer.”
    “Aye. I'll leave the lamp wi' you, then, shall I?”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Just over ayont a bit where it's drier. I just need tae sit f'ae a wee minute. Catch ma wind. It were seven miles o' hell gettin' here, it'll be seven miles o' hell gettin' back.”
    Anne nodded, almost guilty she had ridden The Bruce as long as she had.
    The feeling intensified a few minutes later when she saw MacGillivray and Gillies MacBean walking toward her. John didn't notice her at first; it took a tug on his arm from Gillies for him to lift his head and look in the direction his clansman pointed.
    They