Midnight Honor

both looked terrible, splashed head to toe in mud. Anne had never seen big John MacGillivray with his shoulders drooping, and she caught only a glimpse now before he pulled himself straight and walked toward her. “Ye've heard, then?”
    “Aye. We spoke with Colin Mor.”
    “It was for the best. We got as far as Knockanbuie when they realized it was hopeless. As bad as this bit is, the river is flooded up ahead, an' the horses were sinkin' up to their bellirs. The men, too, for that matter. Gillies here thought he felt a snake crawlin' down his leg, but it were just the mud hangin' off his willie.”
    MacBean was too exhausted to even blush.
    “Here.” John handed Gillies his musket and cupped his hands. “Give us yer foot: We'll give ye a leg back up.”
    “No, I can walk. The Bruce is about done in anyway, and there might be someone needs the ride more than me.”
    MacGillivray did not even have the breath to argue; he simply took the reins and turned the gelding around.
    When the sloping parkland around Culloden came into view, it was nearing six in the morning. Most of the men simply fell down in the grass and slept where they lay. Hundreds more never made it farther than the first point of the road where they could glimpse the roof of the Lord President's manor house. Anne stumbled as far as the same barn she had slept in the previous night; there, she and fifty other MacKintosh clansmen curled themselves into the hay. Most of them were asleep before their heads even touched the ground, but Anne found herself sitting with her back against the wooden slats, unable to close her eyes or even pretend to avert her gaze as MacGillivray stripped out of his coat and leaned over the water trough to scrub the mud and sweat away.
    It seemed like months ago that she had stood in an upper window at Dunmaglass while he doused himself after a hard bout of practice with his men. Then his golden hair and muscled body had gleamed against the whiteness of the snow; there had been laughter and energetic camaraderie, and they had been preparing to set out on a great adventure to reclaim Scotland for their royal prince.
    Now they squatted in dark, ugly places, most of the clansmen too tired to care about such mundane things as mud or how they might stink to the men lying next to them. She suspected that if she were not there, insisting unto the last on maintaining her role as colonel of the regiment, John might have flung himself down in all his glorious filth and been snoring as soundly as the others. Or he might even have been discouraged enough by the night's fiasco to keep going on to Dunmaglass, where his new bride would offer warmth and succor.
    No, she thought, watching him as he flicked the water from his hands in a shower of bright droplets. John MacGillivray would never quit just because the odds were horrendously against any chance of succeeding. He had committed his men, his life, and his honor to fighting a battle hehad been reluctant to join in the first place, but now that he was here, there would be no turning back. No compromising. No easy surrender.
    Lord George had tried desperately to convince the prince to fall back beyond Inverness where they might rest, fill their bellies with hot food, and recoup the strength they needed to fight Cumberland's fresh, well-rested troops. The argument had overtaken Anne and MacGillivray where they trudged along the tract, and if not for her restraining grip on his arm, John would have taken out his gun and shot the Irishman O'Sullivan who, as soon as Lord George was out of earshot, began spouting more accusations of cowardice and betrayal.
    But the prince refused to retreat again. He insisted his brave Highlanders would rally and fight, if only their leaders showed faith. “The Scots,” O'Sullivan had said, “are always good troops until things come to a crisis, then the only word they know is retreat.”
    It was enough to send nearly every man's hand to his sword, and some to even want to turn around and march right back into Nairn.
    “You should be trying to get some sleep,” MacGillivray said, startling her away from her thoughts. He stood in front of the stall the men had set aside for her privacy, and fished a cigar out of his saddle pouch.
    “I will. I'm just… trying to work the knots out of my legs,” she said, rubbing the backs of her calves.
    He watched the movement of her hands a moment, then leaned over and lit his cigar off the pale flame flickering