Heart of Shadows (Hearts of the Highlands Book 2) Read online

  Heart of Shadows

  Hearts of the Highlands

  Book Two

  Paula Quinn

  Copyright © 2019 by Paula Quinn

  Kindle Edition

  Published by Dragonblade Publishing, an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Books from Dragonblade Publishing

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

  Extract from the Declaration of Arbroath 1320

  Chapter One

  Cumberland, England

  Summer

  The Year of Our Lord 1320

  In a quiet corner in Storey Tavern, Commander Torin Gray of the Scot’s army surveyed the men around him from beneath his black hood. He’d been coming here for the last pair of nights looking for the same thing: border guards from Carlisle Castle enjoying the night off.

  Having practically grown up in taverns, Torin knew that if one wanted to find someone or something, the best place to look was in the local drinking spot.

  He’d wait, no matter how long it took. They would come for a drink, or to forget the dreaded monotony of patrolling relatively peaceful borders every day or night, waiting for something to happen, growing fat and lazy when nothing ever did. Some wine or whisky, mayhap a willing lass to soothe their weary souls.

  He knew where to find them. He’d prepared to wait. He needed them to help him gain entrance into England’s last mighty stronghold.

  He looked into his cup, at the ale he hadn’t touched. He wasn’t here to forget anything. He remembered the English soldier who had lifted his weeping mother and carried her away after another had jammed his blade into Torin’s father and killed him. He could no longer remember faces, but he never wanted to forget what the English had done to his family.

  He flicked his gaze to a table across the room, where five men sat drinking together. He’d been watching them all evening. They were thieves, possibly reivers—a more organized alliance of lawless raiders who lived along the borders. Torin could spot a thief anywhere, since he had once been one—and sometimes still was.

  These five were rude and unruly. Perfect for what he had planned.

  After another quarter of an hour, the tavern door swung open and, at last, his prey swept inside with the cool night breeze. There were three of them. They wore the red and blue pattern of the English king on their tabards, and swords tucked into scabbards at their sides. Their lids drooped over tired eyes as they pushed their way around other patrons and sat at a small table near the hearth.

  Torin lifted his finger to the serving girl when he caught her eye. She smiled and sauntered over.

  “A drink for my friend there.” He pointed her in the direction of one of the thieves and slipped an extra coin into her palm.

  Her smile remained as she stared into his shadowy eyes, but then he looked away and she went about her task. Torin waited while she brought the drink over to the man he’d pointed out.

  The patron turned to acknowledge him. Before he had the chance to turn back to his friends, Torin waved him over and hoped the thief would come. He couldn’t take the chance of the guards seeing him at the table with all the thieves. They would not remember one.

  “What is your name and what do you want?” the hulking thief asked a moment later, standing over Torin’s table.

  “
Torin Gray,” he told him. “I’m lookin’ fer work.” He didn’t usually sound like a Scot when he spoke to the English, but he didn’t want to be trusted by this particular man.

  The thief stared down at him with deep-set, suspicious brown eyes. “Remove your hood. Let me see your face in the light.”

  Torin did as he was bid, pushing back his hood and releasing a mop of chestnut curls shot through with streaks of gold. He wasn’t afraid anyone would recognize him. Very few knew he was one of the Bruce’s most lethal weapons.

  “What kind of work?” the thief asked when he was satisfied Torin wasn’t someone he knew.

  Torin let his grin shine as he slipped his gaze to the soldiers. “I saw their purses. They are fat. Their sharp swords and swift horses would be highly desired among the reivers.”

  The thief narrowed his eyes on the soldiers and then turned back to Torin. “So? What has that to do with me?”

  “Ye are a thief,” Torin said boldly. “Are ye not?” He held up his hands when the man reached for a knife in his belt. “Easy, Brother. I’m a thief as well. But I canna take three of them down on my own.”

  The man laughed at his proposal, just as Torin had suspected he would. “There are five of us, Scot. What do we need you for?”

  Torin blinked in surprise, as if he hadn’t thought of that. “But ’twas I who told ye aboot their heavy purses.”

  “You are a fool, but then most Scots are, and not a very good thief.” The man laughed until his gaze fell to a brooch clasped on Torin’s léine, beneath his cloak. “What is this?” he asked, growing serious and leaning forward to push the edge of the cloak aside. “A bug?”

  Torin’s blood went cold. He dipped his chin and looked up from beneath his dark brows. “Take yer hand away before I remove it fer ye,” he warned on a deadly whisper.

  The thief smiled at him. “If you do anything to stop me, I will cry out to the guards that a filthy Scot sought to rob them and I tried to stop you. My cousins will vouch for me.”

  Torin was going to kill him, him and all his cousins. He hadn’t planned on killing thieves, but he was going to.

  First, he had to see this through first. He would not be distracted. It was too late to turn back.

  So he remained still while the thief took his brooch. It was a moth, expertly crafted in bronze. He had snatched it from his home while it burned, before he ran away. It was his mother’s, though he didn’t know for certain.

  He didn’t fight for it now or chase the thief when the man slipped it into a pouch hanging from his belt and then walked away. Torin wouldn’t throw away a perfect opportunity to get himself not only into the castle, but invited into it. He had a promise to keep to himself.

  His smile was cloaked in shadows as he pulled his hood back over his head and rose from the table to leave.

  He went the stable and waited with his horse. It was going to be a long night. He was a wee bit less patient since losing his brooch, but he would wait.

  He turned his gaze to Carlisle Castle in the distance, where resided Alexander Bennett, Warden of the Western March, defender of Carlisle.

  King Robert the Bruce and his forces had attacked Carlisle five years ago but had failed to take it.

  This time, they would not fail.

  This time, they had him.

  He’d come to Robert shortly after the king’s defeat in Carlisle, after he’d written to the Bruce, promising to hand him Till Castle, home of the Governor of Etal. And then he’d done it. His prowess at infiltrating any military stronghold and delivering his enemies to the Scottish king, weakened and vulnerable, had earned him the name Shadow among the Bruce’s forces.

  His skills included things he’d learned as a child while trying to survive alone—things such as lifting valuables from any pocket, and all sorts of thievery.

  But his greatest skill was gaining trust and friendship from his enemies while planning their demise. He was in and out of their lives within weeks. He felt no shame or regret for the things he’d done, the people he’d killed. He wanted no reward. Just revenge.

  Aye, Shadow was the right name for him, but Torin thought it was better fitting for his heart. For it was not completely black. There were glimpses of light shining along narrow paths but, most often, he refused to take them. The light tempted him away from his purpose, and though he enjoyed what he could find in the light, he chose to stay in the shadows cast by it.

  His purpose right now was taking down Carlisle Castle. No Scot had been able to penetrate its stone curtain walls. Little was known about Bennett’s forces. How many men guarded the borders, the battlements? How well did they fight? What could he do from within to ensure the Scot’s victory?

  He would soon find out.

  He set his gaze toward the eastern sky aglow in pale moonlight and endless stars, making the red sandstone keep harder to define. For a moment, the beauty of it took his breath away. He might be one of the Bruce’s most proficient killers, but he always stopped to appreciate what the light revealed.

  He’d been thirteen when he’d broken into Till Castle, home of Governor Henry Alan, and was caught stuffing valuables from the governor’s private chambers into his breeches. He’d been beaten and thrown into the castle’s pit for four days. Two of those days were spent living in the horrors of his past, swearing vengeance, promising the wee lad inside him that he would avenge his family and make amends for leaving them, that he would kill every English soldier he met for the lives of his friends in the woods. Finally, he’d collapsed on the cold stone floor and pondered a field of endless flowers and a sky as vast as his imagination.

  Mayhap he’d gone mad in those eternal days of darkness and hunger and nothing to do, but he’d learned how to escape his life and enter another, filled with sunlight and beauty—and a family, a place to belong.

  He’d had to escape in order to live and take down as many fortresses he could.

  He’d used the next five years in the governor’s garrison, learning to fight, disguised as a friend—

  He heard men leaving the tavern and blinked back to the present. He bent to look around the stable wall and saw the three soldiers step outside and begin the walk toward the stable. He waited for the thieves to leave the tavern next. It didn’t take long.

  He watched as they came up around the soldiers, their faces covered, and surrounded them, knives held outstretched in their hands. He didn’t usually kill thieves, but there was no room in his heart for forgiveness. He had a task to achieve and nothing would stop him. Nothing ever had.

  “Hand over them purses and we will not kill you,” one of the thieves demanded.

  The soldiers reached for their swords and fighting quickly ensued. One of the soldiers managed to take down a thief, but Bennett’s men had had too much to drink and they were weary. As a result, the four bigger thieves soon overtook them.

  Torin watched two of the soldiers fall to their knees and the third lose his sword. He waited another moment until it seemed hopeless for the soldiers to come out of the encounter alive.

  He stepped forward out of the shadows and snapped his dark mantle over his shoulders. Reaching behind his back, he unsheathed his long blade and brought it down hard on one gaping thief, killing him where he stood. He turned for the next and twirled his wrist, making the blade dance at his command in the few shards of sunlight. It was the man who had stolen his brooch. The thief opened his mouth and pointed at him. Torin swiped his sword across his throat with one hand and reached for a dagger at his belt with the other. Before the man’s body hit the ground, Torin slipped his fingers to the small pouch hanging from the man’s belt, cut it free, and dropped it into his boot. He flung the dagger at the fourth robber and didn’t wait to see where it landed when he blocked a blow to his skull from the last.

  By this time, the soldiers had gained their feet and watched him smash the pommel of his sword into the brawny thief’s face and then swipe his blade across the man’s belly, bringing his knees to the dirt, and then, his face.

  With the last of them dead, Torin plunged his blade into the ground and leaned his hands on his thighs to breathe.

  “Stranger,” one of the soldiers said with awe in voice. “Who are you?”

  Torin looked up from his hands and smiled. “Sir Torin Gray. I seek an audience with the Warden of the Western March.”

  The soldiers stared at him and then shared a brief look with one another. “Why? What do you want?”

  “I want to fight in his garrison. Fight alongside his men.”

  Their eyes opened in surprise and…gladness. “You fight well, Sir Torin,” one said, stepping forward. He was the one who had killed the first thief. He was the oldest of the three, mayhap ten years older than Torin. His chin was strong, his shoulders wide, and his nose looked to have been broken numerous times. He bore six different scars on his face that were visible to Torin’s eye. Some of the scars were deeper than others. “I’m Rob Adams, this is Sir John Linnington, and Geoffrey Mitchell.”