Read Chapter 13: The Wounded Loyalty

The smoke still hung in the glen when Callum crawled out from behind the dead horse. His ears rang with the echo of muskets and the screams of men who would not scream again. Around him, the remnants of Thorne’s column scattered like startled game—some dragging wounded comrades, others simply running, their discipline shattered by the rebel fire that had poured down from both ridges.

Callum wiped blood from his brow. Not his own. Corporal Vance’s, who had fallen beside him with a ball through the throat. The man had been nineteen, from Devon, with a sweetheart’s letter in his pocket Callum had glimpsed when they’d searched the body for any last orders.

He hated himself for noticing that detail. For cataloguing the dead.

“MacRae!” Thorne’s voice cut through the smoke like a blade. The captain had found his feet, his fine red coat torn at the shoulder, his face black with powder and something darker—rage. “What in God’s name did they know? How did they know?”

Callum rose slowly. He had sent Eilidh’s runner into the dark with the warning barely an hour before the column moved. He had watched the lad slip between pines like a ghost. The ambush had been waiting, patient, perfectly placed. Too perfectly placed. They had known the exact route, the exact hour, nearly the exact number of men.

*Because someone told them,* Callum thought. *Because I told them.*

“The scouts missed a trail,” Callum said, his voice hollow. “Or they shifted their positions when they saw our fires. Rebels know these hills.”

Thorne crossed the distance in four strides. He grabbed Callum by the collar and hauled him close, the grip of a man who had spent months of frustration curdling into suspicion.

“You are supposed to know these hills,” Thorne hissed. “You are the hunter. The tracker. The one man I trusted to lead us through that pass clean. And we walked into a killing ground.” He released Callum with a shove. “Corporal Gray counted nine dead. Two more won’t see morning. We lost the supply mules. And the rebel leadership—the men we were sent to crush—are gone. Vanished.”

Callum held the captain’s gaze. He had known this moment might come. He had prepared lies, half-truths, excuses. Now, with his brother’s life balanced against his own neck, he found the words came easier than he expected.

“They abandoned the ground the moment we entered,” Callum said. “You saw it. The fires went up all at once. That isn’t intelligence—that’s timing. They had pickets posted. We moved slow with the mules. Sound travels in these walls.”

Thorne studied him for a long moment. The captain’s hand hovered near his pistol, and Callum knew his life hung in that hesitation. Thorne could shoot him where he stood—claim he died fighting. No one would question it. A Highlander, a Judas, a convenient casualty.

But Thorne did not draw.

“You led us true before,” Thorne said, the words tasting like gall. “You have given me Sassenach scum to hang. I want to believe you are still useful.” He stepped back, straightened his coat with soldier’s habit. “But I will not risk my men on your word again. Effective immediately, you are stripped of your tracking role. You will serve under Corporal Gray. Your duties will be the ones no one else wants.” He let the words hang. “Latrine pits. Burial details. Fetching wood.”

Callum felt the rank of sergeant fall from him like a mantle sliding off his shoulders. The men around him—those who had once looked to him for direction, for the knowledge that kept them alive—now stared with a mixture of contempt and pity.

“And you will wear those duties until I decide otherwise,” Thorne finished. “Or until I have proof enough to hang you.” He turned and walked toward the wounded, leaving Callum alone among the living and dead.

The burial detail took the rest of the afternoon. Callum dug the graves with his bare hands until the blisters broke and bled, and Sergeant Boyd—a grizzled veteran who had never trusted Callum—finally tossed him a shovel.

“Weenie do it faster with the spade,” Boyd muttered. “Don’t think this changes anything, MacRae. I’m watchin’ you.”

Callum nodded. He had shoveled dirt onto a dozen men he had led to their deaths. He did not know their names. He did not want to.

By nightfall, camp was a sullen, exhausted remnant of the column that had marched out that morning. The fires burned low, the men too tired or too bitter to eat. Callum sat apart, his hands raw, his mind a wild storm.

He had warned Eilidh. He had saved the rebel leadership. Duncan, his brother, now sat in a cell somewhere awaiting an execution that would come because Callum had chosen the cause over the blood.

*No,* Callum told himself. *Duncan chose. Duncan turned informant. Duncan sent Annabel to the rebels and sold her for coin.*

But guilt did not care for logic. Guilt sat on his chest like a weight and whispered: *You could have saved him. You chose another way.*

The night was cold, the moon thin, when Corporal Gray came to find him. Gray was a short, sharp man from the Borders who had once been Callum’s subordinate. Now he held the role Callum had lost.

“MacRae,” Gray said, not unkindly. “Word came from Inverness. Captain wants you to know.”

Callum’s stomach turned. “Duncan.”

Gray nodded. “He’s been moved from the local holding. Orders came from the major general’s office after the disaster today. They want all prisoners with information in the main gaol at Inverness. Trial to be set within the fortnight.”

The fortnight. Fourteen days. Callum felt the clock begin to tick.

“What’s the charge?” Callum asked, though he knew.

“Treason and collusion with rebels,” Gray said. He hesitated, then added, “They say he’s been spying for you, MacRae. For the rebels. They say he sold out the English girl, the factor’s daughter, to raise coin for the cause. That’s how they read it.”

Callum remembered Annabel’s face in the burned cottage—her terror, her fury. Duncan had sent her to warn the rebels, then betrayed her. But to whom? For what? Duncan’s motive was a knot Callum could not untangle.

“He’ll hang,” Gray said quietly. “If the trial goes against him. The commander is making an example. After today, after the ambush, they need a message sent.” He studied Callum with something close to pity. “Your brother is the message.”

Callum thanked Gray, and the corporal left. For a long while, Callum sat staring at the ashes of the fire. He saw Duncan as a boy, chasing rabbits across the moor, laughing at nothing at all. He saw Duncan in the gaol, thinned and hard-eyed, manipulating him with words, playing a game Callum could not see.

*What are you plotting, brother? What did you gain from sending Annabel into the arms of those men? What are you willing to sacrifice?*

Guilt and love warred in Callum’s chest. He had chosen to warn Eilidh. He had chosen his brother’s death. And yet—was that the choice Duncan had wanted? Had Callum played directly into his hands?

The questions had no answers, only the weight of grave dirt on his hands.

The next morning, Callum reported for latrine duty. The pits reeked with the sickness of frightened men, and he worked in silence, piling lime over the waste, trying not to think of the brother who sat in an Inverness cell waiting to die.

He was shoveling the last of the lime when young Private Wills came running, breathless and pale. “MacRae,” Wills gasped, “you’re wanted. The captain—Thorne—he’s called an assembly.”

Callum dropped the shovel. He followed Wills to the camp’s center, where Thorne stood on a cart bed, addressing the remnants of his command. The captain’s voice was clipped, by-the-book.

“We have suffered a defeat,” Thorne announced. “A defeat caused by intelligence failure, but also by treachery.” His eyes swept the crowd until they caught Callum’s. “I have no proof,” he said, the words aimed like a blade, “but I have suspicions. And suspicion is enough for me to ensure that no one man holds our fate in their hands again.”

He outlined a new strategy. Reinforcements, moving in secret. A new tracker from Glasgow, arriving tomorrow, a man who did not know the hills or the people. Thorne did not glance at Callum again.

Callum stood in the ranks, a private man again, his rank stripped, his reputation ash. Around him, the men shifted away subtly, as though his sin might be contagious. He saw Corporal Vance’s empty place, seen only in the dead eyes of his comrades who had been his brothers.

And in his mind, he saw Duncan’s face as it had been in the cell— sharp, watchful, calculating. He saw the smile that had chilled him.

*You warned the rebels,* Duncan’s imagined voice mocked. *You chose them. You sent me to the noose. Was it worth it, brother? Will they thank you while my body twists in the wind?*

Callum had no answer. He had only the certainty that he would not let Duncan hang without understanding the game his brother was playing. He would go to Inverness. He would face Duncan. He would unearth the truth even if it buried them both.

The afternoon passed in dull labour. The latrines were dug, the fires set for the cook, the wood hauled until Callum’s shoulders screamed. He worked without complaint, methodical, patient. He had been a hunter before he was a soldier. He knew how to wait.

As evening fell, the camp settling into its routine of grief and caution, Major Scott from the quartermaster’s office approached Callum. The major was a thin man with glasses and a ledger that never left his hand.

“MacRae,” Scott said, “a message came for you in the baggage train.” He handed Callum a folded scrap of paper, sealed with a thumbprint of wax—no crest, no name.

Callum broke the seal and read. The handwriting was spidery, urgent, familiar.

*Duncan’s trial is set. He asks for you. He says he will only speak to his brother—that he has a confession that will change everything. Come alone. The price is your silence about Annabel.*

Callum read it twice. The price was a threat as much as a promise. Whoever had written knew of his involvement in Annabel’s rescue—and the lies he had told Thorne.

He folded the paper and slipped it into his coat.

“Nothing, sir,” he told the major. “Just family matters.”

Scott nodded and walked away, and Callum was left alone in the fading light. The camp smelled of death and duty. Somewhere in Inverness, Duncan sat in his cell, waiting.

*What confession?* Callum thought. *What truth could possibly set this right?*

He found his shovel and returned to work, because the orders were orders, and because he had nothing else to do until nightfall, when he would make a choice that would carry him across the rebellion’s heart.