Read Chapter 15: The Assassin's Shot

The heather was wet against Callum's belly, cold seeping through his plaid as he lay pressed into the shallow scrape he'd carved from the hillside. Below him, the Corrieyairack pass curved like a grey scar through the mountains, and the morning light was thin and pale, still struggling to burn off the mist that clung to the valley floor.

He'd been there since before dawn, since the stars were still sharp and the wind carried the smell of snow from the high peaks. His musket was loaded and primed, the stock warmed against his cheek. The range was just under two hundred yards—a difficult shot for most men, but Callum had been dropping red deer at such distances since he was fifteen. Major Harbottle's horse would crest the rise at the far bend, where the track narrowed between two granite outcrops. No cover there. No escape.

Callum's finger rested outside the guard. He counted his breaths. Slow. Steady. He thought of Duncan in a cell in Inverness, of Eilidh's cold eyes watching him leave the rebel camp, of the promise she had made: bring me Harbottle's blood, and I will bring you to your brother.

He did not let himself think of what it meant to kill a man from ambush. That reckoning could come later, after Duncan was free. If it ever came at all.

The sound reached him first—hooves on wet stone, the murmur of voices, the creak of saddle leather. Callum pressed his eye to the sights and watched the bend.

Harbottle's horse came around the outcrop at a brisk walk, a big bay gelding with a white blaze. The major sat it well, his scarlet coat crisp even in the grey morning light, his hat pulled low. Behind him rode four soldiers, and behind them—

Callum's breath caught.

A train of prisoners shuffled along the track, roped together at the wrists, their heads bowed. There were eight of them, maybe ten. Men in ragged plaids, women in tattered shawls, a boy no older than twelve stumbling to keep pace with a soldier's horse. And at the front of the line, limping on a leg that looked freshly wounded, was Iain MacLeod.

Annabel's father.

The old laird's face was ashen, a bruise blooming across his cheekbone, his fine coat torn and muddied. He moved with the rigidity of a man who had been beaten and was determined not to show it.

Callum's arms started to shake.

Harbottle reined in near the outcrop, and Callum heard his voice carry across the valley floor, impatient and cruel, a whip cracking against the air. "Move them faster. I want them in Fort Augustus before the midday meal."

One of the soldiers yanked the rope, and the boy stumbled, fell to his knees in the mud.

Callum saw the soldier raise his musket butt. He heard the thud of it against the boy's shoulder, heard the boy's cry cut short.

He could fire now. The target was stationary. The range was true. One shot and Major Harbottle's skull would paint the rocks red.

But if he fired, the soldiers would scatter. The prisoners—unarmed, roped, guarded—would be shot where they stood before they could run two feet. Iain MacLeod would be dead within a minute of Harbottle's fall.

Callum's knuckles whitened on the stock.

The boy was hauled to his feet. The column began to move again. Harbottle's bay horse took three steps. Four. Five.

*Take the shot*, a voice hissed in his skull. Eilidh's voice. Duncan's. His own.

But Callum thought of Annabel's face when he'd brought her back to her father, the way she'd clung to the old man's arm. He thought of what Iain MacLeod had done for the rebellion—the gold he'd funnelled from his estate, the barns he'd opened to fugitives, the letters he'd risked his neck to carry between clans.

Callum lowered the muzzle. The moment stretched, thin as a blade, and then the column moved past the outcrop and the angle was lost.

A choking sound escaped his throat. He scrambled in the scrape, re-aiming, desperate, but the shot was no longer clean. The prisoners were between him and Harbottle now. A single miss would kill a woman or the boy.

Callum slid his finger to the trigger anyway.

And then Harbottle glanced back over his shoulder, straight up the slope, as if some instinct had whispered danger to him. Callum saw his face clearly for the first time—a hard, narrow face, scarred along the jaw, with eyes as flat and grey as winter ice.

He pulled the trigger.

The crack of the musket split the morning. Callum felt the butt slam into his shoulder, tasted powder smoke on his tongue. Down below, a soldier screamed. Horses reared. The prisoners scattered, ropes tangling.

But Harbottle was still mounted.

The major had been sixty yards ahead of where Callum had aimed, still in the saddle, still alive, his face twisted toward the slope. The shot had taken the soldier behind him—the one who'd beaten the boy—square in the chest. The man toppled from his horse without a sound.

Callum was already moving, scrambling backward through the heather, stuffing his powder horn into his belt as shouts erupted below. A musket ball whined past his ear, close enough to tear a tuft of hair. He threw himself down the far slope, rolling, the world tumbling into a blur of sky and earth and stone, and then he was in the ravine, where the burn ran fast and white, and he plunged into the water without pausing to think.

The cold hit him like a blow. He went under, came up gasping, and pushed downstream, half swimming, half stumbling, the current carrying him away from the voices that were already spreading out along the ridge above.

He did not stop until the burn widened into a lochan, dark and still, ringed by pines. He dragged himself onto a gravel bank and lay there, chest heaving, the icy water soaking through his wool.

He had missed.

No—worse. He had *chosen* to miss. He had weighed Harbottle's life against the prisoners and found himself unable to pay the price. And now the major was alive, a soldier was dead, and the rebels would have nothing to show for the risk but suspicion.

Eilidh's words echoed in his skull: *If you fail me, Callum MacRae, you will never see your brother's face again.*

He had failed her. And Duncan would pay for it.

A sound from the treeline made him freeze. He eased his hand to the dirk at his belt, every muscle taut.

Two figures stepped out of the pines. Both wore rebel plaids, both carried muskets. One was the young man who'd offered Callum whiskey at the camp—the tracker from Glasgow, Eilidh's right hand.

He looked down at Callum lying in the mud, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Then you missed," he said. "The major rides back to Fort Augustus this very moment, swearing to hang the sniper from the nearest tree. He's got soldiers combing every glen from here to the Great Glen."

Callum pushed himself upright, water streaming from his clothes. "I didn't miss. I—"

"You hesitated." The tracker's voice was flat. "Eilidh said you might. She's not a woman who trusts easily, and you are not a man who kills easily. A bad combination."

Callum said nothing. His heart was still pounding, his hands still shaking.

The tracker glanced at his companion, then back at Callum. "It doesn't matter now. Word came this morning, just after you left. Duncan's trial has been moved up. It's in six days. And the new commander at Inverness has ordered that all rebel prisoners in the fort be transported to the docks for shipping to the colonies. MacLeod and his men go with them."

Callum's blood went cold.

"Six days," the tracker repeated. "Eilidh wants you back at the camp by nightfall. She says if you can't take a single clear shot, she'll find another use for you."

He turned and walked into the pines, and his companion followed.

Callum stood alone on the gravel bank, dripping, shivering, his musket useless in his hands. He had failed the rebels. He had failed Eilidh. And somewhere in Inverness, Duncan was counting the hours until a trial that would end with a rope around his neck.