Read Chapter 2: Tracks in the Heather

The heather was still wet with dawn when Callum left the village, and the soldiers’ boots had churned the path to mud. Ivor walked a half-step behind him, close enough that Callum could smell the man’s stale sweat and the oil on his musket. The scout was young—younger than Duncan—with pale eyes that never seemed to blink.

“You know these hills,” Ivor said. It wasn’t a question.

“I know the deer trails,” Callum replied. “The rebels will use them. The deer are too stupid to hide a secret.”

Ivor grunted. He had a knife at his belt and a pistol in his coat, and he kept his hand near both. Callum had seen the type before—men who thought a weapon made them wiser than the land they walked on.

They climbed past the loch’s eastern shore, where the pines thinned and the ground turned to scree. Callum moved slowly, deliberately, letting his eyes drift to a game trail that angled west through the birch grove. A mile beyond that grove lay the old MacInnes bothy, abandoned since the Clearances but still used by men who needed a dry roof and a place to keep secrets.

He didn’t look at it.

“The Grey Fox,” Callum said, spitting into the moss. “I’ve heard the name, but no one’s seen his face. Hard to track a ghost.”

“Captain Thorne says you’re the best tracker in the shire,” Ivor said. “So track.”

Callum crouched, running his fingers over a broken stem of heather. “Here. Something heavy passed through last night. Two men, maybe three, heading north.”

It was true. Two men *had* passed that way—but they were shepherds checking on strays, clumsy men who dragged their feet and left scuff marks a child could follow. Callum had seen their boot prints an hour ago and had walked past them to find this.

Ivor bent low, squinting at the ground. He saw the scuff, the crushed stems, the way the moss had been kicked aside. He nodded. “How old?”

“Since before the rain stopped,” Callum lied. The rain had ended at midnight; the shepherds had passed at dusk. “They’ll be tired. Camped somewhere in the high corrie.”

“Then we go north.”

“We go *carefully*,” Callum said. “North is steep. If they see us coming up the valley, they’ll scatter before we get within musket shot.”

Ivor’s lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t like being told what to do by a Scot, but he liked the idea of losing his quarry even less. “Fine. Lead, but don’t think you can wander us off a cliff.”

Callum led him north, along the ridge, taking a route that wound through dead ground and hollows—places a man could hide, but also places that slowed a man’s pace. He stopped often, pretending to read the ground, and each time Ivor grew more impatient, more convinced the rebels were just over the next rise.

They crested a bare shoulder of rock at midday. Far below, the glen opened green and wide. A stream cut through it, and beside the stream, a scatter of stone walls marked the ruins of a croft abandoned twenty years ago.

No one there. No smoke, no movement, no sound but the wind.

Ivor’s eyes narrowed. “They’re not here.”

“They were,” Callum said, pointing at a faint depression in the grass near the stream. “But they saw us on the ridge an hour back. They’ve moved on.”

“You let them see us.”

“I let *them* think they saw us,” Callum said. “If they believe we’re heading into the high corrie, they’ll run for the pass. But a rabbit doesn’t run from a fox unless it’s cornered—it moves slow, waits, hides. If we want to catch them, we need to be slower than they think we are.”

Ivor glared, but he didn’t argue. He was a soldier, not a hunter, and he knew it.

They made camp beneath an overhang of rock as the sun slid toward the western peaks. Callum built a small fire in the shelter of the stones, careful to keep the smoke low and scattered. Ivor sat with his back to the cliff, musket across his knees, watching the darkening glen.

“You have a brother,” Ivor said.

Callum’s hands stilled over the fire. “I do.”

“The prisoner. Duncan.”

“I know the name of my own brother.”

Ivor’s mouth twitched—not a smile, but a sneer held back. “Thorne’s holding him in the kirk. You bring back the Grey Fox’s head, the boy walks free. If you don’t—” He shrugged, the musket shifting on his knees. “A man’s neck is a fragile thing.”

Callum watched the fire. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” Ivor leaned forward. “Because the way you moved today—circling, stalling, making camp while we could’ve pushed on—it felt like you were dragging your feet.”

“You want to track a man who’s spent years in these hills,” Callum said, “you follow his rhythm. Push too hard, he goes to ground and you get nothing. That’s not dragging feet. That’s hunting.”

Ivor stared at him a moment longer, then leaned back. “Just make sure you’re hunting the right thing.”

The fire crackled. Callum fed it another piece of dried birch and watched the sparks spiral up into a sky heavy with stars.

He couldn’t sleep with Ivor’s eyes on him, so he sat in the shadow of the rock, listening to the night. Around midnight, when Ivor’s breathing evened out and his hand slipped off the musket, Callum rose and moved a few paces away, as if to relieve himself.

The old clansman stepped out of the dark like he was part of it. Fergus was wiry and gray, with a face weathered to leather and eyes that missed nothing. He’d been a poacher and a storyteller in the village before the soldiers came, and Callum knew he knew every path and pitfall within twenty miles.

“You led them wide today,” Fergus said, voice barely a whisper. “Caught that redcoat’s notice doing it.”

“I led them true,” Callum said. “Just not to the bothy.”

“Good.” Fergus’s eyes flicked toward the sleeping scout. “There’s a letter for you at the old wall by the blackthorn where the red stag drank. Bird brought it before dawn.”

Callum’s jaw tightened. “From who?”

“From those who would see the Grey Fox freed, not hanged.”

The words hung in the cold air. Callum shook his head. “I’m not a rebel. I never was. I’m just trying to keep my brother alive.”

“And what do you think your brother is?” Fergus’s voice sharpened. He stepped closer, so close Callum could smell the earth and peat on him. “You think Duncan’s only crime is being young and stubborn? You think Thorne dragged him off for carrying bread to his auntie?”

“He carries letters,” Callum said. “I know. Thorne told me. But letters for who?”

Fergus laughed—a dry, rattling sound. “You still don’t see it, do you, boy? Your brother’s not some petty courier. Duncan’s been running messages for the Grey Fox himself for near a year. He’s one of the Fox’s best. That’s why Thorne took him. That’s why Thorne’s holding him like bait.”

The words hit like a kick to the chest. Callum stood frozen, thinking of Duncan—his quick laugh, his restless feet, the way he’d vanish for days and come back with mud on his boots and a story about fishing.

“You’re lying,” Callum said.

“I’m not.” Fergus’s voice softened, almost kind. “I know it’s hard to hear. But you need to know what you’re bargaining for, Callum. If you bring Thorne the Grey Fox’s head, you’ll be killing the man your brother’s been fighting for. And Duncan will know it. He’ll know it the day you walk him out of that kirk.”

Callum’s fists clenched. His father’s sword hung in the rafters of the family cottage, and his father’s knife lay buried beneath the hearthstone—old things, kept hidden for a reason he never fully understood.

“Go back to the village,” Fergus said, already stepping into the dark. “Read the letter. Then decide what kind of man you are.”

He was gone before Callum could answer.

Callum stood alone in the cold, the fire at his back, the wind cutting down from the peaks. He looked east, toward the village, where Duncan sat in chains in the drafty kirk.

And for the first time, he wasn’t sure what he’d find when he opened his brother’s eyes.