Read Chapter 22: The Escaped Brother

The cold hit Callum’s lungs like a blade as he pressed his back to the timber wall of the guardhouse. Two o’clock. He’d counted the chimes from the church bell in the village below, muffled but unmistakable through the bracken and rain. He’d been here an hour, watching the sentry’s rounds. The man was drunk on cheap ale and would be more so by the time the replacement came.

Callum whispered a prayer he didn’t believe and slid along the wall to the side door. It was bolted, but the iron was rusted, the wood swollen with damp. He worked the blade of his dirk into the gap, leaned, and felt the bolt groan. He had one chance. The sentry at the front was singing—a slurred ballad about a maiden and a soldier. The melody covered the sound.

The bolt gave. The door swung inward.

Duncan was chained to a ring in the far wall, sitting on a mound of straw so thin it was more dirt than straw. His face lifted when the door opened, and for a moment, the brother Callum remembered came through—sharp-eyed, stubborn, unbroken. Then it faded, replaced by a man hollowed out by ten days in a cell.

“You came.” Duncan’s voice cracked.

“Don’t make me regret it.” Callum crossed the space in three strides, dropped to his knees, and examined the manacles. They were old naval irons, the lock a simple lever. He’d picked worse at county fairs when he was twelve. He worked the tip of his knife into the keyhole and felt the mechanism give with a click that was too loud in the small room.

The first manacle fell. Duncan shook his wrist, wincing.

“Your leg,” Callum said, looking at the swelling around Duncan’s ankle. It was the color of spoiled beef. “Can you walk?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Walk, or manage?” Callum helped him up, took his weight when Duncan swayed. “I’ll carry you if I must. Damn it, Duncan, you’re lighter than I remember.”

“They feed you less than you’d like in a cage.”

Callum bit back the retort. Now was not for blame. Now was for motion.

They made it through the door and into the dark, rain-soaked night. Callum kept them low, following the path he’d scouted—behind the cookhouse, past the latrines, through the gap in the thorn hedge the soldiers thought impassable. Duncan limped but held his silence except for the sharp hiss of air when his ankle turned on a root.

When they were clear of the camp’s torch-light and into the first stand of pine, Callum exhaled, but did not slow. They climbed the glen’s east shoulder, following a goat track he knew from boyhood. The rain came in sheets, washing away their scent from any dogs that might be set on them.

They pushed on for two hours until the land broke into the stony faces of the lower hills. Callum found the cave he remembered—a narrow slit in the rock face, barely visible behind a curtain of ivy. He shrugged Duncan inside first, then crawled in after him. The air was stale but dry. He pulled out his flint and steel, and within minutes had a small fire going with dead sticks he’d kept wrapped in oilskin.

Duncan lay against the wall, his face white and beaded with sweat.

“Let me see the leg,” Callum said.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. You’re shaking.”

Duncan tried to wave him off, but Callum took the ankle anyway, cutting away the sodden trouser with his dirk. The wound wasn’t the swelling—it was a gash along the muscle, deep and already festering, the edges raw and black. The chains had done that.

“Christ, Duncan. This didn’t come from chains.”

“I tried to fight them when they first took me.”

“You fought? You’re a spy for the crown and you fought them?”

“I wasn’t arrested as a spy.” Duncan’s laugh was bitter. “I was arrested as a rebel. Same charge as you’d get if Thorne had proof. They don’t know what I am. If they did, I’d be dead, not imprisoned.”

Callum took a strip from his own shirt, wetted it with their water skin, and cleaned the wound as best he could. Duncan’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t cry out.

“I need to sew it.”

“Then sew it.”

Callum had a curved needle and thread in his kit. He’d used it on deer and on himself once, after a boar catch went wrong. He held the needle to the flame of the small fire until the steel glowed dull red, then set to work. Duncan watched the ceiling of the cave, jaw tight, fists clenched against the rock.

When Callum finished and bound the leg with a fresh strip, Duncan let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

“You’ve gotten good at that.”

“Needed to be.” Callum sat back from the fire, letting it crackle low between them. “Now tell me what you promised. Everything. Before I put myself further into madness.”

Duncan’s eyes were half-closed, but he forced them open. He reached into his tunic—the one Callum had thrown over him—and pulled out a folded oilskin packet. The paper inside was damp but legible. A list of names. Eight of them. Officers, by the rank next to each.

“What is this?”

“The names of British officers who ride with us. Sympathizers. Men who would turn their coats if the right wind blew.”

Callum stared at the list. He recognized two of the names. Both captains. One had a command at Inverness. The other was a cavalry officer whose father owned half of Sutherlandshire.

“How do you know these men?”

“Because I was to be their contact.” Duncan’s voice was fading, thinner with each word. “My work for the British was to steer the rebels away from a massacre. But I was also working them. The ones who want peace. Who know the rising is doomed and don’t want to see the Highlands burned.”

“You said you were a double agent for the crown.”

“I said I was a double agent. The crown believes I’m theirs. The rebels believe I’m theirs. In truth…” Duncan coughed, wet and ragged. “In truth, I was trying to stop it all. Before it buries us all.”

Callum sat back. The fire popped; a spark hissed out onto the stone floor.

“Thorne believes you’re his.”

“Thorne believes in nothing but Thorne. He used me to get to the rebels. I used him to get to the code book. I was planning to take it myself before you beat me to it.” Duncan half-smiled. “You stole it out from under me.”

“You knew about that?”

“I read the way Thorne walked the morning after. He was furious, but he was also smug. Because he had the code book, and without it, the map was worthless.”

“He said that to you?”

“Not to me. To his sergeants. I heard it through the wall of the room where they held me before the transfer to the guardhouse. I was in the tent next to his command post for two days. They didn’t think I was listening.”

Callum studied his brother. He had grown thin, but the eyes—the eyes were hard and old. This was not the boy who had chased him through the heather, shrieking with laughter. This was a man who had spent years learning the art of masks.

“Why did you do it, Duncan?”

“Do what?”

“Betray everyone.”

Duncan turned his face away, toward the darkness of the cave.

“Because I tried to imagine a world where your side wins. Do the rebels have a chance? You’ve seen their number. You’ve seen how they’re armed. You know it in your gut, Callum. I saw the same thing. I tried to warn them, but they don’t listen to reason when they can hear tradition.” He coughed again, harder this time. “I couldn’t stand by and let them walk into Thorne’s trap. So I walked into it myself. Every step I took was to slow him down. Give them time to think. Give them another path.”

“But you gave them to him. Names. Movements. Plans.”

“I gave him names of men I knew were already compromised. Men who were worse than useless. Men who would have destroyed the cause from within.” Duncan’s hand reached for Callum’s wrist, grip surprisingly strong. “I gave Thorne the rot and kept the timber. Don’t you see? I played him. I played everyone. Because if I did it right, no one would have to die for a lost cause.”

Callum’s throat was tight. “And Laird MacLeod? Eilidh’s father? They took him because of something you told Thorne.”

Duncan closed his eyes.

“I told Thorne the wrong route. I gave him a dead end. He took the Laird because the man knew the supply lines, not because I gave him up. I was meant to steer him away.” Duncan’s voice cracked. “I didn’t know Thorne would take a hostage. He wasn’t supposed to take anyone. That was not part of the plan.”

“What plan?” Callum said, hating how desperate his voice sounded. “There is no plan, Duncan. There’s just you, playing chess with people’s lives, and acting like that makes you wiser than the rest of us.”

Duncan opened his eyes, and for the first time, they were wet.

“I was trying to save you,” he whispered. “You’re my brother. I was trying to save you.”

Callum said nothing. The fire between them hissed and cracked. Rain drummed on the rock above.

Duncan began to shiver. The tremors ran through him like wind through dead grass. Callum moved closer, pulled his oilskin around his brother’s shoulders, and added another stick to the fire.

“Talk to me,” Duncan said, his voice barely audible now. “Tell me about home.”

“Home is gone. You know that.”

“Then tell me about the river.”

And Callum did. He talked about the river at the bottom of the glen—the one where they had caught trout as boys, the one where Duncan had fallen in and Callum had pulled him out, save for the bruises and the scraped pride. He talked until Duncan’s shivering eased, until his brother’s breathing slowed, until the cave was quiet except for the rain and the crackle of the fire and the sound of one man telling a story to a brother who no longer had the strength to listen.

Callum watched the rise and fall of Duncan’s chest. Slower. Slower. He pressed a hand to his brother’s forehead—burning hot, but Duncan was sleeping.

In his hand, the oilskin packet was still damp.

Callum unfolded it and read the names again in the flickering firelight.

Eight men.

Eight chances.

He folded them away and stared into the flames. His brother lay beside him, fever burning through him, wound seeping black through the bandage.

And Callum sat in the dark, holding the weight of what Duncan had given him, and knowing that he would carry it to the end, no matter how heavy it was.