Read Chapter 23: The Last Testament

The cave smelled of blood and rot. Duncan’s breathing had gone shallow in the night, each exhale a rattling struggle that Callum felt in his own chest. The fever had painted his brother’s face in shades of red and grey, sweat beading on a brow that burned like a peat fire.

Callum had not slept. He had watched the mouth of the cave, listened to the wind carry the distant bark of dogs, and held a wet cloth to Duncan’s forehead until his arm went numb. The guardhouse at Kilmorack would have discovered the empty cell by now. Captain Thorne would be pulling the countryside apart.

None of it mattered if Duncan died before he could speak again.

“Dinna leave me,” Duncan whispered, though his eyes were closed. “Dinna leave me, Callum. I didna mean… I only meant…”

“I’m here.” Callum gripped his brother’s hand. The knuckles were sharp as stones beneath his palm. “I’m here, Dunc. Stay with me.”

Duncan’s eyes opened. They were glassy, fever-bright, but they found Callum’s face with a terrible focus.

“The code book,” he said, his voice a dry scrape. “Thorne’s writing case. The false bottom. You lift the felt and there’s a brass lock. The key is on his watch chain, the small one, the one he thinks nobody sees.”

“I know. You told me.” Callum pressed the cloth to his brother’s forehead again. “Rest now.”

“No.” Duncan’s free hand shot out and seized Callum’s wrist. The grip was astonishing for a man burning alive. “Listen. The officers. The list. You must get it to MacLeod. He’ll know what to do with names. He’ll know who to trust.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Something in Duncan’s face loosened. He sank back against the bracken Callum had piled for him, breath whistling through cracked lips. “I thought I could save them,” he said, gazing at the cave ceiling. “Thorne had the list of every rebel sympathizer in the glen. He was going to hang them all, one by one, unless someone gave him a thread to pull. So I gave him one. Just one. And then another. Each time I fed him a name, I made sure it was a decoy—a man he’d already suspected, a route he’d already guessed. I steered him in circles. I kept the real movement hidden.”

“But Angus MacTavish is dead,” Callum said quietly. “And the cooper Fergus was arrested at the fair. Those were not decoys.”

Duncan’s eyes closed. A tear escaped from the corner, tracing a path through grime and sweat. “I did not know about MacTavish until it was done. Thorne worked around me. He had other informants. I could not stop them all.” His voice cracked. “I tried, Callum. I swear on Mother’s grave. I tried.”

Callum had no answer. The rage that had lived in his chest since the arrest had dulled into something heavier, a stone that sat behind his ribs and would not shift. He had wanted to hate Duncan. He had wanted a clean, simple betrayal to rage against. Instead he had a dying brother who had played a terrible game and lost pieces that were never his to spend.

The rattle in Duncan’s chest deepened. His hand convulsed around Callum’s wrist.

“The uprising,” Duncan gasped. “It will fail. You know it will fail. The British have cannon and discipline and Thorne’s cruelty. The rebels have heart and hunger and not enough powder. If you cannot turn it, if you cannot find enough of Thorne’s own men to refuse their orders, then… then promise me you will run.”

“I will not run.”

“Callum.”

“I will not run.” Callum leaned close until his forehead nearly touched Duncan’s. “I will carry your list to MacLeod. I will steal Thorne’s code book and I will read his plans and I will find a way to give the rebels a fighting chance. That is my promise. And when it is done, I will come back for you.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Duncan’s face. “You always did hate losing.”

“Aye.”

“Will you say it?” Duncan’s voice had dropped to almost nothing. “Say you do not hate me. Say you understand why I did what I did. I need to hear it before I go.”

Callum’s throat closed. He held his brother’s hand and watched the life gutter in his eyes like a candle starving for air.

“I understand,” he said. “I do not hate you. I never could.” It was true, and it cost him more than any lie ever had. “You were trying to save the Highlands the only way you knew. It was not enough. But you tried.”

Duncan’s lips moved. “Tell Eilidh…”

“Tell her yourself when you see her.”

“Tell her,” Duncan insisted, his voice a thread, “that I am sorry. For everything. For the fear and the waiting and the brother she will not have. Tell her I loved her like a sister. Tell her to keep you alive. She is stubborn. She will manage it.”

Callum laughed, a broken sound that was half sob. “She will certainly try.”

Duncan’s eyes fixed on something beyond the cave roof. “Malcolm,” he breathed. “Father. I see… the loch. The boat. We are going fishing. It is a fine day. It is a fine day, Callum.”

His hand went slack.

The breath that left him was soft, almost a sigh, and then there was nothing. The rattle stopped. The chest stilled. The fever-bright eyes stared at the stone above, seeing nothing at all.

Callum sat for a long time in the silence. He held his brother’s hand until the flesh grew cold beneath his palm, and only then did he allow himself to weep. The tears came hard and silent, wrenching out of him in jagged breaths that echoed off the cave walls. He had carried Duncan from the guardhouse on his back. He had cut away his brother’s shirt and packed the wound with moss. He had believed, somehow, that if he could just get Duncan somewhere safe, the fever would break and the brother he remembered would come back.

But the brother he remembered had died long before this cave. Maybe years ago, under the weight of Thorne’s threats and the impossible arithmetic of survival. What Callum had buried in the past hour was only the last echo of a man who had already lost himself.

He did not have a shovel. He used his dirk and his bare hands, scraping a shallow grave in the soft earth behind a screen of gorse, far enough from any path that no dog would find it. He laid Duncan in it and folded his hands over his chest. The list of officers was tucked inside Duncan’s shirt, a folded scrap of paper stained with sweat.

“You tried,” Callum said to the grave, his voice raw. “That is more than most men do. Rest now, Dunc. I will finish what you started. I will not let your names be wasted.”

He packed the earth down with his palms and covered the mound with bracken and stones until it looked like nothing but the forest floor. He did not mark it. No marker was safe. But he memorized the shape of the tree above it, the way the roots twisted at the base, the small white stone half-buried in the moss. He would find this place again, if he lived. And if he did not live, he would at least have died trying to honor what his brother had given him.

The wind outside had picked up. Grey light filtered through the cave entrance—morning, or near enough. Thorne would be hunting by now, his redcoats beating the hills in a tightening net. Callum had no horse, no food, no weapons beyond his dirk and the hunting knife at his belt. He had a list of eight officers who might be turned, a brother’s ghost, and a promise that burned like a brand in his chest.

He checked the paper once, memorizing as many names as he could in the weak light. Lieutenant Ross. Major Whitfield. Colonel Auchinleck’s second, a man called Grantly. The names meant nothing to him yet. To Laird MacLeod they would mean something. Or so Duncan had sworn.

Callum folded the paper and tucked it inside his own shirt, next to his heart. He would take it to MacLeod. He would find the old laird and put Duncan’s names and Thorne’s code book together, and he would give the rebels the only weapon that mattered now—information. If Thorne’s own officers refused their orders, the British command would crumble. It was the thinnest of threads. It was the only thread he had left.

Before he left the cave, he looked back once at the grave. The bracken had already settled, as if the earth had accepted its gift.

“I will come back,” Callum said. “When it is done, I will come back and I will tell you how it ended.”

He turned his face to the grey sky and began to walk toward the rebel camp, carrying his brother’s last testament against his heart.