Read Chapter 28: The Rebel Fire

The council chamber was a circle of hard faces and colder silence. Dawn had come and gone, and with it, the vote that had nearly been Callum's death warrant. Now the same men who had called for his neck looked at him with something between shame and desperate hope. The Laird's ring sat in the center of the oak table, glinting in the candlelight, and beside it lay Duncan's list and Thorne's letter.

Callum stood at the head of the table, not because he had claimed the place, but because no one else would take it.

"The English will march on this camp tomorrow at first light," he said, tapping Thorne's letter. "That gives us one day to do what we came here to do, or none of it will matter."

"Muster the clans," said Fergus, a broad-shouldered crofter who had been Rab's second. "We have near four hundred men within a day's ride."

"Four hundred against Thorne's regiment and whatever reinforcements he's summoned," Callum replied. "We'd be slaughtered on open ground, and you know it."

"Then we don't meet him on open ground," said Eilidh from the shadows. She stepped forward, mud still caked on her boots from her search of the eastern ridge. The council had barely acknowledged her return, too consumed by the vote, but Callum noted the fresh cut on her forearm and the way she held it close to her body.

She had found something. He would ask her later.

"The MacRaes have held these glens since before the English knew our names," she continued. "We know every crag, every bog, every place a horse will founder and a musket will jam. Let Thorne bring his regiment. We'll bleed him dry in the passes."

"Aye," said old Muir, nodding with his one good eye. "The hunter's war. Strike and vanish. That's how we've always fought."

Callum shook his head. "That's how we survive. It's not how we win."

The chamber erupted in protests, voices overlapping, fists pounding the table. Callum let the noise build for a moment, then slammed his palm down hard enough to rattle the ring.

"We don't have time for a prolonged campaign," he said. "Thorne's letter says the attack comes tomorrow. If we scatter into the hills, we abandon Inverness, we abandon the prisoners in the gaol, and we abandon Laird MacLeod to the gallows. The MacLeod name, the ring I carry, the list of officers who will turn when the moment comes—none of it means anything if the rebellion's heart is cut out before it beats."

Fergus crossed his arms. "Then what do you propose, hunter?"

"The prisoners are the key. A hundred and fifty men, women, and children in the gaol, and every one of them has kin who will rise when they're freed. If we break them out, we double our numbers overnight, and we give every clan in the Highlands a reason to commit."

"Break into Inverness gaol?" Fergus laughed bitterly. "The same gaol you entered alone and left alone, with the Laird still in his cell?"

That stung, and Callum let it show. "I went alone because I had no one I could trust. That changes today. The Laird refused to leave because he wanted me to unite you. He gave me his ring so that his name would open doors. I'm going to use it."

"You're going to walk into a British garrison wearing MacLeod's ring?"

"I'm going to walk into a British garrison wearing his ring," Callum said, "and I'm going to tell them that Laird MacLeod has agreed to a prisoner exchange. The English want the rebellion to end quietly. They'll believe an old man's final wish to see his people released before he swings."

"And when they check with the Laird?"

"They won't. MacLeod refused to meet with Thorne's officers. They'll assume he's bargaining through me."

Eilidh stepped closer, her eyes searching his face. "It's madness. You know they'll hang you the moment they realize the trick."

"They'll hang me anyway if I do nothing." He held her gaze. "You found something on the ridge."

It wasn't a question. She hesitated, then nodded slowly. "A firing position. Freshly used. Chalk marks on a rock, the kind a spotter makes to adjust range. And this." She pulled a brass button from her pocket, holding it up so the candlelight caught the embossed crown. "British regular. Line infantry. Not a sharpshooter's rig."

"Reeve might have worn a uniform coat to blend in," Callum said.

"He had an accomplice, then. Someone to spot for him, or someone who was meant to take the blame if he was caught." She pocketed the button. "Someone on this council might know something."

The murmurs resumed. Eyes flickered to the door where Rab's body had lain.

Callum cut through the noise. "That's a problem for after we free the prisoners. But it changes our plan. We don't have a day to sit and sniff out traitors. We move tonight."

"Tonight?" Fergus barked. "We need to gather our men, coordinate the approach—"

"We move tonight because the English won't expect it. More soldiers, in the dark." Callum looked around the table, meeting each man's eyes in turn. "But we're short on another thing, aren't we?"

The silence answered him.

"Gunpowder," Eilidh said quietly.

"We've enough to make noise, not to make war," said Muir. "Our last shipment from France was seized three weeks past. We've maybe forty barrels scattered among the caches."

"Forty barrels," Callum repeated. "That's half an hour of sustained fighting, assuming our marksmen don't waste a single shot. If we're going to take the gaol, hold the streets, and cover our retreat, we need three times that."

"The magazine at Castle Stuart," Fergus suggested.

"Too well guarded. They've doubled the sentries since the last attempt."

"There's another source," Callum said. "A supply convoy out of Fort Augustus, bound for the garrison at Inverness. I tracked it two days ago, before I found Thorne's letter. Twelve wagons, four of them powder. One hundred and twenty infantry and a pair of dragoons escorting."

"A hundred and twenty men for four wagons of powder?"

"That's how much they fear us. The powder is meant to resupply the garrison before they march on this camp. Thorne wrote it into his plan." Callum straightened. "I'll take a dozen men. We'll hit them at the Nine Mile Ford, where the road narrows and the wagons have to single-file."

"You? You just got off trial for murder, and you want to lead our men into an ambush?"

"I'm not asking anyone to trust me," Callum said. "I'm asking you to let me earn it."

The chamber fell quiet. Fergus looked at Eilidh, who gave a small nod. Old Muir stroked his beard.

"The ring is yours," Fergus said finally. "The Laird's authority goes with it. If you say we move, we move. But if you fail, if you don't come back, we're left with nothing."

"Then I'll come back."

He left the chamber before anyone could argue, Eilidh on his heels. The cold air hit him like a slap, and he realized how much the fire inside the room had been warming him.

"You're not going alone," she said.

"I'm not asking you to come."

"You don't have to. I'm coming anyway." She stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Callum. The button. I found something else."

He turned. She pulled a scrap of paper from inside her cloak, crumpled and stained with rain.

"It was tucked under a stone near the firing position. In a dead language."

She handed it to him. His fingers, cold as they were, recognized the script before his mind caught up. Latin. The same hand that had written the graveside inscription he'd carved for Duncan eleven years before.

His father's writing.

No. His father had been dead a decade. This had to be a copy, a forgery—

"Callum." Eilidh's voice cut through his shock. "What does it say?"

He read the words, and the ground seemed to shift under his feet.

*The stag that does not bleed for the hound will learn to run.*

"That's a warning," he said slowly. "A message meant for Thorne. Sent before we even found the camp. Someone in our ranks has been talking to him for longer than we thought."

"Who?"

He turned the scrap over. There was no signature, only a mark at the bottom. A single antler, scratched into the paper. The same mark he'd seen branded into his father's hunting knife—the one buried with his eldest son in the cave.

"Someone who knows my family," he said. "And wants me to know it."