Read Chapter 9: The Hidden Pass

The rain had turned the mountain track to slurry by the time Thorne called a halt. Callum stood at the head of the column, twenty redcoats strung out behind him like beads on a snapped necklace, their boots sucking at the mud. He had led them up through the birch woods and onto the high shoulder of Ben Clach, where the wind cut through wool and skin alike, and where the old deer trails twisted into a maze only a fool would follow blind.

Thorne rode up beside him, horse lathered despite the cold. "Well, MacRae? You said you saw smoke. I see nothing but rock and mist."

Callum kept his eyes on the ridgeline, where the clouds had begun to tear apart. "I saw it, sir. An hour past, on the far side of the pass. A fire burns low if they mean to hide. This one burned high and careless, like a camp of men who think themselves safe."

It was a lie. He had seen no smoke. But Rab's plan required Thorne to believe the rebels were here, tucked into the hidden fold of Glen Sgail, where the old drove road pinched between two cliffs and the scree slopes hung ready to fall on any man below.

Thorne studied him. That look again—the one that said *I do not trust you, but I need you*. "The maps show no pass through here."

"There is a pass. The English maps don't mark it, because the English never needed it." Callum kept his voice flat, deferential. "The rebels use it to move between the glens. If they're caching powder for the spring, it will be there. They'll have a guard, but not a strong one. They won't expect us to come at them from above."

Thorne's jaw worked. He was a patient man, Callum would give him that. Most English officers would have ordered the column forward or back by now, but Thorne weighed his choices like a merchant counting coin. The trap at Loch Lagan depended on drawing Thorne here, to this pass, at this hour. If Callum misjudged the timing, the landslide would bury redcoats and rebels alike—and himself with them.

"Very well." Thorne raised his hand to the column. "Forward. Quiet as you can. MacRae, you take point. If this pass is a lie, you'll walk back to Inverness in chains and your brother will rot in that cell until the war is over."

Callum nodded and turned up the track. The storm had stripped the last of the year's bracken to brown stalks, and the rocks gleamed wet as old bone. He moved fast, more comfortable on the hill than any of the soldiers behind him, and he used the speed to put distance between himself and their clatter. Ahead, the pass narrowed to a throat of stone. He had played here as a boy, hunting ptarmigan with his father. He knew where the old rock face had already cracked, where the winter frosts had pried the cliffs apart until they hung by a thread of faith.

Rab's men were up there now. Callum could not see them, would not see them until the first boulder came down. He was to be below, inside the trap, close enough to the British that his survival would seem a miracle of luck. Rab had insisted on it.

*They must not believe you were warned. You must feel the ground shake like the rest of them.*

The pass swallowed the column. Sheer walls rose forty feet on either side, water streaming down their faces. Callum slowed, letting the soldiers bunch behind him, letting Thorne ride up into the narrow heart of it. The captain's horse skittered, ears flat.

"Quiet," Thorne hissed. "Keep the men tight."

Callum heard it then. A sound like thunder, but wrong—too close, too dry. The ground shifted beneath his boots, and the cliff to his left seemed to exhale, a great breath of stone and dust, before the whole face of it came away in a roar.

Men shouted. Horses screamed. A redcoat ahead of him vanished under a wave of scree, and Callum threw himself sideways into a notch in the rock, pressing his body flat as boulders the size of ale casks thundered past. Dust filled his throat. For a moment there was nothing but noise and the violent shudder of the earth.

Then silence, broken by the groans of buried men.

Thorne was on the ground, his horse gone, blood running from a gash above his eye. He dragged himself up, staring at the wall of broken rock that now sealed the pass behind them—and, more importantly, ahead of them. The way forward was choked with rubble, impossible for horses, brutal for men on foot.

Callum rose, dusted himself off, and made his way to Thorne's side. "Are you hurt, sir?"

Thorne's eyes were wild, scanning the cliffs above. "Ambush. They knew we were coming—they had the slope rigged to drop."

Callum shook his head, playing the bewildered guide. "No one could know. I saw no sign, no track. The rain will have loosened the rock. This face—I've seen it fall before. It's a killing place in the wet."

Thorne grabbed his coat, yanked him close. "You brought us here, MacRae. You swore this was the way."

"And it was the way. Until the mountain disagreed." Callum held the captain's gaze, letting his voice carry the worn patience of a man falsely accused. "If I meant to betray you, I would be running now. Where would I run to? The pass is down. My brother is in your jail. Your men are carrying casualties, and I'm the only one here who can guide them back by the low route."

Thorne held him another moment, then released him. He turned to survey the wreck of his column: two soldiers dead, three wounded, the rest shaken and covered in grey dust. The pass to Glen Sgail was gone, sealed under ten feet of shattered stone.

"Fall back," Thorne said. "We return to Inverness. And God help you, MacRae, if I find this was more than the weather."

Callum helped lift a wounded man onto a stretcher improvised from muskets and coats. He kept his head down, his movements efficient. The redcoats around him cursed the mountain, the rain, the whole cursed country. None of them looked at the high ground. None of them saw the figure that moved along the ridgeline, watching the column retreat, before turning and loping east toward the rebel camp in the deep woods.

---

The scout found Eilidh at dusk, in the lean-to she shared with two other women on the edge of the rebel encampment. She was mending a bridle, her fingers quick and black with leather oil, and she did not look up when he delivered his report.

"A fall of stone in the pass. The English are turned back. Their dead are in the rock."

"The hunter?" Eilidh asked.

"He was at the front. He threw himself into the notch as the cliff came down. When the dust cleared, he stood and helped them carry their wounded."

Eilidh set the bridle aside. She had watched Callum MacRae ride with the patrol that had killed Fergus. She had seen him walking free under a British flag while rebel blood still soaked the heather. And yet—

"He survived," she said slowly. "The rock falls when the column is deep inside. The English lose men, and their captain's trust is shaken. And the man who led them there walks away with a few scratches."

The scout nodded. "It was well done. The timing was perfect."

"Too perfect." Eilidh rose, pulling her shawl tight against the cold. "Find Rab. Tell him the hunter has kept his word. And tell him I want to meet this man myself. Before I believe he is anything but a clever liar."

---

Callum reached Inverness after midnight. The castle gates had been closed for hours, but the guard knew him now, let him through with a grunt. He found Thorne in the officers' quarters, his head bandaged, a bottle of French wine open on his desk.

The captain looked up as Callum entered. "The surgeon says two dead. One of them was a boy of nineteen, a ploughman's son from Derbyshire. He told me he joined to see the world."

Callum said nothing.

Thorne poured himself another glass. "I have been in this country for a year, MacRae. I have seen the mountains shift, the rivers flood, the weather turn murderous without warning. But I have never seen a cliff fall with such convenient timing."

"It was a wet autumn."

"It was." Thorne set the glass down. "You understand that if I ever learn otherwise, I will not hang you. I will take your brother and shoot him in the yard before your eyes. Then I will hang you beside his corpse."

Callum felt the words land like cold iron in his chest. He kept his face still. "You'll learn nothing, because there is nothing to learn. The mountain fell. The patrol is home. I did my duty."

Thorne studied him for a long moment. Then he nodded, a slow, almost sad motion. "Go. See your brother. Tell him the weather has been hard on English soldiers. It may comfort him."

Callum turned for the door. His heart was pounding, but he walked steady. In the morning he would visit Duncan with bread and cheese and a lie about the pass. In the meantime, he had a name to remember: Derbyshire, nineteen, ploughman's son. One more he would carry.