Page 5 of Highlander's Escaped Prisoner
I will show them,she thought mutinously.
Fortunately, there was a full moon that night, and while it was as bright as day, it gave enough light for her to see the path ahead of her quite clearly, and the man who was running on it.
“Halt!” she shouted as loudly as she could, readying her bow. The man glanced over his shoulder but did not slow down. She could see that he was limping, and she was gaining on him with every one of Jo’s long strides. “Stop, or I will shoot you!” she cried. They were approaching the River Baldoon, and soon the man would be forced to stop or slow down, but she had no wish to be soaked, so she loosed an arrow into the air, and it embedded itself in the ground ten feet in front of him.
3
The man was lying, winded and in pain, when Nessa finally caught up with him. After making sure that he was no threat to her, she ordered him to his feet.
“Get up, please, and tell me your business,” she ordered. She was startled to see that he was towering over her. She raked him with a glance from head to foot and back again. He looked utterly pathetic, but she could see that he was powerfully built, although he was dressed in rags and looked for all the world like a scarecrow. He had shoulder-length, straggly dark hair and a thick dark beard that reached to his chest; he had obviously not shaved in years, and his face was encrusted in dirt. Despite herself, she felt sorry for him. She was sure that underneath all that grime, there was a handsome man.
Nessa was glad that she had kept her dagger honed and polished; he could have pushed her over with his little finger. “What is your name?” she demanded.
“My name is Bryce Blair,” he replied, then watched the effect that the name had on her. Her jaw dropped, and her face transformed itself into a mask of fury.
If Nessa had been angry before, she was now incandescent with rage. She clasped her hands into fists by her sides, clutching the dagger so that its point was angled straight at him. This was the monster who had killed her uncle Gerald, the man who had callously ridden a warhorse over him and broken his back. It was at that moment that she realized the truth of what Logan had said. She hated this man with every fiber of her being, but she could not stab him to death in cold blood; perhaps a man could, but she did not have a murderer living inside her.
“You dare say that name here!” she cried. “You dare set foot on our lands, you fiend!”
Blair could almost see her thoughts as he looked at her. Hatred, fury, and the urge to slay him were warring for supremacy inside her, but he knew that she did not have the heart to finish him off, despite the weapon she was clutching.
“You broke my father’s heart,” Nessa growled. “How could anyone who calls himself a child of God ride over a man, friend or foe, and leave him to die? Gerald Guthrie suffered pain that an evil monster like you could not possibly imagine because you have no heart. It took him three days to die. Three days! At the end, my father was praying for God to take him so that the agony would cease. I cannot bear to look at you a moment longer!”
However, Bryce Blair had a heart, and it was being broken piece by piece as Nessa yelled her anger at him, hammering the false accusations into him as he stood, helpless, in front of her. He dropped his gaze from hers.
“Please let me speak,” he begged. “I am not the fiend that you think I am. I did not kill Gerald Guthrie, and I have been unjustly imprisoned these last seven years for a crime I did not commit. Please listen to me.”
“I will listen to you,” she answered with a sneer, “but only when it is safe for me to do so. Turn around.”
Blair obeyed her at once, sure that she was going to stab him in the back and leave him to die on the forest floor as she thought he had done to her uncle. “Let me make peace with God before you kill me,” he pleaded, his voice trembling.
Nessa gave a shrill, unpleasant laugh. “Do not fret, sir.” Her tone was cold and menacing. “I will not kill you. That would deny you many years of loneliness, rats, cold, damp, and dirt, and I can think of no more fitting punishment for you. No, I will return you to the place you came from so that you can sit staring at the bars of your cell and pray for death. That is the best punishment I can devise for you here on Earth because I have no wish to kill you and meet you in hell.”
“You must listen to me!” Bryce persisted. “Please do not give me up to your father. I am not an evil man, although I know many who are.” Suddenly, he felt the scrape of rough twine on his wrists, and pain shot through him as the rope was pulled tighter and tighter, then a hard knot was pressing into his wrist. He groaned and then heard Nessa chuckling in satisfaction behind him. He was beginning to hate her for taking pleasure in another human being’s misery.
“Does that hurt?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Of course it does.”
Nessa thought for a moment. She had been about to express satisfaction that she was torturing him, but then she realized that by doing so, she would be lowering herself to his level. She loosened the twine slightly—not enough for him to escape, but just enough to ease his pain a little.
“Thank you,” he breathed, then he turned to face her again. “What is your name, mistress?” he asked, and for the first time, she noticed his voice. It was deep, husky, and vibrated like the darkest notes of a stringed instrument, sending a thrill through her whole body.
Nessa tilted her chin up. “My name is no concern of yours,” she answered. “Suffice to say that the man you killed was dear to me and my family.”
“Will you please listen to me?” Bryce begged. “I am not the man who murdered him!”
“But you escaped from the town jail in Alderbreck, did you not?” she demanded. “That itself is a crime. Please do not insult my intelligence by denying it because you have their mark branded on your neck. It was the first thing I noticed about you.”
Had it been broad daylight, Nessa would have seen Bryce flushing with embarrassment. Alderbreck Jail was infamous for the brutal method it used to discourage its prisoners from escaping. Each man was branded like a piece of livestock with the letter A on the side of his neck. Bryce Blair’s was partially hidden behind his beard, but it was still visible, and he was extremely conscious of it. The excruciating pain of the red-hot iron searing his skin still visited him in his nightmares.
“I did, but I never should have been there,” he confessed. “I know that you will not believe me, whatever I say, but it is true.”
“Whether I believe you or not does not matter.” Nessa’s tone was grim. “You are a wanted man, and you are going back to jail.”
Bryce began to panic. He would rather die than go back to the horror that was Alderbreck.
“May I explain a few things to you?” he asked, looking at the ground in case she should see the fear in his eyes.
