Page 6 of Highlander's Escaped Prisoner
Nessa sighed, frowning, then she gave in. She had nothing to lose by giving him his say. “If you must, but I cannot pretend that I will believe you.”
“Have you ever been inside a prison?” he asked. “Perhaps if you had, you would understand the fear I have of going back there.”
“No, I have not, and I have no wish to,” she replied tersely. “And whatever punishment you got there is something you brought on yourself. Now, is this going to take all night? Because I have better things to do than listen to fairy tales.”
“Good, because I am not telling any!” Bryce was furious. He sat down with his back to a tree trunk, and Nessa sat beside him, interested despite herself, although she would have died rather than show it.
“Go on,” she urged. “I will listen.”
“When I first went there,” Bryce began, “I was told that I would be lucky to last a year, and after the first week, I wished they would just hang me. The cells are dank, dirty, and infested with rats. The food was disgusting and often full of weevils, but even though it was worse than anything I had ever tasted in my life, I had to stay alive, so I made myself eat it.” He sighed deeply, paused for a moment, then went on. “There was very little light, and the beds consisted of straw pallets with a thin blanket forwarmth. It was laughable, really, since I would probably have been warmer sleeping on the floor. I was always freezing, but after a while, I became accustomed to it.
“One day, they came and told me I was going to work breaking stones for a new abbey that the church is building somewhere near Oban. They cannot get the stone they need anywhere nearby, so they came to quarry it in Alderbreck, where there is plenty of stone and plenty of free labor to gather it and break it.” His tone was bitter. “There are a lot of men in Alderbreck, but no one quite as big as I am, so they picked me.
“It was exhausting and back-breaking work, but I was glad of it because I saw the sunlight, and the church made sure that I had more food so that I was strong enough to do my work. I eat well now, and I made friends too. There are six of us who work together, and we have been doing so for the last seven years. I thought I was as content as it was possible to be in such a horrible place, but when the chance came to escape, I grabbed it with both hands.”
Despite her resolution not to be curious, Nessa asked: “So how did you escape?”
“One of the guards’ wives gave birth,” he answered, laughing. “All his fellow jailers gave him a little money, and he bought himself a bottle of whiskey. Jailers do not earn much, so it was cheap whiskey, and he almost emptied the bottle. He collapsed, and in their haste to make sure that he was not dead, the guards left my fellow prisoners and me unguarded. I ran away as fast as I could, but the stones cut my legs as I went. My fellow prisoners ran too, scattering in all directions, and there were not enough guards to chase all of us. I kept on running, and just as I thought I had got away—”
“I came out of the trees and caught you,” Nessa said flatly.
“Yes, but I hope you will give me a proper chance to explain myself,” he went on. “Please. It will not take long. What do you have to lose by listening to me?”
For a moment, they looked at each other with nothing to say, then Nessa felt a single drop of rain on the back of her hand. She looked up at the sky and noticed that the moon was beginning to dip towards the horizon. As well as that, heavy clouds were beginning to drift over it, obscuring what light there was. It was going to rain, and she only had one horse. It would take too long to get back to her home at Drumblane Castle if her prisoner had to go on foot, so they would have to find shelter since Nessa did not intend to let Bryce Blair out of her sight.
She looked back down again and realized that there was an empty space on her left where her prisoner should have been. She jumped to her feet and began to run after him.
As he ran, Bryce was twisting at the ropes on his wrists, but all he was managing to do was to make his flesh bleed. Running with a sore leg was bad enough, but running with tied hands as well was making things ten times worse.
“Stop!” Nessa cried, lining up her bow. “This time, I will shoot you in the back!”
Completely off-balance and unable to pump his arms to increase his speed, he felt himself slowing without the ability to go any faster. It was utterly frustrating because, at any other time, he would have been able to put hundreds of yards between himself and his pursuer. Suddenly, his foot caught on a tree root, and he tumbled head over heels to land in a crumpled heap on the grass.
“Kill me,” he sighed.
4
Nessa stood over Bryce, looking down on the squirming figure on the ground whose face was once more screwed up in pain. She had heard many stories from her father about the evil man who had killed her uncle but faced with the reality, she found that her hatred was tempered with compassion. This man was not the monster she had expected. He was tired, filthy, injured, and in no condition to hurt anyone. Could she be wrong about him? Perhaps he really was as innocent as he claimed to be. She dithered for a few more moments, then she hardened her heart.
“Do you think that telling me about how badly you were treated in prison will change my mind?” she asked scornfully. “Of course you are guilty, and this show of wretchedness is nothing more than an act designed to elicit my sympathy and trick me into thinking that you are less dangerous than you are. You are a murderer, someone who has snuffed out the life of another person, and you deserve every ounce of pain that has been meted out to you—and more!”
Nessa had worked herself into a fury. She put one booted foot on Bryce’s stomach to stop him from standing up, then looked up into the sky again. It was beginning to rain in earnest, and she knew that they would have to find shelter before they were both thoroughly drenched.
“Get up!” she snapped, and reached down to help Bryce to his feet, keeping the dagger between them as she did so. “We are going to a place of shelter, and if you make a sound on our way there, I will cut you...not deep enough to kill you, but deep enough to cause you a world of pain. Do you understand?”
Bryce sighed irritably, his dejection giving way to anger. “I am not an idiot, whatever else you might think of me,” he answered. “Of course I do.”
Nessa mounted Jo then gathered up the remainder of the rope she had used to bind his hands and tied it to the saddle, then urged the horse forward. She had no wish for any more delay, so she kept Jo at a pace which was within Bryce’s ability to keep up with her.
“It is not far,” she told him, “but please do not fall, or I will have to drag you.”
“I will not,” he promised.
A short while later, they arrived at their destination, a small farmhouse on the very edge of the forest that marked the boundary of the Guthrie land. She had no idea whether it was occupied or not but decided not to take the chance of alerting the householders to their presence. There was a tiny outbuilding fifty yards from it that housed farm implements and hay, and there Nessa dismounted and led Bryce inside.
“We will have to wait here until morning,” she told him. She pointed to a pile of hay in the corner. “Sleep there, and remember what I said.” Nessa took a step closer to him. “I am quite sure an injury, even a flesh wound, would sting like blazes.”
“I know it would,” he agreed, “and I have suffered much worse, but I have to talk to you before you rest.” Bryce’s voice was desperate.
