A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [519]
I ran into the bedroom, gasping. Jamie was kneeling by the window, methodically loading guns and saying something under his breath in Gaelic—prayer or cursing, I couldn’t tell.
I didn’t ask if he was hurt. His face was bruised, his lip was split, and blood had run down his chin onto his shirt, he was covered with dirt and what I assumed to be smears of other peoples’ blood, and the ear on the side closest me was swollen. But he was steady in his movements, and anything short of a fractured skull would have to wait.
“They mean to kill us,” I said, and didn’t mean it as a question.
He nodded, eyes on his work, then handed me a spare pistol to load.
“Aye, they do. Good job the weans are all safe away, isn’t it?” He smiled at me suddenly, bloody-toothed and fierce, and I felt steadier than I had for a long time.
He’d left one side of the shutter ajar. I moved carefully back behind him and peered out, the loaded pistol primed and in my hand.
“No bodies lying in the dooryard,” I reported. “I suppose you didn’t kill any of them.”
“Not for want of trying,” he replied. “God, what I’d give for a rifle!” He rose cautiously to his knees, the barrel of the fowling piece protruding over the sill, and surveyed the state of the attack.
They had withdrawn for the moment; a small group was visible under the chestnut trees at the far side of the clearing, and they’d taken the horses down toward Bree and Roger’s cabin, safely out of range of flying bullets. Brown and his minions were clearly planning what to do next.
“What do you suppose they would have done, if I’d agreed to go with them?” I could feel my heart again, at least. It was going a mile a minute, but I could breathe, and some feeling was coming back into my extremities.
“I should never ha’ let ye go,” he replied shortly.
“And quite possibly Richard Brown knows that,” I said. He nodded; he’d been thinking along the same lines. Brown had never intended actually to arrest me; only to provoke an incident in which we could both be killed under circumstances dubious enough as to prevent wholesale retaliation by Jamie’s tenants.
“Mrs. Bug got out, did she?” he asked.
“Yes. If they didn’t catch her outside the house.” I narrowed my eyes against the brilliant afternoon sun, searching for a short, broad figure in skirts among the group by the chestnut trees, but I saw only men.
Jamie nodded again, hissing gently through his back teeth as he swiveled the gun barrel slowly through an arc that covered the dooryard.
“We’ll see, then” was all he said. “Come that wee bit closer, man,” he murmured, as one man started cautiously across the yard toward the house. “One shot; that’s all I ask. Here, Sassenach, take this.” He pushed the fowling piece into my hands, and selected his favorite of the pistols, a long-barreled Highland dag with a scroll butt.
The man—it was Richard Brown, I saw—stopped some distance away, pulled a handkerchief from the waist of his breeches, and waved it slowly overhead. Jamie snorted briefly, but let him come on.
“Fraser!” he called, coming to a stop at a distance of forty yards or so. “Fraser! D’ye hear me?”
Jamie sighted carefully and fired. The ball struck the ground a few feet in front of Brown, raising a sudden puff of dust from the path, and Brown leapt in the air as though stung by a bee.
“What’s the matter with you?” he yelled indignantly. “Have ye never heard of a flag o’ truce, you horse-stealin’ Scotcher?”
“If I wanted ye dead, Brown, ye’d be coolin’ this minute!” Jamie shouted back. “Speak your piece.” What he did want was plain: he wanted them wary of coming closer to the house; it was impossible to hit anything accurately with a pistol at forty yards, and not that easy with a musket.
“You know what I want!” Brown called. He took off his hat, wiping sweat and dirt from his face. “I want that goddamn murderous witch of yours.