Iwoke up the next morn, and sat for a long time on the edge of the bed, considerin’ what tae do. I was sure I was in the presence of Kaitlyn, that somehow I was separated by a shroud of time between us. I was worried about leavin’ this time, twas a risk, what if I couldna return?
I kent she was in one place, I was in another. What if we never once more came taegether again?
If this was it, I couldna bear leaving her.
But I had tae find a solution tae our separation.
I had found naethin’ in the future. The past was splayed intae segments.
I held m’vessel and turned it over and over. I kent every marking, every part— when I had lived in Maine with Kaitlyn’s grandparents I had learned tae work it. Through the following years my understandin’ had grown. I kent a great deal about the vessel, more than anyone else in the history of the world — except m’mother. She always knew more. I would need tae remedy this imbalance.
In the meantime, in all these years, neither of us had ever landed on a different timeline.
I needed tae think this through methodically, tae begin jumpin’ tae try tae get on the correct timeline. I just needed a plan.
CHAPTER 25 - QUENTIN
Iwas leading a charge, wondering what the hell I was doing. Men were on the castle walls shooting down at us, and as I ran I thought,where the hell did they get these fucking modern weapons?
I was pissed, enraged, waging-war, and I was irritated — if this was Ormr and Domnall shooting at my ass from those old-as-shit timber walls. I was sure that the cause was James looping to save Sophie. Somehow we had effed up the world and given these assholes an easier way to kill us.
I had designed a battle plan based on a football end-around play. We were charging, but as bullets flew I raced from behind the lines, around the army, alongside the castle walls, to the back where the timber walls were up on the top of cliffs. There I would try to find a back entry and force my way in, kill the guard, or scale the wall and kill the guards, and fight my way to the roof in a surprise attack. I had my semiautomatic rifle, a grenade, and a rope from my supplies.
There wasn’t a door. There was no guard to kill, but no one noticed I had run around back.The guards had one job.I looked up at the walls,could I climb them?I ran farther, checking the wall for holes or doors, finding a spot that seemed — I was surprised by how quiet it was in the castle beyond.
I waited in the shadows, listening.
The shooting, the yelling and mayhem, had gone quiet.
Was everyone dead?
I crept back around the castle walls to the front. No one was there.
I looked up at the walls and all around to find no one. I snuck in through the front gate and clung to the walls in the shadows, staring out at the courtyard.
The castle was completely still, there was no sound at all but the wind, and it was echoing, a sound that didn’t happen in an occupied castle.
Humans in a castle dampened the echoes and a castle needed at the very least ten people to make it operable. There needed to be guards, a kitchen crew — and what about the guns that had been shooting?
There had been a battle not more than ten minutes ago and now… I stood in the shadows, clutching the gun to my chest, trying to understand the silence.
With my gun aimed, I stepped from the courtyard into a store room, empty, except for some barrels and bottles on a shelf. There were cobwebs. It had been a while since someone had been in here.
I swept the gun left and right and crept into the next room which was the same, cold and bare. Stirling castle was a huge important castle in the history of Scotland, it had just been full of people, defensively protecting the walls. Now it was empty? I stepped from the kitchen to a wooden stair and climbed, aiming my gun up as I mounted, breathless, to the top of the walls. Not a soul.
I crouched low and crept along to the east side, where Will Wallace and I had staged our attack and peered down.
There was no one there.What kind of mindfuck was this?
The valley stretched in all directions, not a road to be seen. A river glistened in the sun, a village lay beyond, a field looked disused and abandoned, an endless, uncivilized landscape, an unpopulated land, a castle that was unnecessary.
I searched for the stairwell that led down to the dungeons and found it inside a low stone building. I turned on my headlamp in the long corridor, finding no prisoners, only a few furious-to-be-interrupted rats. In the far cell I found a carving in the stone: JC and marks counting one plus five and then eight and then nine, a sum of 24 days.
It had been four days since he and Katie had been captured. A chill ran down my spine. I felt my sporran for the vessel, it was still there.
I left the dungeons, emerged from the stairwell at the courtyard, and crossed to a three-story high building. I went up to the upper rooms and opened door after door, finding one broken door that looked as if someone had hacked away at the wood from the inside, and looking through bedrooms and sitting rooms. I found an office that held nothing but a piece of furniture. All the rooms were unlocked.
I called, “Katie! James!”
