Fire.
There was fire. He didn’t know if he felt the searing pain in his head and then the fire immediately, or if there had been time between the two. He felt the heat of the fire, and he struggled to clear his mind…
Black again. Ebony. A void…
Death…
Aye, death, it was what someone had intended, and in a way, he was indeed to die that night.
Aye, it was death, and the coming of it slow and miserable. He tossed. He felt pain. He felt nothing. Terrible cold, burning heat. Darkness…
No, color again. Color…blue, the sky, the sky at morning. The sun was in his eyes, causing his head to burst with pain once again.
He could hear the lap of water. He was on a boat, he realized. Out in the loch?
“Get this one up and moving, there, man! There’s work to be done on the sails.”
He jumped as he was viciously kicked in the ribs. Despite the pain that continued to rack his head, he managed to leap up to a squatting position.
Sunlight filled his eyes, nearly blinding him. He realized that he was naked and filthy. And indeed, he was upon the water,on a large ship. Seamen surrounded him, doing the bidding of a peg-legged man who stared down at him now with contempt.
“Get this murdering, ragged-ass bastard up and about!” the peg leg shouted. He had an accent. A strange accent.
David tried to stand, tottered, nearly fell. He saw that he had been lying on a pallet. He staggered to his feet once again, in agony, but was ready to leap for the throat of the peg leg. “Do you know whom you address?” David demanded in a rage.
“Aye, you jackanapes! You’re going to live, you sorry bastard, but ’tis my belief you should have met with the hangman in Glasgow.”
“The hangman?”
“For murderin’ that poor wee lass.”
“Murder…”
He did leap at the peg leg. The man shouted, choking. In seconds, half a dozen brawny seamen were atop David. He fought them off, had no strength. He fell back to his knees, a wave of nausea and dizziness sweeping over him again. The peg leg had remarkable balance and struck David with his wooden limb, knocking him to the deck. David barely felt the pain. What were they talking about? What had happened after he had been knocked out in the stables? He could remember nothing but the smell of fire. Had someone come and done harm to Shawna? “Murder!” he cried, pushing back to his knees. “If she’s dead?—”
“Aye, the wee lass is dead, you cut her throat on a drunken binge on a cold Glasgow night, my man, and in my care, I bloody well swear that you’ll pay for it!”
“Glasgow!”
“So drank he canna remember his own crime!” Peg Leg muttered with disgust. “Mr. Phipps!” he cried to one of his men. “Take the bastard back to the hold for the next few days. He’s been in a fever too long to be much good to us yet. But mark me, Mr. MacDonald, I’ll wring flesh and blood from you yet, I will.”
“MacDonald!” David roared. “I am not a MacDonald. I am David Douglas of Craig Rock, heir to the laird!”
Snickering from the seamen who had gathered round him greeted his words.
“Get the bastard below!” the peg-legged captain shouted with disgust.
“Have me touched again, you pathetic piece of pig shit, and I’ll murder you, I swear it!” David promised.
Peg Leg seemed to take the threat to heart. “Shackle him, wrists and ankles!” Peg Leg commanded.
The first man came toward David. David managed to deal him a telling blow to the left jaw. He spun in time to catch the man to his right with an elbow jab to the ribs. He kicked the one before him, slammed the one in the rear with both fists.
But there were four more to fall atop him. He was shackled, and a solid blow with a fisherman’s sinker sent him spinning back into oblivion once again.
He came to stretched out upon dirty, molding straw. A stench surrounded him. He had been wrapped in the remnants of a blanket. A small, ragged little man with sharp features and huge eyes was attempting to spoon some kind of tasteless gruel between his lips. David coughed, sputtered, and managed to lift a hand to stop the man.
“Water,” he croaked.