He moved through the camp methodically, crouching at each bedroll, reading the site. Four men, at least, possibly five.
The boot prints in the soft ground near the fire were varied. Military men, he judged, or men used to sleeping rough in the Highlands. There were no unnecessary possessions, nothing that couldn't be abandoned without cost. No names.
He was about to stand when he saw it.
Caught on a low, jagged branch at the eastern edge of the clearing was a strip of fabric the width of his hand. It was torn rather than cut. The signature of a man moving too fast through the brush to notice he’d been snagged.
He crossed to it, worked it free from the branch, and held it up in the thin, filtered light.
He knew the pattern.
He'd made it his business to know it three months ago, when the name Callum MacDougall had first arrived in his hall attached to the word abduction. He'd sourced a sample of MacDougall plaid through a contact in Oban and studied it until he could recognize it from fifty paces in a storm. The dark green ground, the narrow red overcheck, the heavy weight of the wool.
This was it.
He stood in the clearing with the strip of fabric in his hand and looked at the fire and the scattered bedrolls. He felt the specific, cold sensation of a trap that hadn't yet been sprung.
Callum was close. Not rumors-and-messengers close. He was in the trees outside Duart's walls, within sight of the cliff road, within half a morning's ride of the castle gates.
He folded the fabric into the hidden pocket of his cloak.
He went back through the trees, memorizing the camp's orientation, the sight lines, and the angle of approach from the south. It was a perfect vantage point to watch the cliff path without being seen. He noted this with a grim, tactical satisfaction.
Matilda was exactly where he'd left her, upright on her horse, the second guard at a respectful distance.
"Well?" she said.
"Abandoned camp. Four men, perhaps five. Left in a hurry within the last two hours." He swung up into the saddle in one fluid motion. "And this." He held out the strip of plaid.
She looked at it. Her jaw tightened. Not with fear, but with a sharp, focused anger. "That's MacDougall colors."
"Aye."
She was quiet for a moment, her gaze fixed on the fabric as if she could see the man himself through the wool. "He was watching the cliff road," she said, her voice a low blade. "While we were at the promontory."
"Possibly."
"Probably," she corrected, with that directness she applied to conclusions she didn't see the point in softening. She handed the plaid back to him, her fingers lingering against his for a heartbeat. "Then he kens about the gathering."
"He likely kent as soon as we did. Someone talks." He tucked the fabric away. "The question is what he daes with the knowledge."
He looked at her, seeing the steel that had replaced the shadow in her eyes. "Ye've been thinking about this."
"I've been thinking about little else fer days." She turned her horse toward the castle, the wind snapping her cloak. "Come. Ye need tae talk tae Torvald."
The ride back was faster and considerably quieter than the ride out. She asked nothing further and offered nothing, but she rode close beside him.
He was aware of her awareness. The way her eyes searched the tree line, the slight straightening of her spine when the grey towers of Duart came into view. It wasn't fear. It waspreparation. It was the quiet readiness of a woman who had decided the answer to danger was not to look away from it.
He found Torvald in the outer hall, where the man seemed to live these days.
"Close the door," Ivar said.
Torvald looked at his face and obeyed without a word.
Ivar laid the strip of plaid on the table. It looked small and insignificant against the heavy oak, yet it carried the weight of a declaration of war.
Torvald looked at it. Looked at Ivar. "How close?"