“You will hang for this, witch,” he hissed.
Many were swarming up the steps to the entrance of the town hall and she saw McDonn’s white face cloaked in shadow as the heavy oak doors shut him safely inside. Fists pounded at the doors and Kaetha sighed with relief when she saw that enough people were directing their fury at McDonn that her group now had the way clear to the docks. It had worked. She watched as a young man kissed the forehead of the old woman who lay dead on the ground before following the group. It wasn’t right that they were forced to leave her like that. She could only hope that some in town would have the decency to give her a proper burial.
Roy Macraith addressed the crowd. “I have never before seen anyone more likely to be a dangerous witch than this young woman.”
“Your mouth’s full of arse-haggis,” she retorted. This received some sniggers.
“She’s the devil’s whore, I tell you! Shall we see if she bears his mark?” This remark gained interest from the people and Kaetha felt sick at the bawdy comments and cheers from several lecherous men in the crowd. The witch hunter ripped off the clasp of her cloak and she struggled as his clammy hand slid over her neck to her shoulder, pulling at her clothes. The colour rose to her face and her eyes stung as shouts and whistles rose up from the crowd.
“Get your reptilian hands off me!” she yelled, struggling all the more.
“Stop!” cried Donnan but he was separated from her by the crowd around the scaffold.
She was surprised that a man as scrawny as Macraith could be so strong. She kicked at him and spat in his face, refusing to let him reveal any more of her flesh. “Go to hell!” she growled as she kneed him between the legs. He cried out in pain, doubled up but still grasping Kaetha. Roy Macraith’s cry of fury had a backdrop of raucous laughter. He threw Kaetha hard onto the boards of the scaffold. Flat on her back, winded, she heard the scrape of metal. Laughter faded to an unnerving hush. A long dagger glinted in his hand. He loomed over her, finding his smile once again as he stared at her with his cold eyes.
“Death on the gallows or by the blade, it’s all the same to them,” he said and Kaetha knew as she lay there, immobilised, that there was nothing she could do to stop him. “They came to see death and they will.”
He raised the blade but his smile buckled. He opened his mouth to speak or scream but emitted only a strangled, guttural splutter. Something was poking through his chest. His knife clattered to the floor and he dropped to his knees, then onto his face, right beside her.
She drew in a shaky gasp when she saw the sword in his back and Mairi standing behind it, her hands trembling. The crowd stared in silence as blood dripped from the scaffold. Kaetha snatched up the witch hunter’s knife and stowed it in her belt. Donnan appeared beside them, a streak of blood from a wound on his head tracing the side of his face.
“It’s about time we left,” he said, leading them through the stunned crowd to the docks.
“Effie!” called Margaret and she enveloped Gilroy Baker’s little sister in a hug when she ran up to them.
The child sniffed. “I’m going to miss you.”
“You know, you can come with us,” said Asrid. “We’d look after you.”
Effie smiled sadly. “I want to carry on Gilroy’s business. I think he’d want me to.”
“We wish you good fortune,” said Kaetha, giving Effie a silver coin from their purse. “You can buy plenty of flour with that.”
“Aye, I could. Thanks.”
“Look here!” called the boatman, striding up to them. “Can you stop your lot coming aboard without paying? You said I’d get paid plenty this evening. I can’t afford to work for nothing you know.”
“Here,” said Kaetha, handing him a pile of coins.
“What—?” Mairi squeezed her arm but she ignored her.
“This should cover a boat load down to Doonby, shouldn’t it?”
The boatman scratched his beard and chewed his lip. “Since I’m feeling generous. Usually get more, mind.”
“When your passengers are loading your boat with heavy cargo, of course they pay more,” muttered Donnan.
“Can’t take more than eight, mind,” said the boatman as he pocketed the coins.
“You tell us that now?” said Kaetha. She turned to Mairi and Donnan. “There are seven of them.”
“We should let them all go,” said Donnan.
“I suppose we’ll be walking then,” said Mairi with a sigh, “unless any of these lovely townsfolk will sell us horses, for whatever little is left in that purse. Somehow, I think not.”
As the boat cast off, Kaetha caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye. She squinted up at the steep hillside of the town. “Perhaps we won’t be walking after all,” she said. Through the deep blue of twilight, the people of Neul Carraig were making their silent progression through the central street of the town, a trickling stream of dusk-grey robes.
TWENTY EIGHT
Seeing Things
The sight of the Appointed snaking their way silently downhill stilled the voices of the townsfolk. Aggression was replaced by wary curiosity.
Kaetha watched as groups of Appointed lined the lochside, orderly as ranks of soldiers, lowering rafts. Here amongst narrow, cluttered streets and crooked buildings, no longer with the backdrop of vast stone halls, caves or mountains, their presence was incongruous and unsettling.
Spying Naru,
