“I’m fine. Thank you.” Thanking her captor seemed silly but Scarlett couldn’t blame her guard or take out her frustrations on him. This wasn’t his fault. He was just following orders and it didn’t seem that anyone, Rhys included, was willing to contradict the big guy. “Is there a smaller horse I could ride though? This one is huge and I’m rather neurotically afraid of heights.”
Huge was a modest word for the horse. Gargantuan would have been better.
“My apologies, lady, but nay.”
The horse stomped his feet impatiently and Scarlett clung to the tall pommel as if being tied to it wouldn’t be enough to save her from a fall. Where on earth did they find horses whose backs were taller than a man’s head? The ground looked so far away. It was dizzying. Percheron, Cormac said. Nineteen hands. Scarlett didn’t know the exact conversion but was sure it roughly equated to really, freaking huge.
A total of a dozen of Laird’s men were mounted and ready to go, leaving an equal number behind at Dunskirk. Each of them dressed in kilts and armed to the teeth. The thought of being surrounded by so many strange, dangerous men was disconcerting. Scarlett shuddered. “Where are you taking me?” she asked her guard as he mounted his own horse and gathered up her reins.
Without giving her an answer, Cormac kicked his horse into motion and Scarlett’s obediently followed. Her teeth slammed together and her stomach dropped like a stone as the jarring lift of the rough gait nearly sent her listing out of the saddle.
Oh God! The horse was forgotten as the realization that they were actually leaving the castle robbed Scarlett of her breath. Of course, she knew they meant to but now that they were actually moving…. “Where are you taking me?” She yelled this time, and then screeched out the words at the top of her lungs when she was ignored once more.
Laird pulled his horse alongside of her, looking larger and even more menacing atop a great black beast that incredibly was bigger than her own. Despite herself, Scarlett was momentarily cowed into silence. She didn’t know they made horses that big… or men for that matter. “Where are we…?”
“We travel to Crichton to find out who ye are.”
“Crichton? What is that?”
“Cease yer prattle, lass, or by God’s might, I shall be tempted to gag ye for the journey,” he barked and drew on his reins, turning his mount around and leaving her. Scarlett twisted about in the saddle, bedeviled enough to yell at him once more.
“Hey! Come bac–”
Any other words she might have had caught her throat with a gasp of horror.
The castle – or a good portion of the five-sided goliath – was gone.
Just gone!
Scarlett shook her head and blinked hard but the vision remained.
It made no sense. No sense at all.
In fact, her mind blanked entirely as she watched the building recede in the distance, trying to process what she was seeing.
And what she wasn’t.
Most of Dunskirk Castle had disappeared.
All that remained was the massive westerly tower where the armory exhibit had been, a portion of the keep and a shorter curtain wall. It was like she was seeing the castle as it had been a century ago, before fairy tale façade had been added.
But where had it gone?
Where had it gone?
Cold sweat prickled at her skin as her heartbeat accelerated, pounding nauseatingly against her ribcage. She dragged in a painfully shallow wheeze and then another as her head swam dizzily. A horse whinnied close by and Scarlett stared dazedly at one of the kilted men as he rode by, his eyes narrowing on her with what might have been concern though he said not a word.
That rough faded kilt, the short leather boots and the sword at his side. Then there was their odd language. The fighting… with swords, no less. It was outlandish but it all might be easy enough to explain away. There could be a renaissance fair nearby. There might be some historical reenactment going on. There could have been something some logical reason for them to be out and about as they were.
Hell, they might all have been escapees from a nearby mental facility, for all she cared.
But they could be explained.
Scarlett turned back again, wide-eyed.
The castle though…
That one was tougher.
Their caravan reached the end of the drive to the castle where by all rights an ornate gatehouse and towers flanking a stone arch should stand.
Nothing.
The horses hooves ground against the graveled path that marked the way to the village center. Gravel, not the smooth concrete of the highway. Tall grass waved at her from the open field where the local high school should have been.
Unless sheep had taken to grazing on the golf course to the right, it was gone as well. As was the bustling town she had come to know so well over the years. No inns, no library. No fire station. No pubs. Well, pubs plural. One lonely tavern was all that remained.
No rubble. Not even a small pile of stone to save her from insanity.
Unless alien invaders had somehow surreptitiously vaporized half the castle and three-quarters of the village without catching anyone’s attention…
Yes, that would have been bad.
This, this was worse.
How?
How?
How?
“Are ye well, my lady?” Rhys pulled up alongside her horse, drawing Scarlett’s wild stare. Around her, all the mounted men around her began to take notice of her panic. Some eyes widening, others narrowing worriedly at the hyperventilating, crazy woman they had taken prisoner.
One even crossed himself.
Personally, Scarlett didn’t think prayer was going to help any of them.
Denial warred in her frantic thoughts for an explanation. Any explanation, but her mind was quickly becoming little more than a yawning dark void of horror. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Rhys nodded sympathetically.
