Demon Sword

just high enough to let him stand upright. Groggy with fatigue, he leaned a hand against the chimney to steady himself and glared down at them all.

'I told you!' he shouted. 'I escaped! They accused me of killing a soldier. I admitted it. They locked me up. I broke out. Are you suggesting I did something to Granny Nan? That's crazy! No one can have hurt her!'

He saw the answer in their eyes. No one could harm the witchwife — not here, so near to the hob — except perhaps Toby himself. He, too, lived close to the hob's grotto. Perhaps in their minds he had taken on some of the uncanniness that hung around those who consorted with elementals. In the last few years the orphan bastard had shot up to become the biggest man in the glen. Today he had killed a soldier, and yet here he was, home again.

Swords or not, they were frightened of him.

He gripped hard on his temper. 'Well? If you're accusing me of something, say so. Yes, I killed a Sassenach tonight, and I don't care overmuch. What else is bothering you?'

The men exchanged unsure glances, like children in school when the teacher behaves unpredictably. Toby waited for one of them to ask about the blood on his chest, but he had so many other scrapes that the smears escaped notice.

'I think he's telling the truth,' Rae Butcher announced loudly.

Smith and miller nodded with less confidence.

Tanner scowled. 'I want to know how a man escapes from Lochy Castle.' His voice was slurred.

Toby could not, must not, tell them how he had escaped. If they even suspected he was possessed, they would run a sword through his heart instantly, probably three swords. He tried to invent a plausible explanation and realized that there wasn't one. 'I stole a horse.' That was the best he could do.

Pause… Then the smith chuckled. 'Before that? Rusty chains and the second best shoulders in the glen, I'm thinking.' He was trying to break the tension.

'What do you mean second best?' asked the butcher. 'I know quality beef when I see it.'

The smith and the miller laughed very heartily. They all sheathed their swords. Toby Strangerson had been found not guilty in his second trial of the night — for the time being, at least — and now everyone was friends and everything was sweet and beautiful… for the time being.

'Stole a horse?' The miller's lardy face rolled itself into a smile. 'Good for you! We're not accusing you of anything, lad, except being a true Scotsman, and Sassenachs' horses are another fine tradition in the glen, I'm thinking. We're all proud of what you did tonight!'

Oh, really?

The fat man turned to the tanner. 'Kenneth? You have something to say to this man?'

'Aye.' The flabby tanner lurched forward on his wooden leg. He stuck his melancholy face up at Toby's. It needed shaving and it brought a strong odor of liquor. 'Thank you,' he said sourly. 'We're real grateful, the wife and me. And Meg herself, of course.' He thrust out a hand, which Toby stared at uncomprehendingly.

'It was a brave deed,' Rae boomed, 'worthy of a Campbell.'

Oh, that? One of the better murders! Toby shook the tanner's hand without enthusiasm. 'Any man would have done the same.' Why should they expect him to be different?

'Not any man, only a very brave one.'

Brave was stupid. He did not trust their sudden change of heart. What were they doing here anyway? Where was Granny Nan? 'You said you came here looking for me? Why?'

He put the question to the miller, but with the swords out of the way, the slick-tongued butcher had taken over. He rubbed his gorse-bush mustache. 'To help you, of course. To get you away before the Sassenachs catch you.'

Or to hand him over before the English began reprisals for Forrester's death? Toby Strangerson was not fool enough to expect help from the glen. It had never shown him any affection in the past.

'And just how do you expect to achieve that? They'll take hostages.'

Rae Butcher raised his thick brows. 'Then they'll regret it! They're outnumbered twenty to one. We have friends we can call on. Don't worry about that, lad.'

'They'll watch the roads, send word—'

'We've made arrangements,' said the miller.

'I don't think I like the sound of that.'

The men rolled eyes at one another.

'Annie Bridge,' the butcher explained soothingly. 'She'll put you up until dark. We'll have a guide to get you out by ways the English don't know.' He smiled knowingly. 'And there's a noble lord who can use good fighting men.'

Toby took the statements one at a time. Annie had lost her husband at Leethoul and sons at both Norford Bridge and Parline. No one hated the Sassenachs more than Annie did. If he could trust anyone, he could trust Annie. Her croft stood near to the mouth of Glen Orchy, which was supposed to be blocked by impassable bog and implacable bogy. If there was a safe way through that, then the English were not the only ones who had never heard of it. The lord was Fergan, of course. Because the village bastard had killed an Englishman they assumed he wanted to join the rebels. He had not intended to kill Godwin. He had done what he did because of Meg, not for King Fergan. He had better not go into that.

They were the laird's men, but he would have to trust them, or at least pretend to trust them. He could not hope to escape from the glen if these men turned against him. They might support a Sassenach-killer, a potential rebel recruit, but by morning the details of his escape from the cell would be common knowledge. Their sudden enthusiasm for Toby Strangerson would not extend to a resident demon.

'Young Hamish's going, too,' the butcher said. 'He was with you when it happened, so the Sassenach bast — the Sassenach scum, I mean. They may pick on him.'

Something nudged the back of Toby's mind until he remembered young Hamish's bright-eyed appeal on the way to Bridge of Orchy: Take me with you. The boy might hang on the same gibbet yet.

'He's a good kid,' he said, and realized that to these men he was only a kid himself.

'And Meg, too,' Tanner mumbled. 'The wife's having fits.'

Considering the ordeal she had endured in her youth, Elly Tanner had every right to throw a few hysterics over her daughter's narrow escape, but even so… 'You don't think they'll take it out on Meg?' Toby protested.

'It's a hard world, lad,' the miller said cynically. 'Not the laird, of course. But it's best for the lass to leave.'

Not the laird, nor even Captain Tailor, but some of Godwin Forrester's friends might seek out the girl and see she got what she had missed.

'Elly has family over Oban way,' Tanner stated, with the exaggerated precision of a drunk who had realized he was slurring his words. 'Vik will see Meg there safely.'

Fat Vik?

'Oh, no!' Toby straightened up and felt his hair brush the roof. 'You let me near Vik Tanner and there'll be another murder in the glen.'

He must have looked as if he meant it, because the men made shocked noises and began to protest. He didn't hear. He was remembering what had started all the trouble and his blood froze in his veins. Where was Granny Nan? It wasn't possible, was it? The hob would have protected her?

Apparently they were waiting for him to put it into words.

'That lout gave Crazy Colin a knife — on the night of the full moon, too! He set him onto killing me.'

Vik's father yelled, 'No! That's not true!' The accusation had not surprised him, though, and the other men shrugged. Why had they brought him here? How likely was it that the tanner would limp all this distance just to shake Toby's hand?

'It is true. That's what your daughter came to tell me. That's why she came to the castle — because of your precious son! And where is Granny Nan all this time? Out of my way!' He pushed past them to look in Granny Nan's sewing bag, where he might find a spare pin for his plaid.

'Kenneth,' said the smith, 'the fewer people who go, the better. You could trust Strangerson to see your