The Raven's Moon

The Raven's Moon

The Border Rogues Series

Book Two

by

Susan King

National Bestselling Author

Author's Cut Edition

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ISBN: 978-1-61417-576-6

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 2014 by Susan King. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Dedication

For my sons

Joshua, Jeremy, and Sean

each one a joy and a privilege

each one a hero

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Mary and Ed Furgol for a rousing Burns Supper among other Scottish inspirations; to Ted Wells-Green, M.D., who suggested treatment for fictional injuries; and to Jo-Ann Power and Eileen Charbonneau for always being there, regardless of geography.

Chapter 1

"Oh no, oh no, my brither dear,

That thing maun never be..."

—"The Battle of Harlaw"

Scotland, the Borderlands

October 1588

The wind whirled around her like a curse, strong as a demon's breath. As a gust of rain billowed her black cloak, Mairi Macrae kept her horse steady beneath her. She waited, her attention focused on the dark road below.

Though her knees shook with fear—she was no fool to think this, tonight, would be easy—she tightened her grip on the reins and stiffened her shoulders, refusing to surrender to a sudden impulse to flee. She had to ride out again. Too much depended on her courage, here and now. Her brother Iain, imprisoned and condemned, had no other champion but her.

Blinking in the rain, she watched the road and boggy moor from her hilltop perch. In the distance, the muddy road unraveled like a brown ribbon. Three times over weeks, she had sat here watching for messengers along that highway.

Tonight's twilight storm would give her—and her companion, not yet arrived—an advantage of surprise. The rider coming this way would not expect anyone to be out on moor or hillside, waiting to strike, in such weather.

She had a feeling that another messenger would come through tonight, yet another sent by King James's privy council to deliver documents to the warden of the Scottish Middle March; his stone tower was not far from here. Mairi could sense the rider's approach—a compelling, tense foreboding that she could not ignore.

Iain, her twin brother, had inherited the full gift of Sight from their mother, and Mairi did not share that—for her, a portent was sometimes a strange heaviness in the air or even a physical twinge. As child growing up in the Highlands, she had learned to listen to those silent warnings. Having lived in the Lowlands for a few years, she heeded those feelings even more closely. The Borderlands could be a rough and dangerous territory, and any foreboding was useful. And now she herself added to that danger. She had no choice.