Figg seemed to pick her way along easily enough, despite the shifting, uneven ground beneath her hooves. Her ears twitched from side to side occasionally as the stumbling sounds of our progress echoed between the ridges, but she remained calm and collected following behind Trevor’s bay stallion. Gage and his beautiful chestnut gelding brought up the rear.
Being a market day, my brother had been unable to find a guide to lead us into the hills on such short notice. A fact I was certain our thieves had also counted on. These men were far too intelligent for my comfort, and so I rode on deeper into the wilderness with some trepidation.
Trevor reined in his horse as we rounded a curve in the pass, allowing us to pull up beside him. Up ahead in a sheltered nook stood the yew tree the ransom note had described, and next to it, with her leather reins twisted in the branches, stood the sorrel mare nibbling at the tufts of grass at her feet. We all scanned the ridges above us, looking for any sign of someone watching from above, but the light was fading fast. It would not have taken much effort to remain hidden.
“Do we proceed?” Trevor asked.
The lines of frustration and grim determination that had marred Gage’s brow all day deepened still. “Yes. But remain observant.”
We followed him as he guided his horse forward, down the rise and deeper into the pass. The sorrel mare’s ears perked up, followed by her head as she watched our approach. She did not seem overly wary, and I could only assume she was accustomed to encountering strange horses and people.
I remained on my horse, my eyes trained on the ridges above and my ears attuned to any strange sound—a cough, a sneeze, a slide of loose dirt or rocks, or worse still, the click of a pistol cocking. But no noise came to me beyond the gust of the wind and the shifting of Gage and Trevor’s feet as they hefted the leather satchels filled with Lord Buchan’s ransom money onto the back of the sorrel mare. The leather straps creaked as they were tightened.
Gage nodded for Trevor to mount and then reached up to untangle the mare’s reins from the tree. I tensed, tightening my grip on my own reins, prepared for the thieves’ horse to take off at a gallop. Instead, when Gage pulled the reins over her head, knotting them loosely behind her neck, and tapped her on the flank as directed, she grunted and slowly ambled forward, as if disgruntled to be forced to move from the warmth of this nook in the rocks. Gage had plenty of time to mount before the mare made any sort of effort to leave Shotton Pass.
She trotted lazily through the pass, taking us out of Scotland and into England. I turned to look at Gage, riding just over my right shoulder. Was it truly going to be this easy? At this pace, we could easily keep up with the mare and follow her to wherever the body snatchers were waiting for her.
But my thoughts had raced too far ahead. For when we cleared the last twist of the pass and an open stretch of moorland appeared before us, the mare suddenly lengthened her stride, cantering across the black expanse. In the weak light of the moon, it was difficult to see more than a few dozen feet in front of us—the rest was steeped in deep, tangled shadows.
Even so, the sounds of the mare’s hoof strikes were easy enough to hear, but they also became distorted by the noise of our own horses. Every few hundred feet we were forced to pull up and listen for the swiftly departing cadence of the mare. With each pause, the mare traveled farther away from us, and as much as this frustrated me, it frustrated Gage more. I could feel his aggravation rolling off him in waves, tautening the already tense atmosphere.
Looming before us to the left and to the right, I could see the dark outline of the two ridges where my cousins and uncle had positioned themselves. I was becoming increasingly grateful the men had altered their plan. Uncle Andrew and my cousins were to act as lookouts only, so as not to confuse our pursuit with the sounds of their horses’ hooves. But if they heard the mare pass by without the sounds of our own horses following near enough behind, they were to take over the chase.
Gage pushed his gelding faster, overtaking Trevor in his determination to catch the mare.
“Slow down,” Trevor yelled at him over the rushing wind. “It’s not safe.”
Gage knew this well enough, for we’d visited the day before in the cold winter rain that had plagued the Borders for the past three days. He’d seen the uneven ground, the loose pebbles and shifting mud, the holes overgrown by heather and bracken ready to trip up an unsuspecting horse or human. The harder-packed trails were relatively safe, but they were difficult to follow in the dark with their sudden twists and turns, and with all the rain, even the trails’ dirt had become unstable.
He pulled up so quickly, I worried his gelding had stumbled. “We’re losing her,” he snapped.
He was right. I had to strain to hear the horse’s lope in the distance.