Ghosts of Culloden

The whole Moment

Jack Ran­dall stood still. His sword was in his hand, but he made no effort to raise it. Only stood there, that odd smile on his lips, dark eyes burn­ing in Jamie’s own.

If he had been able to break that gaze… but he could­n’t, and so caught the blur of move­ment behind Ran­dall. Murtagh, run­ning, bound­ing tus­socks like a sheep. And the glint of his god­fa­ther’s blade—had he seen that, or only imag­ined it? No mat­ter; he’d known with­out doubt from the cock of Murtagh’s arm, and seen before it hap­pened the mur­der­ous strike come upward toward the Cap­tain’s red-clad back.

But Ran­dall spun, warned maybe by some change in his eyes, the sob of Murtagh’s breath or only by a sol­dier’s instinct. Too late to avoid the thrust, but soon enough that the dirk missed its fatal aim into the kid­ney. Ran­dall had grunt­ed with the blow—Christ, he could hear it—and jerked aside stag­ger­ing, but turn­ing as he fell, grasp­ing Murtagh’s wrist, drag­ging him down in a show­er of spray from the wet gorse they fell through.

They had rolled away into a hol­low, locked togeth­er, strug­gling, and he had flung him­self through the cling­ing plants in pur­suit, some weapon—what, what had he held?—in his fist.

But the feel of it fad­ed against his skin; he felt the weight of the thing in his hand, but there was no shape of hilt or trig­ger to remind him, and it was gone again.

Leav­ing him with that one image: Murtagh. Murtagh, teeth clenched and bared as he struck. Murtagh, run­ning, com­ing to save him.

All rights for the Pic­ture go to the right­ful own­er Starz
Quo­te and Excerpt by Diana Gabal­don from “A Breath of Snow and Ashes”
I own not­hing but the editing