The Wounded Warrior
The night after the battle lay heavy and damp, as if the sea itself had slumped against the land in exhaustion. Smoke from the smothered fires still clung to the air, curling about the sheds and drifting low along the saltpans like ghosts reluctant to leave. The Craiks had won the field, but victory was a raw thing: blood in the mud, kelp half-burned, salt spilled in puddles that glistened red beneath torchlight.
Agnes Craik stood in the middle of it, her hair undone, her apron blackened, her short sword sheathed but still within reach. She had counted her people three times already—first in the din, then when the fires died down, and now again as the camp quieted into groans and whispers. No dead. That was the miracle. Three wounded bad, seven cut or bruised enough to carry scars, but none gone to the grave.
But her eyes kept sliding to one man only.
Flint.
He stood at first, leaning on his claymore, jaw tight, eyes distant. His cloak was torn, his shirt soaked through with blood not all his own. His left thigh was cut, his ribs sliced, his forearm raw where a blade had kissed it. But none of that frightened her. What frightened her was the way he coughed—deep, tearing coughs that left him bent double, spitting black-red into a cloth already sodden. Each spasm sounded like his body breaking itself apart from the inside.
She crossed the trampled mud to him. "Sit," she ordered.
He shook his head once, stubborn as a bull. "I'll not—" The cough tore through him again, folding him in half. He dropped to one knee with a grunt that wasn't surrender but necessity. His claymore sagged and thudded into the earth.
Agnes caught his shoulder before he toppled sideways. She felt the heat of fever through his shirt, unnatural in the cold night. His weight was immense, not from fat but from the sheer presence of him, the iron will packed into a failing frame. She eased him down onto the turf bank, kneeling beside him.
"Fetch Dr. MacPherson," she snapped over her shoulder. "Now. Run!"
A boy sprinted into the dark. The others moved silently, glancing at Flint as they passed—fear in their eyes, though none dared say it aloud. The man who had turned the tide could not fall. Not yet.
Agnes pressed her palm against his chest. His heartbeat thundered against her hand, erratic, as though racing to outrun death itself. She felt the sharp rise of his ribs under her fingers.
"James," she said softly, for once not calling him stranger, nor warrior, nor ghost. "Stay with me."
His eyes flicked open—dark, bloodshot, hollow with exhaustion. He stared at her as though memorising her face. Then he rasped, "You should not… see me… like this."
Her grip tightened. "I'll see you as you are, or not at all."
For a long moment, he only looked at her, breath rattling, lips parted. Then the fight left his eyes.
"I am Gunn," he whispered.
The name hit her like a thrown stone. Gunn. The clan name. The enemy of Keiths, the echo of blood feuds sung by firesides. She had guessed, aye, but to hear it from his own lips was another thing.
"Seumas Gunn," he said, forcing each word through the cough that wanted to take it. "Born in the strath near Braemore. Fought for the Prince. Killed too many to count. Hunted. Hated. Dead to the world… but not yet buried."
Agnes's throat tightened. She remembered stories told by her father—of the red-haired Keiths and the dark Gunns, forever at each other's throats, spilling blood from Caithness to Sutherland. Of the man they called An Taibhse Dubh—the Black Phantom—who cut down Hanoverian men by the dozen at Culloden and slipped away like smoke. A bounty on his head. A ghost.
And here he lay, coughing blood into her hands.
"You were him," she breathed. "The shadow they feared."
"I was." His voice broke. He spat again, crimson against the grass. "Now I'm only this."
She brushed the blood away with the edge of her apron. "You're not only this. You're the man who stood with us, who turned Keith's charge, who saved my folk from burning."
He gave a short, broken laugh. "I came here to die, Agnes." His eyes caught hers, dark and fierce even through fever. "But you… you've made me want to live."
The words struck her like an arrow. She could not speak, not at first. She only held his face between her hands, her thumbs brushing the coarse beard, her heart hammering harder than his failing one.
Then she whispered, "Then live, Gunn. Live."
The doctor arrived not long after, bundled in cloak and carrying a leather satchel. Dr. MacPherson was a spare man, sharp-eyed, with the manner of one who had seen death in all its forms and was not impressed. He knelt by Flint, feeling his pulse, pressing along his ribs, listening to the rasp of his lungs.
"Well, you've taken your share of cuts," MacPherson muttered. "But none fatal. A bit of steel in the thigh, a slice at the ribs… aye, these'll mend."
Agnes glanced at the doctor, impatient. "And the coughing? The blood?"
Flint laughed bitterly, a harsh sound. "Consumption. I know it. Doctor in Edinburgh said I'd be gone in three years. That was two past."
MacPherson snorted. "Consumption, is it? Who was this doctor—some Lowland fop who's never smelt kelp burning?" He pulled a small glass vial from his satchel and prised Flint's jaw open. "Spit here."
Flint obeyed, hacking blood into the vial. MacPherson held it to the firelight, studying the colour, the thickness. Then he sniffed it, grimacing.
"Hah," he said. "As I thought. Not the lungs, lad. The stomach. Ulcers. Bad ones. You've bled yourself half to death from within, living on whisky and salt meat, breathing smoke and coal dust in Glasgow. No wonder you cough blood—it's your gut that leaks, not your lungs."
Flint blinked, as if he hadn't heard right. "Not dying?"
MacPherson chuckled dryly. "Oh, you'll die, same as us all. But not this year. Not if you stop drowning yourself in whisky and let this good Caithness air work on you. Kelp ash in the broth, clean water, none of that city filth… you'll live to grow grey, if you've the sense to want it."
Agnes let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. She pressed her hand to her lips, her shoulders shaking. Relief, fierce and overwhelming, ran through her like tide breaking on a sandbar.
Flint stared at the doctor, stunned, as if the words could not fit inside him. For years he had lived with death riding his shoulder, whispering in his ear. He had sold his business, abandoned his home, come north to die on Gunn ground. And now—now the man told him he might live.
He laughed, and this time it was not bitter but incredulous, ragged, alive. "By God, you're telling me I've wasted years thinking I was already dead?"
"Aye," MacPherson said dryly. "So start making up for them, eh? Now lie back before you tear that rib wider."
Agnes stayed with him as the doctor cleaned and bound his wounds, her hands steady though her heart still raced. Flint's eyes found hers again and again, as if to be sure she was real, that this wasn't some trick of fever. Each time, she held his gaze, unflinching.
When at last MacPherson left, muttering about broth and clean bedding, Agnes leaned close, her voice low.
"Seumas Gunn," she said, testing the name on her tongue.
His eyes flickered, wary.
She touched his chest lightly, over the bandages. "You told me the truth. I'll keep it safe."
For the first time since Culloden, he let someone see him not as Flint, the ghost, the stranger, but as Seumas Gunn—the boy who had taken up a claymore at his father's side, the man who had bled for a prince, the fugitive who had lived with death at his shoulder.
And in that moment, weak and bleeding though he was, he felt something stronger than any prophecy, any oath, any blade in his hand.
He felt alive.
The Diagnosis
Morning came pale and raw, the kind of Caithness dawn that makes a man believe the world has been stripped to bone and salt. A low mist clung to the hollows by the loch, and gulls cried sharp and thin above the shore.
The Craiks were already at work, as always—boys forking kelp onto drying racks, women tending pans where brine simmered low and steady. But their eyes kept straying toward the turf shed where Agnes had laid Flint. A man who had fought like a legend one day and coughed himself into her arms the next—such a thing left folk unsettled.
Agnes herself had not slept. She sat by the low cot where he lay, mending the bandage on his ribs. His breathing was less ragged now, though each cough still left a stain of blood on the kerchief by his side.
Flint stirred, eyes opening to the dim light. For a moment he looked about, as though expecting the battlefield, then his gaze found her.
"You're still here," he rasped.
She arched a brow. "Where else would I be? You make more work than three men, and someone has to keep you from bleeding on my floors."
He gave a low, rough laugh, and then winced. "God's teeth… don't make me laugh. Hurts."
Agnes smoothed the linen across his chest. "Then keep still. The doctor will be back soon."
As if summoned, Dr. MacPherson arrived, stomping mud from his boots. He set down his satchel, sniffed the air, and said briskly, "How's the hero this morning?"
"Like a corpse that forgot to lie down," Flint muttered.
"Better than a corpse that remembered," MacPherson replied, kneeling to check the bandage. He pressed lightly along Flint's side. "Tender here?"
Flint hissed between his teeth. "Aye."
"Good. Means you've blood in you yet." The doctor nodded, satisfied. He uncorked a small flask and handed it to Agnes. "Kelp broth with chalk and powdered bark. Bitter as sin, but it'll coat his gut. He drinks it thrice a day, no less."
Agnes held it out. Flint eyed it suspiciously. "It smells like a witch's cauldron."
"Drink," Agnes ordered.
He swallowed, grimaced, and swore softly in Gaelic. "Mo thruaighe, that's vile."
"Aye," MacPherson said, unbothered. "But it'll keep you from coughing up half your stomach. You've ulcers, Gunn, not the wasting sickness. Your body's been bleeding slow for years. Poor food, smoke, hard whisky—that's what poisoned you. Here you'll mend. You'll cough less once the bleeding eases."
Flint stared at him, stunned. "You swear it's not consumption?"
MacPherson rolled his eyes. "I've buried enough folk of the lung-rot to know it. You've none of the wasting look—your chest is clear, your breath rattles but doesn't whistle. No. You're not dying of that. You've been eating and drinking yourself into a grave, and telling yourself it was fate."
For the first time, something like shame crossed Flint's face. He glanced at Agnes, then away. "I've lived like a dead man for years."
Agnes reached across, caught his hand, and pressed it to her lap. Her voice was firm, not gentle. "Then stop. Live like one who wants to stay."
The words hit him harder than any blade. He had expected pity, or fear of his truth. Instead, she bound him with command, as if she had the right. And to his own surprise, he wanted to obey.
The day passed slow. Flint dozed between bouts of broth and bitter draughts, each time waking to find Agnes near. She oversaw the camp, aye—calling orders, checking pans, scolding boys who shirked—but always she returned to him. Each time, she brought something simple: a basin of clean water, a strip of cloth, a sliver of oatcake softened in broth.
By evening, the colour had returned faintly to his cheeks. His cough came less often, though when it did, it still left blood in his kerchief. The folk came by in twos, quiet, respectful, bringing gifts—driftwood carved smooth, a pouch of salt, a sprig of heather. They set them by his cot and went without speaking, as if he were not man but shrine.
When night fell, Agnes dismissed them all and sat again by his side. The firelight caught her hair, loose around her shoulders, and made it glow.
Flint watched her, his eyes dark and searching. "Why do you keep at me, Agnes? I came here to die. You could have let me."
She met his gaze, steady as ever. "Because I don't let good men throw themselves away. And because…" She hesitated, then said it plain. "Because I don't want you to."
Silence settled between them, deep as the sea outside. Flint's chest rose and fell, slow, ragged. At last he reached, his hand trembling, and caught hers. His palm was rough, scarred, warm.
"You give me back years I thought gone," he said softly.
"And what will you do with them?" she asked.
His eyes held hers, fierce even through weakness. "Live. For you. For them. For the living."
Agnes squeezed his hand until her knuckles whitened. "Then that's what you'll do. Seumas Gunn."
And for the first time in two decades, he believed it.