Outlander Book Club: A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 28 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

This is a long chapter. It’s one of the longest of the whole of A Breath of Snow and Ashes.

The chapter starts with Claire still in her dangerous situation. Lionel Brown has shown up, and it’s clear that this is going to get worse before it gets better. During the journey, Lionel breaks his leg. Claire wants to help heal him, but he doesn’t want Claire coming anywhere near him. Even Hodgepile starts to think that Claire could have put a curse on them all.

When they reach a river, Claire tries her hardest to get away. She wants Tebbe to lead her to the water unbound and then allow her to float underwater. She says that the waterhorse will keep her safe, but Tebbe doesn’t do it.

That night, Claire is assaulted by multiple men. However, it’s only one man who fully rapes her, which is something different to the books. We’ll get to that. She doesn’t necessarily think of anything bad about the man who does rape her. She notes that he called her by his wife’s name and cried.

Toward the end, Claire meets a fellow time traveler. One of the men asks her about whether she knows Ringo Starr. He introduces herself as Wendigo Donner. Claire realizes that he’s a man who traveled through time with a group but they were separated. One of those men was Otter Tooth, Robert Springer.

Donner is happy that Robert made it, but he’s then disappointed to hear that his friend was killed by the Iroquois. However, Donner notes that if others have made it through then the rest of his group might have made it through, too. He just wants to know that they survived.

He’s also happy to hear that it is possible to get back to his own time. That’s all he wants now, and this is the part that foreshadows things. We’ll get to that. Donner agrees to helping Claire get away when they have a chance, although it’s clear that he’s already a coward.

At the end of the chapter, Claire hears drums. She knows Roger is playing the drum. Jamie has found her, and he’s brought men to help. All of Claire’s attackers are killed. Well, it looks that way. We know Lionel Brown isn’t, and Claire can’t tell if Donner is. She thinks that Donner will have gotten away.

When Claire is offered the chance to kill everyone, Jamie makes it clear that he kills for her since she took an oath not to. He wants to know which one to kill, but Claire can’t give him that answer. So, after Young Ian and Fergus agree to kill for Claire too, Jamie tells them to “kill them all.”

We end the chapter with relief. Claire is saved.