Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (46 page)

It all shone in their eyes: they were not exceptionally fond of her right now.
 

Most especially Ré. From everything she’d been able to ascertain, Ré had been suspicious of her and her value from the start. Suspicious of how Aodh cleaved to her.
 

All those suspicions had just been proven well-founded, had they not?

“We are going to get him back,” she announced.
 

Astonishment lit their hardened faces. Cormac’s jaw dropped. “Why, I’d never have believed it of you, lady,” he said, wiping his hand over his face as if to clear it of a cobweb.

“Nor would I,” Ré echoed.

“And why not?” she demanded, as Dickon came bounding down the stairs, bundled under so many cloaks and weapons he looked like a pack pony. Behind him hurried Susanna, carrying several satchels and strapped with pistols.
 

Cormac looked at Ré, scratching his head. “Well, my lady, meaning no offense, but you’re English, and—”

“I am half Irish,” she retorted, reaching for the sword belt first.

Ré looked at Cormac. “And I am full English,” he said in faint rebuke, then took the cloak hanging over half of Dickon’s head and began fastening it around Katarina’s shoulders.

“Aw, I only meant the army out front and all,” Cormac muttered, taking a satchel from Susanna’s arms into his huge hands. “You’re a testy bunch.”

“Food,” Susanna murmured, heaving another pack into his arms. “Drink.” She hoisted another one into Ré’s hands. “Powder and shot. And salves.” She looked at Katarina. “Be safe,” then glanced at Cormac and tipped up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “You too.”

Cormac’s face, what could be seen above the beard, flooded red. He fisted his hands around the baggage once, twice, then, with a curse, dropped everything and flung his arms around her. He planted a long, hard kiss on her mouth. Then he gathered all the bags back up. “I’ll watch out for your lady,” he said gruffly.

“And I shall watch out for him,” Katarina said as they turned for the door.
 

Then, on the stairs, Bran appeared.

“My lady, may I…I must…” His voice broke for a second. “I am coming.”

Cormac, after a glance toward Katarina, spoke first. “Lad, you’ll be needed here.”

“I am coming.”

Ré said almost gently, “Aodh specifically ordered you to stay here, Bran. He wanted you safe—”

“He raised me. He saved me. I am coming.”

Katarina saw in his eyes exactly what she felt in her heart. “Of course you are coming,” she said, and flung the door open. Cormac shook his head, and Ré all but glared at her. “He doesn’t want to be safe,” she said. “He wants Aodh. Surely we can all understand that. Come, we must be off. The army will move directly for England, and the queen will not be kind to Aodh.”

She had no further plan than this.
The queen will not be kind
was not, in actuality, a plan, but these were Aodh’s men, built for reckless adventures, and they required no convincing.
 

Nighttime was everywhere by the time they led their horses though the small back gate and along the path of the precipice that overlooked the sheer cliff. Carefully, they led their horses along the slippery, rocky cliffside. The hard rock trail underfoot was damp, and reflected moonlight off stone like wet obsidian.

“Jesus save us,” Cormac muttered, his rumbling murmur bouncing off the cliffside, “If I didn’t know better, lady, I’d swear you were trying to kill us.”

“I did not realize you were afraid of heights,” she said, leading the way, her hood pulled forward so she was little more than a dark shadow.
 

Cormac stiffened but didn’t look up from ground beneath his boots, “No’ frightened, simply…cautious.”

“Since when?” Ré inquired from behind.

“I’m a cautious fellow, at times,” came the indignant, if faint, reply.

“Aodh did not mention ‘cautious’ in his descriptions of you,” Katarina said, supporting Ré in this line of questioning.

“Talkin’ about me, was he?” Cormac muttered.

“He spoke of all of you.” She stepped over a portion of the path that was washed away. Rocks dribbled into the little gorge that had been left behind. A little earth slide cascaded into the miniature crevasse, and bounced noisily down the vee.

“What’d he say?” Cormac asked.

A few more pebbles skidded down and fell blackly into the chasm below. She tightened her hands on the wet leather reins of her horse and walked on a little faster. “He told me Ré was most bold, Bran fiercely loyal, and you were middling with a bow and lethal with everything else. He also mentioned you were a most valiant drinker of ale. Mind the washout,” she added, as if it were an afterthought.

“Valiant, is it?” he railed indignantly. “An’ he said nothin’ of Ré’s drinkin’, did he?” He snorted and stepped over the washed-out portion indignantly.
 

“He said you could drink Ré under the table,” she informed him.

“Hardly,” the amiable retort drifted up from the back of the line, where Ré brought up the rear, and in this way, they distracted Cormac from the plunging depths to their left until they reached the end of the rocky cliff trail and stepped out onto grassy earth. There they crouched, and watched the army begin its retreat.

Then smoothly and in single file, caped and hooded, like moving shadows, they rode down the only path of safety through the bog and followed after.

*

THEY TAILED THE ARMY for two days, but it moved swiftly, never stopping for more than an hour or so. There was no chance to intercept it, or sneak inside its perimeter, nor to make any sort of more complicated plans. The army reached their ships and loaded up immediately, eager to return with their prize. And to leave Ireland in their dust. No delay, no pause.
 

Above the town, Katarina, Ré, Cormac, and Bran watched the launch. After two days’ riding, they were a motley-looking crew and would never get through the gates.

“I suppose we must hire ourselves a smuggler,” Katarina announced, realizing she had utterly turned a corner. Lover of rebels, employer of smugglers.
 

“We don’t need smugglers,” Ré replied, reining about.

“Why not?”

“We
are
smugglers.” He cantered off down the hill.
 

Katarina started after him. “Where is he going?”

“To our boat,” Cormac said, gathering his reins. Bran followed suit, and Katarina reined around too, their hooves a low thunder back down the hill.

She’d forgotten they had a boat. How like Aodh, to have provided something that could assist in his own rescue.

Chapter Forty-Three

“HOW ARE WE EVER going to get in there?”

The five of them stood outside the English army camp as night fell. Campfires burned, bright punches of dancing flame amid the dark bodies of army soldiers, who were, without a doubt, celebratory.
 

For good reason. The English battalion had had an easy sailing across a notoriously shifty sea, after having accomplished their mission for the queen with surprising speed and no bloodshed. Even now, their commander had ridden on ahead to inform the queen of their successful accomplishment, leaving the army encamped outside this small town, as night fell and revelry erupted.

On the morrow, they would bring the queen her prize, the Irish rebel. They were understandably and intensely celebratory.
 

The nearby townsfolk seemed of a like mind. Merchants and vendors and whores streamed into the camp as it lit up under the night sky to sell goods, and a festive atmosphere reigned. An army marching into your town was bad news, but passing by it while on other, non-military business was an entirely different matter. The aspiring merchant—or whore—could make a lucrative showing.
 

But exultant and celebratory, the army had not entirely relaxed its guard: everyone entering was being searched.
 

“We shall get in as merchants,” said Ré firmly.

They all looked at the merchants walking by. Every one had a barrel or basket or wagon of goods. The only ones who did not were the tricksters and the whores.

“Can any of you do any tricks?” Katarina asked, watching a trained bear go by.
 

“I can juggle a bit, ma lady.”

Everyone turned to the great hulking mass of Scotsman.

“You
juggle
?” Incredulity stretched Ré’s voice as if it was on a rack.

A huge shoulder lifted in a nonchalant shrug. “Upon a time. Learned when I was a lad. Earned a penny by it here and there.”

“Cormac, every day, you become more of a revelation to me,” Ré said in an admiring tone.
 

“That’s just what ma mam said,” Cormac replied comfortably.

And finally, finally, Bran smiled. Bran who had not smiled, nor barely spoken, since leaving Rardove Keep. In response, she patted Cormac’s chest fondly. “Then juggle you shall, sir. With Ré and Bran as your assistants. And I… I think I shall make a credible whore.” She pulled up her hood and tugged down the laces of her bodice. “Do you think I look like a whore?”

They stared. She’d bathed briefly in the cove they’d sailed from last night, where the water came down over the rocks in a pool lit by reflected moonlight, so it seemed to be a home for nymphs more than men. She’d washed her tunic and her hair, and tucked it all back under the veil, but perhaps… Well, one could not be sure how one looked after several days of riding a horse, chasing an army.

“You’re the best-looking whore I’ve ever seen,” Cormac assured her in reverent tones. He sounded slightly choked up.

Ré smacked him on the back of the head and turned to her. “My lady, you should wait here. We will get Aodh.”

“Yes, with a great deal of bloodshed and attention, which will never do. In any event, you cannot stop me. I am going to be a whore.”

Ré wiped his hand over his face. “Aodh will have my head,” he muttered into his palm.

“I will stand for you,” she assured him. Then Cormac, ever helpful, reached out with huge, beefy hands, and puffed up her hair a little. “They like it a bit more tousled,” he informed her soberly.

She thanked him for the insight.
 

“At least, I should be the one slipping into the tent,” Ré said, and Cormac, hands still in her hair, nodded. “Or myself, my lady.”

She sighed. “We have already been over this. There will almost certainly be guardsmen inside the tent, and they will not be distracted by
a man
stepping into their tent, at least not in the way we want. Only a woman can do that. Whereas the guards
outside
the tent will be very distracted by an argument occurring in front of their faces. With a juggler.”

 
Ré watched in dismay, and Bran watched, impassive, as Cormac dropped his hands, her hair apparently sufficiently tousled. She smiled at him and tugged at the laces of her gown, loosening them a little more.

Ré closed his eyes. Cormac examined her with a soldier’s eye, then nodded. “You’ll do,” he said. Ré groaned.
 

“The green tent is Ludthorpe’s,” Bran informed her.
 

She nodded and tugged her hood forward.
 

“You get Aodh, and you go,” Ré said grimly as they started walking. “Do not wait for us. We meet back at the cave.”

 
They made it into the camp easily, and moved straight toward the green tent. Katarina hung back, head averted, hood up, waiting until Ré and Cormac started a full-on argument that was clearly tending toward violence, then skirted behind the two guardsmen who, as predicted, stepped forward to watch, and slipped inside the tent.

She straightened immediately, prepared to offer explanations and anything else that might be required, momentarily, in order to distract the men and free Aodh. She would just have to hope Aodh could, at some point, offer his own invaluable assistance.

But there were no soldiers. There was only darkness, the pale ambient light of moon and fire that filtered in from outside, and a single figure, slumped sideways on the ground, propped against the tent pole, arms wrenched behind his back, lashed with rope.