Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) (6 page)

“My lord,” Luc persisted. “I’ve taken the liberty of requisitioning the laird’s chamber for you. Is there aught more you would have me do?”

Jaime realized the lad was working hard to prove himself in the absence of his first in command. He peered up at the youth. “How did it go with MacLaren’s steward?”

“He did not complain, though I warrant by the look on his face that he was rankled to his bones.”

Jaime recalled the man’s arrogant expression up on the ramparts and found himself unmoved. “Pity that, but it was never his right to claim the laird’s chamber in the first place.”

“Tell that to Maddog, my lord. These Scots are a surly, presumptuous lot.”

Jaime stood, wiping his fingers on his trews. He lifted a brow, but constrained himself from pointing out that he too was a Scot by birth—half Scot. It was easy enough for his men to overlook, likely because he didn’t feel like one himself. “Maddog? Is that his name?”

“Aye, my lord.” Luc gave another nod. “So it seems.”

“What of his affiliations?”

“None that I know. Born here, served Rogan and his brother before him, and their father before that, but that’s as much as I know. Seems he had some hope of rising in David’s service now that the MacLarens are all dead.”

Jaime ignored the stab of glee he felt over that simple truth. Donnal’s grandsons were hardly responsible for their grandsire’s sins. “Good to know. How many of MacLaren’s men remain?” His gaze automatically rose to the ramparts where a pack of MacLaren guards stood watching him with sober faces. As yet, they kept themselves apart from his troops, gathering in small numbers to watch what Jaime would do. His own reinforcements, led by Kieran, his captain of many years, were at least a day’s ride behind him and so he might advise his men to heed themselves, lest they find a dagger in their backs.

“I counted forty-three, though that includes everyone, from children and scullery maids to the blacksmith, who seems to be lame in one leg.”

“And how many are fit to fight?”

Luc shrugged. “Mayhap thirty of that lot.”

Jaime sighed again, wearied to his bones. His breath lingered in the air, leaving him with a certainty that the rains that had plagued them all the way north would soon turn to snow. It was bloody cold in these Highlands! “So we have thirty, plus twenty and seventy more to come?”

A gleam of admiration appeared in the youth’s winter blue eyes. “Aye, though we have the Butcher and some say he has the strength and cunning of ten.” He grinned over that, and Jaime resisted the to urge to reach out and tousle the lad’s hair.

“Flattery will get you naught from me, wolf pup.”

It wasn’t precisely the truth, and they both realized it. In so many ways Luc was the little brother Jaime never had. At one time their fathers had been like brothers as well. The simple fact that Luc’s sire was old and surrounded by too many daughters and his own was many years dead should have given Jaime a pang of envy, but it did not. Weston FitzStephen had done nearly as much to help Jaime rise in Henry’s service as David had, and Jaime would return the favor for his only son. The lad’s temperament merely made it easier: Luc was a proud, fearless, loyal lad and it was an attitude he wore like a second skin. Betimes it made Jaime proud. Betimes it tried his patience.

Much like the girl up in the tower.

She did not even blink at the sight of his raised sword and that fact piqued Jaime’s curiosity. From the instant he’d sent her away, it was all he could do not to climb the tower stairs to discover who she was and what she was doing in the company of these men. She brought to mind Boadicea, the long-ago queen of the Iceni tribe, who’d led the uprising against the Romans. With the lass’s lovely face swimming through his head, he left off inspecting the gates and started toward the keep, annoyed with his sudden inability to focus on anything but her face.

Luc followed.

“Where did you put the yellow-haired behemoth?” Jaime asked, not wanting the lad to glean how pervasively the girl had crept into his thoughts.

“The gaols, my lord, as you requested.”

Jaime’s gaze swept the courtyard, spying two of MacLaren’s men with their heads together near the gallows. “And what of the girl?”

“I put her where you said as well… next to the laird’s chamber.” There was a hint of a smile in his tone.

Jaime turned a scowl upon the lad, but Luc blinked back, unfazed. God’s truth, the boy was blessed with his father’s sense of irreverence, but Jaime refused to rise to the bait. Only his footfalls in the frozen muck gave any reply.

He’d hoped the inspection would set his mind at ease. Instead, it gave him pause. The simple fact that this castle remained unclaimed during the long months since MacLaren’s death only served to prove how dilapidated it had become. When all was said and done, it wasn’t in much better shape than his patrimony. At least Dunloppe had no keep left to raze. For all his talk of Keppenach’s former glory, David had given him a seat without much to recommend it.

“Is there aught else you would have me do, my lord?” Luc asked far too amenably for Jaime’s present mood.

“Aye,” Jaime snapped. “Go tend the horses, see the stables are proofed against the weather, then have the gallows dismantled.”

“Then what?” the lad asked with a singsong tenor to his voice.

Jaime growled. “Then go hang yourself,” he suggested, but the lad merely chuckled.

“Aye, my lord,” he acquiesced good-naturedly and veered away, heading for what remained of the stables, leaving Jaime alone to wrestle with unruly thoughts.

Cameron MacKinnon lifted his head, examining his surroundings through lashes sticky with his own blood.

Chreagach Mhor
was still too far, but the mare wasn’t bound there anyway. Surefooted and graceful as a dancer, she belonged to Lael of the dún Scoti. He’d taken her because his own was dead, shot through the face with a burning shaft. If he lived to be an old man—not likely, considering the state he was in—he would never forget the hideous neigh of pain and terror that exploded from the animal’s mouth.

Thirsty and fatigued, he collapsed over the withers of his tenacious mount, clinging to the blood-soaked mane as he fought yet another wave of vertigo. His body burned despite the flurry of snow. His wounds were bleeding extensively, draining him of life. He had no will to carry on. Fortunately for him, the silvery mare knew precisely where to go, persevering over the snow-covered shoulders of the
Am Monadh Ruadh
… a faithful pigeon flying home.

With waning strength, he peered up at the overcast sky. The sun had fled, so had his energy and his resolve.

He could hardly fathom what happened. They’d sent seven men in through the hidden portal to unlock Keppenach’s gates. Until then, it seemed no one even realized they’d embarked upon a siege in the freezing rain, for these were the hours when a man should be busy fattening his belly to prepare for a lean winter. Quietly, they’d sent Keppenach’s remaining villagers into the hills and then turned wagons away, keeping David’s garrison lean whilst they awaited reinforcements that never came. Once word came of the Butcher’s approach, Broc commanded the attack.

But somehow the battle was over before it began.

After a single warning shout to draw them out, arrows flew from the ramparts, all aimed at the place where their men lay hidden—as though MacLaren’s archers had known precisely where to aim. Within minutes, the villein’s huts were set aflame. Those who were spared retreated per force, leaving the wounded to draw the endless barrage of burning missiles. Left for dead under the weight of his gray, Cameron crawled out of the line of fire and ran into the copse. Like a red-painted gargoyle with boneless limbs, he climbed atop Lael’s mare. After that, he did not see his men again, and so he fled, without taking the time to see to his wounds. That was a mistake, he realized, but he’d been afraid. He should have stayed and fought like a man. Now he wasn’t certain what was to come.

Mayhap he deserved to die?

He’d failed his cousin.

“War is no game,” Broc’s voice echoed in his head, a warning Cameron hadn’t yet been prepared to heed… and then he left Cameron alone with his gargantuan pride.

In truth, Cameron was no stranger to death. His parents both died when he was but a lad. Nor was he an innocent. He’d witnessed bad men doing terrible things to innocent folks. He’d even been a part of it, much to his regret. But he had never seen war up close. And now that he had, he wished he hadn’t. All his boasts and misplaced pride seemed a blasphemy to his own ears.

“Broc,” he rasped through broken lips, and then collapsed atop Lael’s cantering mare. Every step the animal took felt like daggers through his bones.

In answer, thunder rolled across the heavens… the sound angry and full of condemnation.

Blackness awaited.

Merciful and silent.

Still, Cameron refused to embrace it, afraid to close his eyes lest he never open them again, but unlike the man he’d once thought himself to be, he was not ashamed when the boy inside began to weep.

Five known dead, how many more?

Whatever the answer, Broc realized he was responsible for every single man lost. He alone had waged this war.

With eyes that were half swollen from the beating he’d endured after being cut down from the gallows, he surveyed the space where he was being held.

Judging by the looks of it, his informant spoke the truth. Keppenach’s gaols were rarely used. Damp, dark and full of detritus, the cells were empty, save for the one in which he stood—empty, unless one considered the bloated carcass of a pine marten that had found its way into the adjoining cell.

Knowing MacLaren’s reputation, it was easy enough to believe the man had hanged any and all offenders rather than hold them here for trial. His steward had been quick enough to follow his example, arranging their execution scant hours after their capture. Sequestered now beneath the donjon, it was all the more torturous knowing that freedom lay not more than one hundred meters through half-forgotten tunnels.

Although Broc was only a wee child when last he saw this place, he remembered it still from his dreams. This was how old Alma had secreted him away from Keppenach after Donnal MacLaren and his cold-hearted sons took the castle per force. He knew his parents were dead—had spied their butchered bodies lying upon the ground—but he was told little more. Ushered away to live with distant kin, he forsook the images in his head, blocking them away. But it took a single look at Keppenach from a distance, and all his memories came flooding back.

At one end of the tunnels, unguarded and concealed by years of bracken, lay the outside portal to Keppenach’s tunnels. The wooden trap was surrounded by lichen-painted oaks and knotted elms, whose roots poked insistently at the long-neglected door.

At the other end, the tunnel led into a cobwebbed chapel, built by his father to appease David’s sire, Malcom mac Dhonnchaidh. Tucked away oddly, the tiny chapel sat at the back of the bailey, very near the well, and it was easily overlooked, save by those who came to fill their daily buckets.

Purportedly, both of the tunnel entrances had been sealed since the night of Broc’s departure, but the wood was wormy and easily destroyed. Three entire generations of MacLarens had perished in less than two score years, but the treachery always came from within, thus the hidden tunnels remained overlooked. For all these years, they lay unused and ignored. Under Maddog’s provisional leadership, it should have been an easy breach. But someone took the time to unseal the inner door, and then set a new padlock on both the door to the tunnels as well as the door to the chapel. It was a grievous miscalculation, one that roused the attention of the guards during their attempt to break through.

Now he stood in chains, mired in sludge that smelled like the seepage of waste. Wracked by guilt, he hung his head. After all was said and done, not only had he cost good men their lives—and both his and Lael’s freedom—he’d lost the sword of kings.

Was it worth it?