Highland Guard (18 page)

“Ye have two choices, woman. Ye freely give o’er Glencullaich to me or ye watch your people die.”

“Actually, there is another choice. I could say nay and watch ye and your army fall before my walls.”

“Ye think ye can win this battle?”

There was no hint of her fear or uncertainty in her voice when she replied, “Aye. So I give ye two choices now, sir. Ride away home or die. Here. In a vain, foolish attempt to steal this land.” She turned and started to leave only to turn back, glare down at Sir Adam, and point to the gravestone visible at the top of the hill overlooking them all. “And look there, Sir Adam, for there lies the mon ye had murdered. He will be watching, waiting to see ye pay for what ye have done and now try to do. And I mean to let him see ye die, here, on this ground while he watches over it all!”

She turned and marched away, stumbling only a little when the men on the walls cheered and banged their swords on their shields. Just as she stepped inside the door, out of sight of the men on the walls, she felt the first tear slide down her cheek. It would begin now. There was no way every man on those walls could survive and she had to find a way to accept that, to not bury herself in blame for it all. She gave a start when a piece of linen was placed in her hand and she looked up to find Joan watching her.

“Dinnae ye dare take this on your own shoulders, Annys,” Joan said as she took her by the hand and led her down the steps. “’Tis all on that bastard’s head. We heard him. T’was him that got David hurt, although I would wager his plan was for David to die. I also suspicion ’tis him that prevented us from getting Nigel back or e’en kenning his fate. And it wasnae just the men on the walls cheering when ye said our laird will be watching him die. We all did.”

Everyone was so fierce in the defense of Glencullaich, Annys thought. She needed to share that strength. Stopping when they reached her bedchamber, she patted her hair to make certain it was not too windblown and brushed down her skirts. Bellowed commands and a clatter against the walls of the keep made her tense but she shook aside the urge to go look.

“Best we get to work then, Joan,” she said. “It has begun.”

 

 

Harcourt watched Adam ride back to his men and start yelling orders. He cursed when he saw that the man had armed other men with bows, increasing the number of archers he had. The twenty hired archers were still the ones who needed to be taken down first, however. For now, their job was to stay alive until the rain of arrows about to descend upon them ended. The moment he saw the archers pull back on their bowstrings, he yelled out the command to take cover. Even as he crouched next to the wall and held his shield up to cover himself, he watched Bear get down off the walls with a grace and agility that was astonishing in a man of that size.

“Bastard needs killing,” grumbled Nathan from his side. “Needed it years ago if I am guessing the full meaning of what he was yelling at your lady.”

“Aye. I believe he set the jealous husband on David.” He winced as a cry from farther down the walls told him someone had been injured already. “Suspicion he thought the mon would just kill him.”

“Ladders up,” Nathan murmured when the clatter of wood on stone echoed all around them.

“Be ready. The moment the rain stops, on your feet with sword in hand,” he said to the man on his right. “Pass it down.” He could hear Nathan saying the same to the man next to him.

The sound of the deadly fall of arrows faded away minutes later. Harcourt used as much speed as he dared to rise to his feet, sword in hand. He had barely adjusted his shield to cover his chest when a man began to scramble over the wall. The man swung his sword but was in too awkward a position to be a real threat. Harcourt knocked the man’s sword aside and slammed him in the face with his shield. The man’s scream as he lost his balance and fell to the ground brought Harcourt no joy.

Cries from the men on the walls as well as from the ones they were sending to the ground filled the air. Harcourt could not afford to check on the men who fought with him, however, as Sir Adam was sending his men to the walls without pause. Considering the number of them plummeting to the ground to die or who were dead before they got there, Harcourt had to wonder why the men did not just stop no matter how much Sir Adam yelled at them. They were not MacQueens and he doubted Sir Adam paid that well. Then he saw Clyde on a horse, riding back and forth behind the men, his sword out, and several equally armed, grim-faced men riding with him. Clyde was driving the men forward like cattle to the slaughter.

Then he saw the arrow fly over their heads, the arrow’s tip a ball of flame, and cursed. “Geordie! Skewer those bastards!”

“Trying!”

Harcourt watched as the women and young boys, even some of the older girls, poured out of the keep to make sure no fire got a good start. Although he had to admire how efficiently they worked together, his heart clenched with dread. They were now in reach of the arrows. Refusing to let that prey on his mind, he turned back to the fight to keep the enemy from clearing the walls.

 

 

Annys tied off the bandage on the arm of the man who looked far too young to have been fighting on the walls, swinging a sword as he faced the enemy. Since the wound was not in his sword arm, he was already talking about getting back into the fight causing the girl who so plainly adored him to weep. Annys felt like doing the same.

Actually, what she truly wanted to do was become some great warrior, grab a sword, march out to confront Sir Adam, and start slicing off pieces of him until he was dead. Then she would put all of the pieces in a sack to send it to his father. It would be a message that man would not scorn or ignore. One he would fully understand, as would the other MacQueens who were helping Adam.

“Ye will rest until at least the morrow,” she told the young man. “Ye lost a lot of blood and need to replenish it. Agnes,” she said to the young girl, “ye will take young Auley here to the kitchens and feed him.”

“Aye, m’lady.” Agnes took Auley by the arm as he sat up straighter and began to cautiously stand up.

“But,” Auley began only to sway and need Agnes’s arm around his waist to steady him.

Annys nodded. “As I said, ye have bled a lot and need both rest and food. Off ye go and dinnae e’en think of climbing back on those walls until the morning.” As she watched the couple leave, she felt Joan move to stand beside her. “How many?”

“Two dead. Could be four soon although they are doing weel enough so there is hope. Bad wounds though and bled a lot. Five who are wounded badly enough that, unless this lasts a fortnight which I pray it will not, they will nay be fighting again. Six, including Auley, who will return after they rest and eat. Except for a few wee bruises and scrapes, none of the ones who went out to fight the fires got hurt. It helped that Geordie was lessening the numbers shooting those wretched things.”

“Anything burned badly?”

“Nay. Everything was too wet to catch quick and the ones who rushed out were quick to fair drown any of those arrows that landed. Big Mary quietly picks up every arrow and takes them up to Geordie, the only truly skilled archer we have, and, I am thinking, a mon our Big Mary has decided will be hers.”

“Let us pray he remains uninjured then.” She looked around. “I have ne’er actually hated anyone before. Disliked, disrespected, mayhap. Just wanted to avoid, aye. But, I hate Sir Adam MacQueen. Loathe him and want him dead. Something else I have ne’er wished for anyone.”

“And ’tis certain ye will ne’er feel wither way ever again so I wouldnae worry on it.” Joan shook her head. “If that mon fell into the hands of the people here right now, he would be torn apart. Do ye think they would e’er do that to anyone, ever?”

“Nay!”

“Exactly. But they would do it to him in a heartbeat, so dinnae fret o’er how ye feel. Right now all these people see is that that swine out there is killing and hurting their men, their husbands, sons, and lovers.” She patted Annys on the arm. “We all feel it now.”

“Strangely, kenning that I am nay the only one thinking of tearing the mon apart is oddly comforting. Of course, I meant to use a sword.”

“Weel, aye, of course ye did. Ye are a lady.”

Annys could barely believe it when she choked on a laugh. She clapped a hand over her mouth but made the mistake of looking at Joan. Then they both started giggling.

Their brief moment of laughter ended abruptly when a badly wounded man was carried in by Bear. Annys waved him over even as she hastily worked to wash off the table. When Bear put the man down on the table and she took a look at the wounds, she sighed. He would have to fight hard and long to survive. She began to wash away the blood as Joan readied a needle and thread. It was going to be a very long day.

And so begins the third day, Harcourt thought as he made his way down from the walls. At least it was quiet for now. After a dawn attack that had come close to succeeding, even Sir Adam’s men needed to rest and regroup. He spotted Geordie and Big Mary collecting up arrows and shook his head. Who would have thought the tall, broad-shouldered woman who cared for all the fowl of the keep would be attracted to someone like Geordie, a man neither handsome nor as tall as she was.

He stood by the well set in the center of the bailey and gathered the strength to pull up a bucket of water. Harcourt groaned in relief as he poured the cool water over his head. Every muscle and bone in his body ached. And he smelled, he thought crossly as he wiped the water from his face. He hated to smell bad and Harcourt decided it was yet another crime he could add to the list of ones Sir Adam deserved to die for.

“No one else will say it, so I will,” said Ned as he stepped up beside Harcourt and got some water for himself.

“Must ye? If no one else will say it, mayhap that is because no one really wants to hear it.”

Ned poured the water over his head and then shook himself like a dog would, ignoring Harcourt’s complaints about being splashed. “Ye are wet now. A wee bit more willnae kill ye.”

“Aye, but with clean water. I dinnae think what ye just shook all over me is too clean.”

“This is nay looking good for us, Harcourt.” He looked at Harcourt after wiping the water from his eyes, and did not even try to hide his concern. “That bastard is wasting his men but it still looks bad for us. He throws his men at the walls and loses some but has more. We push them back and lose some of our own, but dinnae have more. Soon, nay matter how hard and weel we may fight, he will still have more and we will nay longer have enough.”

“I ken it,” Harcourt reluctantly admitted. “Worse, the men fighting on those walls can see it, but we have no choice.”

“Mayhap nay right now, but soon.”

“Ye mean for us to all flee this place.”

“Aye. Ye said ye didnae believe in fighting to the last mon, woman, and bairn. I believed you.”

“I meant it. But, we still have some time left us.” He held up his hand when Ned opened his mouth to speak. “Nay much, but just a wee while more. I can see the time coming when we will have to leave if we mean to live, but a lot can happen between now and when it is time for us to get out, short though the time for a miracle might be.”

“My thought was that we start now to get out those who cannae walk or run because of age or wounds or e’en a bairn in her belly. We ken no one is making an assault on the burn side. Too difficult to get the men there, to put the ladders up or e’en set up some archers. We put a few of our archers on the wall o’er there and begin taking out all the ones who would slow the rest of us down. Give them a head start. At night. We do it at night. After ye found that tunnel down to the banks of the burn we put a few wee boats in the cave there so that we can use them to carry some of the wounded or infirm and some could just walk until they need the help.”

Harcourt slowly nodded. It was a good plan, a very good one. It was not only the aged, wounded, or infirm who needed help to escape. Women carrying a bairn in their arms, or e’en two, very small children, and, of course, the women carrying a bairn in their bellies, simply could not move as fast as others. Right now Sir Adam’s full attention was on breaching the walls of the keep, or even the gates. Letting some of the people slip out now would give the slower ones more time to get out of the man’s reach before the keep fell to him.

The thought that, if Sir Adam won, he would find himself the owner of a completely deserted keep and lands was a pleasant one even though he knew that deprivation would not last all that long. What would hurt Sir Adam, and his purse, would be the loss of the highly skilled people of Glencullaich whose goods not only brought people from miles around to their market but put a lot of money into the coffers of the laird.

“Do it,” he said. “Start tonight as soon as the light fades ye can start. If that bastard gets in here I want him to find it empty of all but the dead, and if I could think of a way to move them, too, I would, but I think we will need what time we have left to just move the living out. Anything ye can move, do it. Be sure to take the most valuable things first.”

Ned slowly grinned and nodded. “I will find a few lads too young to fight but old enough to help me and will start the minute that sun dips low enough in the sky to cast more shadow than light.”

“We will keep them busy near the gates. Ye might have your brother go with ye to have a look about, see if there are any of Sir Adam’s men on the banks of the burn watching for an escape. If there are, silence them. Then take two archers but leave us Geordie as we need him.”

“Aye, he is the best.”

Ned trotted off to the keep and Harcourt was confident everything would be well planned and efficiently carried out. If anyone could find a way to get the more vulnerable of Glencullaich’s people out of Sir Adam’s reach it was a MacFingal. Ned would also have a keen eye for what goods to take that would cause Sir Adam the most annoyance and the deepest cut to that fat purse the man was seeking.

 

 

The sound of geese and ducks coming from the upper floor had Annys turning around and running back up the stairs. She feared it was a sign that someone had found an opening and they would soon be attacked from inside as well as outside the walls. As she neared the ledger room she watched a line of ducks disappear inside. Cautiously she followed the birds all the way down into the cellars and found Big Mary leading her flock down the shadowed hall toward the cell Geordie had once occupied.

“Mary,” she called, refusing to use the name Big Mary when there were none of the other Marys around, “what are ye doing?” She watched in amazement as Mary made a few tsking noises, then made a few odd signals with her surprisingly elegant hands, and all the birds stopped, not moving even when Mary walked away from them.

“I willnae let that bastard have my flocks to fill his evil belly,” Big Mary said.

“But where can ye possibly take them?”

“Near a mile down the burn is a wee bothy. I have used it before when I wished my flock to have a time of eating something besides grain. Doing their own food hunting now and then keeps them strong, healthy for them, I think. I willnae be gone long.”

“How do ye plan to get them out without being seen? Or heard?”

“No one watching the burn side. Why would they? They think ’tis naught but a cliffside what with the walls going right down to the rock which already rises out of the water a fair height. I think that fool has also wasted so many men that he doesnae have the ones needed to watch such a place he doesnae think we can escape from anyway.”

“Weel, if ye are certain it is safe, then I wish ye luck with it.”

“Oh, I will be back once I get this lot settled and hide this somewhere.” She pointed to the heavy sack slung over her back. “Sir Ned is making verra certain that as many of the things that are worth some coin are being taken out of here. It gets a wee bit darker and they will start moving some of the people.”

“Have we given up then?” Annys had known it might happen for Sir Adam had them badly outnumbered yet no one had come to wake her from her rest and even ask her about it.

“Och, nay.” Big Mary frowned. “Weel, aye, in a way. It doesnae look good for us, m’lady.” Big Mary stepped closer and patted Annys on the arm. “Aye, we havenae lost too many men because your mon trained them weel in how to protect themselves against arrows and fight off a mon trying to get o’er our walls, but we do have a lot of wounded, some we may yet lose. That filth kicking at our walls has a lot more men than we do and Sir Nathan said the mon could probably get e’en more if he felt he needed them.”

“Even more? We will all die here,” she whispered and then struggled to throw aside her fear.

“Nay we willnae because your mon doesnae believe in that. Says if we die, Sir Adam gets it all and we willnae be able to do anything about it. But, if we survive, we need but work to get it back. So, Sir Ned said we need to get the slow ones out now, start moving out the wounded, the old ones, the bairns who need carrying and anyone who cannae run and keep running. We will start as soon as the sun sets.”

“And the valuables?” Annys wished someone had just taken a minute to waken her and tell her they were making such important decisions, if only because it was a little embarrassing to be told something so important from the goose girl.

“Sir Ned and our men decided they wouldnae let the mon fill his coffers with the selling of such things. They also sent a lad to the drovers and herders watching o’er most of our livestock and Sir Harcourt sent word with the lad to tell those men where they needed to head for. Then we found ourselves a few boats and are making some litters for the wounded who cannae walk.” Big Mary paused in her listings and shrugged. “Ye ken who needs more time to flee an enemy. Then if the able ones see that all is lost at the walls, they will run but, when ’tis all said and done, we will be leaving that filth with naught but empty buildings.”

“’Tis really quite brilliant,” Annys said. “The more I hear, the more annoyed I get that someone didnae come and awaken me so that I could have been of some help.”

“Nay, m’lady, ye needed the rest.”

“Aye, I ken I did, but I hate having missed something so important.”

“’Tis important and people are working hard to see it all done. We were all grieving, thinking we had lost when he told us we had to leave but then your mon said we cannae just think on the lost battle. Said we will have a win now by leaving the mon naught but all these empty buildings. Said the true riches of Glencullaich were its people, that our work and skills are what make it such a fine place and that that filth can ne’er replace us. And, since we will be taking all we can that is valuable, he willnae have a quick way to get the coin to even try. Dunnie is sad that he cannae save the horses though. I am verra sad that we probably willnae be able to take our dead with us.”

“That grieves me as weel. I had planned to bury them on the hill with the laird, David, so that they could look down on all they had helped to save.” She saw Big Mary grimace and her eyes turn shiny with tears.

“Their families would have been so verra proud of their men up there with their laird. I will pray that that may yet come to pass.”

“So will I, Mary. Now, best get that verra weel-behaved flock of yours out of here. I will go see if I have missed anything else.”

“Weel, at least ye dinnae have to fret o’er that lamb or the cat.” Big Mary’s lips twitched. “Your mon told Dunnie to see if he could fix up something so that those two cursed beasties could be moved fast and without the worry that they might run off.”

Annys laughed. “Go. Get your work done and get back here. This lull in the fighting willnae last long.”

After watching Big Mary lead her birds away, Annys shook her head and hurried back toward the great hall. The idea that they were losing the battle was indeed a hard blow to the heart, but she had always known that was a possibility. She also refused to believe the men who had died had done so for nothing. They had fought hard to try to save their homes, their loved ones, and, win or lose, their families should only have the greatest of pride in them.

And it would not be a complete defeat, either, she thought as she finally stepped into the great hall and saw Harcourt speaking with one of the wounded men. He looked exhausted and bandages circled the top of his left arm and the calf of his right leg. The way he moved told her that they were small wounds, but it took a moment to push down the intense fear roused by the sight of them.

Everyone looked exhausted, she realized. Annys knew it was not just the hard work that put that look of tight exhaustion on everyone’s face. Fear did it as well, eating away at the strength everyone needed to go on. No matter how much faith one had in one’s fighting men, that fear was there from the first hint of a coming battle. The sounds of battle surrounding the keep only kept adding to it. She could feel it nestled in the back of her mind and a corner of her heart.

“I hear ye have all been plotting whilst I was snoring,” she said to Harcourt as she stepped up beside him.

Harcourt smiled and draped his arm around her shoulders. “Ye have discovered our plan, have ye?”

“Met Big Mary taking her flock to safety.” She looked at the man on the table and was pleased to see that, although he had a serious wound on his left side, it would heal if it was taken good care of. “I didnae ken ye were anything more than a wondrously skilled weaver, Dougal.”

“Weel, near every mon has had some training and Sir Harcourt gave us more. Nay as watchful as I should have been though.”

“Ye will heal if ye take care of it as ye are told to,” she said with such confidence she could see his fear fade away. “I dinnae think ye will be going back on the wall though.”

“That was just what I was telling him,” said Harcourt. “He will be going out with the others once the sun sets.” He reached out and patted the man’s shoulder. “Ye will make your family happy by doing so, I am thinking.”

Dougal nodded. “Just wish I could have done enough to hold fast to the home they love.”

“Try to think of all this as just leaving for a wee while. For a time of healing and getting strong again. Aye, I believe we will have to retreat but then we can busy ourselves planning to come back, to take it all back, and be rid of that fool who thinks to steal from us. I will bring in my clan and some of our allies to help us do it. And, if we are lucky and nay get caught slipping out we will have a way to slip right back in.” He exchanged a brief grin with Dougal. “Rest while ye can. The leaving will be hard as it isnae an easy path to follow.”