Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] (29 page)

“’Fore God, there is a sight,” Iain cried, smiling clear to his foot soles.
“Praises be!” Gavin agreed.
Almost laughing, Iain vaulted into his saddle. If his lady had still been at his side, he would have swept her off her feet and whirled her in a wild circle so that she would become so dizzy from spinning, and so giddy with excitement, she’d have little choice but to fall right into his sheltering arms.
And it was into his arms he hoped to see her running again very soon. With God’s good grace, he would, too.
“Well done,” he called to the small host of MacFies. Together with Beardie and Douglas, they were already torching the three cothouses. Soon, they’d raise general chaos and mayhem, their ruse allowing Iain, Gavin, and the MacNab’s men to make short work of pushing through Abercairn’s main gate.
“Come, MacFie,” Iain called, spurring forward. “Let us give those bastards a taste of our steel!”
Already a hue and a cry had been raised within the castle. Garrison men ran along the wall-walks shouting and pointing at the smoke rising from the cothouses, the orange flames leaping high into the gray, early morning sky.
Muffled shrieks, war cries, and a tremendous clashing and rattling of swords sounded behind Iain as the MacFies set about their task with gusto, and, as he’d hoped, Silver Leg’s men clearly mistook the smoke and flames of the burning cothouses and the wild cries of a small band of bored and eager-for-excitement Highlanders for a great host of attacking men.
Indeed, they made a large enough ruckus for the castle’s morning patrol to ride hotfoot back to Abercairn. Iain’s heart soared upon seeing their swift approach. The large host of MacNabs neared, too, charging forward at a strong canter.
Iain kneed his horse, riding hard to intercept them. Within minutes, he drew up before their ranks, bringing his foaming garron to a slithering halt. He scanned their faces, raised his sword in greeting.
“To cover in the shadows!” he urged them, already wheeling about. “But stay close to the gate. Keep your mounts still, and when the drawbridge is lowered for the patrol, we surge up out of the shadows and ride in behind them.”
As quietly as they could, they picked their way through the half-dark, moving ever closer to Abercairn’s looming walls, and trying their best to blend with the shadows cast by large outcroppings of rock near the gatehouse.
They’d no sooner gathered into a dark, silent group, when the patrol went pounding past them, to a man bent low and beating their horses’ flanks with clenched fists. At once, the drawbridge dropped in a great clanking of chains and the portcullis rose with a series of metallic creaks and groans, quickly followed by the hollow-drumming clatter of racing hooves on heavy-planked wood.
“Now!” Iain shouted, his own beast surging forward. He dug in his heels, urging the garron to greater speed before the bridge could be lifted.
He tore after the patrol, his own steed now pounding across the wet timbering of the drawbridge. The MacNabs thundered close on his heels, following in a tight-packed arrowhead formation and yelling a series of angry, Gaelic war cries.
Their massed steel drawn and slashing in furious, killing arcs, the whole of them poured into the castle’s inner courtyard, cutting down any and all who stood in their way.
The shouting of men and the wild clanking of swords filled the bailey, and within moments its damp cobbles ran red with the spilled blood of a garrison caught unawares.
Somewhere a dog barked, and the few of Logie’s men yet cowering in the shadows of the gatehouse pend lost their lives to a MacNab battle-ax or long sword. Swinging down from his winded garron, Iain near landed on the twitching corpse of one of the two miscreants who’d sought to seize Madeline in the alehouse.
Resisting the urge to spit on the bastard, he stepped over the blackguard’s body, not for one instant grudging the dastard a portion of fine Highland steel as his last supper.
Looking around, he searched the faces of the other garrison men. Some still clashed swords with the hot-blooded MacNabs, others stood already subdued.
Gavin MacFie held his own in a far corner of the bailey, his fierce swinging blows sending one man-at-arms after the other crashing to the blood-stained cobbles.
But no matter how carefully Iain scanned the strong hold’s massive curtain walls or the timber lean-to buildings huddled against them, he couldn’t locate the second man from the Shepherd’s Rest.
Nor did he see anyone who even remotely resembled the description he’d been given of Silver Leg.
All other hapless souls faced the grave danger of meeting a swift and steely end if they so much as batted an eye against the Highland brawn that held well-muscled arms around their necks, and well-honed blades against their throats.
A sea of flame now bathed the morning sky behind Abercairn, streaking the pearly gray horizon with a hellish orange-red glow, and those garrison men still breathing stood flummoxed in the cold smir of rain just beginning to fall.
Stiff-lipped with defiance, their eyes wide with disbelief, and their hands without their swords, the men of Logie’s garrison offered little resistance, some even stumbling from the various outbuildings without so much as a nightshirt or shoe.
“Who amongst you will own to being Sir Bernhard?” Iain called out, swinging down from his heaving garron. He gazed around him, and began pacing before the ranks of captured men.
Sensing a movement behind him, he whipped around, his gleaming brand flashing in a deadly arc, the huge sword slashing down on his would-be assailant, striking just at the vulnerable spot where neck meets shoulder, his blade slicing deep into flesh and muscle. His shock-widened eyes still staring, the man toppled sidelong, his own sword clanking useless to the cobbles.
Spinning back around, Iain raked the gaping garrison men with a heated stare. “Well?” he demanded, jabbing his bloodied sword in their direction. “Who is Logie?”
No one answered, but proud and granite-faced as they gave themselves, none made further attempts at resistance. As so often, the threat of losing their lives overrode their loyalty to their absent liege.
For truth, Iain might have missed the lout entirely had he not spotted the dark-frowning dastard slinking along in the shadows cast by the lee of the curtain wall. Two men and a pair of cowed-looking greyhounds accompanied him. Iain stared, open-mouthed, stunned that a man of Silver Leg’s infamy would stoop to such an ignoble flight.
One of the men with him walked somewhat hunched over, his resentful scowl even blacker than Silver Leg’s own. His blood firing, Iain recognized him as the second man from the Shepherd’s Rest.
But it was the other man, the third, who truly caught Iain’s attention, had him sprinting after the other two blackguards, his heart lodged so tight in his throat he couldn’t call out for the bastards to halt.
Couldn’t shout a warning that their days of nefarious deeds had come to an end. Truth be told, he could scarce see to run either, for a few particles of dust seemed to have been blown into eyes, causing them to burn and water.
Almost as if he had tears in his eyes.
And mayhap he did, for the third man was the reason the bastard from the alehouse couldn’t walk upright. The bastard was carrying the third man slung over his shoulder like a sack of coal.
A sack of pathetically unimpressive coal, for the old man bouncing along against the blackguard’s back was quite thin indeed.
A frail old man.
A fine-boned graybeard who looked to be ailing.
Madeline Drummond’s father.
“Da!”
If he hadn’t guessed right yet, his lady’s tearful shout told the tale.
Iain’s blood froze. He spun on his heel, turning full around in time to see her rein up, then leap from her saddle just outside the shadows of the gatehouse pend.
Shock tying his tongue in knots, Iain stared, slack-jawed, as she streaked across the bailey towards her father. Ne’er had he seen anyone—male or female— fling themselves from a horse’s back with such speed.
Nor would he have believed that a lass could run so fast.
Or so brazenly defy such bitter-earnest orders as he’d given her!
Nella of the Marsh burst out of the pend just then, disheveled and breathing hard, her face red from exertion. Nigh collapsing against the side of one of the lean-to buildings, she appeared to inhale great gulping breaths of air.
Catching Iain’s eye, she lifted her hands and began shaking her head, but Iain paid her scant heed. Furious at the danger Madeline had put herself in, he tore across the blood-slick cobbles, reaching her in the selfsame instant she hurled herself at the miscreant carrying her father.
“Mercy of God, woman, what are you about here?” he roared, plucking her off the bastard. “Did I not tell you to stay put at the forge?!”
Wriggling free, she ignored him, launching herself anew at the blackguard holding her father. “Would
you
have sat fast? Helpless and not knowing what was happening?” she shot back, pulling her father from the other man’s arms.
“Well?” she snapped, her tone so like his own when riled, he almost forgot his ire. Cradling the old man’s thin body against her own, she glared at him, her eyes blazing defiance. “I told you Drummond women are known for their tempers.”
Her chin lifting a notch, she added, “We also descend from a long line of warrior women.”
And looking at her, Iain didn’t doubt it for a minute. But then the anger seemed to drain out of her and she clutched her father tight, more loving daughter than aught else. She made some kind of cooing sounds, wee little
mewlings,
and just stood there, rocking the man, tears spilling unchecked down her cheeks.
As discreetly as he could, Iain dashed his own from sight and thrust the killing end of his blade beneath Silver Leg’s chin. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Gavin MacFie making short work of the other dastard. His gullet sliced clean through, the man went down without a single cry.
Silver Leg deserved a slower death.
His two greyhounds snarled in bristling agitation, but stopped short of snapping at Iain’s sword, their white-eyed trembling speaking more of terror than menace.
“So-o-o!!” Iain lowered his blade, but kept its tip aimed at Logie’s sizable girth. “I’d say you’ve been well fed during your sojourn at Abercairn. ’Tis your doom that I cannot say the same of the laird.”
Casting a sidelong glance at Madeline’s father, Iain noted the man’s skeletal frame and sunken eyes, the waxy pallor of his skin.
Sir John Drummond’s sad state made Iain’s blood run cold and ripped off all the veneer he’d struggled so hard for so long to paint o’er his fuming MacLean temper.
“This was ill done, Logie,” he said, his voice quivering with rage. “I am nigh wont to tear you limb from limb for your villainy.”
Silver Leg spat on the cobbles. “God’s everlasting curse on you and yours!” he hissed, his glance sliding to a shadow-hung byre hard by the curtain wall.
Following his gaze, Iain spied two sumpter horses, each one heavily burdened with bulging canvas or leather sacks. Logie had been heading in that direction. No doubt to flee with whate’er of Abercairn’s spoils he could carry away with him.
“Where were you going, Logie?” Iain pricked the man’s quivering belly with his steel. “Do those sacks contain what I think they do? Or simply . . . food. Since that, too, you seem to crave.”
“I’ll rot in hell before I answer a single of your questions,” Logie seethed, his face dark with fury.
“And I would assure you a swift passage there!” Iain vowed, nodding to Beardie and Douglas. “Seize him and hold him fast until I’ve seen what those sacks contain.”
His blood pounding in his ears, Iain unsheathed his dirk and slit the burlap canvas of one of the sacks. Silver plate and assorted Church goods, not unlike the treasures Iain was delivering to Dunkeld Cathedral, spilled onto the bailey’s rain-damp cobbles.
Snatching a handful of silver coins, Iain strode back to Silver Leg. “Your life is forfeit, Logie,” he said, letting the coins tumble from one hand to the other. “Had those sacks held your own collection of fine-embroidered tunics and knitted braies, I might have given you some degree of lenity.”
Handing the coins to Madeline, Iain grabbed a handful of Logie’s hair and yanked back the bastard’s head so far, his mouth gaped open. “I ought melt down every last of those coins and pour the molten silver down your throat!”
Silver Leg’s face ran chalk white.
“Tell me what you were about with Laird Drummond, and I will think on a more acceptable solution,” Iain said, and folded his arms.
“He was taking me to the old smithy,” Laird Drummond himself spoke up, his voice little more than a rasp but surprisingly strong for a man who’d been through such hell.
“The smithy?” That, from Iain’s lady. “But Da . . . are you sure? No one has gone there for years.”
His bravura cracking at last, Silver Leg began to tremble.
Laird Drummond eyed him, a look of raw disgust on his haggard face. “Logie has been using the old smithy to melt down Abercairn silver and gold,” he said, clutching his daughter’s arm, clearly grateful for her support. “But he hasn’t found the
true
treasure . . . our jewels from Bannockburn,” he saided, a note of pride in his thin voice.
He looked at his daughter then, and the love Iain saw shining there flooded him with an intense wave of sheer yearning and clutched fast at his heart.
Saints, but he’d love to have a daughter or son he could share that kind of love with someday.
“I didn’t tell him where the Bruce jewels are hidden,” Sir John said, his gaze still on Madeline’s tear-streaked face. “That’s why he brought me up from the dungeon when the trouble began this morning. He meant to ride away, but keep me with him until he could pry the answer from me . . . or find you.”
“No one is going to e’er harm a hair on your daughter’s fine head, Sir John. Nor on your own,” Iain declared, keeping an eye on Silver Leg.
“You,”
he said to that dastard, “shall receive a most pleasing penance, Logie.”
Striding up to him, Iain drew himself to his full height, and smiled. “I shall allow you to return home . . . to your own home,” he said, and his smile widened a bit more. “Word has come to me that the accommodations there are most comfortable. I wish you all haste on your journey . . . both to your own home and to hell.”
He turned to Beardie and Douglas. “Hie the bastard from my sight,” he said, eager to have done with the viper. “And see you he is cast into the deepest pit in his dungeon.”
“Ho! That we will do,” the seamen chimed in chorus and dragged the spluttering Logie from the bailey.