The Striker (30 page)

It was a slaughter. Eoin's stomach lurched as he fought off the MacDowell warriors while knee deep in the blood and gore of his compatriots. Hundreds of bodies, most of them Bruce's men, were strewn across the beach and floating facedown in the loch that in dawn's light would be a grisly red.

They'd realized they were trapped too late. The fleet of ships and army that had taken Robert the Bruce five months to put together—over two-thirds of them Gallowglass mercenaries from Ireland—had sailed into the loch under the moonless sky without the vital element of surprise. The enemy was waiting for them. Far more than their intelligence had led them to believe.

Eoin grimaced as a fountain of blood splattered on his face from the slash of his sword across his opponent's neck. He didn't have time to wipe the grime from his face—or think about how MacDowell might have come upon his intelligence—before the next Gallovidian swarm of warriors was upon him. Two, three, sometimes four men at a time. MacDowell's men poured out of the trees where they'd hidden like plaid-covered locusts.

MacDowell was a wily bastard, Eoin would give him that. The Galwegian chief and his men had lain in wait until a large part of Bruce's army had dragged their
birlinns
up the beach before attacking—and then with only a small force meant to entice more of Bruce's army to come to their aid.

It had worked. Thinking they were sailing to the rescue, the crews in the second wave of ships had been surprised, and then overwhelmed as a much larger force of MacDowell's men suddenly appeared.

As part of the vanguard, Eoin and Lamont had been among the first men on the beach. Realizing what was happening, Eoin tried to warn the ships behind them to turn back, but his shouts could not be heard from above the clatter of the battle, and he couldn't break away from his attackers for long enough to do anything else. In between swings of his two-handed great sword, Eoin watched as men he'd fought alongside for months were cut down under the vicious onslaught.

Their only stroke of luck came when someone had lit a beacon meant to guide the seafarers into the mouth of the loch. It had alerted the last ships to the danger, and two had managed to escape before they sailed into the trap. Of the eighteen ships and nine hundred men who sailed into Loch Ryan to launch Bruce's rebid for the crown, all but a little over a hundred men had been caught in MacDowell's web.

The rest of them were left to fight their way out or die. Eoin fought like a man possessed, but it wasn't enough. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, Thomas Bruce, one of the commanders, gave the order to retreat, which in effect was a call to flee by whatever means possible. A moment later, Eoin watched in horror as Thomas, along with his younger brother, Alexander, were surrounded by MacDowells and forced to surrender.

With their commanders taken, it became a free-for-all—every man for himself—as what remained of Bruce's army ran for the trees, their only hope to evade capture in the forest.

Above the din of the mayhem, Lamont shouted to get Eoin's attention and motioned for him to head his way. Eoin nodded with understanding and dispatched one of the two swordsmen attacking him with a disabling swing of his sword across his legs, followed by a deadly one across his neck. He slashed his way through a few more enemy warriors, slowly forging his way up the beach toward his partner.

He was only a few feet away from Lamont when a large warrior stepped in his path. From the quality of his armor and weaponry, Eoin knew he wasn't a regular man at arms, but it wasn't until their swords met in the first clash of steel that Eoin recognized the face beneath the helm and grime: Dougal MacDowell, his wife's eldest brother.

Eoin cursed and stepped back. He was furious with Margaret, but there was no way in hell he'd go back to her as the man who killed her brother. For despite her ultimatum, he had every intention of claiming his wife at the first opportunity. She wouldn't be rid of him that easily, but he wasn't going to stand there arguing with her when she was being so irrational. “Let me pass, Dougal.”

“Surrender,” the MacDowell heir responded, “and my father may be persuaded to spare your life. You deserve some credit for this, after all.”

Eoin's stomach dropped; his bones turned to ice.
No
.

Dougal smirked, reading his shock. “Your devotion to my sister has turned out to be surprisingly useful—for us.”

He laughed, and Eoin felt as if he'd just taken a dirk in the gut. Nay, in the back. He couldn't believe it. She'd told someone about his presence. He'd known he'd made a mistake when he followed her and had been forced to reveal himself, but not once had he ever really thought she would betray him.

She'd betrayed him. The words echoed over and over in his head, but still they couldn't quite penetrate.

“MacLean, watch your back!”

He heard his partner's warning an instant too late. His inattention—his shock from his wife's treachery—had cost him in more ways than one. While he'd backed away from Dougal, another MacDowell warrior had come up on his flank. He turned in time to see the flash of silvery steel right before the blade struck the back of his head with a felling blow.

As Eoin fell to the ground, he was almost glad he wasn't going to have to live with the knowledge of what his weakness for his wife had done.

Margaret was still miles away from Stranraer and the beach at Loch Ryan when she began to hear the sounds. Horrific sounds. The violent clash and clatter of metal, the shouts of angry voices, and the hideous cries of the dying.

She was too late. It had taken her too long to escape and reach the old beacon at Kirkcolm. Her warning hadn't worked. The ships must have been ahead of her.

Oh God, please don't let anything happen to him!

If only it hadn't taken her so long to light the beacon. She'd brought a tinderbox and was able to get a small fire going, but the last keeper hadn't left the basket ready, and it took her some time to gather the wood and twigs, and then climb up and down the rungs on the pole to place them in the iron fire basket.

Her heart seemed to have stopped beating as she rode as fast as she dared through the dark forested path—praying, begging, bargaining every step of the way.

But the sounds from the beach only grew worse as she drew nearer. The fierce clatter of swords that had reverberated in the air dulled as the battle lost its intensity, and the cries took over. They were cries unlike any she'd ever heard, and would haunt her dreams for years to come, but instinctively she knew what it meant: it was the sound of a massacre.

The world seemed a blur, whether from the tears pouring from her eyes or the horrible images spinning through her mind. But by time she reached Stranraer, jumped off her horse, and pushed her way through the hundreds of celebrating clansmen, Margaret seemed to have lost all sense of reality. She felt like she was in a hideous nightmare, a slow-moving world of disbelief and horror, as she raced toward the beach, her path lit by the torches that seemed to have sprung up all around her.

Some of the men recognized her—she heard more than one surprised “my lady”—but no one tried to stop her. She knew why the moment she broke through the trees and the crescent-shaped beach spread out before her: the battle was over.

Her stomach heaved at the sight that met her eyes. Bodies—or parts of bodies—were everywhere. A few patches of light sand were all that remained in the sea of blood and gore. She retched, the sickly, coppery smell overwhelming.

When she lifted her head, she gazed around blindly, not knowing where to look—not knowing how to look—so scared of what she might find.

Eoin. Please, not Eoin
.

Her father's men were dragging bodies into piles. The sudden roar of fire and the first throat-searing, acrid wafts of burning flesh that hit her nose explained why.

With a sharp cry of desperation, she began to frantically search among the bodies. Bile rose to the back of her throat more than once at the grisly images, the faces mutilated beyond recognition, the blood, the unstaring eyes, swirled in front of her, as she picked her way through the dead.

Many were young, and few wore mail. From the saffron-dyed
leines
and quilted
cotuns
, she realized most were Irishmen. But no blackened nasal helms and black leather
cotuns
studded with mail.

“Margaret, what the hell are you doing here?” Duncan had come up behind her, and spun her around by the elbow to face him. “Satan's stones, as if I need to ask! I couldn't believe it when one of the men said he saw you. You must be mad coming here like this. It could still be dangerous. Father would be furious to see you.”

“Where is he, Duncan? Where is Father?” she pleaded desperately. “I must see if he knows anything about Eoin.”

Her breath caught as something flickered in his expression—sympathy?

“MacLean is dead, Maggie. Dougal saw him fall.”

“No!” She staggered. “No!” She clutched at Duncan's arm to steady herself. Eoin couldn't be dead. “Where is he? If he is dead than show me his body.”

“It's probably too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?”

His eyes flickered to the far edge of the beach where she could see the flames of a fire beyond a large crowd of men. Her heart froze. Panic raced wildly through ice-cold veins.

She started to run. Duncan yelled after her to stop, but his words were droned out by the hammering of her heart in her ears.

He caught her when she was still a few dozen yards away. “You can't go over there,” he said furiously, lifting her off the ground from behind by her waist. “Jesus, Maggie, trust me, you don't want to see that.”

“Why not? What are they—”

A flash of silver above the heads of the men followed by a roar of cheering cut off the question in her throat. She stopped thrashing in her brother's arms and he turned her around to face him.

“Some of the rebels are being executed,” he explained.

Her eyes widened with horror. Her father was exacting his vengeance with mercilessness and brutality that would be remembered for ages.

“Not your husband,” he assured her. “He was killed on the battlefield.”

Her mind screamed, refusing to believe it. She had to see for herself. “If he is in that pyre, I need to see it, Duncan.”

He must have heard the desperation in her voice. After a moment he let her go. “Don't say I didn't warn you.”

She should have listened to him. She reached the edge of the crowd just in time to see the executioner's sword take its deadly arc across the neck of a man she recognized: Duncan of Mar, the former Earl of Mar's younger brother, and Robert Bruce's brother-in-law twice over. Bruce had been married to Duncan's sister, Isabella, and Bruce's sister, Christina, had been married to Duncan's brother Gartnait, the former earl. She looked away, but it wasn't soon enough.

Margaret had seen men die, but this was different. This time she'd played a part in it. Nausea rose anew. Dear God, had these men died because of her?

She pushed through the crowd until she saw her father. He was watching from the side as Duncan of Mar's body was tossed onto the pyre and another man was brought forward. This one looked to be an Irish chieftain.

Her father didn't look surprised to see her, but she could tell he wasn't pleased by the interruption. “Daughter,” he said sharply as she drew near. “Next time I will lock you in the garret.”

She ignored the threat. She would have escaped that as well, although admittedly using the iron poker for the brazier as a bar across her window, tying one of the bedsheets to it, and only having to drop fifteen feet had been much easier. “Where is he, Father? Where is my husband?”

The reddish orange of the flames was reflected in his dark eyes as his gaze turned to the fire. “Halfway to hell, if the fire has done its job.”

He pointed to a body consumed in flames near the top of the pile. Near it she saw the helm that must have fallen off. A blackened nasal helm just like Eoin had been wearing.

Margaret stared into the flames and felt the light inside her go out. The world turned dark. She sank to her knees, a soft, broken cry the only sound of the searing pain that her father's words had unleashed.

Eoin was dead. Because of her.

God forgive me
.