Chapter 10
William tossed and turned through the night. He’d anticipated sleeping in a real bed earlier that day. No matter that the mattress was lumpy and the straw inside in dire need of replacement. At least it wasn’t the ground.
And then he’d gone and blundered things with Kinsey. He’d been arrogant in his assumption that he could kiss her again, that they might enjoy a night in a bed together. He’d like to blame his poor decision on ale, but he hadn’t had all that much.
Not enough to lose himself.
Nay, that part had come from his attraction to her. Her curls had been damp when she’d come downstairs, the fiery locks darkened with moisture. She’d given him and Reid a quick nod of acknowledgment and bypassed William. God, but she drove him mad with her indifference.
It was those thoughts and many more that burned through the night and kept slumber at bay.
By the time he’d finally fallen into a restless sleep, the sun was already slanting through the shutters. When he managed to rouse himself, he realized with a sinking stomach that he was late to meet for practice.
He quickly dressed for the day and ran from the inn.
The air was thick with the promise of more rain.
He was able to arrive at the field outside the castle walls before the rain began to fall.
Laird MacLeod was already there in front of the army, issuing commands with smooth authority.
Though he wasn’t loud, his voice carried, and his instructions were obeyed.
But then, William’s soldiers were well trained.
His father faced him, and William’s stomach dropped.
“Were ye able to secure the rooms for several additional nights?” he demanded.
Behind him, Reid winked.
William sent his friend a silent word of thanks and nodded with confidence. “Aye.”
“These foul cities.” Laird MacLeod’s lip curled. “Always so damn busy. Again,” he called out to the soldiers.
They swiped their blades in a simultaneous arc. Including Kinsey.
Where had she even obtained a sword?
“They’re all in good order.” Laird MacLeod gestured in her direction. “Except that one. What possessed ye to bring yer whore on as a soldier?”
It was said with disdain, the slur indicative that she wasn’t worthy of traveling with them. Heat scorched up from his gut. At that moment, hearing that word practically spit from his father’s mouth, William understood Kinsey’s determination to refrain from an affair.
“She’s no’ a whore. Ye put an archer in a soldier’s place.” William folded his arms over his chest. “She’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
His father’s brow quirked with interest. “Is she?” He returned his attention to her once more with renewed focus.
“Kinsey,” William called out. “Get yer bow.”
She moved with swiftness to comply with his request. The target was set up on the opposite side of the field. She looked at William, and he nodded.
Quick as lightning, she sent five arrows down the field, sinking each one into the target. Her fingers were deft as they plucked the arrows from her quiver, nocking each one with certainty.
Laird MacLeod nodded in approval. “Talented and bonny.” He narrowed his cold eyes at William. “And ye’re no’ bedding her?”
“Nay,” William replied, grateful that he was honest in his reply.
He studied her a moment. The rain had made her curls wild and lovely, and the chill in the air left her cheeks and tip of her nose red. Aye, bonny indeed.
His da smirked and strode off in her direction.
William was no fool. He knew exactly what his father intended to say to her. And even if William could have stopped him, he wouldn’t have. Not when this would be so entertaining.
Laird MacLeod approached Kinsey. His hand lightly touched her lower back. She spun around, eyes flashing.
William didn’t bother to hide his grin.
She propped one hand on her hip, her head tilted to the side with obvious impatience. Whatever his father said must have come to an end—or she interrupted him—as she leaned forward and spoke angrily to him.
Laird MacLeod turned away from her sharply and resumed to his place beside William, his face nearly purple with rage. “’Tis no wonder ye’ve no’ taken her into yer bed. The lass is a harpy. Get rid of her.”
William scoffed. “She’s intelligent, and she’s skilled. I’ll no’ get rid of her because she has the good sense to keep out of yer bed. Mayhap ye ought to have treated her like a warrior rather than a doxy.”
“’Tis what she said.” His father glared daggers at him. “I liked ye better when ye were bedding lasses rather than hiring them as warriors.”
“Ye never liked me at all, Da.” William cast a rueful look at his father before moving to correct Alec on a defensive move.
When he returned, his father was gone. No doubt to sulk in the shadows of the castle.
For the next several days leading up to the raid on Lothian, William kept his distance from Kinsey. She, of course, did not approach him either.
But he didn’t stop thinking of her, dreaming of her, replaying in his mind the way she’d grudgingly admitted that she’d enjoyed his kisses. That wasn’t all. He reminded himself how his father had said, “whore.”
Their brief stay in Edinburgh flew by quickly as William worked with several other men commanding armies, all alongside the young king, in an effort to plan the raid. They would attack at all angles with fire and blades and arrows. The Englishmen inhabiting Lothian would fall.
The next morning brought the day of their raid on Lothian.
William’s army was armored and ready for the attack.
Energy hummed in his veins, the way it always did before a fight, his senses heightened and on high alert.
Aware of his restlessness, his horse shifted its weight from one hoof to the other, eager to charge at full speed.
They rode the short distance to Lothian in a tight group, surrounded by many other armies fighting for Scotland. Several had left early that morning and were already fighting. William’s was one of the last groups to join.
His heart thundered like a war drum in his ears. His stomach clenched.
He hated raids and avoided them at all costs. Even now, in a moment where it was forced on him and his army, he would only fight English guards. Men who were armed. He’d instructed every one of his soldiers to do the same.
Kinsey, however, had been told to stay just outside of town. Archers had no business in close combat. Especially not with a raid.
The men ahead of William’s army swept into the city like a swarm of locusts, their path set on destruction.
Lothian would surely fall.
Kinsey would finally make the English pay. Crackling energy raced through her like lightning until she was practically shaking. She gripped her reins tighter as if doing so could squeeze the excess tremors of anticipation.
The helm was heavy on her head and made her breath echo against the metal around her.
From the slit in her visor, she could make out the city ahead of them, a cluster of tightly packed buildings, white-washed with thatch roofs.
Plumes of dark smoke rose in various locations as homes were set aflame.
Cries filled the air, those fighting and those dying.
A shudder wracked through her.
Sir William nodded to Kinsey just before they entered the city, indicating here was where she should stay.
Everything in her wanted to keep charging with the men into battle and slay every Englishman she came upon. But she was an archer, a part of Sir William’s army, whose deviation could cost Scotsmen their lives.
She reined her horse to a stop and leapt from her steed.
The heavy chainmail she wore tugged on her as her feet hit the ground.
She wore a blue and red MacLeod tunic belted over the armor, which made her even more ungainly.
The horse was battle-trained and remained by her, unflinching amid the clashing metal and screams.
Her hands trembled when she reached for an arrow. Her fingers swept past the fletching in her haste. She had to get control. She pulled in a slow, careful breath and let it out.
The anxiety racing through her calmed somewhat. Enough to steady her hands. She reached for an arrow, nocked it and gazed through the mass of people to find an English soldier as she’d been instructed.
Black smoke billowed toward her, stinging her eyes and making her throat raw. It limited her visibility, so targets came in flashes and glimpses. Her arm burned from the effort of holding her drawn bow with the weight of chainmail dragging at her. Frustration ground at the base of her neck.
There was not one solitary person she could sight in her aim. There was only chaos.
Blades flashing. People rushing by. Screaming. Blood. And through it all, a thick haze in the air from various huts that had been set aflame.
She searched through it to no avail.
The helm further blocked her sight and the huff of her own breath echoed in her ears. It was impossible to shoot with the damn thing on.
She wrenched the helm off her head. Her renewed senses were brilliantly aware suddenly, like having a candle lit in a dark room. She could see, hear. Focus.
Soldiers in different colored surcoats battled one another, but she wasn’t familiar enough to know many of them outside of the red and blue livery of the MacLeod clan. It was those colors she sought.
For if she could find her own army, she could easily find their enemy.
There.
A man in chain with a red and blue surcoat was shoved against the wall by a man in a yellow surcoat. Kinsey took aim and released her arrow. A screen of black smoke swept over the scene.
She squinted to see, her heart pounding. Had she hit the Englishman? Or her own man?
The scene reappeared for a blink of a moment. The Englishman lay on the ground with an arrow jutting from his back.
The air whooshed from her lungs with relief.
Her gaze darted through the hellacious scene, seeking out another man from their army to help her identify more English soldiers. On and on she went, repeating the action as she used her fellow soldiers to locate the English guards.
Her arm and back were on fire with exhaustion from drawing her bow repeatedly beneath the weight of the chainmail, but she kept on.
Suddenly, a woman burst from a smoking home, her mouth stretched in a scream, wild with fear. Chills raked down Kinsey’s spine and made the hairs along the back of her neck stand on end.
The woman stiffened and pitched forward as her eyes rolled back in her head. She fell into the dirt without ceremony. An axe handle jutted up from her back amid a dark stain of blood.
Kinsey gasped and involuntarily stepped backward.
The soldier behind her was one whose liveries she recognized. White stars on a blue background. One of Sir James’s soldiers. One of the men who fought to reclaim land for Scotland.
Bile rose in her throat. He had killed a woman. An unarmed woman. From behind as she ran.
Kinsey shifted her focus, no longer seeking soldiers to hit with her arrows, but searching for the townspeople. A man wearing a tunic and no weapon in his hand was run through with a sword. Another woman running, crying as another soldier chased after her.
This wasn’t vengeance.
This was a slaughter.
They were supposed to reclaim land under English rule by fighting soldiers, not by killing unarmed people.
A sudden rush of awareness tingled at the base of Kinsey’s neck. She spun about, narrowly missing the thrust of a blade at her back.
“Man or woman makes no difference to me,” the soldier wearing white and red livery bellowed as he swung his sword. “Die, Scottish whore.”
She leapt out of the way, heavier and more cumbersome in her chainmail. A breeze of air swept past her cheek from the weapon.
It had been close.
Too close.
She reached for an arrow, but before she could nock it, he was charging at her once more. There were only so many times she could evade his sword before her armor would cause her to be too slow.
Her fingers worked blindly over her belt as she spun away, freeing her dagger.
Agony exploded at the back of her head. She tried to jerk away, and the pain worsened. The bastard had her by the hair.
Drake had always taught them how to rush into an attack rather than from it. She did exactly that now, turning suddenly and racing toward the English soldier, her dagger locked tight in her right hand.
The bastard hadn’t been expecting the attack and didn’t have time to block her as she thrust the dagger up into his neck. Hot blood gushed out of his throat, splashing over her hands and face and soaking into her tunic.
She jerked in surprise, and he dropped to his knees. A strange, awful gargling sound rattled in his throat as bubbles frothed at the blood still gushing from the wound.
Her stomach roiled.
He pitched on his side, his blue eyes fixing first on her in uncomprehending surprise, then on nothing as his body slowly relaxed.
Kinsey couldn’t stop staring. He was dead.
She had killed him.
She staggered back in horror. His blood stained her hands, creasing in sticky folds at her palms, and the taste of it lingered thick and coppery in her mouth.
Her stomach heaved again, and she retched.
A new cry rose up from the city center, not one of terror or death, but of victory.
They had won.
Why then did it feel more like a defeat?