Chapter Ten
MY MIND WHIRRED WITH PANIC. Where did they come from? How did they get inside the walls? Hadn’t Wilkie said that the keep was well guarded? Had they found a hole in the defense?
There were four of them, and they surrounded us. They wore hoods, but I recognized their faces, although I knew none of them by name.
Christie, Ailie and I huddled together in the middle of their shrinking circle, and when one of them reached to grab Christie’s arm, she let out a high-pitched scream. I was glad she did, too, as it might alert others to our plight.
The Ogilvie warrior was caught off guard by the noise she made and let go of her momentarily. And Christie screamed again, calling Wilkie’s name, twice. But then the Ogilvie warrior grabbed her again, and he sneered at her. “We might have found ourselves more than one prize, men.”
Christie screamed again, and the warrior pulled her up against him and covered her mouth with his hand.
She struggled, and her screams were muted to near silence.
Ailie was grabbed by another warrior, and the look on her face brought all the pain of my earlier realization home to me: they were not safe.
And it was my fault they had been put in this dire and horrific situation.
Before a third warrior could grab me, I reached down to pick up a thick stick that lay on the ground near my feet.
I took off my hat.
“Unhand them. ’Tis me, Roses. I’m the one you want. Leave them.”
One of the warriors chuckled. “A clever disguise, lass. No one would have guessed you were, in fact, a kitchen servant.” He stepped closer, but I held up my stick like a sword. It would barely sting him if I swung it, but it briefly kept him at bay.
“I’ll come with you willingly,” I said. “There’s no need to manhandle me. Or them. You should take me now, and let these two go immediately. Mackenzie warriors will have heard the screams—they’re not far. They’ll be on their way as we speak. Let them go.”
“Let’s take all three,” said the warrior holding Christie.
“Nay!” barked the warrior closest to me, the biggest, and the apparent leader of the raid. “Leave them! We take this one. Now!”
With some regret apparent on his face, the warrior released Christie, and the second released Ailie. The sisters backed away, clutching each other’s hands, but they didn’t run. They were watching me, their eyes terrified and helpless. They could do nothing to save me.
“Run!” I yelled at them. There was a question in Ailie’s eyes, but she heeded my warning, and she pulled Christie along with her. I felt overwhelmingly relieved when they were out of sight, so much so that it overshadowed my own fear for several seconds.
I dropped my stick, and I followed the lead warrior, flanked closely by Ogilvie’s men.
Only then did the sickly weight of my terror begin to make itself known.
Could I try to fight them off? Unlikely, as there were four of them, each about twice the weight of me. And they were armed. I barely acknowledged the thought of my own weapons, hidden from me, so far from my reach they may as well not have existed at all.
Something occurred to me then, as we quickly approached the wall of the keep.
Could I somehow take one of their weapons?
I knew how to use a sword, and they wouldn’t expect that I would possess such a skill.
If I could get my hands on one of theirs, they would be caught unawares.
I could take small comfort in the fact that they were unlikely to kill me; there was little doubt in my mind that Ogilvie had ordered me to be delivered very much alive.
It was a risky plan. But I eyed their belts, where their swords and knives hung, and I began to consider how I might take possession of one of them.
The lead warrior threw a rope over the wall.
Within less than a minute, the rope was pulled tight.
Which led me to believe that there were more Ogilvie warriors waiting there, on the outer side of the wall.
Why hadn’t they been seen? I supposed it was the boldness of their raid that might have been unexpected.
And the stealth of it, and silence. A handful of men, sneakily penetrating the keep in broad daylight: this tactic might not have been anticipated.
The Mackenzies had expected an army. Or a bluff. Not this.
One of the warriors climbed the rope and disappeared over the wall.
I was hoisted onto the back of a second warrior, the one who had held Christie.
I was ordered to hold on. The warrior’s hair was long and bunched into knotted strands that hung down his back.
Holding on to him as I was, I could tell that he hadn’t bathed in some time.
His high, feral odor, combined with my own fear, rolled my stomach, and I thought for a moment that I might be sick.
But I turned my face to the side and took a deep breath of the floating breeze.
I may have imagined it, but, briefly, I could smell the fruity scent of ripe pears.
That sweet, happy perfume stirred something in me, and my fear gave way to anger.
Now that Ailie and Christie were safe, I didn’t have to go with these men meekly. I could fight.
And I was in a perfect position to reach for the warrior’s knife.
He climbed up the wall, holding the rope, pulling us up, fist over fist.
I knew my chances of escape, or even survival, if I chose to fight, would be far greater inside the Mackenzie keep than out on the open plains. Or, at worst, back inside the confines of the Ogilvie manor. If I could stall for time, Wilkie might come for me. He might reach me.
“Hurry, man!” gruffed one of the warriors on the ground.
The warrior I clung to climbed faster. And he was nearly to the top of the wall.
So I took my opportunity. I grabbed the knife that hung from his belt.
Before I could question my own outlandish plan, I plunged the knife deep into the warrior’s back, gouging just above his waist on the right side.
I’d surprised him, and he screamed a yell.
He let go of the rope with one hand, and I released my hold on him, falling heavily to the ground.
Realizing he’d dropped his cargo, he jumped down after me.
I was glad he hadn’t landed on top of me, but still, it was a good fifteen-foot drop, and I was winded.
The injured warrior touched his hand to his wound and, seeing the blood on his hand, grew furious.
“You feisty wee bitch!” he yelled, and he slapped me across the face so forcefully, I fell back. I fought against the blackness that lurked around the edges of my vision and the small white stars that inflected the scene before me.
I tried to back away from them, still lying on the ground, but the lead warrior grabbed me roughly, pulled me up and spun me around. He looped a cord around my wrists, too tightly, painfully, and he threw me over his shoulder.
“Tie her onto me! I can hear them coming!”
Something was strung around my waist and my shoulders, pinning me tightly to the warrior.
My ribs and my stomach pained me where it was slung over the warrior’s shoulder, and my head was down, dizzying me.
I heard myself groan slightly. My hair, now loosened from my struggles, covered my face.
With me strapped to his back, the lead warrior began to climb.
I was losing my battle against the rising tide of unconsciousness, as the pain of my position and the bruised right side of my face settled in.
I thought I imagined Wilkie’s voice in the distance, calling to me.
I knew I was dreaming him. I wished I could see him one last time, before I was lost to him for good.
There was commotion now, and I wondered if we’d reached the top of the wall, if the soldiers on the outer side of the wall were yelling and jumping.
I opened my eyes to see a blurred figure climbing the rope behind us, grabbing the leg of the Ogilvie warrior, slicing it with a knife.
The red of the blood that spilled seemed surreal, almost theatrical in its abundance.
And then we were falling again, and the hard, jolting collision with the ground stunned me anew.
I couldn’t breathe, and my hair was in my face.
I was sandwiched between two men, one of them limp and lifeless, one furious. There was so much commotion. And blood.
And then I could hear him.
Wilkie.
“Roses” was all he said. He cut me free of the dead Ogilvie warrior and carried me to sit me under a tree.
He took a very brief moment to push the hair from my face, to study me with fierce concentration.
And once he saw that I was alive and conscious, he ran back to rejoin the fight, his sword already raised.
I could see that Kade was there and others. A crowd was gathering in the distance.
Wilkie was dueling with the warrior I had injured with my knife.
I could only watch in amazement at the skill of him, the grace of his attack.
It seemed a strange thing to appreciate, but his movements were so clean, so articulate, and so very confident, I could only have described it as such: beautiful. Like everything else about him.
What was not quite as beautiful, however, was the sight of his sword slicing neatly through the neck of the Ogilvie warrior, separating his head from his body, both of which thumped heavily to the ground.
Almost simultaneously, Kade thrust his own sword into the chest of the last Ogilvie invader, who fell to his knees, propped up only by the force of the metal that skewered his heart.
He was looking at me, as the life seeped from him along with his blood.
“He’ll continue to hunt you,” he said. Then he crumpled and was still. His statement disturbed me greatly.
And Wilkie, too, it appeared. He grasped the head of the decapitated Ogilvie warrior by its long matted hair and threw it over the wall. “Take that to your laird,” he muttered, thrusting his sword back into its scabbard.