Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Chaos had many sounds. Ruaridh knew them all: the alarm bell, boots striking stone, men shouting over one another, steel drawn too quickly and doors thrown open.
Duart had become a body in panic, every passage and wall and stair flinching at once.
Ruaridh was standing in the outer court with his sword already in hand and fury held tight beneath his skin.
Torin had taken men toward the lower stair.
Brodie had gone to the store passages. Two guards were checking the postern gates, and three more had been sent along the inner wall.
The prisoner had vanished from a locked cell, and no one had yet given Ruaridh an answer he could use.
That fact alone made him want blood.
“How many saw him?” he demanded.
“One lad near the old stores,” a guard answered breathlessly. “But he lost sight of him by the western passage.”
“The western passage splits in four.”
“I ken that, laird.”
“Then ye ken how useless that answer is.”
The man went pale. Ruaridh turned away before temper made him crueler than needed. It was not the guard he wanted. It was the man who had walked through his castle while his people scattered like frightened birds.
A shout came from the gatehouse.
“Naething by the shore path!”
Another voice answered from the wall. “Nay movement below!”
Naething. Naething. Naething.
The word beat through Ruaridh’s skull. A man did not escape a dungeon and vanish into stone unless he had help, knowledge, or both.
“Me laird!”
He turned sharply. Two children came stumbling across the court from the side passage near the kitchens.
A girl dragged a smaller boy behind her, both of them white-faced and sobbing.
The girl had one arm wrapped around him and the other lifted as if she feared someone might strike them before they were heard.
Ruaridh crossed the distance in three strides. The boy flinched when he came near. Ruaridh stopped short and lowered his sword point at once.
“Easy,” he said, though his own voice was rough enough to scrape stone. “Who frightened ye?”
The girl tried to speak. No sound came out. Ruaridh crouched, forcing himself down to their height though every instinct in him screamed to move.
“Look at me,” he urged.
The brave lass did. She was terrified and shaking, but she looked at him.
“Where was he?” Ruaridh asked.
“The old store passage,” she whispered. “Near the hidden door. The one behind the barrels. Me ma said never tae go near it.”
The boy began to cry harder. Ruaridh’s heart struck once, hard.
“What happened?” he asked.
The girl’s face crumpled. “He had Callum. He asked for the quickest way deeper in. He wanted tae ken the servant stairs.”
Ruaridh already knew. His body knew before his mind finished the thought.
“Have ye seen Lady Isobel?” he asked.
The girl’s eyes flooded. Ruaridh went cold.
“She came,” the girl sobbed. “She had her bow. She told us tae run.”
For one heartbeat, every sound in the court fell away.
Then the boy choked out. “He grabbed her.”
Ruaridh was moving before the child finished. Behind him, someone called his name. He didn’t stop. He ran toward the western passage with the kind of speed that came not from thought but from terror sharpened into purpose.
Isobel had left the chamber. A child had screamed, and she had gone.
Ruaridh should have been angry. He would be angry later, if God allowed him the mercy of later. But now there was only one truth. Ewen’s man had found her.
The old store passage was narrow, the stones slick in places where damp came through the walls. Ruaridh took the turn hard enough that his shoulder struck stone, but he did not slow. He saw the first sign before he reached the barrels.
An arrow buried in wood.
Isobel’s.
Then, he saw her bow on the ground. Ruaridh did not remember picking it up. One moment it lay there, elegant and abandoned against the stone, and the next he had it in his left hand, his sword in his right, and something inside him had gone so still that rage no longer felt hot. It felt clean.
The side door stood open. Outside, he heard his name in a scream.
Ruaridh went through the door like death given shape. The narrow service path beyond ran along the lower outside wall, half-hidden by rock and thorn. Evening had darkened into a grey-blue gloom, and the wind moved hard off the sea. For one instant, he saw only shadow and rough ground.
Then he saw them. The prisoner had Isobel by the arm, dragging her toward a broken gap in the outer stones. Her hair had fallen wild around her face. One side of her cheek was marked red. Her gown was torn at the shoulder, as she fought him with everything in her.
Beyond the gap waited three more men, positioned exactly where they needed to be if the prisoner reached them with his prize.
A trap.
The realization struck with brutal clarity.
The capture had never been failure. It had been invitation.
They had allowed him to be taken, allowed him into the dungeon, waited for Duart to turn inward in alarm, waited for Ruaridh to scatter his men through corridors and yards while the true path opened from below.
And Ruaridh had fallen for it.
Then, Isobel looked up and saw him.
“Ruaridh!”
The sound broke whatever remained of thought.
He attacked. The nearest of the three men outside the gap turned too late.
Ruaridh threw Isobel’s bow at him first, not as a weapon meant to kill but to blind his attention.
The man flinched, lifting his arm, and Ruaridh was already upon him. His sword cut across the man’s throat.
The second man lunged from the left with a short blade. Ruaridh caught the strike on his own sword, drove his shoulder into the man’s chest, and slammed him back against the stones hard enough to break the breath from him.
The man tried to recover. Ruaridh did not let him. He brought the hilt down against his face, then turned the blade and drove it beneath his ribs.
The third shouted something toward the prisoner.
“Move!”
The prisoner wrenched Isobel backward. She twisted in his arms. Even in that moment, even with blood rushing in his ears, Ruaridh saw the lessons from the yard. Pride and terror struck him together.
She nearly broke free. Then the prisoner struck her hard across the side of the head with his forearm, not enough to drop her senseless but enough to stagger her.
Ruaridh saw red. The third man came at him then, with his sword raised.
Ruaridh met him halfway. Their blades rang once, twice.
The man was fast and trained. He pressed hard, trying to keep Ruaridh from the prisoner, trying to buy the few breaths needed to drag Isobel through the breach and into the dark beyond.
Ruaridh gave him none. He shifted his weight, let the man’s next strike slide, stepped inside the guard, and drove his knee into the man’s thigh. The leg buckled. The man cursed and dropped low.
Ruaridh caught him by the back of the neck and pulled him onto the blade. He left him falling and turned.
The prisoner had almost reached the rocks beyond the wall.
Isobel had one hand braced against the edge of the breach, fighting like a wild thing, refusing to be pulled through.
Blood marked her lip now. Her fingers were scraped raw against the stone.
The prisoner had both arms around her, hauling with vicious desperation.
“Let her go,” Ruaridh snarled.
The prisoner froze. Slowly, he turned enough for Ruaridh to see his face.
Fear flickered there now. He had seen the others fall.
He had seen the distance between rescue and death close too quickly for hope.
But fear made some men wiser and others more dangerous.
Seumas dragged Isobel against him and put a knife to her side.
Ruaridh stopped. Every part of him wanted to keep moving, to cut, break, tear. But the blade was against her, and Isobel had gone very still.
Seumas’ arm tightened around her. “Back away.”
Ruaridh’s sword remained low at his side. “Nay.”
“I’ll cut her.”
“Nay,” Ruaridh spoke quietly. “Ye willnae.”
Seumas’ mouth twisted. “Ye think ye ken that?”
“I ken Ewen wants her alive.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. Ruaridh took one slow step forward.
Seumas jerked the knife higher. “I said back.”
“And I said nay.”
“Ruaridh,” Isobel warned, her voice thin with pain and fury. He looked at her then, only her.
“Turn toward the thumb,” he said.
Seumas frowned. Isobel understood. Her body shifted before the man did.
Ruaridh moved at the same moment. Isobel twisted hard toward the hand that held the knife, not away from it.
Seumas swore, his grip loosening as she drove her elbow back into his ribs.
The blade scraped across fabric instead of flesh.
Ruaridh closed the distance. Seumas shoved Isobel aside and slashed at him.
Ruaridh caught the man’s wrist with his left hand.
Bone ground beneath his grip. Seumas gasped.
Ruaridh drove his sword into him. The man’s eyes widened.
His mouth opened as if he meant to speak, perhaps to curse, or perhaps to deliver one last message from Ewen MacDonald.
Ruaridh did not care. He wrenched the blade free and let him fall.
For a moment, there was only the wind. Then Isobel made a small sound. Ruaridh turned. She was on one knee near the stones, with one hand pressed against the ground as if it alone kept her upright. Her hair hid part of her face. Blood marked her mouth. Her breathing came too quickly.
His sword fell from his hand. He did not remember dropping it.
He reached her and went down before her, with his hands hovering for one unbearable moment because he did not know where she was hurt, and he would sooner cut off his own fingers than cause her more pain.
“Isobel.”
She lifted her head. The look on her face nearly broke him.
“Are ye cut?” he asked.
She swallowed. “I dinnae think so.”
His hands finally touched her then, carefully, checking her arms, her shoulders, the side where the knife had pressed. He checked for blood, the torn fabric, the bruises already rising, the scrapes across her fingers and a swelling mark at her cheek.
Ruaridh’s breath left him like a man struck. Behind them, boots pounded closer. Torin’s voice rang out, then Brodie’s. Men flooded through the side door and around the wall. Someone cursed at the bodies. Someone else called for more guards.
Ruaridh heard none of it clearly. He gathered Isobel into his arms. She made one faint protest, which was more pride than refusal, then gripped the front of his shirt and buried her face against him.
“I told ye tae stay in the room,” he said, feeling unsteady.
Her fingers tightened in his shirt. “The children were screaming.”
A laugh almost broke out of him. It would have sounded like grief.
“Aye,” he spoke while holding her closer. “Of course they were.”
Brodie stopped near them, with his sword still drawn. “All dead?”
Ruaridh looked over Isobel’s head at the four bodies on the ground.
“All dead.”
Torin crouched near the breach, his expression grim. “They kent the path.”
“Aye,” Ruaridh confirmed.
The word tasted of failure. He looked at the open gap, the hidden door, the dead men who had waited outside his walls while he had searched within them.
The trap lay clear now, ugly and simple.
Ewen had not only sent a man to escape. He had sent a man to be caught and to draw Isobel out or find her in the confusion.
Ruaridh’s arms tightened around her before he could stop them.
She drew in a small breath, and he loosened at once. “Did I hurt ye?”
“Nay.”
The answer came against his chest, muffled but certain.
Then, she whispered. “They wanted tae take me.”
“I ken.”
“Tae Ewen.”
Ruaridh closed his eyes for half a heartbeat. When he opened them, there was nothing soft left in the world beyond the woman in his arms.
“They failed,” he assured her.
Isobel lifted her face enough to look at him. He touched his thumb, gently, to the blood at the corner of her mouth. His hand shook once before he made it still.
“They will all fail,” he promised. “Every man he sends. Every road he opens. Every hand he reaches toward ye.”
Her eyes searched his, and whatever she saw there made her breath tremble. He carried her back through the hidden door and into Duart, past the scattered arrows, the blood on the stones, and the bow he had given her lying where he had thrown it in battle.
Torin picked it up without being asked. Ruaridh saw it and gave one sharp nod. Then he looked down at Isobel, at the woman Ewen had tried to take from the heart of his own home, and the last remnants of any restraint he had held toward that man turned to ash.
This was not a warning anymore.
This was war.