Chapter Twenty-Five
Bram arrived at the wall above the gatehouse within two minutes of the first blare of the horn, taking the steps two and three at a time. Harsain was already there, leaning over the parapet with one hand braced against the stone, while men hurried into position along either side of him.
Bram went directly to the parapet and looked beyond the village.
Dawn had not yet broken. The eastern sky was a pale wound, bleeding thin, colorless light across the land.
It was enough to see the road. And the army moving toward Craig na Coille.Riders crested the distant rise first—cavalry, by their spread and pace.
Infantry followed, a dark column stretching along the road, disappearing where the land dipped from sight.
In the half-light, individual men were indistinguishable, their banners lost to shadow, but the length of the column told him all he needed to know.
Whoever had sounded the alarm had spotted them early. They were yet well beyond the village and showed no sign of charging toward it, but there were far too many men for any ordinary traveling party.
“They move with purpose,” Harsain said, his voice low. “A hundred, at least.”
Bram narrowed his eyes upon the distant column. “More, I ken.”
He watched long enough to satisfy himself that they had time and then dropped his gaze to the village below.
The alarm had emptied it with astonishing speed.
Men, women and children streamed from between the cottages and workshops and hurried up the rise toward the open gates, some running outright while others carried bairns or supported older kin.
Farther back, two lads attempted to drive several sheep toward the keep until one of Bram's men shouted at them to leave the beasts and get themselves inside.
“Keep the gate open,” Bram said.
“Fearchar is counting them in.”
Bram's attention returned to the approaching force. More riders crested the rise, followed by men on foot, and still the column came, unhurried now that concealment was no longer possible. Bram had seen enough armies to know what he was looking at. No friendly force approached another man’s stronghold in such numbers without sending riders ahead to announce itself.
“Archers to the landward wall,” he ordered. “Niall takes the west. Keep twenty men below until we ken what we're facing.”
Harsain turned to relay the orders while another horn blast sounded overhead, shorter this time. A handful of Bram's men were still moving from cottage to cottage below, shouting through open doors to make certain no one remained behind before hastening toward the keep themselves.
“Where the devil is Donnchadh?”
“Coming.”
Harsain pointed, and Bram found him near the far end of the village, half running and half dragging old Eòghan MacRae by the arm while the ancient fool appeared determined to argue about something even now.
Bram might have laughed on any other morning, but his attention was drawn again to the advancing force.
They were nearer now, and the strengthening light allowed him to distinguish individual riders and the banners lifting intermittently above the column.
One unfurled, collapsed again, and then snapped outward upon the next gust.
Bram knew the device.
“Christ,” Harsain breathed beside him.
Raghnall’s colors. The sight was a brand against his eyes, burning away any last doubt.
So the word was out. The traitor knew he lived.
After selling sixty MacCailin men to the English, the bastard had trusted a London dungeon and an executioner’s rope to bury his secret.
Bram’s survival was a loose thread that could unravel everything. Raghnall had come to cut it.
“Ten score, mayhap,” Harsain estimated.
“At least.” Nearly three times what Bram could presently put upon the walls.
“Jesu,” Harsain seethed.
Only a few villagers remained outside now.
Donnchadh and old Eòghan were nearly to the gate, accompanied by the last men returning from their search of the cottages, while behind them the village stood eerily abandoned, doors hanging open and several bewildered chickens wandering between the buildings as though nothing whatsoever of consequence were happening.
“Get them in.”
Harsain leaned over the parapet. “Donnchadh! Move your arse!”
Donnchadh answered with an obscenity Bram could not quite hear and shoved Eòghan bodily ahead of him beneath the gatehouse.
The last men followed, and at the shout of “Clear!” from below, Bram gave the order to close the gates.
He watched until the great timbers met beneath him with a deep, reverberating thud and the heavy bar dropped into its brackets.
He finally turned from the parapet, his mind already placing his men.
“Every archer we have to the landward wall.” He scanned the approaching force, noting the dark shapes of ladders.
“Bring up every arrow from the stores. I want stones stacked high, spears at hand, and poles stout enough to push back whatever they raise against us.”
He glanced toward the courtyard. “Domnall keeps fifteen men in reserve, armed and ready, and six remain upon the seaward wall. Nae man leaves his post merely because the enemy stands before the gate.”
Harsain nodded and started away.
“And tell Fearchar to clear the courtyard of anyone who has nae business being there. Women and bairns into the keep. Anyone able to carry arrows, stones or water can help supply the walls, and have him make ready a place for the wounded.”
Harsain paused. “Anything else?”
“Have the horses brought into the inner yard and saddled. Then get back here.”
Bram returned to the parapet as Raghnall's men began entering the village, several mounted men riding first between the deserted cottages while the greater body remained beyond it.
Bram didn't like the cover his own village afforded them; cottages, workshops, sheds and stone walls would conceal men from his archers until they emerged upon the nearer side.
More troubling was the fact that Raghnall knew this keep.
He knew the landward approach was its strongest point, yet he had brought his army straight to the gate.
Bram studied his own walls with a critical eye.
Raghnall knew he was undermanned, but even so, the cost of a direct assault would be steep.
Why this approach? What advantage did the bastard believe he possessed?
Raghnall was many things, but Bram had never known him to squander men without purpose. If the bastard meant to come directly at his gate, he had arrived believing he could take it.
Bram only wished he knew why.
His thoughts went briefly to Anastasia. She was safely inside the keep and, while she had not precisely promised to remain there, surely even Anastasia possessed sufficient sense not to argue with him while an army stood outside the walls.
The sky had lightened perceptibly by then, enough that colors began to emerge from what before had been only shades of gray, and Bram watched as Raghnall's men spread into the open ground between the outermost cottages and Craig na Coille.
Some carried bows and others shields, while several groups farther back bore long timbers upon their shoulders.
Bram recognized the first as a ladder and counted another and another behind it.
They had not fashioned such things upon arriving.
Raghnall had brought them with him, further evidence that he had come prepared not merely to threaten Craig na Coille but to take it.
Harsain returned to Bram's side, and together they watched the force arrange itself beyond the abandoned village.
Men moved between the cottages carrying arrows and shields while mounted figures remained farther back beyond useful bowshot.
There was an unsettling deliberateness to it all.
Raghnall was in no haste now that he had arrived, seemingly content to let the sight of so many armed men gathered outside Craig na Coille speak for him while he made ready to attack.
Another rider appeared between the cottages, and Bram recognized the gray destrier before he could clearly distinguish the man upon it.
An instant later there could be no mistaking Raghnall himself.
He sat heavily in the saddle, broad through the shoulders and thick through the middle, his dark hair showing more gray than Bram remembered at the temples and his beard trimmed close along a square jaw.
Mail showed beneath his surcoat, and a dark red cloak hung from his shoulders.
He looked much as he always had—solid, prosperous and imposing, every inch the Scottish lord he had pretended to be while secretly selling other Scots to Edward.
Bram had wondered during his captivity what he would feel when he saw the man again and had expected rage, mayhap even some uncontrollable desire to cross whatever distance separated them and put a sword through him.
Yet as Raghnall rode beyond the last cottage and stopped upon the open ground, Bram felt none of the wild fury he'd imagined.
What he felt instead was closer to clarity—the same steadiness that had come over him in the pit when screaming had accomplished nothing and he had learned to go very still inside himself, to make himself small and cold and patient.
Bram did not want merely to kill him. He wanted the bastard to answer for what he had done.
Raghnall raised his face toward Craig na Coille and surveyed the battlements until his gaze reached the gatehouse and stopped.
Even across the distance separating them, Bram saw the instant he was recognized, Raghnall's shoulders drawing back while one hand tightened upon the reins.
He had plainly heard that Bram had escaped and returned home, but seeing him standing alive and armed above his own gate was evidently another matter entirely.
For three months Bram had expected to hunt the bastard across Scotland if need be. Instead, Raghnall had brought an army to his door.