Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Roy faced armies with less unease than he felt standing before the altar.
The great hall of Dun Ard had been transformed beneath MacIver red and MacNicol green. Winter heather wound around the pillars. Fresh rushes covered the floor, releasing the clean scent of grass beneath the heavier warmth of peat smoke, beeswax and bodies gathered too closely beneath one roof.
Both clans filled the benches. Men who once reached for weapons at the sight of one another now sat shoulder to shoulder, though suspicion remained in the careful angles of their bodies.
Young heirs watched from the lower tables.
Elders whispered behind raised hands. Every face seemed turned toward Roy, measuring whether a King’s command could truly become peace.
The joined banners stirred faintly above the high table.
Roy looked at them once. He spent most of his life beneath colors that demanded blood.
A banner marked the ground a man was expected to defend, the name he was required to preserve and the enemies he inherited before he was old enough to understand why they hated him.
Today, two banners hung together. Neither was lowered. Neither was conquered.
Hamish stood beside him, dressed more formally than Roy had seen him since before the war. He shifted the ceremonial brooch at his shoulder as though it were more uncomfortable than armor.
“Ye look as though Father Maol intends tae execute ye,” he murmured.
Roy kept his eyes upon the doors. “Silence would improve ye.”
“It rarely has.”
Malcolm stood on Roy’s other side with several elders and councilmen. Their expressions ranged from solemn approval to the grave resignation of men who believed weddings ought to resemble funerals in all but destination.
Roy barely noticed them. The musicians ceased. The hall rose.
Donaldina entered between Mairi and two MacNicol women carrying candles. Roy forgot the gathered clans. All he could see was her.
She wore deep green, the color of rain-darkened hills, with her mother’s silver clasp bright at her shoulder. Lachlan’s plaid had been folded over one arm. Winter heather threaded through her dark hair, though no ornament could soften the certainty with which she crossed the hall.
She did not look like a woman being surrendered beneath royal decree. She looked like the mistress of Dun Ard approaching a future she had judged and chosen.
The knowledge struck Roy more deeply than the beauty of her gown or the softness of the candlelight upon her face.
She had chosen this. She had chosen him.
Her gaze found his. Everything within Roy quieted. He had seen her furious, wounded, and smoke-stained. He had held her while she trembled and watched her command men twice her age without raising her voice. Yet the sight of her walking toward him struck some unguarded place beneath his ribs.
For years, he believed peace was merely the absence of fighting. Donaldina approaching beneath the joined banners made him wonder whether peace might instead be something a man had to dare accept.
She stopped beside him. Their hands brushed.
“Still time tae flee,” she whispered playfully.
“Ye would only follow and correct me route.”
“I would have tae. Ye would choose the most difficult road.”
Father Maol cleared his throat with priestly disapproval. Donaldina’s mouth softened. Roy turned toward the altar before the entire hall witnessed him smiling.
The priest lifted his hands. “We gather beneath God, before kin and clan, tae witness the joining of Laird Roy MacIver and Lady Donaldina MacNicol. They stand here beneath the agreement of the Crown, but also by the consent of their houses and the choice freely given between them.”
The last words entered Roy with quiet force.
Choice freely given.
Donaldina’s fingers shifted closer to his. Father Maol reached toward the ceremonial cord resting upon the altar, but then, a horn sounded outside. One blast, then another. The sound cut through the hall.
The doors near the lower tables opened, and a guard stumbled across the threshold, breathing hard.
“Fire!”
Voices rose at once. Roy turned toward the narrow eastern windows. Smoke climbed beyond the wall, thick and black against the pale sky. It was the direction of the garden and the hives.
Donaldina’s breath caught. Roy’s hand closed around hers before she could move.
“Hamish,” he ordered. “Twenty men tae the garden. Malcolm holds the hall.”
Warriors surged from the benches.
“Remain calm!” Malcolm shouted. “Nae one leaves without instruction.”
The hall ignored him. Guests rose. Women pulled children toward the walls.
Several men demanded weapons while others pushed toward the doors to see the fire.
Benches scraped across stone. Cups overturned.
The musicians retreated against the western hearth, clutching their instruments as though wooden pipes might offer protection.
Donaldina pulled once against Roy’s hand. “Those are me hives.”
“I ken.”
“The old hive—”
“I ken.”
The pain on her face nearly made him release her. Suddenly, another horn sounded from the battlements. Beyond the eastern treeline, a second column of smoke appeared, followed by a third. Roy sensed the approach of the attack before the steel emerged.
“He is drawing us outward,” he said.
Hamish stopped halfway toward the doors.
Roy looked toward him. “Send only half the men. The rest remain inside the walls.”
A crash sounded from the side passage. Men shouted. The narrow service door burst inward, its wooden bar splintered from the opposite side. Armed figures poured through, some wearing servants’ cloaks, others dressed in the colors of minor clans welcomed through Dun Ard’s gates the day before.
They entered as guests, or hidden among them. One drove a blade beneath a MacNicol guard’s ribs before the man could draw his sword. Another overturned a bench into the central aisle, trapping several guests behind it.
The wedding hall erupted. Roy drew his sword.
“Seal the main doors!” he shouted. “MacIver men tae the eastern passage. MacNicols protect the civilians!”
The orders carried above the panic. Men answered them from instinct, training, or sheer relief that someone had given the chaos a shape.
An attacker rushed Roy from the side. Roy turned the first stroke and drove his shoulder into the man’s chest. The intruder struck the floor.
Roy’s blade followed, ending the struggle before the man could rise.
Another came through the press. Roy cut across his arm, forced him backward, and saw too late that the fighting divided him from Donaldina.
“Roy!”
Her voice reached him through steel, screams and the roar of overturned benches.
He turned. Donaldina was standing near the dais with Mairi beside her. Two MacNicol guards fought their way to them, but armed men blocked the aisle. Father Maol remained beside the altar, one hand gripping the wooden cross at his breast.
Donaldina seized Mairi’s arm and attempted to draw her behind the high table.
At that exact moment, Cormac emerged from among the guests. He wore no clan colors. He had concealed himself beneath a dark cloak and the ordinary dress of a lesser retainer, passing through Dun Ard’s gates while every eye searched the roads for banners.
For one terrible moment, Roy saw how carefully the attack had been designed. The fires drew the guards outward. The visiting clans crowded the castle with unfamiliar faces. The political challenge made every armed guest appear dangerous, and every hesitation look like betrayal.
Cormac had not come merely to attack Dun Ard. He had come to turn the wedding itself into proof that peace could not survive.
Roy moved toward him. Three men closed across the aisle. Roy struck the first beneath the jaw with the guard of his sword. The second caught his shoulder with a blade, slicing cloth and skin. Heat spread beneath his sleeve. Roy scarcely felt it.
Donaldina lifted a heavy candlestick from the altar and swung it into the face of the man reaching for her. Bone cracked. He staggered, clutching his nose.
For one heartbeat, Roy felt savage pride.
Then another man caught her from behind, wrenching one arm against her back.
She fought him with everything she possessed.
She drove her heel downward, twisted her wrist, and threw her weight violently to the side.
Her attacker cursed and tightened his hold. Cormac mounted the dais.
“End this!” he shouted.
His voice cut through the hall with the force of madness sharpened into command. He seized Father Maol by the front of his robes and pressed a dagger beneath the priest’s chin.
“The accord is void. The Crown abandoned these lands and forfeited its authority over them.”
No one listened willingly, yet the violence forced the words upon them. Cormac dragged the priest toward Donaldina.
“She will be joined tae the man chosen by Highland blood, nae delivered tae a foreign laird beneath an English King’s paper.”
Donaldina’s expression hardened. “Ye were never chosen.”
Cormac struck her. The blow snapped her head sideways. Roy saw blood brighten at one corner of her mouth. The world narrowed. He cut through the man before him. His sword entered beneath the ribs and came free hot with blood.
“Cormac!” The name left Roy like thunder.
The former looked across the hall. Fear passed through his face. Then he seized Donaldina by the hair and drew the dagger against her throat.
Roy stopped. The point pressed into the skin beneath her jaw, near the faint scar left from the first time Cormac had held a blade there.
Donaldina’s breathing came hard, but she did not plead.
Blood marked her lip. Her hair loosened from its ceremonial arrangement, dark strands falling around her face and catching against the heather woven there.
Her gaze fixed upon Roy’s with fierce, terrible steadiness.
“Ye see?” Cormac smiled. “Even now, MacIver’s authority ends where her life begins.”
Roy heard the challenge beneath the words. Cormac believed he had found the only chain strong enough to hold him.
Around the dais, fighting continued. Guests crouched beneath tables.
Malcolm’s warriors struggled to clear the central aisle, while smoke entered through the opened doors and spread in thin gray layers beneath the rafters.
Somewhere outside, men shouted for water.
The smell of burning heather reached the hall.
Father Maol stood pale and rigid beside Cormac.
“Speak the vows!” Cormac ordered him.
“I willnae bind a woman beneath a blade.”
Cormac pressed the dagger more firmly against Donaldina’s skin. A thin line of blood appeared. Roy’s grip tightened upon his sword until pain entered his wounded shoulder.
“Then ye will watch her bleed before the altar,” Cormac snarled.
The priest’s face changed. Donaldina saw it.
“Dinnae,” she told him.
Cormac jerked her backward. “Silence.”
“I will speak nae vow tae ye,” she spoke more loudly. “Nae before God, nae before this clan and nae with me last breath.”
A murmur passed through the hall. Even held beneath a blade, she had taken the moment from him.
Cormac’s face twisted. Roy understood then that Cormac had never truly wanted her obedience. He wanted the world to witness it.
Donaldina twisted suddenly, driving her heel into the foot of the man holding her arm. His grip loosened. She nearly broke free, but Cormac caught her himself and dragged her backward against his chest.
Roy moved. Two attackers rushed him from the western aisle.
He met them without slowing. Sparks leaped near his face.
He turned one blade aside, drove his elbow into a throat, and forced the second man against a pillar.
The man struck wildly. Roy ducked beneath the cut and drove his sword through the space below the attacker’s arm.
The body fell between the benches. Nothing existed beyond the dais. Not the fire, not the gathered clans, not the blood warming Roy’s shoulder or the pain spreading down his arm… only Donaldina, held beneath the banners that were meant to witness her choice.
He remembered her walking toward him moments before, the green gown, her mother’s clasp and Lachlan’s plaid folded over her arm. He remembered her whispering that he might still flee. She trusted him to remain.
Roy wrenched his sword free and stepped over the fallen man. Cormac’s supporters closed ranks before him. Eight armed men stood between Roy and the dais.
Beyond them, Donaldina met his gaze. There was fear in her eyes now. There was also certainty, the same certainty she carried in the hunting lodge, when smoke filled her lungs, and she believed he would reach her.
Roy advanced. They placed eight armed men between him and the woman he loved… but it was not nearly enough to keep her away from him.