Chapter Three
Nobody had thought to tell Alexandra she was not to go into the war room, and she intended to make full use of that before anyone remembered.
They walked the long gallery together, her father already gone ahead at a stride no one was expected to match.
Arran had washed and found a clean shirt somewhere and had done nothing at all about the beard. He walked with his helmet under one arm and his eyes on the floor two paces ahead, and at the turn by the tall windows he glanced sideways at her and smiled.
It was small and it was tired and it was gone almost at once. But she knew it. She had seen that exact smile on a boy in the McKenzie stables, half his face in shadow, being dared to do something he had already decided to do.
“Ye’re as stubborn as me father,” she told him.
“I’m worse. He gives up eventually.”
“He does not, and ye ken it. When has that man ever given up anythin’ in his life?”
“Then I’m in for a long winter.” The smile went. He shifted the helmet to his other arm. “Alexandra. Ye ken why I came back.”
“Ye came back with six hundred men, so I’d say I’ve a fair idea.”
“That isnae what I mean.” He stopped walking.
He looked at the window rather than at her, and took his time about it.
“I made a promise a long, long time ago. Longer than ye’d think.
I’ve broken it the once already and I’ll nae be doin’ it twice, and that’s the whole of the reason, and ye can think what ye like of me for it. ”
Her heart went sideways in her chest and her face went hot with it.
“A promise tae who? Arran. Tae who?”
But the doors at the end of the gallery came open, and her mother was standing in them.
The war room was already full. Six of her father’s council were down one side of the table, Hamish and two captains at the foot, and Iona McKenzie at the very centre of it in the Laird’s chair, where the Laird of this clan had sat since her grandmother’s day and where nobody had ever once suggested she should not.
Finn saw Alexandra come through the door behind Arran and his face began to close.
“Alexandra, ye’ll—”
“She was a prisoner in the Campbell stronghold, me laird.”
Arran said it to the room rather than to her father, while he set his helmet down on the sideboard and did not look up from doing it.
“I’ve six hundred men outside yer walls and nae one of them has ever laid eyes on Ian Campbell. She has. If she leaves this room I’ll be askin’ her the same questions in the corridor within the hour, and I’d sooner nae waste the hour.”
It was so smoothly done that it took Alexandra a moment to understand what had happened.
Two of the council were nodding before her father had finished drawing breath.
Finn looked at Arran for a long moment with an expression she could not read at all, and then jerked his chin at the empty chair beside Hamish, and said nothing.
She sat down before he could reconsider, her pulse loud in her ears.
“Kincaid.” Her mother rose. “Ye brought two clans and an English lord’s soldiers tae me gate on three days’ notice, and ye did it after me husband put ye off his land, and I’ll nae pretend I dinnae ken what that cost ye tae do.
” Iona inclined her head. “The McKenzies accept yer pledge, and they’ll remember it.
Sit down, lad, and eat somethin’ while ye talk. Ye look like a fence post.”
Something eased in the room. Arran sat.
Then he put both hands flat on the table and the ease went straight back out again.
“Ye’ll want the rest of it,” he said. “It isnae good.”
He told it plain and in order, the way a man does when he has had three days in the saddle to arrange it in his head.
Campbell riders had been working the Murray lands for a fortnight.
Not war parties—small, fast, six and eight at a time, hitting the outlying farms and the drove roads and never the same place twice.
Two villages burnt in the north. A toll bridge taken and held for a day and abandoned again, which made no sense at all until you understood that it had never been about the bridge.
“They’re nae takin’ ground,” Hamish said, working it out as he went. “They’re teachin’ us we cannae hold it.”
“Aye.” Arran’s mouth was flat. “And they’ve gone further than the Murray lands.”
He said the rest of it without any change in his voice at all, which was how Alexandra knew what it was costing him.
Riders had come south five days ago. Not to the Kincaid stronghold—they had gone nowhere near the walls, and no Kincaid had been killed, and that was deliberate.
They had gone eleven miles east to the high paddocks, where the Kincaids kept the breeding stock out of the wind, and they had fired the long barn with the horses shut inside it.
“Thirty-eight!” Arran said. “Six of them in foal.”
The room went very quiet. He had not lifted his eyes off the table, and his hands had closed slowly into fists on the wood, and Alexandra felt her own throat ache at the sight of it.
Alexandra sat with her hands knotted in her lap and felt something come up in her that was not grief at all.
Her face went hot with it. She knew what those horses were.
Everyone at that table knew it. The Kincaid line was the only reason the clan had a name worth anything after the burning.
It was Aila’s whole life’s work, and Elsie’s after her, and it carried the name of Lachlan Kincaid, who was the only true-born Kincaid of any of them.
Splendor had come out of that same paddock, a gift to a boy who had been let to name him.
“There was a message,” Arran said. “Nailed tae the gatepost, where it wouldnae burn.”
“Sayin’ what?” Finn demanded. “What does a man write on a gatepost after a thing like that…?”
“That his uncle wanted the Murray lands, and he wants a great deal more than that.” Arran finally looked up.
“It was addressed tae me by name, me laird. And I’ll tell ye what I take from it, since ye’ll have taken it yerself already.
He doesnae need the Kincaids beaten. He needs me lookin’ south while he works in the north.
He burnt me horses tae put me on the road home. ”
“And ye came here instead,” Iona said.
“I came here instead.” Arran turned his head, and for the first time since he had sat down he was speaking to Alexandra and to nobody else in the room. “Ye should ken what this is now. It isnae yer war and it isnae mine. He’s comin’ for every one of us that ever took a stranger in.”
“There’s one thing more.” Arran drew a folded paper out of his cloak and put it on the table.
“This came up from Liam’s people two days ago and caught me on the road.
His scouts have a body of Campbell men, three hundred at the least, movin’ well and in good order, sittin’ half a day east of a Murray village on the low road.
That isnae a raidin’ party. There’s coin behind that. ”
Her father took the paper and read it twice.
“East,” he said. “He’s nae in the north at all. Have ye any notion what that means, Kincaid? Have ye any notion at all?”
“I have. It means we’ve been lookin’ the wrong way for a fortnight.”
“Three hundred with a real column behind them, and the whole of the Murray strength lookin’ the wrong way.
” Finn set the paper down and put his knuckles on the table, and for the first time in four days Alexandra watched her father look like a man with somewhere to put his hands.
“How fast can ye move yer men? Can ye be up by first light, or am I askin’ too much of tired horses? ”
“They’ve been in the saddle three days. Give me one night and they’ll go anywhere ye point them.”
Finn turned his head. He did not say anything to his wife, and his wife did not say anything to him. Iona looked back at him for a moment and then closed her eyes briefly and opened them, and that was apparently the whole conversation, because Finn straightened and started giving orders.
“Hamish. Every man that can sit a horse, ready tae ride at first light. Send tae the outfarms tonight.” He was already moving. “Donnchadh, the wagons. Kincaid, yer captains in this room in an hour with yer numbers written down—”
The war room came apart into noise, and Alexandra sat in it with her hands shaking in her lap and her heart banging.
Alexandra got to her father in the doorway.
“I’m comin’ with ye.”
“No.”
“Will ye nae even hear me?” Alexandra went sideways down the corridor to get in front of him. “Da, ye’ve just sat there and heard why ye need me—”
“I heard why I needed ye in that room. That’s a different thing entirely from needin’ ye on a horse in Campbell country, and ye ken it as well as I do.” He did not slow down. “No.”
“I can fight! Ye trained me yerself! Ye put the sword in me hand when I was knee-high tae ye—”
“Aye! And I’ve regretted it every day since the word came about yer brother!”
It went off in the corridor like something dropped. Two of the council stopped where they stood; her father shut his eyes and his whole face worked, and for a second she thought he might take it back.
He didn’t.
“Ye’ll stay behind these walls,” he said, and went.
She turned to Arran because he was there and because some part of her that she was going to be very angry with later expected him to be on her side.
He was standing with his helmet back under his arm and his face carefully arranged, and she knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.
“Dinnae,” she said.
“He’s right.”
“He is not right—”
“He’s right, and ye ken fine he is!” Arran’s voice was low and it did not waver, though his hands had closed on the helmet until the knuckles stood white.
“I’ll be ridin’ intae a place where I dinnae ken the ground and I dinnae ken the numbers and the man settin’ it up has already put a sword through one McKenzie this month.
If ye’re behind me on that road I’ll spend all of it lookin’ over me shoulder for ye instead of at what’s in front of me, and that gets men killed. Mine and yers.”
“So it’s for me own good. Is that it? Am I tae be kept like the plate, and brought out when the fightin’s done?”
“It’s for theirs!” He said it hard, and then, quieter: “And aye. And for me own. Will ye have me pretend otherwise? I havenae the stomach for it twice, Alexandra. I havenae.”
She looked at him for a long moment with her ears roaring and her eyes burning and her fists shut so tight her nails had found her palms.
“Ye stood in me father’s courtyard three nights ago,” she said, “and swore in front of two hundred men that ye’d nae stop until this was answered for. And here ye are, tellin’ me tae sit at a window and watch ye go.”
“Aye,” Arran said. “I ken.”
She left him standing in the corridor. Her eyes did not clear until she was two floors up, and her face was still burning when she got there.
She was still walking the length of her room an hour later, back and forth past the window, watching the courtyard fill with torches and men and horses and her father’s voice carrying up through the glass, when the door opened behind her without a knock.
Her mother came in and shut it and stood with her back against it.
“Sit down, Alexandra.”
“I willnae sit down. And I willnae stay—d’ye think I could?” Alexandra turned from the window. “I’m goin’ after them, Ma. I havenae worked out how yet, but I’m goin’, and ye can help me or ye can stand in me way.”
“Then stand.” Iona folded her hands. “I want tae say a thing tae ye and I’ve nae much time tae say it in.”
Alexandra stopped walking.
“When I was a lass nae older than ye are this minute,” her mother said, “yer grandfather locked me in a room in this house tae keep me out of a fight I’d nae business bein’ in.
I went out the window and down the ivy and I was three miles gone before they missed me, and I have never once in all the years since told ye that story, because I’m yer mother and I’m nae a fool.
” She let that sit. “Ye’re goin’ tae go after them, are ye nae? ”
Alexandra opened her mouth.
“Dinnae lie tae me, lass, we havenae the time.” Iona’s chin was up but her eyes had gone bright.
“I ken what ye are. I made ye. I’ve lost one of me two children this month and I’d give me own two hands tae keep ye in this room.
And I’m nae goin’ tae. If I lock that door I’ll lose ye a different way, and I’ve watched that happen tae other women. ”
She crossed the room and put something into Alexandra’s arms. A cloak, folded, plain dark wool with no clan colors on it anywhere.
“Catriona is takin’ a dozen healers out behind the column at dawn,” Iona said, “half a day back, with a guard on them. That’s nae a secret and yer father kens it fine. What he doesnae ken is how many healers there are.” Her mouth went crooked. “I’ve nae idea either. I’ve nae head for numbers.”
Alexandra could not speak. Her hands shook against the wool, and her eyes had filled before she could stop them.
“Ye’ll keep the hood up past the gate. Ye’ll do exactly what Catriona tells ye.
If she tells ye tae run, ye’ll run and ye’ll nae argue about it.
” Iona took her daughter’s face in both hands the way she had when Alexandra was small, and her thumbs moved once across her cheekbones, and her hands were not steady at all.
“And ye’ll come home tae me! D’ye hear me? Say it.”
“Ma—”
“Say it.”
“I’ll come home tae ye.”
Her mother kissed her forehead and held her there a moment, and Alexandra felt her shaking, and neither of them said another word. Then Iona let go and went out and did not look back, which Alexandra understood, because she would not have managed it either.
The healers went out through the north gate an hour before the light, twelve of them and a dozen pack ponies, and Catriona sat her horse at the head of them and watched a hooded figure come down the yard and fall in at the back without a word.
She did not ask. She counted the party once, out loud, and got thirteen, and did not appear to find anything wrong with it.
Then she turned her horse north after the army.