Chapter Eight
The men came down off that shelf angry, and by the time the light went anger had turned into something worse.
Arran rode the length of the column twice.
He had ridden with enough men to know the difference between an army that is frightened and an army that has decided.
This one had decided. The McKenzies had their heads up, and they talked about the Campbell gate the way men talk about a thing that is already done.
Somewhere behind the wagons a lad started singing.
It was an old song about a girl at a fair and it had about nine verses, and he sang all of them.
Men who had been silent since the shelf began to join in on the ends of the lines.
By the fourth verse half the column had it.
Arran let it run, because a man who is singing is not a man who is thinking about a boy’s cloak on a spike, and they had another three days of road in front of them.
Hamish rode up beside him near the end.
“He cannae sing,” Hamish said.
“He cannae.”
“Let him keep at it.”
The song ran out somewhere behind them, and after that the column went quiet again.
Arran went up the line to find her.
Alexandra was riding alone at the head of the McKenzie warriors with her hood back and her brother’s cloak across her saddlebow. She did not turn her head when he came level with her, but she did not tell him to go either, and he took what he was given.
“Will ye hear me for two minutes?”
“Have I nae heard ye all day?”
“Ye’ve heard me twice and ye walked off in the middle of both.” He brought Valiant up beside her. “Two minutes. Then I’ll leave ye be and I’ll nae raise it again.”
“He wants ye up that road,” Arran said. “Everythin’ that’s happened since the ford has been him puttin’ ye on it.
The village he burnt and left the beasts in.
The riders that went west where Liam’s men would see them.
The cloak, above the water, where a man cannae miss it.
That isnae three things, Alexandra. That’s one thing done three times. ”
“And it worked. I ken.”
“Then—”
“It worked, and I’m goin’ anyway.” She looked around at him.
There were shadows under her eyes that had not been there at the river.
“Do ye think I’m a fool? I ken fine what he’s doin’.
He’s stood in his own hall this whole while wi—” She stopped and got the word right.
“With his feet at his own fire, sendin’ Caindachs out tae walk us around the hills like a dog on a rope.
He’s had a fortnight of it. He’ll have had a laugh every night. ”
“Aye. And he’s still doin’ it.”
“Then let him be in his hall!” Her voice came up and two riders ahead of them turned around. “That’s where I want him! I want him behind his own gate wi—with all of it shut, and me father’s army on the outside of it, and nae place left tae send a soul!”
“He chose that gate, Alexandra. Nae us.”
“Then I’ll take the gate he chose.”
Arran let a length of track go under them before he tried again.
“There’s a thing ye’re nae sayin’,” he said. “Say it and we’ll both be further on.”
“There’s nothin’ I’m—”
“Ye think that if we stop movin’, ye’ll have tae feel it. Is that nae the truth of it?”
He should not have said it. He knew that before it was out. It went into her, and for a moment he thought she was going to hit him with the reins.
“Do not,” she said. “Do ye hear me? Nae that.”
“Alexandra—”
“Do ye ken what I think?” She had her voice down now, which was worse.
“I think ye’ve been sayin’ wait since the day ye followed me out of the Murray gates.
Wait, and scout, and send tae the Murrays, and let some other man go and stand in front of it.
And I ken why ye do it. But I cannae carry yer fear and me brother at the same time. ”
“That isnae what this is.”
“Then what is it? Tell me plain, for once.”
“I dinnae think… “ He made himself say it. “I dinnae think I can keep ye alive in there.”
It was the truest thing he had said to her in a fortnight, and he would have given a great deal to have it back.
Alexandra stopped talking.
“I’ve thought about it every night since the burnt village,” Arran said.
“He’ll have chosen the ground and he’ll have chosen the hour and there’ll be walls on all sides of us, and I’ll be one man in the middle of an army, and I willnae be able tae see where ye are.
That’s all of it. That’s what I’ve been sayin’ wait for.
Nae for the Murrays. Nae for the scouts.
” He made himself look at her. “I’m frightened I’m nae good enough tae bring ye back out, and I’ve nae idea what tae do about that. ”
For a moment she only looked at him. Something went over her face that he could not read, and her eyes went bright, and he thought she might reach across and take his hand.
Then her jaw set.
“Then dinnae come,” she said.
“Alexandra—”
“I mean it. Go home, Arran. Take yer men and go south, and I’ll say tae anyone that asks that ye did right by us and more.” Her voice did not shake at all, and that was the part that got him. “I’ll nae have ye die in a courtyard bein’ frightened for me.”
“Nay.”
“Arran—”
“I said nay.” He got his voice level. “I’ll nae go south, and ye can shout at me the rest of the way if it helps ye any.
I made a promise a long time ago, and I’ve broken it the once already, and I’ll nae be doin’ it twice.
That’s all of it. That’s the whole reason and there isnae another one under it. ”
She looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes had gone bright again. She was angry about that too.
“Tae who?” she said. “Arran. Who did ye promise?”
“I promised—”
His men came in around him in the road with the horses steaming. Kincaid green, grey and white behind it, and the deep blue of Blackwood’s soldiers at the back where they always put themselves. A man had a torch up. Their faces came and went in it. Alexandra put her heels in and left him there.
“Ye’ll have heard where we’re goin’,” he said. “I’ll tell ye what I think of it and then I’ll tell ye what I’m doin’, and ye can hear both before anyone says a word.”
Not one of them said a word.
“Laird McKenzie is takin’ this army north tae the Campbell stronghold.
He’ll be at the gate in three days and he means tae have the place down.
” He put it plain. “I think it’s a trap.
I think Ian Campbell has spent a fortnight puttin’ us on that road, and I think he kens the hour we’ll come, and I’ve said so tae the laird’s face twice and been told no twice, which is his right.
He’s the man in command and I put meself under him in his own courtyard. ”
A McGregor at the front spat into the road, which was as close to a comment as anyone was going to make.
“So here’s the rest,” Arran said. “Ye came north because I asked ye. Ye came for a McKenzie lad that most of ye never laid eyes on, and ye came fast, and ye’ve been in the saddle ever since.
I’ll nae hold one of ye tae more than that.
Any man that wants tae turn south in the mornin’ goes with me hand on it and me thanks, and I’ll say it tae his laird meself if it’s ever raised.
There’s nae shame in it and I’ll hear of none. ”
The Kincaid riders were at the tail with the McGregors, and Blackwood’s men behind those.
The road was very quiet. A horse shifted. Away up the line a man laughed at something, a long way off, and it made the silence worse.
Arran did not dress it. He had been dreading this since they found Rory’s cloak and there was no sense pretending otherwise, at least to himself.
“Well,” said Hendry, who had been in the Kincaid paddocks since before there was a Kincaid clan to speak of, “I’ll nae be walkin’ home in the dark at me age, so ye can put me down for the north.”
The laugh went around them and came back, and Arran was suddenly and badly glad of the old man. After that it started.
They did it one at a time and they did it without being asked.
The old ones first. The young ones after them, because the old ones had gone.
A McGregor captain wanted it known that his men had ridden four days to get here, and had not ridden four days to look at a hill.
One of Blackwood’s, in an accent from a long way south of the border, said his lord’s orders had been to go where the Kincaid went and he did not recall any part about coming back early.
A boy at the back with a bad haircut said “aye” too loudly and went scarlet.
The man beside him put a hand on his shoulder and said it again for the both of them.
Arran stood in the middle of it with the torchlight going over him and could not get a word out. His throat had closed. He looked at the mud for a while and let them think he was considering something.
He had counted these men on a road in the rain and thought of them as a number he could put in front of Finn McKenzie.
Every one of them had just told him, in front of the rest, that they would ride into a place he had called a trap to their faces, and that they would do it because he was going.
He was ashamed of having done it and grateful past speaking, and the two sat in him together and would not separate.
“Right,” he said, when he could. “Get fed. We’re up before the light.”
They went. Hendry stayed long enough to say, “Ye’ll want tae eat somethin’ yerself,” and then he went too.
Arran waited until the fires were down.
He got his writing case out of his own pack, which was the only place in that camp where no one would think to look. He sat with his back against a wheel and the case on his knees. He did not light more than the one candle.
It took him three attempts. The first two went in the fire. He watched them until they were nothing.
The third one took him a long time. He wrote small. He stopped twice. There was a long stretch where he did nothing but sit with the pen in his hand and look at the dark past the wheel. When he started again he wrote fast and did not stop until it was done.
He read it over once. His hand was not steady by the end. He was glad there was no one awake to see.
Then he melted the wax and put the Kincaid seal into it, harder than the wax required. He held his thumb there until it had gone cold under him, and his heart was going the whole time like a man expecting a hand on his shoulder.
He sent for two men, and he chose them with care. Domhnall, who had ridden dispatch for Lachlan Kincaid, his adoptive father and his laird, and had never once told a living soul what he was carrying. Young Iain, who could sit a horse all night and was too frightened of Domhnall to ask a question.
“Do ye ken Murray Keep?”
“I do.”
“Then that’s where ye’re bound,” Arran said. “Intae Elsie’s hand, or Christopher’s, and nae other hand in that house. Nae the gate captain, nae Seamus Murray himself. If they’re both out, ye wait for them.”
“Aye.”
“Do ye ken the ground south of the ridge?”
“I do.”
“Ye go south of it and ye keep off the drove road, and ye light nothin’.
” He gave Domhnall the letter and watched him put it away inside his shirt.
“Ye tell nae one in this camp where ye’re bound.
Nae one asked ye, and ye’re carryin’ nothin’.
If ye’re stopped on the road ye’re two Kincaids sent home lame. ”
Young Iain opened his mouth. “Master, is it tae do with the—”
“Do it,” Domhnall said, and Iain shut it again.
They took the horses down through the trees below the camp rather than out past the pickets. Arran stood at the edge of the firelight and watched them go until the dark had them.
It was done. He had gone against Finn McKenzie’s word in the dark with no witness at all, with the whole camp asleep behind him, and there was no version of it he could tell himself that made it anything other than what it was.
He turned around.
Catriona, who Arran knew had been one of Rory’s closest friends, was standing on the far side of the horse lines with a bridle over her shoulder. She was not moving. She had been there long enough that there was no question about what she had seen.
The fire was between them. She looked at him across it.
Arran did not explain himself. He had nothing to say that would have been true and short. He was not going to insult her with the other kind. His throat had dried right out.
She looked at him a moment longer. Then she shifted the bridle on her shoulder and walked away up the lines to the ponies. She said not one word to him. She did not go anywhere near her laird’s tent either.
He stood there until the fire went right down.