Chapter 8 #2
She scrambled to her feet and raced across the room. The dog opened its eyes to her crooning but did not stir. Aiden handed her the bedding. “Lay it beside the fire,” he instructed. When the bedding was unrolled, he lowered the dog to the blankets.
“You told me I could not see him until morning,” Isabail said, crouching beside the dog to pet it.
Aiden shrugged. “He’s doing much better. He has eaten and gotten to his feet, though he is still too weak to walk. And I will not be able to look in on him during the night.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve something important that needs my attention.
” Digging through the leather bag leaning against the wall, he found a dark gray lèine and a black brat.
Sneaking into Dunstoras would require extra diligence on such a bright night.
He strode to the door and then paused. “If for any reason Beathag comes to you and tells you to flee into the tunnels, do not hesitate. Gather everything you see, save for the brazier, and run.”
“Do you anticipate an attack?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“If someone attacks your encampment, would that not suggest my rescue is imminent?”
Aiden favored Isabail with a flat stare. The thought of returning to a camp that did not include Isabail was disagreeable. “Do you not recall what I told you of MacPherson’s army? Mercenaries are hard men capable of heinous acts. Stay with the other women and children; you will be safer.”
“Oh.”
“Take care.” He tugged open the door.
“Wait! Where do you go?”
He turned back to her. “It matters not. I’ll be back by morning. If you wish, Muirne can pass the night here as well.”
Isabail rose to her feet. “Is it dangerous, this important task you must see to?”
He met her gaze. “Not overly,” he lied.
“So a prayer to Saint Andrew would go amiss?”
A faint smile touched his lips. “That would depend on what you pray for, lass, but a prayer to Saint Andrew rarely goes to waste.”
And then he left her.
* * *
“What are you doing?” asked Muirne, a frown upon her brow.
Isabail wrapped the dark brat she’d pulled from MacCurran’s sack around her shoulders. It was much less bulky than the blanket, yet it still hid a great deal of her pale blue gown. “Seizing the moment.”
If the MacCurran was leaving for the night, it surely meant a sizable portion of his warriors were leaving, too. The close should be nearly empty. There would be no better time to search the tunnels than right now.
“But what about Gorm?”
Isabail scurried to the door, opened it, and peered into the night. “You can tend to him.”
“What if he doesn’t heed me?”
“Speak firmly to him,” Isabail advised. “He’s not as strong as he was when he knocked you over at Lochurkie. He’s unlikely to even rise from his bed.”
With that, Isabail slipped out of the door and darted for the deepest shadows.
As she hoped, the courtyard was almost entirely empty—the men were gathered at the outer gate and the women of the clan were seeing them off.
With one eye on the gillies who were cleaning away the last of the supper, she crept along the wall toward the far end of the close.
One of the older bakers shuffled toward her, and she halted, hugging the wall with a pounding heart.
If he looked up, he would surely see the pale blue cloth of her dress against the moonlit stones.
But thankfully he did not. He picked up a platter of bread rounds, tipped it into a canvas sack, and then walked off with the sack.
Isabail continued along the wall to the ancient storeroom.
The entrance to the tunnels was hidden by a tall slab of granite.
Until Beathag had shown her there was a gap between the huge granite stone and the wall, she’d not seen the entrance.
Now that she knew it was there, slipping into the tunnel was a simple affair.
The tunnel was narrow and poorly lit but not difficult to navigate.
Isabail’s only fear was meeting someone else in its damp confines.
She paused every few paces to listen for the footfalls of a gillie.
At every stop, she examined the walls for signs of another room or vault, but saw nothing.
The walls were remarkably smooth, worn down by strong, skilled hands and the passage of time.
When the tunnel opened into the torch-lit cave, Isabail breathed a sigh of relief. She had no fear of the dark, nor of small spaces, but found the tunnel rather airless and smoky.
Isabail spun slowly around, studying the walls.
If there was a second room or an alcove of any sort, it was not immediately obvious.
Of course, the cave was piled with sacks and barrels and furniture, so much of the walls were not visible.
She squeezed between two barrels. A small space behind a pile of flour sacks seemed conspicuously empty.
Climbing upon the sacks, she peered into the gloomy space . . . and frowned.
A winch?
Why would there be a winch here? With a rope that disappeared into the rock behind it? It made no sense. What purpose could it possibly have? At Lochurkie, the only winches she had seen were used to raise heavy stones into place on the walls. What did this one lift?
There was only one way to find out.
Carefully searching for foot- and handholds, she climbed down the sacks to the winch. The base of the winch was a carved stone etched with several Pictish symbols. It seemed unlikely the wooden shank and the rope were as old as the stone; they appeared to be freshly carved and corded.
She grabbed the handle of the winch and applied all the force she could muster.
It turned with surprising ease. Not so easy that it didn’t tax her arms, but not so challenging as to render her efforts useless, either.
As she turned the handle, a low rasp of stone on stone echoed through the tunnel.
After a half dozen turns of the crank, the winch locked and she could turn it no more.
She crawled out of the space and looked around, but saw no door, nor any sign that a stone had been moved. So what had the winch done?
A cold clamp of fear seized her throat. A vision of the granite slab at the entrance to the tunnel rose in her mind. Dear Lord. Had she just sealed herself in?
Lifting her skirts, she ran.
* * *
Aiden and his men approached Dunstoras from the west. It was the side most heavily protected by the mountains.
Massive shards of shale had broken away from the side of the mountain, making navigation treacherous for anyone not familiar with the terrain.
As a result, MacPherson wasted few guards on the west side of the keep.
At the crest of a narrow ridge, Aiden paused and allowed himself a brief moment.
The castle stood before him in all its glory—a graceful tower reaching toward the night sky, a crenellated curtain wall, and a sturdy gatehouse with an iron portcullis.
A year ago, he’d stood inside those walls and watched his father’s body lowered into the crypt beneath the kirk.
Now he stood outside the walls, an outlaw.
God surely knew how to test a man.
The moon was high as the Black Warriors wended their way between the rocks, allowing them to avoid random slides of shale.
To a man, they wore dark brats and equally dark lèines.
In days of old, they would also have carried a symbolic black targe, but tonight such a weighty implement would only slow them down.
Silently and swiftly they made their way to the base of the castle wall.
The two visible guards on the ramparts were felled at the same time—one by Cormac with his large ash bow and the other by Niall with a crossbow.
Duncan and Ivarr, the largest men among them, swung iron grappling hooks atop the ramparts, then retreated to the rocks. A few moments later, a second pair of guards appeared to investigate the noise. They were silenced by Cormac and Niall before they could raise the alarm.
Aiden sheathed his sword and ran for one of the two ropes dangling from the ramparts. Niall was the first to reach the other.
Aware that Niall considered him to be a little soft due to his role as chief, Aiden put substantial effort into the climb. He reached the top of the forty-foot wall ahead of his brother and grinned at him in the dark.
“A sennight ago, I took an arrow in the chest,” Niall whispered with a shrug.
“Impossible.”
“Ask Ana.”
Aiden took stock while he waited for the others to gain the wall. A dozen soldiers huddled around a fire pit in the close, warming themselves against the winter chill. Another six, armed with bows, stood at various spots along the wall, looking out at the forest.
To succeed, Aiden’s men needed to reach the donjon without attracting attention. Not an easy feat, given that the only way into the tower was through the big wooden door in the close. But they had to move—it was only a matter of time before someone spotted them in the shadows.
When all ten men were crouched on the ramparts, he waved them forward.
“Take three men and fetch our lads,” Aiden told Niall. “I’ll create a diversion on the south wall.”
Niall and his three men went right, keeping to the shadows. Aiden went left, his gaze firmly locked on the young archer immediately in front of him. The lad’s peripheral vision caught his movement when he was a dozen paces away, and the short but powerful bow he carried swung in Aiden’s direction.
Aiden gave up stealth in favor of speed. The foolish fellow neglected to call the alarm as he scrambled to nock and loose an arrow. Aiden’s sword ended his effort swiftly and with little more than a gurgle. He caught the archer’s falling body and dropped it over the wall.
A moment later, he entered the door to the gatehouse. To create a successful diversion, he had to pose a credible threat to the castle. As long as the portcullis was lowered, the additional men he had waiting outside the gate were little more annoying than a swarm of angry bees.