Chapter 14 #3
“Niall MacCurran for one,” she said bitterly.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell him I dragged Ana along on my foolhardy quest and then left her in the woods with an old peddler.
” She released a humorless laugh. “He’d have been completely distracted as he set off to scale a cliff to the castle, and I’d have another person’s blood on my hands. ”
“Ah,” he said, lowering himself to the log beside her. “Indulging in a wee bout of ‘pity me,’ are we?”
She glared at him. All of it was true. Couldn’t Magnus see that?
“You’ve never struck me as a lass given to weeping,” he said. “We are safe, Ana is safe, the MacCurran lads are about to surprise the castle guards, and your wee lad is about to be rescued. What’s there to weep about?”
“All of this could have been avoided!” she cried, leaping to her feet. “If only I’d told MacCurran from the start that Daniel was after the necklace.”
He stared at her. “Why didn’t you?”
“In the beginning, I believed MacCurran might be guilty. Later . . . I don’t know. I suppose telling MacCurran felt like I would be betraying Daniel.” She shook her head. “In the end, he betrayed me.”
“Well, ‘tis all water under the bridge now. Daniel will not escape his just dues.”
Isabail frowned. Escape. That tugged at a memory—an old memory from when she was a child. She and John had played in the empty dungeons of Tayteath, a simple game of hide-and-chase. He’d leapt out of a hidden door and sent her screaming down the corridor.
“Wait,” she said, grabbing Magnus’s sleeve. “There’s a door in the dungeons that leads to outside. If John told Daniel, Daniel can indeed escape.”
Her hired warrior surged to his feet.
“Show me where the door leads.”
* * *
Scaling the cliffs was a slow, arduous task.
Footholds were scarce and narrow and sometimes crumbly.
There were few outcroppings big enough to hold a man, so rest was infrequent.
By the time Aiden was halfway up, his thighs were aching and his fingers were raw.
But quitting wasn’t an option, so he pushed on.
He glanced down only once, when he was a fair distance above the beach. The tide had started to come back in, and the sand had vanished. Waves beat slow and steady against the rocks, and his head swam with a dizziness that made him cling to the rock face.
Since down was not a direction he wanted to experience, he focused on up. One toehold and push at a time.
The men who followed him were equally silent and focused. Aiden heard the occasional scrape of a sword or a knife against rocks, but nothing more.
When the gray stones of the castle came into view, Aiden found renewed strength. Their goal was in reach. He felt for a grip among the rocks over his head, found purchase for his right boot, and heaved his body another three feet up the cliff.
A wide ledge was his next target—the ground on which the castle was built.
Eager to plant his feet on solid ground again, he gripped the ledge with both hands and hauled himself over the lip.
He lay there for a moment, catching his breath and offering a short prayer to the gods; then he leaned over and offered his hand to Niall.
One by one the MacCurran men reached the top. Aiden could tell by the euphoric expressions on their faces that several of them had not believed they would make it.
They paused on the ledge for a short while, allowing their shaking legs to recover.
When Aiden was confident they were ready to move on, he waved Cormac forward.
The bowman swung the crossbow from his shoulder. “Any one of you could do this,” he muttered. “Don’t need a skilled man to shoot a bloody bolt thirty feet into the air.”
Aiden patted the man’s shoulder. “I need you to bury it in the stone next to the window”—he pointed above them—“deep enough to hold the weight of a man. At this angle, that requires a man with skill.”
Cormac shrugged, aimed, and fired. The bolt, with rope attached, drove into the stone with a loud thunk. Aiden and the others flattened themselves against the castle wall and waited for someone to peer out the window. But none came.
Aiden yanked on the rope, testing its solidity.
It held firm. Then he wrapped his hands and feet around the rope and began to climb.
By comparison to the cliffs, scaling the castle wall and entering through the window was easy.
The room he slipped into was dark and small—an antechamber intended to house guards on watch. But it was empty.
As the other men dropped into the room, Aiden quietly pulled on the door and peered into the larger room beyond. A bedchamber. Fortunately, the curtains on the bed were open and he was able to quickly ascertain this room was also empty.
Widening the door, he stepped inside.
The room was well appointed. Velvet draperies on the bed, an elaborate brocade coverlet, a ladies’ table replete with combs and mirrors.
Just for an instant, Aiden’s thoughts went to Isabail.
It was easy to imagine her here, attired in her finery, with a maid brushing her hair.
Living in a ruined broch with no furniture did not suit her beauty. But this elegant castle did.
He shook the mental cobwebs away, unsheathed his sword, and peeked past the outer door to the corridor.
There were four guards stationed in the corridor, and as soon as his men joined him at the door, he swung it open and leapt to the attack.
With the element of surprise in his favor, he made short work of this first opponent, then moved to the next.
The clang of metal on metal soon drew other soldiers, and the battle thickened. Had they been fighting regular household guards, the fight would have ended swiftly. But these were seasoned warriors, not easily unnerved. They fought aggressively and with skill.
It took Aiden longer to dispatch his second and third opponents than he had hoped. By the time he was free to search the other rooms for Daniel and Jamie, they were empty. The door at the end of the corridor opened into a large chamber that clearly belonged to the lord of the keep.
The bed sheets were rumpled, and Aiden noted the presence of a pallet on the floor at the foot of the bed. A manacle lay on the mattress. Anger surged through him. After all the lad had been through, he hardly deserved to be chained like a dog.
“Search the chests,” he ordered. “Find the crown.”
Then he dove for the stairwell. They couldn’t have gone far. If he was fleet of foot, he could end this now. Leaping several stairs at a time, he reached the great hall in a heartbeat. But Daniel and the boy were nowhere to be seen, Only a frightened group of gillies huddled by the fireplace.
“Where?” he demanded.
They pointed to the stairs leading to the dungeon, and he raced for the bottom.