Devil in a Kilt by Sue-Ellen Welfonder
Chapter 37
“Idinnae believe my own eyes!” Duncan raged, glaring at his addlepated Sassunach brother-in-law. “Has your brain turned to mush, English?”
Bold as day, Sir Marmaduke stood before him, Linnet fair crushed against his mailed chest. With his brawny arms and broad shoulders, he all but swallowed her, one arm wrapped tightly about her waist, the other holding a shield over her head and upper body.
Only a fleeting glimpse of her lustrous red-gold hair and the bulge of her herb bag peeking from beneath the shield revealed just who the English knight cushioned so protectively with his great, hulking form.
Duncan swiped at the blood dripping into his eyes and let loose a string of vicious oaths. He didn’t give a pig’s arse how carefully the witless dolt sought to shield her from the arrows whizzing all about them, his lady wife did not belong on the battlements.
He’d given strictest orders she was to be kept under guard.
In her chamber.
Safe.
Away from danger.
Not here on the wall walk exposed to a hail of fire arrows and sword-wielding assailants bent on slashing anything that moved.
Still cursing, Duncan cast aside his crossbow and, heedless of the blood on his hands, yanked Linnet from Sir Marmaduke’s grasp and thrust her to her knees before the crenellated wall. Gritting his teeth against the searing pain the effort cost him, he shoved her down, lower and lower, until she was completely sheltered by one of the stone merlons.
Ignoring his agony, he straightened and snatched the shield away from Marmaduke. “Cover yourself and dinnae move,” he ordered, shoving the shield at Linnet. “Do as I say,” he snapped, when she started to protest.
“But, my lord – Duncan – please!”
“Silence!” He whirled to face Marmaduke. “Have you lost your wits? What were you thinking bringing her up here? If aught-” he broke off suddenly and clutched his side. A fresh stream of hot blood spilled onto his hands.
He’d been clipped by a crossbow bolt.
This time it was Sir Marmaduke who swore. His arm shot around Duncan, supporting him. “’Tis not I who would be a fool this night. If you will not heed my advice and take yourself below, then at least listen to your lady.”
“Aye, Duncan,” his wife pleaded, her head popping up above Marmaduke’s shield. “Merciful saints, you’ve an arrow in your arm and I do not want to know how many other wounds. It serves no purpose for you to-”
“Get down, I said!” An arrow whistled through a gap between the merlons, barely missing Linnet’s head. A sickening thwack and a pain-filled grunt bore testament to the arrow’s having found another mark.
Glancing quickly to his right, Duncan saw one of his younger squires go down, the arrow shaft protruding from his back. Rage as red as the blood trickling into his eyes surged through him at the sight.
Beside him, Sir Marmaduke muttered a quick prayer.
The squire was but a lad.
A boy who, mere days before, had proudly showed Duncan the first signs of facial hair sprouting on his youthful chin.
Now he was dead.
Duncan threw back his head and roared out his anger.
Turning again to his wife, he found her creeping on hands and knees toward the boy. “Crucifix, woman, stay where I put you! I will not see you killed.”
“Yet you would have me a widow before morn,” she argued, still moving toward the fallen squire. “If you dinnae care to have your wounds tended, I shall lend my talents to others.” She glanced defiantly at him over her shoulder. “And you will not stop me.”
“You cannot help the lad. He is dead.”
Linnet froze and stared at the inert youth. Her face paled as if she only just noticed the queer bend of his limbs, only now realized the arrow had surely pierced a lung, perhaps even the lad’s heart.
She opened her mouth, perhaps to scream, but no sound came forth. Her stomach turning inside out, she could do nothing but stare at the slain squire.
Heaven help her, it was the one who’d reminded her of Jamie, her favorite brother.
As Jamie’d looked in his youth.
She’d been fond of the squire, a cheery lad who’d often gifted her with a broad smile, then blushed furiously when she’d smiled back.
“Nae!” Denial burst from her throat. Heedless of the chaos around her, she scrambled across the last few paces to where the boy lay so still.
“He is not gone,” she insisted, rolling him onto his side. “He is not.”
But the loll of his head and his blank stare told another tale.
Horror washed over her, colder and more biting than the chill sea wind tearing at her hair and whipping the loose folds of her arisaid.
Her gaze flew from the dead squire to her husband. He’d retrieved his crossbow and now leaned heavily against one of the square-toothed merlons, struggling to discharge a quarrel through the open notch-space between.
His concentration was apparent in the tight set of his jaw, his waning strength in the way his powerful frame trembled as he cocked the bow with his foot, took aim, then loosed the deadly weapon.
From below, a sharp yelp of pain proved he’d hit his target. Duncan sagged against the merlon and let the cumbersome crossbow slip from his bloodied grasp. “Done,” he breathed, his normally booming voice, ragged and weary. “God willing, that was the fiend who took young Ewan’s life.”
Linnet swallowed hard, her heart aching at the anguish she saw in his eyes. Pain she knew came from seeing his young squire meet such an untimely death and not from the grievous wounds he bore.
Tears of anger and fear jabbed into the backs of her eyes but she refused to let them fall. She could weep later, now she must get her husband to safety, see to his wounds. Pushing to her feet, she ran forward and clutched his uninjured arm.
“Have done with this show of MacKenzie valor and come inside, my lord,” she begged, pulling on him in vain. Though gravely injured, he stood as immovable as the stone of his castle. “I beseech you.”
His face set in tight, grim lines, he shook her off as if she were a pesky fly. Ignoring her pleas, he stooped to retrieve his discarded crossbow, his chest heaving with agony as he straightened. Clenching his teeth, he made to reload it, but Sir Marmaduke wrested it away from him.
With a mastery that made the breath catch in her throat, Linnet watched the Sassunach right the unwieldy weapon, fix his bolt, draw, take aim, and release the lethal quarrel before she could let out her pent-up breath.
Then he propped the crossbow against the crenellated wall, boldly placing himself between the weapon and Duncan. “You will not live to use that crossbow or any other bloody weapon again lest you remove yourself from here at once.”
“Duncan, please,” Linnet pleaded anew. “You are covered with blood. Ne’er have I seen-”
“Here!” A fierce scowl darkening his blood-smeared face, Duncan lunged forward, grabbing Linnet by the elbow and yanking her out of the way as four kitchen boys rushed past carrying a large vessel of hot, bubbling grease. “Careless whelps,” he called after them, “watch what you’re about!”
He held her tight, his grip no less powerful for his injuries, and kept her out of harm’s way as two of his men took the vat of boiling oil from the lads and hurled its contents over the wall.
Screams pierced the night as the scalding brew rained onto the heads of those unfortunates who happened to be in its sizzling downward path. Duncan gave the men who’d tossed the hot oil over the wall a grim nod, then loosened his hold on Linnet.
“See her back inside,” he ordered Marmaduke, pushing her into the Sassunach’s arms. “Do not even think to disobey me,” he added, then limped toward a small cluster of men clashing swords with two of Kenneth’s miscreants who’d gained the wall walk. He drew his own blade as he went.
“Lady, come,” Sir Marmaduke said, wrapping his arm about her shoulders. “Allow me to return you safely belowstairs. I should have known it would do no good to bring you here.”
Linnet held back. At the far end of the battlements, Duncan wrangled with a man lashing furiously around himself with an ugly-looking battle-ax. And Duncan’s movements were slow, hampered by his injuries.
Yet he fought on.
Despite the hail of fire arrows arching overhead, trailing acrid smoke behind them before clattering on the stone floor of the wall walk in a shower of sparks and ashes. Pages dashed madly about, their sole task stamping out the flames with their feet.
But the mighty Black Stag of Kintail fought on – just as his guardsmen had told her he would.
* * *
“Lady, we must go,”Sir Marmaduke urged her again, trying to drag her away. “’Tis not safe for you here.”
“Nae. I will not go,” Linnet argued, stiffening in the Sassunach’s iron hold on her, straining against him.
Her heart pounded hard within her breast as she watched her husband fend off his assailant’s vicious attack. Were he hearty and whole, uninjured, he would have skewered his enemy and sent his corpse sailing over the wall before the man had even lifted his ax.
But he wasn’t whole and hearty.
And he was getting weaker by the moment, she could tell. If naught happened, he’d soon be felled.
He must not die.
She’d sworn he wouldn’t, vowed it to herself, and if the saints so deemed it, she’d perish keeping her vow.
God willing, neither of them would die.
A fire arrow whistled past, coming to a sputtering halt near the edge of her cloak, and Sir Marmaduke loosened his hold on her to stomp on its smoking shaft. Linnet seized the moment to tear away from him and dash to the wall.
Before any of the men could stop her, she snatched up Duncan’s forgotten crossbow and heaved the cumbersome weapon into place, aiming it downward through the open space of a crenel.
“Kenneth MacKenzie,” she called to the men below, “I challenge you to show yourself!”
“Lady, cease or you will be killed.” Sir Marmaduke slid his arms around her from behind and began pulling her away from the wall.
Linnet dropped the crossbow and grabbed hold of a merlon, clinging to it while arrows sped through the crenels and over their heads, sailing into the castle wall behind them with loud thwacks.
“Leave her be,” a deep voice rose up from the rocky shoreline beneath the battlements. And with the words, all fighting stopped.
A lone fire arrow clattered to the stone floor near Linnet, then an eerie hush fell over the men assembled on the ground below as well as those manning the turret walls. For a long moment, the only sound was the gusty sea wind blowing over the ramparts and the rhythmic whoosh of waves smacking into the jagged rocks lining the base of the tower.
“Let the lady come forth and speak her piece,” the voice called again.
“Do not heed him, ‘tis madness,” Marmaduke whispered above her ear. “He would think naught of seeing you killed.”
“God’s teeth!” her husband bellowed, his bloodied fingers curling around her arm in a viselike grip. “Go inside at once!” he commanded, yanking her arm with such force, she tumbled away from the merlon and out of the Sassunach’s firm hold.
“Leave me be,” she shrieked, unconsciously mimicking Kenneth’s words. The blood on Duncan’s hands made them slippery, and she took advantage, squirming nimbly from his grasp. “I ken what I’m about,” she said, pouncing on the crossbow where it rested against the crenellated wall. “Don’t even think to stop me.”
“Seize her!” Duncan shouted at the men closest to her.
“Stay back!” Linnet warned as they closed in on her. Then, feigning acquiescence, she bent down, making as if to adjust the folds of her cloak. She whipped out her dirk instead. Raising it calmly to her throat, she said, “Dinnae think I will not use it. I would speak with my husband’s half brother, and none shall hinder my doing so.”
Muttered curses and grumbles answered her, but the men, Duncan and Marmaduke included, remained where they stood.
Keeping her gaze steady on the circle of fiercely scowling MacKenzie warriors, she placed the dirk on top of the nearest merlon. Then she swept them with a dark look of her own. “Those of you who’ve seen me teaching Robbie to throw a blade know how fast I am with this dagger. Do not force me to show you again.”
When they said nothing, she nodded and lifted the crossbow. “I have come,” she called to the tall man standing below, his broad shoulders and arrogantly cocked head raging high above his men, who still hunkered beneath the shelter of their upturned boats.
She peered down at him, wishing fervently she could set him aflame with the heat of her stare.
Even at this distance, he looked so much like her husband, only her strength of will kept her from glancing over her shoulder to make certain Duncan stood yet behind her and hadn’t somehow found his way downstairs and outside.
But she knew beyond a doubt her husband hadn’t left the wall walk. She could feel his fury burning holes into her back.
As she could feel the bemused smile his loathsome half brother bestowed upon her. Linnet shuddered, steeling herself against his unsettling resemblance to Duncan. Briefly, the greenish black glow she’d seen around him that long-ago day in the yew grove, flared, reminding her of the kind of man he truly was.
She shuddered again and willed her hands steady on the bow.
“I am come, Kenneth MacKenzie,” she repeated, “to bid you and your men begone from this place.” She paused to cock the crossbow with her foot. “If you remain, I shall fire a bolt from this bow into your bonnie knee, and your men can carry you away.”
Kenneth inclined his head and deepened his smile. A gust of briny air carried his men’s snickers up to Linnet and those standing upon the battlements.
Linnet held his gaze, unsmiling. “Tell your men to cease their laughing – or have you brought different brigands with you than those present when we first met?”
Kenneth raised a hand and his men fell silent. “’Tis not you they find amusing, fair lady,” he called up to her, his deep, rich voice so like Duncan’s her blood nigh curdled. “They – we – find it humorous that my brother would hide behind your skirts.”
Behind her, Duncan roared his outrage. Linnet heard his struggles and knew his men were holding him fast. The Sassunach admonished him in a low voice, “Be still, you fool. He speaks thusly to rile you. He would that you storm forward so one of his assailants can take you down before you could draw your bow.”
“My husband is not here,” Linnet called down to Kenneth, her voice firm and steady though her heart beat wildly at the lie. She heard Duncan swear, then the black oath was cut off sharply as if someone had clapped a silencing hand over his mouth.
“He is gravely wounded, and his men have taken him below,” she rushed on, worried she’d expose herself as a liar if she didn’t speak the untruth swiftly.
“What a shame,” Kenneth crooned, his voice smooth as cream. Once more, he inclined his head.
“Kenneth MacKenzie,” Linnet lifted her voice, “you claim to be a chivalrous man. Will you prove your words by granting that, as lady of the castle and with my lord husband fallen, ’tis my duty to oversee these walls?”
His displeasure floated upward like a dark cloud, coming at her in great, rolling waves. He stared up at her, hands braced on his hips, then finally made her a low bow. “I concede, lady. Under one condition.”
“I will not bargain with you.” Linnet stood firm, fixing and drawing an arrow as she spoke. “Go forth from here and do not return.”
Without taking his gaze off her, Kenneth placed his right foot upon a nearby boulder. “And if I do not, you think to shatter my knee?”
“So I have said.”
“Your courage impresses me, my lady, but I do not believe a mere lass, any lass, can wield a crossbow.” He patted his knee and smiled again. “Most assuredly not with the accuracy you claim to master.”
Linnet said nothing and took aim.
“Throwing a dagger is a gypsy’s trick,” he taunted. “As a healer and seeress, it is not surprising you are possessed of such talent. Handling a man’s weapon…” his voice trailed off and he chuckled. “Nae, I dinnae believe it.”
Linnet kept her silence, her fingers inching toward the lever under the bow’s crosspiece.
“Send down my son, and I will leave you in peace.” All mirth now gone from his voice. “My claim to this castle can wait for another day.”
Angry rumblings came from the men crowded around Linnet, jeers from those below.
“You have claim to neither,” Linnet shouted, her fingers finding the lever. “Not the boy nor these walls. I bid you once more to be gone.”
“I think not,” came Kenneth’s reply.
“Then I shall send you,” Linnet said under her breath and released the quarrel.
A sharp cry of pain rent the air. As her husband’s men cheered, Linnet propped the bow against the wall, satisfied even though the bolt had missed its mark.
Instead of striking Kenneth’s knee, the quarrel had lodged deeply into the bastard’s thigh.