“I’ll say it again since you’re either hard of hearing or just fucking daft. Give me my woman,” the Norseman demanded.
“I hear just fine. The only daft bugger is you. You sailed in winter for the sake of your pride. Let me ask you this. How big a funeral pyre will satisfy your ego? You don’t deserve so much as a campfire.”
“Bastard,” Gunter snapped.
“Shut your fucking mouth, you stupid piece of shite.” It was Tristan’s turn to enter the parlay. “Speak of my wife like that again, and I shall shove my own son out of the way and run you through myself.”
Another scream tore through the night air, this one much closer. Elene looked up at the battlement when light flashed in her periphery. Flaming arrows shot through the air toward the encroaching enemy. The Mackays used their elevated position and knowledge of the land to their advantage. Their archers picked off one man after another.
A noise behind her drew Elene’s attention. With everyone’s attention directed at the front gate and the screams of pain coming from the other side, they overshadowed the thuds she heard. She shifted her gaze up to the battlements in time to see a man fall backwards, landing with lethal force into the bailey. Another man staggered on the wall walk before pitching forward toward the enemy. Elene looked around in desperation.
“Mairghread!” Elene hissed as her mother-by-marriage hurried past her hiding place. The older woman shifted course. Before Mairghread could chastise Elene, the younger woman blurted, “They’re at the postern gate. Gunter is distracting them while they take a battering ram to the gate. I heard the thud. Look.” Elene pointed to the dead man.
“Hie yourself up to that chamber now. I will deal with that. If they get through either gate, you cannot be standing here. Go.”
Elene didn’t hesitate to follow Mairghread’s command this time. Something in Lady Mackay’s tone told Elene life would bode poorly for her if she disobeyed. Elene ducked into the kitchens; the last thing she saw outside was Mairghread pulling dirks from her gown. She didn’t wait to discover what the woman did with them.
Mairghread kept close to the wall, expecting arrows to land soon within the bailey. She slipped into the keep through the gardens and ran toward a flight of stairs. She went up past the family and guest chambers to the battlements. A memory flashed before her: the first time she and Tristan stood together looking at the early morning sun. They’d agreed to court while they watched the sunrise, Tristan’s extra length of plaid wrapped around them. She was certain she was half-in-love with him, and they’d only known one another for a day.
Pushing open the door, Mairghread eased onto the wall walk. She crouched and walked, hidden, to the portion of the battlements above the postern gate. She was grateful for her dark hair rather than the blonde locks of her daughter-by-marriage, as her own brunette hue disguised her against the night sky. She counted the ten men who stood with a battering ram. It was smaller than what the Norse would use for the front gate, but it would still break through the postern hatch. When the remaining Mackay guards spied her, she waved them away.
Still crouched, Mairghread pulled a dirk from each boot and two from the sheaths around her thighs and beneath her gown. She tugged at the seam at her waist, ripping the skirts but freeing the threesgian dubhsewn into the clothing. She had already withdrawn two from her belt before entering the keep, and she pulled a final one from a wrist bracer. Pressed against the stones, the knives in her lap, Mairghread aimed her first one. It embedded in the man's neck at the end of the battering ram. In quick succession, she picked off one man after another. She’d moved so quickly, the men were dead before they found their assailant.
With her skirts gathered close around her, Mairghread crept along with her head below the crenelation. The Mackay guards knew better than to question their lady, but she knew there would be plenty of talk after the raid. As she approached her husband and sons, she listened to the ongoing exchange.
“You claim I have something of yours, but I haven’t seen you in months. Did you get lost?”
“Hardly. But I’ve found several people along the way who’ve been happy to tell me all about your whore.” Gunter sneered. “Your arrogant family assumes they command everyone in sight.”
Liam snorted. “Just as on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
“You would quote the Bible, yet you conveniently forget ‘thou shalt not steal’.”
“You grow boring. You can keep repeating yourself, but you cannot claim theft of something that never belonged to you. Elene is her own woman. One you intended to enslave.”
“She pledged herself to me.”
“She did not. But you played her false. You led a young woman to believe you would marry her. Fortunately, she realized you’re a whoreson before making mistakes she couldn’t fix. When you couldn’t have the daughter, you made a whore of the mother. Does Inburgh know she isn’t your only wife?”
“Idiot wench drank herself to death two moons after her brats left.”
Liam hadn’t expected that piece of news. He was about to respond when he realized his mother stood behind himself and his father and brothers. Without acknowledging her, he turned his head slightly to hear her whisper.
“He had warriors at the postern gate. Be sure ye get ma dirks back before they leave.”
“Mair,” Tristan huffed, but he couldn’t fault his wife. She’d stood beside him for over two decades defending their people. Her reputation was as fierce as his and was in no small part a reason no one had raided them since before Wee Liam was born.
“I’m going inside. But there will be more.” Mairghread didn’t wait for any of the men to respond before she followed her own advice to Elene and hied herself off to the keep. There, she checked on people hiding throughout, then locked herself in the chamber she shared with Tristan.
“I tire of this, Gunter,” Liam called down.
“Then come out and meet me like a man.”
“Single combat,” Liam announced.
“Bah. Is your father getting too old to fight? Are those boys standing with you too small to wield a sword?”
“We don’t want to waste the wood on the funeral pyres,” Liam retorted. “This is about naught but you and me. Are you too craven to fight on your own?” Liam knew challenging Gunter’s manhood was an insult the Norseman wouldn’t overlook. While they were now Christians who paid lip service to turning the other cheek, it was clear Gunter’s beliefs harkened back to the days of yore, when vengeance was justice to the Norse.
