Squaring his mail-clad shoulders, he made a pact with the silent night. “I will vanquish her scars and win her love,” he vowed, the distant stars and the cold, dark sea his only witnesses.
“And none shall stop me,” he said to the bleakness in his heart as much as to the blackness surrounding him.
Not even her own sweet, proud self.
Chapter 7
In the gloom of earliest morning, nothing stirred in Dunlaidir’s cobbled bailey save thick tendrils of mist curling along the ground and drifting between the stronghold’s deserted outbuildings like a phalanx of spectral sentries.
Nothing disturbed the breaking day except the hiss and zing of Marmaduke’s sword arcing through the silence. A furious onslaught aimed at the demons ever lurking at the darkest edge of his soul.
Fiends eager to mock him with every disappointment, failure, or loss he’d ever had to bear.
And so he fought on, the whoosh of his blade echoing again and again in the empty bailey, a fierce battle cry against a fate that had been anything but kind.
Then, his unseen tormentors besieged at last, the fire in his gut quenched for another day, he lowered his steel and drew a deep breath of the chill, tang-kissed air.
Chill, damp air, brisk and invigorating.
Flavored with hard-won peace.
Blessed quiet marred only by the fog-muffled roar of the sea, his own heavy breathing, and the faint rustlings of someone slinking about behind him.
Swinging around, he caught a movement in the shadows even as a long-bladed dagger sped toward him. With a swift agility few could match, he hurled himself to the side just as the blade whistled past his shoulder and skittered to a halt not two feet from where he’d stood a moment before.
“Ho!” His sword at the ready, he ran toward the sounds of a scuffle, chaos erupting all around him. Shouts rang out from above as Sir Lachlan and Dunlaidir’s seneschal tore down the outer stairs in hot pursuit of a third man now racing toward the farthest seaward wall.
Fast gaining on him, they chased the intruder, drawing swords as they ran. Marmaduke pursued a dark-cloaked figure using the confusion to flee along the bailey wall.
“Halt you!” he called, closing in on the man. “Cast down your blade and show yourself.”
The figure stopped but crouched deeper into the murk rather than come forward. “I have no blade,” he rapped out, anger crackling in his voice. “I’ve been disarmed.”
Only then did Marmaduke see the discarded broadsword, its gleaming length bright against the mist-dampened cobbles. His gaze on the cloaked figure, he kicked the sword aside. “Your name,” he demanded, approaching the other. “Speak lest I force you.”
At the answering silence, Marmaduke hoisted the interloper a good foot off the ground, pinning him roughly against the wall. “Who-are-you?” he bit out, emphasizing each word with a jab of his sword tip into the soft flesh beneath the man’s chin. “Speak, or prepare to meet your Maker.”
“God’s bones, release me,” the man wheezed, indignation blazing in his dark eyes. “I am James, lord of this holding.”
Marmaduke loosened his hold but didn’t release the man. Much as he wanted to. The swordless knave reeked fouler than an overripe cesspit.”
“Lord of the castle, eh?” Marmaduke’s brow arched upward. “’Tis a rare noble who smells so rank.” Careful not to breathe too deeply, he used the tip of his blade to ease back the woolen cowl hiding the man’s face.
Freed of the concealing hood, a much younger man than he’d expected shook back a thick mane of dark hair. The wretch glared at him from a face that would’ve been noble-looking indeed were it not so twisted in anger. More telling, he recognized the face from a painted likeness he’d seen earlier in the great hall.
“So you are James.” He eyed the bristling lad, his gaze assessing. “The elusive young master of the castle.”
“Aye,” the youth snarled.
Easing him to the ground, Marmaduke lowered his sword. He clamped a comradely hand on James Keith’s shoulder. “Sakes, lad, where do you sleep or can it be you never bathe?”
“’Tis not my stench.” Panting, James wrenched free of Marmaduke’s grip. “The foulness clung to the miscreant who tried to kill you. I saw him and another man crawl from one of the latrines and gave chase.”
“The latrines?”
“Aye, just.”
Marmaduke frowned, his mind racing. “Two men, you say?”
