Even so, he didn’t want to tempt fate, so he returned his gaze to the stone-flagged floor and fought back a smile as he finished the prayer.
He was indeed a well-blessed man.
Chapter 32
Not much later, in the gloaming hour of a near-perfect day, the returning wedding party neared the bulk of Dunlaidir’s gatehouse. Torches blazing just inside the tunnel-like entrance beckoned refuge, but the low-hanging clouds, the same pewter-gray as the sea, pleased Marmaduke more.
Their roiling masses almost touched the tossing waters, blurring the horizon and blending with the fog to promise a fine, moonless night.
A blessing, if the small raiding party he would lead later that night wished to cross the sleeping moorland, swiftly and unseen.
But the persistent throbbing in his temples had nothing to do with blessings. And so he kept his gaze trained ahead, then expelled a sigh of relief when the slow-moving column of revelers began passing beneath the gatehouse’s raised portcullis.
Even so, he scanned the arched entrance for movement that shouldn’t be there. But the sputtering torchlight revealed nothing more ominous than wildly dancing shadows. Nothing gave cause for alarm save the sharp-edged uneasiness flitting around his every nerve ending like a swarm of whirling midges.
An odd prickling in his nape that kept his hand not far from his sword-hilt.
His gaze, alert and wary.
Sir Ross fell in beside him, edging his shaggy-felled garron closer to Marmaduke’s larger steed. “I dislike this more than if a horde of screaming banshees poured from yon gatehouse,” he bit out. “At least then we’d ken where to aim our blows.”
“We are warriors enough to-” Marmaduke broke off at a sudden commotion in the scrubby trees to their right.
Kneeing his horse in front of his wife’s, he whipped out his sword with an ear-piercingzingjust as an arrow whistled past his shoulder, missing him by inches before it cracked into a nearby boulder.
“God’s bones!” he roared, reining round to scan the little copse of stunted ash and bramble.
Swords drawn, his men spurred forward to form a protective cordon around Caterine and Rhona. From all along the cliff road, came the scrape of countless other weapons being wrenched free as armed villagers and fishing folk took up fighting stances, each man ready to test newly-learned skills on any and all comers.
But none came.
Nothing marred the stillness save the frantic baying of dogs somewhere in the distance and the frenzied clashing of steel somewhere inside the copse of trees.
Cold fury washing over him, Marmaduke threw a look at his lady. “Stay here, heed my men,” he warned her, then spurred off toward the skirmish.
A second arrow sped past him as he neared the copse, but this time the arrow came from a different direction. This arrow flew into the trees, a dullthwackand a sharply cut-off cry signaling it’d found a mark.
Even so, the thrashing and cursing continued.
Urging his horse to greater speed, he pulled up before the trees just as a wild-eyed, hard-panting bear of a man crashed out of the underbrush, a reddened battle-ax in his hand, a dead man slung over his shoulder.
A dead man with an arrow shaft protruding from his back.
The giant carrying the body lumbered forward, swaying a bit under the dead man’s weight. Marmaduke recognized the big man as Black Dugie, Dunlaidir’s newly returned smith.
A man he’d deemed trustworthy, if a mite simple-witted.
Leaping down, Marmaduke closed the distance between them with long strides. “Saints alive! What goes on here?”
The blacksmith dropped the felled man onto the ground and spat on him. “I spotted him creeping through the trees and followed him.” Black Dugie panted, glaring at the corpse.
He nudged the quiver of arrows at the man’s belt with a worn-toed boot. “When he drew an arrow, I hurried to stop him, but…” He trailed off when James and Sir John thundered up, their faces as dark as the fast-descending night.
They reined in so abruptly, their horses reared high, the beasts’ powerful forelegs flailing in midair before pounding back to earth mere inches from the slain man’s body.
His temper clearly strained, James stilled his mount with surprising mastery. “But what?” he prompted the long-errant smithy. He leaned forward to eye the big man with rampant mistrust.
Black Dugie thrust out his bearded chin. “But I wasn’t fast enough to get to the Sassunach bastard, is what.”
