She waited for her moment.
Gordon paced over to stand in front of Vaila, still mounted tall on Sgàil. Vaila’s cheeks were bright with her anger.
“No,” Gordon said theatrically. He was clearly enjoying himself. “Your sister has made herself useless to me. But you, Vaila? You’ll do nicely.”
Vaila’s eyes flashed with fury. She spat at Gordon’s feet, her spittle hitting his boot.
“I willdiebefore I let you lay a hand on me,” she snapped.
Gordon looked down at his foot, then up at the woman who had issued his challenge.
“Fine, then,” he said. “Die.”
And his men charged.
There weren’t so many of them, not compared to an army. Part of Ailsa was relieved to see that, even as the rest of her realized that it wouldn’t matter. Gordon might only have three dozen men or so at his command, but that was still more than enough to easily overpower four women, who were not armed nearly as well as they should have been.
Or, rather, theywouldhave overpowered the sisters easily, except their people would not allow it.
When the first soldier lurched forward toward Vaila—Gordon backed up, Ailsa noted, the coward—he was stopped almost immediately by Jamie Finnigan, the blacksmith, who grabbed the soldier without even having a weapon to hand. Callum Finnigan, Jamie’s uncle, joined his nephew, bringing a hunk of wood from a nearby log pile down on the soldier’s head.
After that, it was chaos.
Ailsa and her sisters had been riding since before they could walk; they urged their horses into position, then let their battle-trained mounts use their deadly hooves to strike out at any enemy who dared put themselves within reach. Ailsa pulled knives from her belt and, despite keeping her focus on the nearest soldier, saw as her sisters did the same.
The press of the Donaghey clansfolk from behind pushed the skirmish out the gates, trapping everyone on the narrow stretch of land between the castle and the cliff. Another soldier lunged at Ailsa, and she slashed back with the knife in her left hand. She made him dart out of the way but ended up losing her seat in the saddle in the process. She had no choice but to throw herself out of the way as her horse, knowing friend from foe, continued to battle in his mistress’ defense.
Ailsa was bruised but otherwise uninjured. She got to her feet, a knife in each hand.
She was halfway to turning back toward the fray when thick arms wrapped around her from behind.
“Ye are going to pay for all this,” Finlay Gordon hissed in her ear.
He didn’t have weapons—another massive tactical error, as far as Ailsa was concerned—but for a moment, she feared it wouldn’t matter. He was bigger than her, taller.
And he was dragging her toward the edge of the cliff.
She fought with everything she had, digging her feet into the ground and struggling to lift her arms. He held her below her elbows, however, resisting her range of motion. When she tried to lurch away from him, he kicked into the back of her leg, making the muscle go numb.
He managed to jerk her around, so that the yawning emptiness was stretched out before her.
Ailsa’s eyes burned with regret. She would never get to make amends to Ewan now. She would leave her sisters undefended. She would never avenge her parents’ deaths.
And then there came the sound of hooves, not one horse, nor even ten. An entire company’s worth. Gordon and Ailsa both turned toward the sound, and Ailsa allowed herself one single moment of joy as she saw the rider at the head of the group.
Ewan. He’d come for her. He’d come.
Then, she took advantage of Gordon’s distraction to throw her weight downward, crouching enough so that his grasp was on her upper arms. It gave her just enough movement to stab her knife up and back, hitting some part of him that made him roar with agony and drop her.
She scrambled away from the cliff’s edge just as the Buchanan men—her people too, she realized with a rush of gratitude—raised their swords to battle their foes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ewan only keptthe attention necessary on the battle around him to keep himself from being cleaved in two. The rest of it was on Ailsa, who looked dirty and bedraggled butalive. She wheeled to face Gordon, who was bleeding from a cut on his leg that matched the dripping knife in Ailsa’s hand.
Ewan parried the attack from one of Gordon’s men as he surged forward, viciously slashing out and causing the man to drop to the ground, clutching an arm that was cut down to the bone. Ewan didn’t even pause to spare him a glance.
He needed to get to his wife.
