Eachann didn’t say anything, but the quirk of his mouth gave him away.
Lamont gave a sharp laugh and said to Eoin, “He’s your son, all right.”
I’ll be damned. Eoin couldn’t take his eyes from the boy. The swell of pride that rose inside him threatened to burst his chest.
For a moment, Eachann seemed to swell up, too, and he started to give him a tentative smile. But then he seemed to remember something and jerked away from him as if scalded. His little face contorted in rage. “I’m not your son,” he said angrily. “I’m a MacDowell, and you’re a traitorous baserd! I hate you and wish you’d never come back!”
Eoin jerked back as if the boy had just struck him.
The shock gave Eachann his opening. Before anyone could stop him, he darted toward the keep. And obviously thinking better of his promise, he did so yelling.
21
KNOWING SHEwouldn’t sleep, Margaret didn’t bother trying. How long had it been since Eoin had left? An hour? Two?
She paced the small tent, the flame from the oil lamps flickering, and occasionally paused to open the flap and peek outside.
From the position of the tent on the small rise, she could easily make out the castle in the not-so-far distance. The dark castle that...
Her heart jumped to her throat as the castle suddenly sprang to life. Torches went up everywhere and the sounds of shouting and clamor of men roused for battle shattered the night air.
Had Eoin been discovered or was this part of his plan? Oh God, what was happening? Why hadn’t she forced him to confide in her?
She watched in horror as her father’s men started to line the ramparts. Not just his men, she realized a moment later, but his archers.
Arrows unfurled into the darkness, apparently aimed at targets below.
Not Eachann. Not Eoin. Please!
A few moments later the camp around her responded, roaring to life as well. Men rushed about everywhere. Men in full armor ready to attack. But they weren’t attacking.Something is wrong. Her chest pounded high in her throat. She tried to question the men running by her, but they ignored her.
Bruce’s archers started to return fire, slowing the hail of arrows on the targets below.Please...
It took at least another five minutes for her prayers to be answered, when down at the far edge of camp she saw at least a dozen warriors plunge out of the darkness. Eoin! It had to be. She scanned the unusually imposing figures. Her heart stopped on the man being carried between two others. Even from a distance, she recognized him.
Heedless of Eoin’s warnings about leaving the tent, Margaret ran. She didn’t stop until she reached the gathering of men, and then she had to push her way forward through the crowd to see him.
When she did, a cry escaped from where she’d held it tightly in her chest. She would have launched herself toward him, if he wasn’t being held up by two men.
“You’re hurt,” she said, taking a more tentative step toward him.
“I’m fine,” he said, but winced as he tried to stand on his own legs to prove it to her. “I just jammed my knee.”
Only then did she notice that the two warriors holding him were wearing blackened nasal helms like the one Eoin had been wearing six years earlier. Of the dozen or so warriors who were with Eoin, only a few wore regular helms like he did, but all of the men wore black from head to toe. Black leather war coats, blackened mail shirts, blackened helms, black leather boots, even some of the faces beneath the masks seemed to be blackened. They seemed to blend into the night.
There was something about them that made the hair on her neck stand up. Who—what—were they?
But her attention was drawn off by one of the nasal-helmed monoliths holding Eoin. He sounded irritated. “Might be jammed or might be torn or broken, so don’t try to stand again until Helen has a chance to look at it.”
Suddenly what—or who—was missing penetrated. Her eyes met Eoin’s.
When he gave her a grim shake of his head, she knew he’d understood her question. It hadn’t worked. He hadn’t been able to free Eachann.
“What happened?”
Margaret recognized the voice as Robert Bruce’s, even if the mail-clad warrior who stood in the crowd of men surrounding them was otherwise indistinguishable. None of the men wore arms or colors, she realized. Bruce’s secret warfare, an army of pirates and brigands, they said. It wasn’t hard to understand why.
“We were outsmarted by a lad,” one of the men quipped dryly.
