“Are you sure?” the king asked.
Thom shook his head. “Nay, but it is worth a try.”
They were gathered in Randolph’s tent—all ten members of the Highland Guard, Thom, Randolph, the king, and the king’s closest advisor, Neil Campbell. Douglas probably would have been included had he been there, but Thom knew he wasn’t the only one who was glad he was not. If they were successful, Randolph wouldn’t want to share the credit with his rival. Was that why he’d been sent to Stirling for a few days?
“If the spikes don’t hold, you will fall to your death,” MacLeod said.
“They’ll hold,” Thom said with more certainty than he felt.
“And if they don’t?” MacLeod challenged.
Thom didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. They all knew the risk involved; risk he was willing to accept. His role in Bruce’s army had become his sole focus. He was determined to win his knighthood and a place in the Guard.
It was the game of tossing daggers at the wall that had inspired him, though it wasn’t until he’d woken up that next morning with his stomach turning and head splitting apart that he’d figured out how it could be applied to the Rock of Edinburgh Castle.
He’d gone to the forge first thing that morning, and instead of working on Douglas’s sword (which was almost done but which he didn’t want to look at), he’d modified a few small steel spikes. Each was about six inches in length and tapered from about an inch in diameter below the head to a point. They needed to be strong enough to hold his weight, but thin and sharp enough to be hammered into a small crack in the rock face. A few of them, strategically spaced, should allow Thom to climb the sheer section of wall that he’d been unable to get past before. Once clear of that section, he hoped to be able to drop one of Bruce’s ingenious rope scaling ladders fixed with grappling hooks to the rest of the men, enabling them to climb up after him, and—if fortune was with them—surprise and take the castle.
MacRuairi wanted to go up the spikes after him to help with the ladders, but Thom told him it would be an unnecessary risk.
To this, the king agreed. “I have no interest in telling your wife that I let you fall off a cliff.”
Bruce shuddered and the rest of the men laughed, though Thom was pretty sure the king wasn’t jesting. From what he heard, Bella MacDuff was a formidable opponent. He supposed she had to be to take on Lachlan MacRuairi as a husband.
“Will you be able to secure the spikes without alerting the garrison?” Randolph asked.
It was a good question. No matter what Thom’s personal feelings were toward the man, Randolph had not become one of Robert the Bruce’s most valued commanders from his familial link alone. He might be an overly arrogant arse at times, but he was a wily one who knew how to wield a sword and wasn’t afraid to get a little dirt on all of that shiny armor.
“I will try to muffle most of the sound with a piece of leather or cloth, but preventing the garrison from hearing the hammering will be the trickiest part of the mission,” Thom answered. Well, except for the possibly falling to his death part. “But I was thinking that maybe you and your men could create some kind of diversion at the gate.”
The men discussed it for a while and agreed that it might work.
But there was one part Randolph would not agree to. He insisted on being part of the team that went up the cliff. If this went down in history, he wanted the accolades. That Thom was helping the man who’d won the woman he loved win battle immortality, he tried not to think about. He would win his own, though he did not doubt Randolph would be the man whom history would remember.
They decided to take thirty men. In addition to the Guard, Thom, and Randolph, they added eighteen of Randolph’s Highlanders from Moray, all of whom had some climbing experience. Thom had handpicked the best of the lot earlier today.
The king would command the rest of the army responsible for the diversionary attack at the gate. They hoped to draw most of the garrison to the south gate and away from the men trying to climb the north face of the Rock.
Anxious to take the castle and end the nearly two-and-a-half-month-long siege, the king told them to proceed as soon as they were ready. After a reconnaissance mission tonight, they would make their attempt on immortality tomorrow night.
If this worked, Thom knew he would secure his knighthood and his place in the Guard. They were the only things that mattered to him now.
Elizabeth was going out of her mind. Even with all the entertainment and activities that Edinburgh had to offer, she could not relax. All the restlessness that she’d experienced at Blackhouse and attributed to the boredom of the countryside had never come close to what she was experiencing right now.
At least she was not forced to feign happiness with her bridegroom. Randolph and the king had been conspicuously absent from both the evening meal last night and today’s midday meal.
Had there finally been some progress with the siege? For Randolph’s sake she hoped so, but for her own she wasn’t so sure. Without the distraction of the siege, she might see far more of him, and she wondered how long she’d be able to hide her frayed and frazzled emotions.
On Thursday, two days after the betrothal, when Lady Helen mentioned that she was going to camp again to tend to the soldiers, Elizabeth practically jumped at the opportunity to accompany her. It was just what she needed to take her mind off... everything.
The thought that she might see Thom only occurred to her afterward. She thought she would be able to handle it.
She was wrong.
No sooner had she and Lady Helen entered camp than she came face-to-face with him. Actually, as fate would have it, she ran right into him as he exited a tent—the king’s tent, she realized from the banners outside.
At the slam of contact, Thom instinctively reached for her. But the moment he recognized her, he stiffened and jerked his hand back. She would have stumbled had Lady Helen not been by her side to steady her. For the first time since she’d known him, he would have let her fall.
Startled from the bump—and more startled that it was him—she took one look at his icy expression and felt her emotions shatter. The connection was gone. “I’m sorry,” she practically sobbed.
