“Ye know,” his friend said after a few moments, “I will miss the farm.”
Irvine arched a brow. “Ye will?”
“Aye,” he sighed. “I dinnae care tae admit it tae anyone but ye, but I enjoyed the work. It was fruitful.”
Irvine never thought he would hear his friend say such a thing.
“Well, then perhaps we should just get our own farm since mah great-uncle is likely tae have us killed when we get back.”
Malcolm chuckled. “Aye, perhaps we should.”
Irvine rested against a tree, watching the fire as it danced in the falling snow. The small canopy of trees, those that didn’t lose their leaves in the winter, provided some protection from the snow, but the ground and the air were still cold as ice, even with the fire going.
That was fine with him. He felt cold ever since he had told Bridget the truth, detesting the look on her face as if he had betrayed her. Maybe he did, but now, well, he wanted nothing to do with what was on that farm and only wished to protect her.
Hence the reason he was sitting in the snow, freezing his arse off. A lesser man would have already ridden back to the castle to plead his case, but Irvine knew that Kenneth wasn’t going to let his failures just be the end of their dealings with the farm. There was a reason he had sent Irvine there and not just to fail in his errand.
No, there was another reason, one that was much more sinister than Irvine liked to think about.
“I dinnae think that ye are wrong in thinking that Kenneth is going tae try something,” Malcolm mused as he stretched his legs out before him. “I just hope that we are able tae stop him from hurting those people.”
If Irvine didn’t know better, he would think that his friend had grown a soft spot for the tenants as well.
“Wot will we do if it’s our own warriors?” Malcolm continued, a frown on his face as if he hadn’t thought about it before.
“I dinnae know, but we have tae be ready,” Irvine sighed. He didn’t want to go up against his own clan, his own flesh and blood, but to protect the tenants and Bridget? He would gladly do it. The warriors would be misguided in their reasoning for attacking the farm, and he would need to act quickly to have them change their minds. There was no telling what they would be told.
“I was afraid ye would say that,” Malcolm replied, staring into the fire.
The men fell silent as the night wore on, and Irvine could feel the exhaustion start to pool in his veins the longer they sat there. What if he was wrong about this? What if he was wasting his time thinking that his great-uncle wanted more when he was content with the lairdship after all?
No, that wasn’t how his great-uncle was, and it wasn’t long before Irvine knew that his assumptions were correct.
They heard the warriors before they saw them. Malcolm was quick to douse the fire, and the men sat in the dark, their swords in their laps as they saw the soldiers filter through the trees not far away from them.
They were too far away, and it was too dark to see who they belonged to, but Irvine knew in his gut that they were his great-uncle’s warriors.
He waited until there were no more before rising from the ground, his sword in his hand. “We cannae wait for them tae attack,” he murmured to Malcolm.
“Aye,” Malcolm sighed, his own sword in his hand.
Before they could move, however, a scream rent the air, and Irvine’s blood froze in his veins. Before another scream could happen, he was moving through the woods, abandoning the horses. Irvine’s boots crunched in the snow as he ran, hoping that when he arrived at the farm, he wouldn’t find those that he cared for perishing because he had left them.
The clearing broke, and Irvine growled as he saw the chaos before him. One of the huts was on fire, the smoke billowing in the air as the fire licked the sides of the hut.
There were people everywhere—some warriors, some tenants attempting to fight back. Irvine saw Bridget’s friend struggling with a warrior who was doing nothing but laughing at her, and he saw red. Before he could charge over there, Malcolm beat him to it, and his sword clashed with the warrior’s.
Irvine turned toward the other tenants, swallowing hard as he stepped over a dying tenant to fight the next warrior. It wasn’t the battlefield. The farm shouldn’t be awash with the blood on the ground. These were hardworking people, not hardened warriors.
His stomach turned as he fought back against the warrior, whose eyes rounded as he saw his opponent.
“Irvine?” he asked. “Wot are ye doing?”
“This is wrong,” Irvine replied as their swords clanged together. “These people wilnae hurt ye.”
The warrior quit fighting, lowering his sword. “Nay, I’m not going tae fight ye.”
“Get out of here then,” Irvine growled, lowering his own sword. “Before I change mah mind.”
