7
It was nearly midnight when Isla and her father sneaked into the bailey barracks, quiet as mice.
“We are ready to leave when ye deem the time ripe, sir,” Master McDonnell told Finlay.
The laird’s son looked down at Isla, wanting to comfort her in such a way that would chase the fearful look out of her eyes.
“I am waitin’ for the last lantern light to burn out in the castle barracks, then we leave.”
He walked outside, preparing to stand in the dark night. He knew the lantern inside the castle barracks well; he had watched it burning for many a night. It was where his father had forced him to live the moment he was tall and strong enough to hold a sword. The day he was trained well enough to hold his own in battle, his father had sent him off to war. Combat was all Finlay had ever known, and he thought it was his only love until he met the blacksmith’s daughter at the forge. The moment she turned around, her flaming hair fanning out beneath that queenly gold circlet of hers, his desire for combat had begun to fade.
Finlay knew he had become so bogged down with the conflict his father and grandfather had urged him to continue that he had never been given the chance to live a fulfilling life like other people. But in his heart, Finlay realized that if it had been any other maiden he had found at the forge, he would have been content to continue in his warlike ambitions forever. It was Isla who could heal from his wandering warrior ways—only Isla.
The lantern in the barracks dimmed but did not go out entirely. The wick must have still held a spark of fire in it. He was too far away to guess with any certainty, but he was eager to be off. Finlay ducked under the stone lintel and began waking up his men. One tap on the shoulder was all it took, then they would be awake and readying themselves. Earlier on, Master McDonnell had led the horse and cart down to the bottom of the hill, out of earshot of the castle sentries. If the sentries heard anything, they would duck inside the gatehouse and cross themselves, praying that the raiders would be taken care of by the troop of Finlay’s soldiers instead of making it up the hill as far as the castle gates.
Not a word was spoken. Finlay went to the corner where the blacksmith and his daughter were huddled and held out his hand to help her up. When she stood beside him, he risked whispering into her ear, “Soon, ye will be free o’ this place forever, lass.”
She gave him a tremulous smile that he saw by the light of the moon. After checking that she was wearing soft, comfortable leather short boots on her feet so that there were no heels to tap on the causeway, he gave her hand one last squeeze and walked out of the door ahead of everyone.
Alex came to walk beside him. Next followed the blacksmith and Isla with his troop of men trailing behind. Once they made it to the horse and cart, they would be free.
“Halt!” a voice shouted out, loud in the stillness and darkness. “Ye are leaving the steward’s hospitality without his grace an’ favor! Ye are all to follow me back up the hill and wait at the castle until such a time as the steward had heard the reason for yer lack o’ manners!”
The moment Finlay and Alexander had heard the complaint made against them, they knew they had to fight or flee. The two men glanced at one another using their secret code of communication with their eyebrows before launching themselves at the four men standing in their way. The interaction was quick and deadly, six swords shining in the moonlight as the blades fell against one another in furious flurries.
“Form a circle around the McDonnells! Let no man harm them!” Finlay bellowed out his order as more of the steward’s mercenaries attacked him from all sides. Four more soldiers fell under Alex and Finlay’s swords; the dead soldiers were wearing trews and not Dougal plaid great kilts—they were the steward’s men. In his mind, Finlay was keeping count. Eight dead, forty-two mercenaries left to kill.
Then his deadly attack ceased when he heard a voice rise up out of the night.
“We have the girl. Throw down yer weapons.”
He risked looking back, and what he saw told him everything he needed to know. Many of the stewards’ mercenaries had broken the circle of men around the McDonnells. One of Finlay’s men had been killed, which gave one of the mercenaries the chance to grab hold of Isla and hold a knife to her slender white throat. In that moment, it felt to Finlay as if the steward’s men knew his one weakness, and then he realized that looking after the blacksmith’s daughter would be the priority of every man under his command. He threw down the sword out of his left hand; he had been fighting with it to give the wrist of his right hand time to heal. The men he had been fighting seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
“Hold yer hands high above yer head, Dougal,” the captain of the mercenaries said. “We ken ye have about five daggers hidden here an’ there about ye.”
His hands were bound, and his clothes searched. Alex and the seventeen of Finlay’s soldiers who were still alive were disarmed and their hands bound with strong cords. Master McDonnell’s cheek was bleeding, and one of the steward’s men was nursing his hand. It looked like Isla had bitten him. Finlay knew the blacksmith and his daughter would be safe…until they revealed the whereabouts of their gold.
The sentries looked sad when they saw the laird’s son and the McDonnells being dragged through the gates.
“Ye useless bampots!” the mercenaries’ captain spat at them. “Did it never occur to ye that the raid was a lie so that these traitors could escape?”
“Now, hang on there,” one of the sentries complained. “Isla an’ her faither are no’ traitors. An’ that’s the laird’s son and his men ye have trussed up there! Ye cannae think the castle folk will stand for this! We’re the Dougal clan, for God’s sake! If ye arrest the honest blacksmith an’ his daughter, ye’ll have to arrest everyone!”
The captain ignored the sentry, marched them down to the dungeons, and pushed them all into the largest cell.
“Ye can all stay here until Laird McMichaels decides what he wants to do with ye!”
Finlay went to stand at the dungeon door, shouting through the barred watch hole, “We ken what he’s after, an’ soon everyone will ken too, ye scoundrels. Tell yer ‘laird’ that he can have this poxy castle, an’ he’s welcome to it, but he must let the good blacksmith an’ his daughter go lest I call him a thief to his auld face!”
But the only sound that answered him was the slamming of the outer dungeon doors.
Finlay went to check on his men but found Isla already busy binding the wounds. They were not severe.
“That auld bustert obviously told his men he wants us alive. They were scared to attack Alex an’ me with full force,” Finlay told them.
They were all hunkered on the dirty straw covering the flagstones. A steady drip could be heard outside the door. The cell was pitch black except for the moonlight streaming through the barred window that looked out over the cobbled courtyard that serviced the kitchens. The rotten smell of scullery water permeated the cell.
“How did they ken we were leavin’?”
