“Cameron, you must listen to me,” she pleaded against his lips, her heart hammering in her breast when he lifted his mouth from hers to look down at her. “My father… before he left—”
“Laird Campbell, look tae the north!Fire!”
Aislinn felt Cameron stiffen as the outcry from one of his men shattered the night’s stillness. He thrust her away from him so abruptly that she gasped, though his hand upon her forearm kept her from falling.
“Stay here.”
His tone brooking no argument, she nodded, but already he had lunged out of the trees to the road where he had stationed a quarter of his men to stand guard.
She smelled it then, the acrid stench of smoke. She looked northward but could see nothing through the dense foliage other than a faint orange glow higher up as if from atop a hill.
Aye, Cameron had told her to stay, yet how else was she to know what was happening?
Biting her lower lip, Aislinn drew her cloak more tightly around her and followed his men that had abandoned their scattered hiding places to run toward the road.
Her face burned at the realization that some of them might have overheard her and Cameron, though he had said it was none of their concern. A brazen intended bride, aye, she could just imagine what they might have been thinking!
She was almost to the spot where he and his men had gathered, Cameron uttering a command for them to mount their horses, when her foot caught upon a root. She cried out, bracing herself for a fall, when she was swept up by powerful arms so abruptly that her teeth rattled.
“I thought King Robert told you tae doexactlyas I say,” he muttered fiercely, striding with her back into the woods. “God help me, Aislinn, this is no time tae defy me! The MacGodfrey stronghold is aflame, aye, which means an attack—else the English there decided themselves tae burn it.”
“Aflame?” Aislinn echoed as Cameron hoisted her up onto her steed and then untied the tether. “My father, Cameron… my brother!”
He didn’t answer, his grim silence chilling her as he handed her the reins. Then he untied his own horse and led their mounts by the bridle through the trees, most of his men already waiting for them out on the road.
“I would leave you here with guards if I thought you wouldna ride off—by God, Aislinn, you promised the king that you’d stay close tae me! Mayhap he decided tae send some of his forces tae attack the stronghold after all, but we willna know until we’re closer. Keep your sword at the ready!”
Her hand already gripping the hilt, Aislinn nodded and swallowed hard against tears that they might arrive too late.
Her father might have paid her no heed for much of her life, but she loved him all the same—aye, and Daran, always trying so hard to please him and yet never quite making the mark. What kind of justice would it be for them to have mayhap survived this far only to succumb to smoke and fire?
“Ride!” Cameron commanded, Aislinn urging her stallion into a gallop alongside his steed as his men came thundering behind them.
* * *
“Hold!” Cameron pulled up on the reins just in time, a barrage of arrows raining down upon the road only twenty yards away as fire lit up the night sky.
From their position, he could see that the stronghold gates were aflame, as well as much of the front of a high palisade that surrounded a towering stone keep. A host of attackers with shields to protect them were shoving a battering ram against the burning gates, and already there was a gaping hole, the outer perimeter breached.
Yet who were those men? Clearly not English soldiers that he could see scurrying atop the part of the palisade that wasn’t ablaze, their conical helmets glinting in the orange light and their raised voices filled with alarm.
Nor were they King Robert’s forces for, to a man, they wore trousers beneath their tunics, so Cameron judged they weren’t Scotsmen, either. The dark color of their clothing blended into the night and made it impossible for him to count how many were attacking the stronghold.
“Declare yourselves!”
Cameron cursed as another barrage of deadly arrows skewered the ground even closer to their position. He glanced at Aislinn, who stared in wide-eyed horror at the flaming gates.
Blast and damn! Why hadn’t he stopped his men further back on the road where they could have dismounted and crept in closer, unseen?
“I said declare yourselves or die now—but if you’re loyal to Edward, you’ll die anyway!”
“Cameron, they’re Irish!” Aislinn blurted, holding tight to the reins as her stallion snorted and pawed the earth. “My father’s kinsmen come to rescue him, surely!”
Holding fast to his own reins, Cameron made a split decision and roared into the night. “Laird Cameron Campbell, and loyal tae King Robert the Bruce! We believe kinsmen of Lady De Burgh are imprisoned here!”
No more arrows came after his pronouncement, the crackling of the flames growing fiercer and glowing red sparks flying high into the air.
So high that some of the wooden shutters at the windows of the tower had caught fire, a gasp coming from Aislinn.
