“I won’t,” Rory promised. “I’ll get ye back to Castle Leod.”
***
Malcolm still clung to life by a thread when they reached the castle. Rory carried him upstairs to his own bedchamber and laid him gently on the bed. He left him and Kenneth in the care of Grizel and the other women, with instructions to call him if Malcolm woke again.
Then he set his sorrow aside. He had to protect his son and rescue his wife. He posted half a dozen men at the chamber door and ordered that no one be allowed to enter except at Grizel’s request, then he went down to the hall.
Everyone except the men who had gone with him to Beauly was whispering about the dead boy come to life and making signs of the cross. Clearly, it was too late to maintain the pretense that the lad was dead.
“Kenneth is my son,” he shouted over their voices, “and he was never dead.”
When the room quieted, he explained the reason for the hoax.
“The person who attempted to harm him may be in this castle,” he said. “Kenneth is my heir and your future chieftain, so I charge every one of you to protect him.”
He could not risk Hector hearing from one of his spies that Kenneth was alive.
“No one leaves the castle until I return,” he said. “If anyone attempts to, they will be executed at once.”
There was a general intake of breath. He had no time to discuss it further. He called his senior men to his private room behind the hall.
“While ye were gone, we learned that the Munro chieftain survived the ambush,” one of the men reported.
Here, at least, was one piece of good news. “How do we know?”
“He led raids on two MacKenzie villages along our shared border.”
Rory rubbed his forehead. “Anything else?”
“The MacDonalds have burned MacKenzie boats in Gairloch Bay and attacked villages all along our seacoast in the west,” another man reported.
“A’ phlàigh oirbh MacDonalds!” A plague on the MacDonalds, several of the men said in unison.
And a plague on Hector for leaving their defenses so thin in the west.Damn him!
Everything Rory touched had turned to ashes, just as Hector predicted. For the first time, Rory considered that it might actually be true that he was not his father’s son and that he had brought all this on his clan because he did not have chieftain’s blood.
Regardless, he knew what he had to do.
He sent a man to ride ahead to alert his uncle, then he set out with his brother and thirty men for Fairburn Tower.
As he approached the fortified tower house, he counted the warriors in the clearing surrounding it.
“I see two hundred to our thirty,” Alex said beside him. “And that’s just outside the house.”
“There are more men in the woods,” Rory said. So far his uncle’s men were letting them pass.
“I’m not sure this is wise,” Alex said. “I hope ye know what you’re doing.”
Rory hoped he did too. But he could think of no other way out of this.
“Hector of Gairloch!” he shouted when they halted in front of the house. “I’ve come to discuss the terms under which I will leave MacKenzie lands.”
CHAPTER 46
Rory laid out his conditions for leaving.
“You will cease provoking our neighboring clans and make peace with the Munros and the Grants,” Rory said. “If ye lay the blame for your attacks and the death of Grant’s grandson on me and say you’ve banished me, that will go a long way toward appeasing them.”
