The Laird's Choice

by Amanda Scott

  “The pass suffered a few bad landslides,” Andrew explained as they went.

  “Suffered?”

  “They didna occur all on their own, withal.”

  “The wee folk did it, I expect.”

  “Aye, sure, along with boggles, boggarts, and banshees, to name a few. They do say that the Fates help them wha help themselves, aye?”

  Mag shook his head at the man but admired his ingenuity. To have persuaded his enemy that Tùr Meiloach enjoyed strong protection, and maintained his deception for two decades, commanded respect however he had done it.

  “You did set men to watch the river, aye?” he asked a few minutes later.

  “Aye, sure, but Parlan will choose the pass. The rivers be yet too wild. Forbye, as ye said yourself, we’ve discerned nae sign that your pursuers knew aught of the south river bridge.”

  “I did scale the south cliff,” Mag reminded him. “On a dark night, in a storm.”

  “Aye, but your life was in your hands. And the Fates were with ye, too.”

  Engaged, in the ladies’ solar, with last-minute details as she and her sisters had been since breaking their fast, Andrena paid little heed to the first tingling uneasiness she felt. Recalling her father’s hunt, she thought she was sensing disquiet of the forest creatures at the hunters’ invasion of their territory.

  The unease increased to apprehension and grew stronger. Studying her sisters, she saw that both were busy and unperturbed. So neither Andrew nor their mother was cause for the sensation. Moreover, Lady Aubrey and Lady Colquhoun were each still enjoying a rare opportunity to sleep late.

  Moving to the south window, she saw several hawks soaring in an overcast sky. Although she knew they might be part of the disturbance she felt, their behavior was different from what she’d seen before. The sensation she felt was different, too. It intensified to a sense of something ominous approaching and then rapidly clarified itself as danger greater than what she had sensed in Dougal MacPharlain’s galleys.

  She could see naught to explain her feeling. The hawks, instead of clustering as they had before, when she had felt their distress so keenly, ranged widely and might well be reacting to the hunting party. If so, they were not causing the alarm she felt. It seemed to come at her from all directions, from above and below, too.

  Moving to the west-facing window, she could see only a portion of the loch beyond the cliffs. She saw no boats. All that she did see looked calm.

  “What is it, Dree?” Lina asked. “Is aught amiss?”

  “Danger comes,” Andrena said. “But I don’t know its source or direction.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Murie said with a shrug. “Father has forbidden us to leave the tower, Dree. He and Magnus both told Malcolm to keep us inside whilst they hunt. Not just inside the wall but inside the tower. This time, you cannot investigate.”

  Andrena barely heard her. The sensation had grown so strong that she could no longer fight it. She turned and strode toward the door.

  Lina’s voice intruded as if from a great distance. “Dree?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “Not now, Lina, I must have quiet to determine what stirs this feeling and why. Don’t worry. Naught will happen to me.”

  “Perhaps not now,” Lina said. “But if Magnus said we should stay—”

  “Magnus is not here,” Andrena interjected. “He, Father, and the others are all out in the woods, hunting. If there is danger and they don’t see it coming…”

  She opened the door as she spoke and stepped onto the landing, pausing only long enough to decide that going up to the ramparts would be useless. The forest’s dense canopy would conceal hunters and danger alike. She’d be wiser to slip out if she could and track down the menace that threatened them. The urgency that drove her insisted that she lacked time to argue with anyone. Even Lady Aubrey might try to stop her if Andrew had said they were all to stay inside.

  Feeling for her eating knife as she hurried downstairs, she had an impulse to take her dirk, too. But she reminded herself that Mag knew more than she did about such things. She would not change to her breeks, either. The last thing she wanted, if Parlan had dared to invade their land, was to look like a man or a boy. Even Parlan, surely, would hesitate to harm a noblewoman—his own cousin’s daughter, at that.

  Hearing a faint echo in her mind of Murie’s saying that Andrew and Mag had both left orders to stay inside the tower reminded her that Mag had warned her that such an order would come when the men put their plan into action. Even so…

  Hurrying down to the postern door, she took her shawl and knitted cap from the hook. The heavy iron bar was in its nighttime position across the door. When she moved to lift it, Murie’s voice from the stairway above startled her.

  “Where are you going, Dree?”

  “To see what I can see,” she said. “Since Father and the others went hunting, even if I could persuade Malcolm to heed my warning, he’d send no one if Father said to stay inside the wall. I’ll take care, Murie, but I must go. If Parlan is coming with an army, the hunters may not see it coming. I must see what the danger is and find a way to warn them, or see enough to persuade Malcolm to do so.”

  Murie hesitated, but Andrena held her gaze. “Put the bar back when I’ve gone. Tell no one where I am, save our mother when she awakens, unless something else occurs. If aught does happen to me, you will know it, Murie. But, even if you do, stay inside this tower. I’ll keep to the woods and shrubbery.”

  Murie shook her head. “Father will be furious, Dree. And Magnus—”

  “I am thinking of Magnus and Father. Now, no more. I must go.”

  Opening the door, she stepped outside and pulled it shut. Waiting to hear the reassuring thud of the bar going back into place, she descended to the yard.

  Pluff stood guard near the postern gate as usual. The only two guards that she saw on the wall were looking outward.

  When Pluff saw her, he gaped.

  Putting a finger to her lips, she hurried toward him. “I must go out, Pluff. Danger comes, and I must see what form it takes.”

  “Coo,” the boy breathed. “Did the lady Aubrey see it? They do say—”

  “Never mind what they say,” Andrena said. “With the men away hunting, the men-at-arms they left here must stay and keep the gates and tower shut tight. Yet someone must warn the hunters of their danger. So you must open the gate for me, Pluff. And when I go out, you must distract the guards on the wall long enough for me to run into the woods. Can you do that for me?”

  “Aye, sure, though I’ll get a leathering when they hear what I’ve done.”

  “I will do all I can to prevent that,” she promised, well aware that she might face similar punishment when Mag and her father learned what she had done. None of that mattered, though, if Mag was in danger.

  “Aye, then,” Pluff said, and quietly opened the postern gate.

  Chapter 20

  Mag and Andrew lay concealed in steep woodland near the outflow of a large, deep tarn. The tarn collected snowmelt from the precipitous, encircling heights of tumbled rocky debris and sheer granite cliffs that formed the granite bowl in which it sat. The tarn, with myriad streams and rills that fed it, was the primary source for the river that formed Tùr Meiloach’s north boundary. The sheer cliffs curving around the tarn’s northern perimeter helped protect the area from intruders.

  From where the two men were, they had an unobstructed view of the vee-shaped declivity that—although now filled with loose rocks, strewn with boulders, and treacherously unstable—had once served as the high pass from the west-Lomondside of the peaks to the northeastern part of Tùr Meiloach.

  Most of their men had concealed themselves nearby. Others kept watch on less likely approaches. Three more had hidden on the ridge above the pass. The three took turns reporting the slow progress of Pharlain’s men as they made their way carefully up the far side, following the ancient route to the pass.

  Andrew had sent word out to his captains to begin
converging on the northeast area while taking care to leave a man or two to watch the other approaches. Having received no report of boats on the loch, he and Mag remained confident that Pharlain was behaving as they’d hoped he would.

  Safe in the woods, Andrena turned west toward the cliffs, only to realize that if she went onto the clifftops to look down along the loch shore, men on the ramparts would see her. Since no part of her plan included drawing notice from the tower or men on its wall, she turned instead toward the steep, wooded slopes in the northeast, where she felt the strongest warning of danger. On the higher ground, she could stay concealed and yet see more while she figured out what was going on.

  Taking care to disturb little shrubbery, she moved nonetheless quickly while keeping her senses on full alert, until she realized that her feeling of imminent peril was expanding rapidly. An ominous sense of bellicose intruders from the southwest, where Mag had climbed the cliff, spread to include a pulsing awareness from the southeast peaks of similarly pugnacious men nearing the high pass there.

  She had no time to assess those feelings before more such sensations flowed to her from the northwest. And where was the hunting party, if hunting party it was?

  Danger from armies of men seemed to be all around her.

  Striving for calm, she reminded herself that many of their own people would be coming to the tower to celebrate the lady Aubrey’s birthday. That did little to reassure her, though, because she realized that that very fact might have encouraged Parlan to think Andrew might have left the passes unguarded.

  Above her, as one went higher along the northern river, one found naught but granite cliffs, boulders, and open, scree-strewn slopes. The pass boasted no discernible, let alone easily passable, trail. Hunters might find a roaming deer or two. Otherwise only wildcats, a few agile sheep or wild goats, ravens, ptarmigan, and eagles inhabited the higher elevations. None save the deer made good eating.

  She wondered if perhaps Andrew, Mag, and the other men were seeking a good place to put their plan into action or perhaps even luring Parlan into a trap.

  On Lady Aubrey’s birthday?

  If it was a trap, surely Andrew’s men and Colquhoun’s would have left watchers elsewhere, keeping a lookout. Yet no one had sounded an alarm.

  The sensible thing to do, she knew, was to return to the safety of the tower. But she had her wee pipe in the pocket of her shawl. She also had increasing fear that she alone was aware that the danger lay all around them—and an increasingly overwhelming need to warn Mag and Andrew.

  Her decision made, she kilted up her skirts more securely under her narrow leather girdle, felt to be sure that her small knife was in position beneath her shawl, and lengthened her stride. Coming to a wide, boulder-strewn clearing, she hesitated, still sensing danger everywhere but particularly north of the tower from above and below, east and west, drawing nearer and nearer.

  Realizing that her senses were being overwhelmed, she stayed where she was, at the edge of the clearing, and tried to concentrate, to sort the sensations.

  Were there men in the forest nearby? There were, aye, and it felt as if she were the one they surrounded. But some of them were likely her father’s men.

  The safest path seemed to lie straight ahead of her. Accordingly, she hurried across the clearing, darting glances right and left. Every instinct told her to run as fast as she could. But doing so on such uneven ground would likely bring disaster.

  Halfway across the clearing, as that thought flitted through her mind, a cacophony of men’s shouts and clanging swords erupted behind her and to her right. Leaping forward, terrified now and no longer concerned about noise or stumbles, she flew into the woods on the far side of the clearing only to come to a dead halt when a large man clad in mail, with sword drawn, stepped in front of her.

  “Let me pass,” she said firmly. “Or do you make war on noblewomen?”

  “Nay, lassie,” he replied, stepping nearer and looking around, his sword still at the ready. “I dinna make war on women. But when this business be done, ye’ll make a fine fortune o’ war, I’m thinking. I’ll just bind ye up and slip ye under a bush where ye can keep safe. Likely, ye’ll thank me later for looking after ye.”

  Taking a step backward for every step he took toward her, Andrena exerted herself to look helpless. Looking frightened came easily, because she knew she had erred gravely by not returning to the tower the minute she’d sensed how many invaders there were. If this lout or another didn’t kill her, Magnus surely would.

  Her heart pounded. Sensible thought stopped in the face of the anger flowing at her from men at battle in the woods north and east of her. Keeping her gaze on the one in front of her, she tried to ignore the rest. Much of the noise to the north seemed to be moving downhill toward the tower. If she could elude this man—

  He lurched toward her, holding his sword out away from him with one hand as if he took care not to injure her while he reached for her with the other. She was in the clearing again, if such a rocky place could be called so. When his free hand caught her left arm and gripped it hard, she had all she could do not to panic. But she knew she had to keep her head and move carefully to have any chance at all.

  A few minutes earlier

  The snail’s pace of Pharlain’s men in their ascent toward the pass had stirred Mag’s suspicions. “What if this is a diversion?” he muttered to Andrew.

  That the watchers they had set elsewhere had sounded no alarm could mean that Pharlain, anticipating a trap, had created his own diversion to keep the bulk of their army in one place until all of his men were in position to attack.

  Andrew twisted around to look downhill toward the river.

  “Devil take the man!” he exclaimed. “He’s got lads creeping up our riverside from the loch. How the devil did he get them across?”

  “In the night, perhaps,” Mag said. “If they’ve lost their fear of boggarts…”

  But Andrew wasn’t listening. To one of his men nearby, he growled, “Take your lads to meet them. And sound the alarm only after ye do. The men we left on watch are too few to engage that lot—if the bastards havena killed them already.”

  Praying that everyone at the tower—Andrena in particular—had stayed inside and not ventured even as far as the yard, Mag got to his feet. Andrew had begun signaling orders to his other men and would likewise have orders for him.

  Motion in a clearing on the hillside below diverted Mag’s attention.

  The moving figure was female, Andrena.

  Thought stopped, and his emotions as he drew his sword left no room for such paltry stuff as surprise. Instead, fury exploded within him, a fury so powerful that it was all he could do to control himself long enough to glance back at Andrew and wonder if the man had been shouting orders to him.

  Sounds of battle erupted below them.

  “Andrew,” Mag bellowed, pointing, “look yonder!”

  “I see her, aye,” Andrew replied. “Go on, then. Take your men down there. She may have sensed trouble, but dinna fear, lad. She’ll be safe enough!”

  “Not when I get my hands on her,” Mag shouted back.

  When Andrew—clearly daft—grinned in reply, Mag signaled to his own lads to follow him. Drawing both sword and dirk, he set off downhill through the woods at a lope, leaping shrubbery and skirting boulders in his path as he went.

  An image flashed through his mind of Will, trying to fight off Pharlain’s ambushers and falling, while Mag was also fighting and too far away to help him.

  A brief glance northward showed Andrew signing to some men to stay where they were, to wait for Pharlain. Shouting at Mag to keep south of him, Andrew led his own men in a charge downhill along the river to engage the enemy there.

  When he looked back at the clearing below, Andrena had vanished.

  To his added horror, as he plunged down the hill at his perilous pace, men fighting the battle below spilled into the clearing from the woods south and west of it. Other men, waving swords and ax
es, charged uphill toward him and his men.

  He was swiftly assessing their strength when Andrena stepped backward into the clearing again, nearly making him choke on his own indrawn breath.

  A swordsman grabbed her and yanked her back among the trees.

  Shouting for his men to run faster, Mag charged down toward the two, determined to wreak slaughter on anyone who got in his way.

  Overwhelmed by the anger and fury she felt around her, Andrena barely noticed that battle had enveloped her. Instead, when her captor pulled her back into the woods, she watched every move he made, determined to keep her wits about her.

  “Ye’re a fool,” he snapped. Despite the clash and bellow of battle, she heard him clearly. “They be moving downhill as be natural,” he added, leering. “We’ll just hide ourselves here till it be safe. I’ll look after ye.”

  “You are nowt but a coward,” she said, jerking her left arm from his grasp as her right hand sought the hilt of her knife. Slipping the sheath’s leather thong off with her forefinger, she gripped the knife hilt firmly and raised her left hand as if to try to push him away. As Mag had predicted, the man’s gaze followed that hand.

  “What’s this?” a voice cried from her right. While keeping her gaze on her opponent, peripherally she noted two men running toward them through the trees.

  Fixing her gaze on her chief tormentor when he reached again to grab her, and ignoring the others, she slashed his outflung hand, drawing blood. When he cried out and looked in dismay at the injured hand, she darted out of reach behind the nearest tree. He shouted at her. The other two, evidently viewing her as easier prey than any fighting man in the clearing or elsewhere, moved in to help him.

  Watching all three now, she kept stepping backward, threading her way between and behind trees as she did. Her every sense heightened until she felt strongly aware of obstacles behind and nearby her, almost as if she had eyes all around her head. Since she had no such extra eyes, when the first deep growl sounded at her heels, she thought vaguely that Old Bess must have followed her and did not look away from the men. A second growl snatched her gaze leftward, where a large wolf stood poised in a gap between shrubs, its teeth bared.