The Warrior of Clan Kincaid

by Lily Blackwood

  Cull did not miss how Duncan avoided speaking his name, as the future lord, but he cared little what Duncan thought now. Large and sprawling, with towers that most certainly on some days touched the clouds, the fortress was also strangely familiar, as if it had always been there in the back of his mind, and in his dreams. Perhaps that meant Inverhaven was truly his destiny, and that he should feel no regrets for making it his.

  Arriving at the entrance, they all stopped their horses, except for him, who rode to their forefront. In that manner, they waited as the heavy wooden gates groaned, swinging open.

  A man stood there at the center—tall, and dark haired, wearing no armor, but only a tunic and plaid. He stood as proud as a king, and stared directly into Cull’s eyes. He knew, without introduction, that this was Niall Braewick, the Laird Kincaid.

  Behind him, several stone throws away, stood a beautiful, raven-haired woman who was very pregnant, whom he could only assume to be the Lady Kincaid. To her side, and a few steps back, glowered a striking pale-haired warrior, and a lovely redheaded woman, who if his information was correct, would be Faelan Braewick and his wife, the Laird and Lady Alwyn of Burnbryde Castle, who had no doubt arrived with countless Alwyn warriors to assist in the defense of Inverhaven, just before his army had arrived.

  Beyond them, the bailey was filled with hundreds of warriors and villagers, including children, all looking at him in surly silence. He searched every face in the crowd, as well as he could from that distance, but did not see Derryth. It did not mean she was not there, watching him, hating him, at this very moment.

  “You must be Sir Cull,” said the Kincaid, his gaze piercing him through.

  “I am,” Cull replied. “I have come to offer terms.”

  “What terms?” the laird demanded darkly.

  Cull shifted in his saddle. “Surrender the castle and your lands and you will be allowed to live.”

  “Whose terms are those?” the laird replied, sounding tired and unsurprised. “I don’t think I have to ask, with Robert and Duncan Stewart sitting there behind you. Tell me, where is Buchan?” He stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with challenge. “Where is the Wolf?”

  Though he’d intentionally not asked the details of the conflict between Buchan and the Kincaid, it was clear there was hatred between them.

  Cull answered evenly. “The terms are issued by the king and Parliament.”

  The Kincaid laughed, the deep sound bearing an edge of sarcasm, as if he doubted Cull’s words. “Well then … before I respond to your very generous offer, I would see the formal charges against me, issued by said king and Parliament, signed, and given his seal, so that I may know the reasons why I’m being commanded to forfeit my castle and my lands.”

  ’Twas a reasonable request, and strangely, one rarely made by those facing attack.

  Cull tilted his head in assent. “I shall have possession of the orders shortly, and will present them when they arrive. Until then, consider your castle under siege.”

  The laird’s eyes went flat. “I think we’ve already assumed that.”

  With a jerk of his chin, the gates moved again, slamming closed.

  Cull stared at the closed gate, his mind churning.

  “Delightful people,” said Duncan, sarcastically. “I don’t know why Father so despises them.”

  To Robert, Duncan said, “Did you see Magnus—”

  Magnus. The name was unfamiliar.

  “You mean Faelan, as he is now known,” his brother replied.

  “He was standing off to the side.”

  “I always liked him,” said Robert.

  “I did not,” Duncan growled. “He was such an arrogant bastard.”

  “But he isn’t a bastard,” Robert argued. “Don’t you remember?”

  “I meant the words as a general insult.”

  The words meant nothing to Cull. Always before, he’d preferred not to know the stories of the men he would meet on the field of battle. The more faceless and heartless they remained, the better for his conscience. But something about the story of the Braewick brothers, Niall and Faelan, intrigued him. He wanted to know more. He would have the story from Robert in private, without Duncan to interfere and taint the truth.

  Cull turned his mount, and rode in the direction from whence they had come, the others following him.

  Duncan still spoke behind him. “Faelan left his own castle and lands, to come to his brother’s aid. Would you do that for me?”

  “No,” said Robert plainly.

  “Nor I for you,” said Duncan.

  “I did not see your faithless lover, Cull,” Duncan teased. “She must be in one of those fine towers, hiding from you. Hopefully not with that strapping young warrior who saved her.”

  Cull ignored the taunt, though he wished more than anything to reply with his fist. As much as he liked to believe he’d hardened himself against Derryth, his feelings were raw where she was concerned. Aye, she had made the decision to return to her people, but he did not have to like it. And though he’d confess the truth only to himself, he’d wanted nothing more than to have glimpsed her face.

  Riding in silence for the remainder of the way, they returned to camp and an hour later held council in his tent.

  “Father would want us to attack,” said Robert, holding a cup of ale, and staring into the brazier.

  Cull replied, “I am a knight of Scotland, and by my honor, I will follow the accepted rules of battle. I will present the laird with the orders he has requested to see, which by the laws of the land, he is owed. Your father promised to send them. Why have they not yet arrived?”

  Robert shrugged. “Perhaps Father is distracted. Perhaps the king is dead, and word has simply not yet arrived here.”

  “Well we can’t wait forever. The men want to fight, and soon will grow bored.” Duncan stood and turned to him. “Give me leave, Sir Cull, to take a small company of men to go and retrieve the orders.” He shrugged. “Likely I will meet the courier along the way. It isn’t as if anything is going to happen here for a long while. Either way, it is not so far to Carven. If all goes well, I will return within a sennight, the orders in hand.”

  “Yes, go,” said Cull.

  Any excuse to send Duncan away had its attractions.

  Duncan stood immediately. “Then I will go, and return as soon as possible. In the meantime, my company will continue on under my captains—under your direction of course.”

  After he was gone, Robert sat with Cull in silence for a long while.

  He leaned forward, suddenly, his eyes, darkly intense. “Commander, I ask with all respect that you do not inform my brother, nor my father, of the request that I will now make…”

  Cull scrutinized Robert’s face. “What is it?”

  But Robert’s face gave nothing away. “I would beg your leave as well. Not to depart camp, but to dispatch a letter, written by myself.”

  “What sort of letter?”

  Robert peered down into the goblet he held. “I feel … overwhelmingly compelled to send a trusted rider straightaway to Edinburgh, where Parliament last met, to request the original orders for this action there, at their source.”

  Original orders. Why would Robert feel the need to circumvent his father, and request such a thing?

  Cull tensed, his scalp drawing tight. “You do not believe the orders were issued? Or that those we receive will be false?”

  “I don’t know … not yet,” Robert replied, leaning back, his expression suddenly hard. “But I feel that for whatever reason, my father intentionally delays, and there is no guarantee Duncan will return with them. I … understand and respect your need to proceed in this mission with honor, and wish to do the same, as much as that is possible in battle. In war. Obtaining orders that we know to be true and correct will allow us both to do so, with a clear conscience.”

  Cull could not help but suspect there was something else, buried within Robert’s words. A warning that even here, between just the two of them,
he dared not speak.

  Would Buchan have truly dispatched him, with an entire army, to these Highlands, to fulfill a personal quest for revenge? Without the approval of the king or Parliament? Being that Buchan was no longer Justiciar of the North, he no longer commanded such authority. ’Twould be an egregious transgression, not just against the king and Parliament, but against Cull himself. One that despite the debt he owed to Buchan, he could never forgive.

  He recalled the faces of the Kincaids, who had looked out at him from the gates, those of the Braewick men, and their wives, and their people. Long ago, he’d learned to block out the emotions … the empathy and care. But he could only admire the Kincaids, and wish duty had not brought him to this place. Even his desire to claim Inverhaven faded, which astounded him, because for a brief moment in time, it was all he desired. It was then he heard a voice inside his head that was not his own, compelling him to press further, to know more. It was Derryth’s. His chest tightened, and his skin warmed, and in that moment he ached for her so deeply. Was she a part of him now, even if he did not wish it?

  After glancing away, he again held Robert’s gaze. “What grievance does your father have against the Braewick men? Don’t tell me it’s better not to ask. I must understand the truth of what’s going on here.”

  Robert nodded, his face grim in the firelight. “You deserve to know. You must understand that much of this I myself have heard secondhand, as my father all but refuses to speak of the true details of the matter.”

  “Go on.”

  “At one time, before Robert was king, and David still ruled the land, my father and the Laird Kincaid were allies of a sort, brought together by their disagreements over David’s policies, and his plundering of Scotland’s coffers.”

  “Allies you say.”

  “Aye. The Laird Kincaid was a powerful man here, in the north. Many smaller vassal clans swore their allegiance to him. But the night he died, two of those clans turned on him. The details have always been … muddy. Shrouded in secrecy. No one speaks of what happened that night, almost as if there is shame involved.”

  “The Kincaid was killed,” said Cull.

  Robert nodded. “Some allege betrayed and murdered … along with his lady wife, their three young sons, and many Kincaid men and villagers.”

  “His three sons, you say.” Cull leaned forward, for if he had seen two of the sons that day, the words made little sense.

  “Aye, and there is the source of today’s conflict. You see, some two years ago, a man claiming to be Niall Braewick—the eldest of the sons who had long since been declared dead—murdered along with their father—appeared. He seized control of the castle at Inverhaven, which had been granted by the Crown to a Lord MacClaren, a suspected conspirator in his father’s and mother’s deaths. Indeed, he married the MacClaren’s eldest daughter. But many, including my father, allege he is an imposter.”

  “And that therefore, we find ourselves here in a dispute over land.” Cull nodded slowly. “There was another Braewick there today—”

  “Faelan, who lived for years believing he was the bastard of another conspirator, the Lord Alwyn … defeated just last year at the hands of the Kincaids, in their quest for vengeance.”

  “Another imposter, I suppose.”

  Robert nodded. “So some claim.”

  “What do you believe?”

  Robert remained silent.

  “Robert,” Cull demanded forcefully. “What do you believe?”

  “I believe they are Kincaids,” he blurted out, standing, to pace beyond the brazier. Turning back to Cull, he said, “I believe their claim is true and honorable.”

  Cull also stood. “And you believe that those years ago, your father was somehow involved in murdering theirs.”

  Robert clasped his eyes shut, and clenched his jaw. “I don’t know. Truly, I don’t but—”

  His words stalled.

  “But what?” Cull demanded, his muscles tense, for perhaps he did not want to hear what Robert would say.

  “An old warrior told me once, when I was trying very hard to understand the earl’s motivations against this northern clan, that my father once admired the Lady Kincaid, when she was young.” His voice softened. “Before she married the laird.”

  No. He did not want to hear this.

  “Your father has admired many women,” Cull replied, tamping down the anger that grew in his chest.

  “But loved only one, it seems,” Robert concluded quietly. “The same man also told me when he traveled through the Highlands years later, and allied himself with the Kincaid, that he loved her still, and endeavored to have her for himself … and that she did not feel the same.”

  A whole clan destroyed … for the love of a woman? That was what had brought him here, to the gates of Inverhaven, with an army and catapults? That was what had driven him and Derryth apart?

  His hands curled into fists, and he seethed. “You are saying that your father plotted against the Kincaid, because the Kincaid’s wife rejected his advances, and that because of that they were all murdered? Including children?”

  Just speaking the words chilled him to his soul.

  “I did not say that,” Robert bit out, glancing toward the door of the tent.

  “But you believe it,” Cull alleged. He closed his eyes, disgust rolling through him, like plague. Damn, what crime did he find himself complicit in?

  In the shadows, Robert’s countenance appeared to pale. “I only know that some say that there were not only MacClaren and Alwyn warriors present there that night. That there was a third conspirator, never identified, who provided many well-trained warriors.” He sighed, aggrieved. “And that since hearing the words, my soul has never rested easy since.”

  For a long time, silence held the room.

  “Write your letter,” Cull said at last.

  * * *

  The sound of a rider’s approach awakened Derryth. Her eyes flew open, and she lurched up, to stare across the top of the fire, to where Nathan lay curled on his side sleeping, and beyond the men who stood watch over them, diligent, their stances alert and their hands resting on the hilts of their swords. ’Twas early morning. Just before dawn. Darkness concealed the identity of the traveler, and weariness dulled her mind, but hope rose up inside her with each thud of the horses’ hooves.

  Cull, her heart sang. He came for her.

  And yet when the rider arrived, the eyes staring down at her did not belong to Cull, but to Duncan. Disappointment speared through her, sharp and grievous. The dark seemed darker then, and the cold all that much colder. The distance between the camp and Inverhaven, herself and Cull, far too vast. She gathered her cloak around her, and stared into the fire, though its warmth did nothing to remedy the chill in her bones. Moments later, she heard the sound of him dismounting, and his boots crunching across the earth toward her. She closed her eyes, and braced herself for his unwanted presence.

  “Wake that churl,” he ordered, with a jerk of his chin toward Nathan. “Take him away so that I may speak privately to the lady.”

  One of the warriors kicked Nathan, and as he roused, they dragged him away.

  With Nathan gone, Duncan stepped closer, his intimidating presence towering above her. Firelight revealed his lips drawn into a teasing smile.

  “Good morning, love,” he said.

  Her blood curdled at the offending words. She offered no greeting in reply—only a warding glare. And yet she stood rigid, her feet fixed in place, undeniably curious about what he would say to her. If he would share some news of Cull or the Kincaids. But could she trust anything he told her? She knew she could not.

  “I saw you there,” he murmured, glancing to the place where she’d first stood after wakening. “Filled with such hope until you saw it was me.”

  She looked away, into the darkness, so he would not see the true depth of pain he inflicted upon her with the truth of those words. Just days ago, she had never felt so alone as in Cull’s quarters, separated f
rom her kinsmen. How strange that now she hoped with such a wild and desperate fervor, to be returned to him. To face the future and any conflicts or consequences with him. Here, she felt lost and entirely out of sorts.

  But he moved nearer. “But he won’t be coming for you. All it took were a few words from me, and he believed.”

  “He believed what?” she demanded, as a gust of wind swept her hair across her lips.

  He shrugged, his manner easy, though his eyes gleamed hard and cold. “That you attempted again to escape with Nathan, and this time the two of you succeeded. He believes you’re inside that castle back there.”

  Derryth’s spirit plummeted. No doubt his words were true. Cull had no idea she was here, being held as Duncan’s prisoner, and that she had been forced to leave him against her will. Instead, he believed she’d willingly escaped … run from him … after they’d sworn their hearts to each other. Weak kneed with despair, she sank down beside the fire, perching on a log.

  No. No.

  She must be stronger than this.

  She inhaled deeply, drawing on Cull’s strength and her own, and pushed the misery away. Things were different now. She had to believe that despite Duncan’s lies and interference, Cull knew in his heart and soul that her words and her actions had been true. That she would never betray him. That they would find each other again, and never be torn apart.

  But the question remained. Why had Duncan brought her here?

  “Why have you done this?” she whispered harshly, making no effort to conceal the hatred in her eyes. “What do you intend?”

  He crouched beside her, so close she felt his warmth.

  “I don’t really have to tell you anything, do I? But I will.” He gestured between the two of them, his tone intimate. “Because you and I are going to be partners from this moment on.”

  “Partners,” she repeated the unpalatable word, her voice devoid of inflection. “In what way?”

  “In that you will do as I say,” he said almost amiably—but the curl of his lip grew cruel. “Today. Tomorrow. Always. And if you do, I will allow him to live. Defy me, and … I make no promises.”