[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  Emily held out her hand.

  Dog gave her his phone.

  She noted that his screen showed the same map with a line to Kilchurn Castle. It had the countdown, too. And yes, she showed up on it—or rather her phone did—as a big glowing dot. But this was not the Time Management app that she had on her own phone. Dog’s app didn’t have settings, and most importantly, it didn’t have the button she had pressed to bring herself and Dall here.

  Afraid to ask, but needing to know, Emily said, “Does it let you listen in on my conversations?”

  Dog pursed his lips and looked down at the floor.

  “I knew it.” Emily turned to Dall to see his reaction.

  Dall’s face was thoughtful. “Could ye always hear us, or ainly betimes?”

  Emily was impressed with Dall anew. He had only just learned about electricity, and he was already speculating about the microphone only working when powered up, even though some weird druidic magic was obviously involved.

  “We could hear you most of the time,” said Dog, still looking at the floor. “And if I could hear, then I bet Eamann could hear, too.”

  ***

  Early the next morning, Dall hugged his children and his mother goodbye and clasped forearms with his brothers.

  His mother smiled extra warmly at him, and kept smiling really big at Emily.

  “Safe journey,” his family called out in Gaelic as he mounted the horse and handed her up behind him.

  Emily was surprised to see Dog and his crew already mounted, each on his own horse, all with leather packs on their backs. She made a mental note never again to underestimate the resources at the druids’ disposal, nor to count on escaping their clutches—if only for a week—through the element of surprise. This made her check to make sure her phone was securely fastened to her cloak inside its brooch, along with the charger she hadn’t needed to use these two weeks she’d been in close proximity to Dall.

  The countdown had said ten days. Plenty of time.

  They were half a day’s ride away from the settlement when they heard Clan Menzies’ battle drums behind them, getting closer.

  5 Castle

  Do you think we lost them?" Emily's voice was nearly breathless as their horses ran. She and Dall were mounted together in the lead, with Dog and his crew following. They still had a ways to go before they got to the shelter of Orson’s cabin. They had left the Menzies clan drumbeats behind a while ago.

  Abruptly, Dall turned and ran their horse into a shallow side canyon, along a small creek. "Nay, they follow us yet. They wull na stop until they catch us or they are dead."

  “Where are we going?” Emily knew she should keep quiet and let Dall worry about their safety, but she couldn’t help asking.

  He didn’t need to answer, though. Even to Emily’s inexperienced eyes, it was obvious that Dall was setting up to ambush their pursuers. Ambush was their only option, really.

  The small canyon narrowed. Dall must have been headed for it on purpose. Just after a rock formation made it almost unbearably narrow—room for only one horse and rider—the canyon widened up again.

  Dall stopped, dismounted, and led the horse up the hill to the right, into some trees. “Up here, lads. Dae hurry.”

  Dog and Mike and the rest of the crew rode up and stopped noisily, their horses stamping and snorting. They dismounted and tied their horses to the trees.

  Dall pointed out the best places for them to climb up and shoot from. “Ower there. Up that way, the two o’ ye. On top, ye. The rest, up that way.”

  The archers scrambled up the rock formation. In moments, they were positioned.

  Dall dismounted, helped her down, and held her close a moment. “Stay hidden behind the horses, lass. If it does look bad for us, then ride on. When the canyon opens back up intae a glen, bear left along the river.” He kissed her then, fiercely, before he drew his sword and ran down the hill to hide behind the rocks that served as a narrow gate to this part of the canyon.

  Emily wished she could offer to help with their defense, but she knew she would only slow the men down. Instead, she huddled behind the horses, fighting the panic that threatened to take her over.

  And then the archers were shooting. And their targets were screaming.

  The first sky-blue kilted rider got as far as the rock gate, and Dall cut him down in seconds. The Menzies man already had two arrows in him. Emily cringed when the man’s horse neighed and reared, battering the air above Dall with its front hooves. But Dall ducked in time. The next Menzies rider rode right into it, though. Between Dall and the Menzies horse, the bodies were stacking up down there.

  Huddled down among the horses with her back against the rock wall, Emily couldn’t take her eyes or any of her attention off the action surrounding Dall. Mostly, she feared he would be injured, or worse.

  But also, he was just so amazing to watch. His sword swung, he leapt with his kilt flying, he ducked, he swung around the horse. If Dall’s life hadn’t been in danger, this fight would have been a better show than Cirque du Soleil.

  “Got ya.” A sky-blue kilted man appeared in front of Emily with his hands reaching out to grab her. He spoke in Gaelic, but she understood him perfectly. Mostly because of the leer on his face.

  Over the Menzies man’s shoulder, Emily saw that Dall saw him, too.

  It was tempting to stay put and let him come save her, but if Dall broke away from his fight at the gate to come help her, then the attackers would be at his back.

  Looking for whatever cover there was, Emily edged to her right along the rock wall, behind one of the horses. While the man couldn’t see, she reached down to her boot and pulled out the dagger.

  Again he spoke in Gaelic. “Think ye can hide from me, dae ye?”

  She feigned ignorance and kept easing around the horse, readying her stab as she had in the drills.

  “Ha. I wull hae ye now.”

  Their entire exchange took only seconds, not long enough to cause Dall to expose his back to their enemies.

  Before Emily could think about what she was doing, she stabbed her attacker under his right arm with the dagger, just as she had practiced on the straw bales.

  The man loosened his grip on her.

  Emily got away from him, grabbed one of the far horses, and ran down the canyon with it until she found a fallen tree to climb up on so that she could mount. Unpracticed as she was, getting up onto the horse by herself took Emily an uncomfortably long amount of time. She kept trying and failing, and she vowed to take riding lessons once she got back home. Once on horseback, she could see over all the brush back up the canyon.

  The sky-blue kilted man leaned against a tree, holding his wound with his other hand and huffing for breath. He was the only one back here. He must have climbed over the rock wall.

  Hoping no more men did that, she sat there on horseback watching him, planning to turn the horse and gallop away if he moved to follow her, but hoping he didn’t, because she had only ever ridden rental horses that followed each other in a pack, and only a handful of times.

  But she didn’t need to worry about the Menzies man for long.

  Dall called out to the archers, “Behind ye, lads.”

  The man’s sky-blue kilt acted as a target. He was full of arrows in seconds, pinned to the tree he’d been leaning on for support.

  Emily was glad she was far off down the canyon. Afraid as she’d been of the man, and glad as she was he could no longer come after her, she didn’t want to see his dead face. Back here, she could pretend it was all fake, a movie or something. She didn’t want to get close enough to make his death real.

  As quickly as it had started, the battle was over.

  Dall called down the canyon to Emily, “Bide there, lass. We gae tae make certain they are all dead.” He started to walk through the rock gate. Away from her. Out of her sight.

  “No.” she called back to Dall down the canyon. It echoed all around, making an eerie sound. “No, no, no, no, no…”
r />   Dall stopped and turned toward Emily again, halfway through the rock gate. “Are ye hurt, lass?” He started running to her.

  Dog and his crew were climbing down the rocks. She watched them gather what arrows they could off the bodies that lay still on this side of the barrier and then mount their horses to come join her.

  Emily’s common sense told her she was being childish.

  She didn’t listen.

  Maybe she had grown up a little, but she couldn’t bear for Dall to leave her sight right now, and she also couldn’t bear to go back up the canyon to him and see the carnage. So she stayed right where she was and let Dall come to her. She let him think she was injured and bleeding, rather than just afraid.

  Dall was in the saddle behind her almost as soon as he got there, looking her over for wounds. To her surprise, he found one, a slice on the top of her left forearm, through what she knew as her ‘tennis muscle’. It hadn’t even hurt until she saw it. Too shocked to move, she watched it bleed for a second, and then everyone fell silent, and Dall gently put his hand over her mouth.

  She turned to look at Dall.

  He had his hand over his own mouth, and a question in his eyes.

  She gently brushed his hand aside and hushed her own mouth, nodding to show that she understood: for some reason, Dall didn’t want the druids to hear them talking about Emily’s injury, through her phone.

  He pointed to her brooch and then to her boot.

  She tucked it away, but she put her finger over her mouth and pointed to her injury and made sure everyone nodded that they understood.

  Dall said out loud, “Let us ride for a bit, tae make certain we are safe afore we stop tae decide what we wull dae.”

  Mike rode up then and whispered something in Dall’s ear.

  After hesitating, looking at Emily, and then nodding to Mike, Dall whispered in Emily’s ear so softly she could barely hear it, “I hae given the lad a minute tae clean and bandage yer wound tae stop the bleeding. He says he wull stitch it later.”

  Even as Dall spoke, Mike gently took hold of Emily’s arm and poured iodine-treated water through her wound.

  Rather than relaxing, though, Emily could feel Dall stiffen in the saddle behind her. She could picture him scanning up at the rocks all around them, looking for intruders. She fought a giggle. Her arm didn’t hurt yet, and she was content to sit there quietly and let everyone take care of her.

  A second surprise was that Mike had his own soap. He lathered it in his hands, rinsed, made more lather, and used the lather to clean her wound. It stung like nothing she had ever felt, and she gasped over and over, fighting the scream that tried to form.

  A third surprise was Mike’s own tube of antibiotic ointment, which of course wasn’t disguised like hers was. He dressed her wound and then bandaged it with part of someone’s clean shirt they had dug out of their leather backpack and ripped. Just for her.

  Once the bandage was on and she wasn’t watching her life’s blood drain away, Emily snapped out of her daze. Having Dall behind her on the horse was a brand new and comforting experience.

  Now, he was the one hugging her. It almost let her ignore the ache that formed in her arm.

  A fourth surprise was when the guy who had played the apothecary in their play wordlessly handed Emily the dagger she had left in the Menzies man’s underarm. He had cleaned it.

  “Thanks,” Emily told him just as quietly, re-sheathing the dagger in her boot.

  Dall was talking to everyone, though. “Lads, let us ride as far from here as we can in one gae.”

  They all kicked their horses and took off down the canyon.

  Emily was glad to leave the dead and dying behind.

  When they saw the first of Orson’s cattle grazing about the green hills, Dall slowed the horse to a walk and all the men followed his lead. From her week of highlands experience, Emily knew Dall had slowed so as not to spook the livestock. But the cattle lowed anyhow, and by that means of warning, red-kilted Orson MacGregor was in his open front door, alerted to their arrival by the time the riders got to the house.

  “Cousin Dall. Are ye growing lads oot in the fields now? How came ye upon such a large company?”

  “Cousin Orson. I hae traveled the waurld, dinna ye ken?” Dall gave Emily a squeeze and then jumped down from behind her and greeted his cousin with a hug and several manly slaps on the back, which made both of their red plaid kilts sway.

  There was general hubbub over the next several minutes while all the archers dismounted and Dall helped Emily down with a smile and an embrace and Orson’s children took the horses to the barn and Orson’s wife in her long plaid skirt shooed all of the adults into the house and bade them sit around her huge kitchen table. Bows, quivers, and Dall’s claymore were stacked in the weapon racks on the walls, tankards were filled with beer, and plates of bread and cheese were plunked down.

  For the first few hours of the traveling party’s merry time at Cousin Orson’s, the crew whittled new arrows while they told Orson how they had turned the tables on their Menzies pursuers that morning. If Emily hadn’t been there and seen the fighting for herself, they would have given her the impression that their battle had been a marvelous and even a glorious thing, rather than the terror she had known it to be.

  “There were at least FIFTY of them, all on horses.”

  “Dall got us to this sweet spot where we picked them off with arrows from on top of some rocks.”

  Dall cut in then and gave his cousin the Gaelic name of the place.

  Orson made a noise of recognition and sat back to hear the rest of their tale.

  Dall explained to Emily much later that Orson would get word to the Menzies of the location of their kin’s bodies, so that they could be taken to the Menzies burial grounds.

  But right then, the bikers continued bragging about their second real battle.

  “I shot fifteen of them.”

  “I got ten.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Nine for me.”

  “They were all bottled up there at that narrow gap in the rocks with nowhere to go. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  There weren’t quite enough chairs, so Mike was sitting on a crate by Emily’s left side in the corner of the kitchen, quietly stitching her wound together while Dall sat on her right, caressing her back through her thick bodice and letting her squeeze his other arm with her right hand. Emily was biting down on the rolled-up remains of the shirt Mike had torn to make bandages for her, but she was breathing heavy through both nose and mouth, visibly in pain all the time Mike was stitching and bandaging and measuring out doses from her pouches for her—of Ibuprofen and Tylenol and oral antibiotics.

  “Sorry,” Mike said to her quietly, “but I don’t think there’s any ice.”

  Wondering what would happen if she took her phone out of her boot, brought up the Time Management app, and pushed the time travel button right now, Emily managed a weak smile for Mike at his joke. “Thanks for all you’ve done, Mike. I mean it.” She had counted twenty stitches.

  Dall held forearms with Mike for a moment, in silent thanks for his help.

  The gesture made Emily smile a little bigger, for some reason.

  The guys went on and on about the battle, as if it were a football game. And then the conversation came around to Emily’s small part in the fray.

  “They were all so full of arrows, they looked like voodoo dolls.”

  “Of course Dall got twelve with that crazy big sword of his.”

  “Yeah, but even Emily stuck one.”

  Everyone turned to look at her then, and seeing her stitched-up wound and her unamused face, they quieted a little. But they still talked of the battle.

  “Yeah, all of us men except Dall were hiding up there on the rocks, shooting from far away.”

  “The one woman in our group is the only one who is going to have battle—”

  Mike put a hand over that one’s mouth and concluded for him without reveali
ng Emily’s injury to the druids.

  “You’re a tough one, Emily.”

  “Yeah, no one should me messing with you once this gets around.”

  And then someone handed her a tankard of beer laced with whiskey.

  She sipped it, and once she was halfway through that, the pain had subsided and she was having fun again on this epic adventure.

  Orson’s children were the only ones not drinking. They were up in a loft most of the time, only coming down to go out to the privy to relieve themselves, and when dinner was announced.

  Dinner. Emily thought she remembered dinner being good, but she couldn’t remember what it had been, really, only that she had lost count of her tankards of beer and whiskey.

  And then she was laughing, because Mike was up on top of the empty kitchen table, doing Juliet and the nurse and Lady Capulet in much more daring female voices than he had used at the castle. He sure was funny. She looked around and everyone thought so. It was good to hear them all laughing and having fun.

  And then Dog and the others took turns in the kitchen, showing off their staged sword fights with pots and pans round and round the stove with much yelling and groaning and other exaggerated theatrics.

  The children peeked down from the loft to watch, and the whole play went by, acted in various parts of the house around the kitchen table, wherever there was room.

  But the room was spinning, and she was so sleepy. Dall was giving her the usual goodnight kiss, and then someone who reminded Emily of her mother walked her through a door, undressed her, and put her to bed.

  She drifted off to the sound of men singing.

  Emily’s full bladder woke her. She had a warm fuzzy moment when she thought she was in her bed at her parents’ house. She meant to go start the coffee maker, guzzle all the orange juice in the fridge, and then take a shower. Until she opened her eyes. It took a few seconds for her to realize she was in Orson and his wife’s bedroom. It took one more second for her to remember why they had given her their bed and slept elsewhere.