Men fell on him in a heap, hands grappling, weight pressing, locking him into place. James kicked and punched and writhed, but none of it did him any good. Within seconds, he was fully restrained, his wrists bound behind his back with a rough rope.
“Lord Werrick,” Laird Graham’s voice cried out in the cool spring air and echoed off the thick stone walls. “Cede yer castle, or yer man will suffer the consequences of yer refusal.”
A scuffling came from the outskirts of the party and Drake was dragged forward. The tear at the collar of his shirt had been ripped to his navel and his bonny face was mottled with bruises and dried blood. The Graham reiver behind him knotted a rope into a noose and slung the loose end over the high branch of a tree. Drake tensed but did not attempt to run. Not that it would have helped. Instead, his gaze darted over the surrounding crowd. No doubt in search of Anice.
Forever her protector.
The reiver draped the loop over Drake’s head and fitted it snugly around his throat. After the long production of preparing Drake to hang, Laird Graham shouted up at the battlements once more. “He isna all ye’ll be sacrificing. We also have yer daughter.”
Anice was pushed from the massive band of reivers toward the tree. Her blue dress was streaked with dirt, but she appeared unharmed. More than unharmed, in fact. She was defiant, her eyes flashing and her back straight and proud. James’s chest constricted.
Within seconds, it became clear why he had been restrained, for a second noose was knotted. They meant to put the scratching rope around Anice’s slender neck and—
His body erupted with rage.
One elbow caught a reiver in the gut while the top of his forehead smashed into another’s nose. There was no pain with any of his strikes, only the overwhelming need to get to Anice. To save her.
James lurched forward, hands still bound, with her name on his lips and in his heart. A cold hand clasped over his face, stifling his cry. Grit from his attacker’s palm ground harshly against his mouth, the pressure clamping off her name and muffling it to something she would never hear.
Many hands restrained him, and still he fought, helpless as the noose was placed over Anice’s head and roughly tightened.
Laird Graham grinned at his handiwork. He faced the castle once more. “Well?” he demanded. “Will ye cede yer castle?”
“Nay,” Anice cried out. The man beside her attempted to restrain her, but she shoved him away. “Don’t do it, Papa!”
“Ye dinna have long to make yer decision.” Laird Graham nodded to the reivers near Anice and Drake. “Slow, lads. Ye dinna want to break their necks.”
To James’s horror, the men obediently pulled on the ropes, arm over arm, until Anice’s feet lifted off the ground. He struggled and fought against his captors to no avail. His father would get Werrick Castle, even if it meant that Anice would have to die.
James knew that now, and he was entirely helpless to stop it.
Anice had expected her fate as soon as the noose slipped around her neck and immediately formed a plan.
The loose-bound ropes on her wrists were made more so by subtle wriggling during the journey. Her bindings had slackened so much that she had to hold her fingers just so to keep the rope from slipping off. Then there was the blade James had slipped her.
James. Where was he?
Her gaze skimmed the crowd of faces with desperation, but he was not to be seen. She gritted her teeth. She couldn’t think about him now, not when she needed to focus, to survive.
The dagger was in her boot. She would need to cut her own rope first, then Drake’s.
The intention had been laid out and was ready to be acted on. But that was before the rope was pulled taut and her body weight was hung by the frailty of her neck.
Pain.
There was so much pain.
Even having been raised gently, the ache at her throat was stunning. Her feet kicked to find solid ground but met only air, and each shift in movement caused the rope to tighten around her neck, squeezing, digging. So much pain.
Tears blurred her vision and panic swept through her mind, threatening to wipe away her carefully thought-out strategy. Her hands jerked and the ropes slipped free, an action done in her body’s desperate attempt to live. But it was the reminder she needed.
To save herself. To save Drake.
She drew up her right leg, plunged her hand into the side of her boot and withdrew the sheathed dagger. The world began to grow dim and shouting echoed around her. Shouting.
She could be caught.
Panic consumed everything else and pushed her further into action. She ripped the sheath from the dagger and yanked on the rope around her neck. It hardly gave at all with her weight pulling it snug, but it was enough for a blade to fit between. She shoved the dagger with the blade toward the rope and sliced outward.
The pressure on her neck abated and she fell hard to the ground. She wanted to gasp breath into her burning throat, to taste the sweetness of fresh air filling her lungs once more. But there was no time for even that. Her captors were already leaping toward her and Drake—
Choking, she lurched to her feet and sliced at the rope stretched in front of her from which Drake hung. He dropped like a sack of grain.
“The horse,” she rasped. The two simple words were like fire to her raw throat. Drake quickly staggered to his feet as Anice had, and together they ran toward a nearby horse.
The reivers were nearly on top of them now, swords brandished. Drake grabbed her and threw her onto the horse. A man raised his blade. Drake’s back was to them, vulnerable to attack in his desperation to escape, to save her. Anice aimed her dagger and let it fly as the man began to bring down his weapon.
Her blow struck first. The blade plunged into the reiver’s throat and he dropped at Drake’s feet just as the warrior leapt onto the horse behind her. Anice dug her hands into the mane and the beast galloped in the direction of Werrick Castle.
Already men were at their side on horseback, trying to run them off the straight path to the castle.
It was the first time she had truly looked at her family’s castle since being strung up in the tree. Now, with a moment to spare as they raced to outrun the Grahams, she saw that the portcullis had, in fact, been opened.
“Nay!” The protest croaked weakly from her throat. Certainly nothing could be heard over the two armies preparing for battle. If anyone could actually hear, it was far too late. The portcullis could not be closed in time.
A man to their right edged closer and forced his horse to knock into theirs. Their mount staggered but caught its footing and continued on. An arrow whizzed past and the man fell from his horse, with a white-fletched arrow jutting from his eye.
Catriona.
A glance at the battlements revealed a slender blonde-haired woman armed with only a bow and quiver of arrows. She drew back an arrow and the man to Anice’s left fell. One by one, Anice’s sister cleared the path for them to get to the castle, even as the remainder of the army stormed behind them, rushing forward with the same purpose.
When the shadow of the entryway fell over her and Drake at last, they finally met with hope. They leapt from the horse on trembling legs and were greeted by soldiers pushing them deeper into the depths of Werrick Castle’s bailey as men closed around them in a protective circle.
Catriona’s voice rang out from above, calling to her archers on the battlements to ready their arrows.
“You were not set free?” Anice asked Drake.
“I was.” His words were as roughly spoken as her own from having been hanged. “But the reivers were waiting for me just outside the walls. As if they knew.” He slid her a glance, saying everything his words did not.
He suspected they had been betrayed.
The silent accusation slipped into her gut like a blade. Surely James had not betrayed her. “He gave me the dagger which saved both our lives,” Anice reminded Drake.
His jaw flexed.
“Say your piece,
” Anice demanded.
“He did not stop the reivers when ye were hanged.” The skin around Drake’s eyes tightened. “He betrayed us.”
Her heart slammed painfully inside her chest to hear such words aloud. She could not believe them. Not when James had given her the dagger, when they had spent so much time carefully laying out their plan, when he’d told her how he loved her. “Nay.” Her response was determined and resolute.
James would not have betrayed her. But then, where was he? Fear trickled down her spine. She turned back abruptly to the soldiers racing toward the portcullis, once more seeking his face.
“Anice.” Her father’s voice pulled her attention away.
Lord Werrick looked every bit the same as he had when she had left, albeit in his armor. The slender face with hollowed cheekbones, the gentle smile, the kind eyes that were now filling with tears.
“My daughter.” His voice choked off and he rushed to her, arms open.
Anice ran to him as she had when she’d been a girl, eager for his comfort and the safety only a father’s embrace could give.
He held her to him and gave a shuddering exhale. “My girl, I thought I would lose you on this day.”
“You raised us to be stronger than that, Papa,” she said into his chest.
Her father drew back and took her face between his hands. His palms were cool and eased the blazing heat of her face. “I’ve never been gladder for it.” He turned to Drake and nodded. “I am indebted to you yet again. Get you both inside where it is safe. Isla is at the ready for the wounded and can tend to you with haste.”
At the front of the bailey, shouting rose and the unmistakable clatter of armed men slamming into one another shattered the still air. The battle had begun.
Drake’s shoulders fell at the command. He glanced back to the melee with apparent regret, but dutifully nodded his assent.
“Nay,” Anice said forcefully. “Laird Graham lied to us all.”
And James was somewhere in that mass of men.
She could feel him, sense him in that crush of reivers as surely as she could sense her own heartbeat. “Bring us swords,” she said. “For we will fight.”
29
The arms restraining James released him suddenly. But it was too late. Anice was in the castle and the reivers were already breaking inside.
The departure from Caldrick Castle had been too abrupt for James to know if Tall Tam had been able to successfully deliver the message to Lord Bastionbury. It would be impossible to know until James was inside. And he would get inside.
He shoved free of his captors and sprinted toward the castle, toward Anice. Men rushed on either side of him, driven by avarice and anticipation for plundering.
“Go back to yer farms,” James shouted at the men as he ran. “Yer wives and children are waiting for ye, for a life of peace.”
But they did not hear him, or if they did, they did not care for what he said, for on they ran.
Surely Anice would know he hadn’t betrayed her. After all, he’d given her the dagger. And thank God he had, or she would have been surely killed on this day. The very idea sent a shiver of fear rippling over his skin.
Ahead, the entry to the castle was jammed full of men engaged in close quarter combat. Blades flashed in the afternoon sun, glinting red with blood.
James shoved his weight into the wall of men. His weapon had been taken, but he did not need it. Nay, he relied on his fists, refusing to take the lives of either a soldier of Werrick Castle or a Graham reiver. Both his brethren—by blood or by marriage—but brethren all the same.
His armor was good, and his instincts were better still. A blade flew in his direction, but he ducked to avoid its strike. The man beside him cried out and fell hard against him. James caught the reiver and held him upright. Not that he could do anything to save the man. Blood gushed from a wound in his throat and splashed hot and wet against James’s gambeson, staining it with death.
The light dimmed from the reiver’s pale blue eyes and the gripping hold he kept on James’s sleeves slackened. Slowly, he slid to the ground, leaving James covered in gore from having borne witness to the man’s final moments of life.
Regret and rage burned in James’s chest. This was what he’d striven to prevent. Lives senselessly taken for no purpose but purloined treasure. It was disgusting, this greed.
He’d finally given peace to his men, but they wanted treasure more.
James roared with anger, with anguish, and shoved into the melee once more. Something hard and heavy slammed into his back. Searing pain cracked through him and robbed him of his breath. He staggered, held upright only by the pressing wall of others around him. Were it not for the armor in his gambeson, no doubt that blow would have felled him.
A massive battle axe came down from above, but James jerked hard to the right, through the agony it cost him to do so, and narrowly avoided the impact. He had to get through the melee and into the castle, to Anice. To do what he could to protect her. To do what he could to stop this battle.
All around him were faces he recognized, men from his youth and men from his weeks spent at Werrick Castle.
“Anice,” he cried out. “I need to get to my wife.”
The man in front of him, a Werrick soldier, shifted back slightly. Whether the move had been intentional, or by accident, James shoved past and slipped between the soldiers. Now he was on the side of battle with Werrick Castle’s soldiers, an area far more dangerous.
Battle was confusing; it always had been with the cacophony of melee and screams and death. Fear ran high, as well as confidence and the heart-rattling energy pumping hot through every man’s veins. James used that confusion to his advantage. He darted and dove through the men, pushing his way further into the bailey.
His awareness tingled. Something moved in his direction from the side. Something fast. He spun around and was immediately struck by a hurtling body. James dropped to the ground, the man still standing over him. He swept his leg out with all the strength he could muster. The man fell beside him.
Not just any man. Drake.
The younger man stared at him through the slits of his helm.
James held his hands at his side, trying not to appear as a threat. “Drake, I—”
Drake’s right leg curled in as he moved to stand.
“Forgive me,” James muttered. He shoved hard on Drake’s chest, using the weight of the younger man’s armor against him, and sent Drake crashing to his back once more. The weight of his helm crashed into the hard cobblestones and Drake went still.
The pain at James’s back had abated some, but his breath still came like heavy fire in his lungs. He turned from Drake before the man regained his senses and regarded the castle once more.
Anice stood at the entrance only feet away, her eyes wide with horror.
“Anice—” He reached out for her. It was then he noticed his fingers, covered in blood. All of him, covered in blood. In that instant, he realized how it must look with him approaching her thus. He’d come through the battle still standing and smeared with gore.
He doubted he looked like a man set on reclaiming his wife, but instead a reiver set on pillaging.
“Anice, wait, I—”
She held her sword aloft between them, preparing to fight.
Persuading her of his innocence would not be as easy as it had in the dungeon. Judging from the raw anger flushing her cheeks, he would need to convince her soon, or she just might kill him.
The ache in Anice’s heart threatened to cave in her chest. Drake lay still on the ground and James covered in blood. Surely, he had not…
“James.” She choked out his name and stepped forward with more confidence than she felt. The blade trembled in her hand, belying the torrent of hurt and sorrow rushing through her. “What have you done?”
“He’s no’ dead.” James regarded first the tip of her sword pointed at his throat and then her. “This isna his blood. Anice, please believe me.”
“My da knew I had lied to him.” He shook his head. “Anice, I dinna betray ye.”
She lifted the sword higher lest she give into the temptation to let it fall away. She wanted to believe him, with every piece of her soul.
“I’m no’ armed,” he said.
She drew a dagger from her belt, similar to the one he’d given to her, and tossed it on the ground at his feet. It skittered over the uneven cobblestones and came to a rest in front of his boots.
She did not wish to fight him, but if it came down to it, she would not battle an unarmed man. “How do I know I can believe you?”
He didn’t look at the dagger on the ground, but kept his stare fixed on her, his expression solemn. The background sounds of war were loud and invasive. The clang of metal on metal, the cries of the dying.
“I gave ye a similar dagger for protection,” he said. “Because I am on yer side. I always have been.” He finally looked down at the dagger, untouched, at his feet. “I willna fight ye.”
Her throat went tight, and her eyes grew hot with emotion. Hope blazed through her, a flame she realized had never fully extinguished. Hope that his words were true. “Then you did not betray me?” she asked slowly.
The clatter of weapons and men became louder, closer. They were running out of time.
His face softened. “Nay, mo leanan.”
The endearment tore at her heart and her sword tip lowered slightly. So much was at risk if she was wrong. Her people, her home, her family, everything.
“My father intercepted my message to Lord Bastionbury,” James continued. “He knew early on I was against him. When he—” His voice broke. “When he hung ye from that tree…” He lowered his head and sniffled.
“Where were you?” Anice asked, desperate to know what had happened to keep him from coming to her aid.
Anice's Bargain Page 23
