Medieval Ever After (130 page)

HIGHLANDER’S RECKONING

CHAPTER THIRTY

Meredith darted from
the door to the great hall toward Daniel, her arms full of tallow candles.

“This is the last of them,” she breathed as she passed the armload of candles to Daniel.

She turned and scrambled back toward the safety of the great hall, looking overhead as she did. Arrows continued to drop occasionally over the curtain wall and into the yard, though blessedly the locust-like swarm of arrows raining down on them had ceased.

Once he saw that Meredith was securely inside the great hall, he spun around and strode to the enormous iron caldron in the middle of the yard. One of the men used a long wooden pole to stir the contents of the caldron from several feet away to avoid the heat of the roaring fire underneath it.

Daniel dumped the castle’s candles into the caldron, watching the tallow melt and blend into the rest of the animal fat almost instantly.

“Is it ready?” Robert said as he strode toward Daniel from the wall.

“Aye, but Robert…this is all of it.”

Daniel locked eyes with his older brother for a moment. They’d dumped the storeroom’s entire barrel of tallow into the caldron, and Meredith and Alwin had been at work collecting every last candle within the castle. They’d even slaughtered the few animals kept at the castle and rendered their fat as best as they could. Normally they would have kept the animals alive as long as possible in case they were trapped in the castle for several weeks and needed fresh food. But they wouldn’t withstand the attack from Warren’s men for another week or even just a few days. This was their last hope.

Robert gave Daniel a terse nod, his face grim. He pivoted and brought his fingers to his lips, whistling loudly. A moment later, Garrick appeared at the bottom of the stairs leading to the battlements.

“Is it time?” Garrick said, trotting to the smoking caldron of animal fat.

“Aye,” Daniel replied. “Where are the English most densely packed?”

“On the island’s eastern shore, though they continue to move toward the main gate and the postern gate.”

As if to prove Garrick’s words, another loud thump came from outside the main gate. Daniel tried to block out the sound, which had started in the middle of the night and had hammered on until now.

He glanced up at the blue-pink dawn sky. This was the second breaking of dawn since the castle had been under attack. He wasn’t sure they would see a third.

They’d managed to pass a relatively quiet first night after Daniel and the others had made it to the castle. The Englishmen on the far shore had apparently deemed it unwise to try to cross the loch’s dark waters at night. But as soon as the sky lightened on the first full day of the attack, the English once again took to their makeshift rafts, some of which managed to land on the castle’s island.

The castle’s men had had their hands full trying to pick off the armored soldiers one at a time, and by that evening, there were enough Englishmen on the island to unlash their rafts and use one of the large tree trunks as a battering ram against the main gate.

The dull crash of the trunk against the main gate’s thick wooden doors jarred through Daniel’s thoughts yet again.

“Even if they splinter the main gate, the iron portcullis will hold,” he said more to himself than his brothers. “We should concentrate on the men at the postern gate.”

Robert nodded, and Garrick took off toward the battlements above the postern gate to prepare the castle’s men.

Burke suddenly appeared at Robert and Daniel’s side carrying a long and thick wooden beam over one shoulder.

“It’s probably time to tell the women to bar the hall’s doors,” Daniel said to Burke. Despite his initial assumption that Jossalyn, Alwin, and Meredith would stay safely ensconced behind the tower keep’s stone walls, they had been an immeasurable help in the last day and a half. Jossalyn tended to arrow wounds as the attacking bowmen continued to fire over the castle’s walls. Alwin and Meredith had kept the castle’s staff out of harm’s way and made sure the men ate heartily to keep up their strength.

“I already did,” Burke replied. “They have a beam like this over the door, and all the windows, even the loopholes and arrow slits, have been sealed.”

Burke rolled the wooden beam off his shoulder and guided it through the hooped handle holding the caldron on a spit over the fire. Daniel and Robert took up the other end. With another man on Burke’s end, they hoisted the caldron off the fire and set the beam on their shoulders. Slowly, so as not to spill the near-boiling animal fat brimming in the caldron, they paced across the yard and toward the curtain wall.

As they made their way up the stairs and onto the battlement, the castle’s men moved out of their way. Daniel overheard Garrick directing the archers’ attention to the men ramming the main gate in an effort to make the most of this last effort.

They propped the caldron on one of the merlons directly above the postern gate and inched it into position. As the others removed the wooden beam from the caldron’s handle, Daniel chanced a glance over the wall. Dozens of mail-clad English soldiers swarmed below looking for a way to break down the postern gate.

This was it—their last defensive maneuver before their attackers would likely break through the castle’s gates and storm the inner yard. Daniel stepped next to Robert and Burke, taking hold of the wooden beam.

“Now!” Daniel bellowed. They rammed the beam into the caldron, sending the hot animal fat, along with the heavy caldron itself, streaming over the curtain wall.

A fraction of a second later, Daniel heard the frantic shrieks of the men below. He risked another glance over the wall. The near-boiling tallow had poured and splattered all over the English soldiers. Their skin smoked underneath their chainmail as they were roasted alive. Some tried to scramble into the loch’s waters, but the animal fat clung to them, not washing away. The screams of agony began to fade, and Daniel turned away from the carnage.

He suddenly realized that he hadn’t heard the thud of the ram against the main gate in several minutes. He ran along the battlements toward the front of the castle, fearing the worst. When he skidded to a halt above the gate, however, he almost fell to his knees with joy.

Garrick’s archers were raining down a merciless stream of arrows on the soldiers below, concentrating their efforts in one mighty assault. The soldiers had dropped their battering ram and had taken cover by pressing themselves as closely as possible against the curtain wall.

“That’s it, men!” Daniel shouted to them.

A cheer went up around the battlements as the castle’s men began to sense that they’d won a small victory. Daniel, too, let his heart surge with hope.

But then he glanced up from the cowering soldiers below the wall and all hope drained from him. Instead of the trickle of rafts that had dared to brave open waters, the loch between the eastern shore and the castle was now choked with rafts. They had been so focused on fighting off the men who’d reached the island that the English had doubled their efforts when they realized the rafts were going unassaulted.

Daniel cursed, and the cheer of triumph died along the battlements as others noticed the swarm of rafts headed right for them.

“Aim for the rafts, men!” Garrick shouted to redirect the archers’ efforts.

“The rest of you, to the yard!” Daniel barked. The remainder of the castle’s men not firing arrows quickly filtered into the courtyard. They gathered in a tight knot in the center of the yard, somber and grim.

Daniel stepped into their midst, and they naturally parted for him, giving him a little space in the middle of their group.

“The English will shortly breach our gates,” Daniel said quietly to them. “But that doesn’t mean the fight is over.”

A few of the men nodded, though most looked on gravely.

“This is our home,” Daniel went on, “but it is also our King’s home. We will do everything in our power to defend it, to protect our loved ones, and to hold this castle for Scotland.”

Several “Ayes” rippled through those gathered around him. Daniel’s eyes scanned the men, and his gaze landed on Robert, who nodded to him, his jaw tight.

“We will fight with our dying breath to stand against our English attackers. We will fight fiercely and die honorably for our King and cause!”

The men rumbled back their approval at Daniel’s words. Daniel unsheathed his sword and held it over his head.

“You men, stand at the postern gate,” he said to part of the group. “The rest of you take the main gate. When they break through, give them hell!”

The yard rattled with the men’s battle cries and fierce shouts as the group split and took up their positions, waiting for the dreaded breach of their defenses.

Daniel gripped his sword in both hands as the seconds crept by. The dull, slow hammering against the main gate resumed. Enough men must have already landed on the island to overwhelm Garrick’s archers and take up the battering ram once more. He could hear Garrick urging on the bowmen, but then a large crack rent the air. The main gate was finally giving in to the battering ram. Daniel braced his feet and sent up a prayer.

“Daniel! Robert! Burke!”

Garrick’s voice was closer on the battlements overhead, tight with urgency. Daniel sprinted across the yard, followed by Robert and Burke, and the three of them bounded up the stairs to the battlements.

“What is it?” Daniel said, fearing the worst. Garrick was staring at the far shoreline, his face disbelieving.

Daniel followed his brother’s line of sight, but he heard the sound before his eyes could make sense of what he was seeing.

“What in the bloody hell…?”

A deep rumbling drifted across the loch from the shore. The rumble grew louder and turned into a cry. A battle cry.

Before Daniel’s eyes, the forest behind the Englishmen on the shoreline exploded as an army poured forth and set upon their attackers.

The Bruce’s army.

Even from this distance, Daniel could make out the splashes of red, green, blue, and brown plaid that marked the motley rebel army. The English soldiers fell into disarray, some turning to face their new attackers while others attempted to flee either along the north or the south shorelines. But the Bruce’s army had them surrounded, pinned against the loch.

“Christ, they made it!” Burke breathed.

Daniel’s eyes flitted first to the dozens of rafts floating between the shore and the castle, then to the English soldiers below as they scrambled onto the island and toward the castle. Apparently they had noticed the sound of the surprise appearance by the Bruce’s army as well, for they looked at each other in confused turmoil.

“We should attack,” Daniel said to himself, his mind suddenly forming a plan.

“What? How?” Robert retorted, bringing Daniel’s attention to him.

“We should attack those who have reached the island,” Daniel went on, the pieces of the plan coming into place. “Open the gates!”

“This is madness!” Robert shouted at him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. “It’s far too risky!”

Daniel wrenched his shoulders free.

“Aye, but they are scattered and confused at the moment. If we strike now, and strike hard, we could save the castle!”

“With the Bruce’s reinforcements, we won’t have to worry about withstanding a relentless assault from the soldiers on the shore,” Garrick said, his eyes scanning the battlements’ stones in thought. “And the Englishmen on rafts are stranded in the middle of the loch. They would be easy to pick off.”

Robert stared silently at both of them. Finally, he spoke.

“What do you think, Burke?”

Burke ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair, his brow furrowed.

“If we open the gates and the Englishmen on the island and those soon to reach us by raft overpower us, the Bruce’s army can’t save us,” he said slowly. “But if we catch them off-guard, and if Garrick’s archers can concentrate their efforts on the rafts, we could save ourselves.”

“We have to take the chance, brother,” Daniel said intently to Robert. “Stand by me in this decision.”

Robert closed his eyes for a moment and bowed his head. “Let’s do it then,” he whispered.