Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (51 page)

“What is writ there?” Guy asked from above
him, still astride his mount.

Robert crumpled the vellum in his fist.
“Donnach. He’s got her at the hunter’s cot where we...where he
first found Morgana and I together.”

“I believe it not. Let me see.”

Without looking up, Robert thrust the vellum
at Guy.

Guy kneed his mount foreword and took it.
There was a tense silence while Guy read.

“Blood of Christ!
Tricked.
The cur!” He
looked up. “Morgunn will be on his way to court, even now. Do we
wait, or do we ride?”

Robert mounted his courser, saying in a
growl, “We ride.”

Guy gave a sharp nod. “I’ll send one of my
men back to inform the King we know where he’s lodged with your
wife.”

Wheeling his steed around, Robert said only,
“Aye,” then moved to the head of the rank and wasted no more time
there, simply spurred his mount into a canter down the road they’d
just been traveling for nigh on three hours.

Tho’ he knew that Morgunn would relish the
chance to face his half-brother, Robert also knew that his wife
would ne’er forgive him if her father was maimed or, worse,
killed—a very likely outcome, in Robert’s opinion, as Morgunn was
not young, and so would still be recovering from the injuries he
sustained five days past.

And there was also the
fact that Robert held no doubt that Donnach lied, that he would
kill Morgana—may already have done so—even were Robert to bring
Morgunn to him. Which was why his gut was, and had been, telling
him to hie himself to her side without delay.
You are on the wrong path, just as I had
planned
. The words chafed, made spikes of
bile that pierced the insides of his stomach.
If he’s killed her, I
shall
kill him.

Guy rode up next to him then. Robert felt
the weight of his stare, but refused to bend in this contest of
wills.

Finally, Guy said, “I know what you are
thinking.”

Robert shrugged.

“The King’s warning to you in the bailey
before we departed was clear: He wants Donnach brought to him
alive.”

Again, Robert shrugged.

“You’ll hang.”

Robert said naught. The silence thrummed
between them. Finally, Guy shook his head and turned his gaze back
to the road.

* * *

Several hours later, Robert, Guy, and his
force were at last on the steady incline of the path that would
lead them through the wood to the cot. All was quiet, except the
sound of horses’ hooves clomping as they stepped and shifted up the
slope. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. Robert
scanned the area. Sunlight dappled the ground, gilded the trees in
gold light, and from every direction came to him the lush scent of
green leaves, earth, and woodland flowers. Fleetingly, Robert
recalled the winter snow that had weighed upon the brown branches
and blanketed the earth beneath on his last journey up to the cot,
but swiftly forced his mind back to his purpose. ‘Twas too quiet,
too still.

Yet. He saw no one. Even so, he moved his
hand to the hilt of his sword, saying to Guy sotto voce, “I full
believe we shall find a contingent of Donnach’s mercenaries
surrounding the cot. There may even be some that will meet us here
on the path. I’ve a feeling in my gut. Warn your men.”

G
UY PIVOTED IN his saddle and lifted his arm, giving the
signal to his soldiers to be on guard. Just as he was turning back
around, the boughs of the trees came alive. Men with daggers raised
fell from the skies onto them, dropping their shrubby shields as
they went, and making short work of stabbing as many as they could
in their eyes or throat when they came down on top of them, before
fleeing with their victims’ mounts through the trees, like cowardly
robbers.

In little more time than ‘twould have taken
to utter the Lord’s Prayer, ‘twas finished, and six of Guy’s men
lay slain. Still more—by a quick count, four—lay moaning and
writhing, blinded and bleeding.

“Follow them!” Guy yelled to two of his
soldiers nearest the place off the path the cowards had taken, but
Robert gripped his arm and bellowed to them, “Nay! Stay where you
are!” then to Guy, he said, “ ‘Tis what Donnach wants. To delay us,
mayhap even to trap us with not enough men to fight. Did you not
see that we two were left unscathed—were not the goal, in fact. He
hopes to weaken our force before we e’er reach the cot.”

With a nod, Guy tossed his reins to Robert
and swung down from his steed, calling orders to those men closest
to the injured to make haste to bind the maimed soldiers’ wounds,
then drag them off the path to a more protected area while those
remaining completed the operation.

As Guy was o’erseeing that task, Robert
walked his courser over to two other of the de Burgh guards and
said, “We need a new scout, for ‘tis clear the first has been
captured or killed.” Tho’ he spoke to both, his sights were fixed
on the older, better thewed, and better tried of the two. As he
expected, the knight did not hesitate, simply said, “Aye. I’ll go,”
and kneed his mount into a trot down the path that would eventually
end at the hunter’s cot.

For the remainder of the journey, the men
rode with swords drawn, but there were no more attacks, which put
Robert even more on edge. Tho’ they had placed a guard to ride on
either side of the path, about twenty feet into the wood, but still
close enough to see and hear, so that they might spy for mercenary
movement, the guards had found naught. However, something was not
right, he could feel it in his gut, but he could not ken what it
might be. And by the tick in Guy’s jaw, he could see that his
neighbor was of much the same mind as he.

* * *

As the yellow-orange orb
of the sun sank behind the trees, and the wood became naught more
than dusky shadows, Robert scanned the perimeter for those who
might be lying in wait for them. Restless and agitated that his gut
was telling him what his eyes did not, he gripped the hilt of his
sword tighter and looked behind him. All was as it should be—or so
it seemed. The animals of the forest were preparing to settle in
for the night, and all about them could be heard the rustling and
snuffling sounds of the creatures as they made their beds or
searched for their meals. In the far distance, the
hoo-hoo-hoo
of an owl on
some towering tree branch announced his presence, as the
pleasant
chirp-chirp-chirp
ing of the last
rush of bird flocks found their perches in the dense profusion of
leaves high above Robert’s head.

“It grows dark,” he said to Guy.

“Aye,” Guy said, and Robert heard the same
tension he, himself, was feeling echoed in his neighbor’s
voice.

“ ‘Tis time to light the torches.”

“Aye.” Guy twisted around and called out the
command.

A guard—the same youth that had been
traveling beside the more seasoned man that Robert had earlier
commissioned to scout the path ahead—came forward bearing a torch
to light the way for Robert and Guy. As he did so, the scout came
trotting toward them from the area up ahead.

“I’ve been as far as the cot, and have seen
no sign of those who attacked us.” The scout’s mouth opened, but no
words came forth. He shot a glance to his right, then settled his
gaze once more on Robert and Guy. “John Gault, the first scout, is
dead—hanged by his feet and gutted like a swine.”

“Blood of Christ!” Guy growled. “ ‘Tis worse
than I thought,” he said to Robert.

Robert only gave a solemn nod, then asked
the scout, “What else?”

“There are two guards outside the cot, but I
saw no others, which I thought odd.”

Robert and Guy fired grim glances at each
other, and Robert said, “Aye. Odd.”

“But,” the guard said, “I will tell you that
once, when the door was opened, I happened a glimpse of your wife.
She lives.”

The tight bands of dread that had been
constricting his chest for all these hours loosened and Robert was
at last able to take a full breath.

“Praise be,” Guy said, expressing in words
the same overwhelming relief that Robert was feeling.

“He must have been told by now that you
travel with another knight and believes that ‘tis Morgunn,” Guy
said to Robert.

“Aye. These men that ambushed us were
mercenaries, felons not of his clan, so would not know your colors.
But only two guards? What is his plan?”

“I know not.” Guy scanned the trees, scanned
the wood, tho’ the torchlight did not penetrate the dark by very
far. “Another attack, no doubt.”

“Aye. No doubt.” Robert
scanned the wood as well, his fist yet again gripping the hilt of
his sword. He growled low. “Argh! He plays us like pawns in his
cheater’s game of chess!
Nithing!
”

“Aye, that he is, and much more. Or is it
less? Either way, I’ll be there to cheer when he hangs.”

“Well, staying here doing naught is
pointless, and I’ll not turn back—not now. For, no matter the
current case, my wife is still in grave peril for her life.” He
paused, but only briefly. “However, I shall feel no ill-will toward
you if you and your men decide instead to go no further, to await
the King’s contingent, when e’er they may at last arrive.”

“Nay,” Guy said, “we continue on. For, as
you say, your wife’s life is still in danger.”

Robert gave a sharp nod. “On guard!” he
barked to the men, then, with the scout, and the stripling soldier
who held the torch, riding vanguard, the force, now down to ten
men, set out once again for the cot.

They had continued on up the path no more
than another quarter-hour when a clamor of raised voices and
neighing, panicked horses broke out at the back of the rank,
followed on its heels by the shouted warning, “Attack! Fire!”

Robert, Guy, and the two in their vanguard
reeled around in time to see a barrage of flaming arrows fly from
every direction—except one: Theirs.

The shafts that did not topple the men from
their mounts, landed at their horses’ feet, which sent the beasts
up on their hind legs screaming in panic, stalling the men where
they were, unable to move out of the line of fire.

“I’m going to kill them with my bare hands!”
Robert roared, then kneed his courser and charged into the wood to
rout their unseen foes. Guy and the two guards followed instantly
on his heels. In the next moment, they were upon them: A band of
archers crouched on the ground, firing their flaming missiles with
lightning speed and precision.

But they were no match for raging steel.
Within a mere whisper of time, Robert had toppled the heads of
three of them before they had even turned to view him. Guy and the
scout took their cues from Robert and began doing the same, making
swift work of annihilating their attackers, while the young de
Burgh guard sped up to Robert’s side, lifted his sword to an archer
who had rolled to his back and lay screaming, “Nay! Nay!” with his
arms o’er his face, and hesitated, unable to finish the deed.

“Get back!” Robert thundered at him, then
slashed his sword in a heaving arc, quickly severing the archer’s
head from his torso.

In only moments, ‘twas completed. Twelve
archers, total, lay dead on the ground, and by Robert’s reckoning,
that was all of them. But to be sure, Robert and Guy, after taking
a bow and quiver of arrows from four of the dead for each of them,
went further into the cavernous blackness to look for stragglers,
and found no sign of any more. Eventually, they turned back to the
path.

* * *

“I am to blame,” Robert said to Guy later,
when they broke through the copse of trees back onto the open path
and stood stunned looking at the carnage the archers had left. “We
should have destroyed them earlier, as was your plan.”

Guy clamped his hand on
Robert’s shoulder. “Nay, ’twas the right decision. We might have
lost hours—lost your wife—if we’d spent that precious time in
pursuit of the cowards instead of moving ahead to save the lady
Morgana.” He inhaled a deep breath. “Donnach, the craven cur
dog.
He
is to
blame, no one else.”

The stench of burning flesh and fresh blood
invaded Robert’s nostrils and he bit back a roar of rage. Not a man
nor beast was left standing, and at least two horses had arrows,
still flaming, protruding from their eye sockets. Lit torches
scattered the well-worn path where they’d been dropped to the
ground. Only one lay close enough to the underbrush that it might
catch the wood on fire, and Robert leapt off his mount and lifted
it up, then doused the other flames using the dry earth of the
path.

As he walked back to his courser, he took
stock of their situation. They were down to a force of four—three
and a half, in Robert’s estimation, as the stripling was surely as
green in experience as the flesh on his cheeks had been in the
moment past when he’d hurled the contents of his stomach o’er the
side of his mount and onto his boot.

“There was not a sign of them, I swear, when
I searched the area earlier, Laird MacVie,” the scout told him,
breaking the silence.

“Nay, there wouldn’t have been,” Robert
replied. “The sniveling whoresons waited until we passed, then
attacked from behind, like the puling cowards they are.”

“And left us unscathed, yet again, while we
watched the slaughter unfold,” Guy added, a thread of anger and
disgust woven through his tone.

“All right. We dally here
no more,” Robert said. “Let us speed to the cot.”
And kill Donnach Cambel.

* * *

Morgana, seated on a stool, leaned against
the wall of the cot. Her wrists tied securely in her lap, her
ankles bound, and her mouth muzzled, she allowed her gaze to follow
the frantic movements of her uncle as he paced the twenty steps it
took to go from one end of the chamber to the other, mumbling and
gesticulating as he went.