Jamie!she thought.He’s come for me!
A strange mixture of terror and elation washed through her as she burst into the courtyard, looking around wildly, somehow expecting to see Jamie and his men already inside, already here for her.
But that’s not what she saw.
Instead, she found Phillip’s men mustering in the bailey. The gates had been thrown open but Elise didn’t spot Jamie’s army marching towards them. The road down to the harbor lay empty, but she could hear warning bells sounding from that direction too. She squinted, looking out at the sea stretching into the distance and thought she made out a line of tiny specks on the horizon.
Jamie’s ships?
But a shout went up, dashing her hopes. “Ulster! Ulster is coming! Ware!”
Ulster? Warriors dressed in the king’s colors formed up in ranks, ready to march out. She had no idea what was going on but whatever had been spotted on the horizon had kicked Dun Arach like an ant’s nest.
A hand grabbed her arm, pulling her around. She found herself looking into Phillip MacClelland’s face. He wore a grim expression. “Come. We must hurry.”
She snatched her arm from his grip. “What’s going on?”
“Everything that I had hoped to avoid.” For the first time since she’d met him, he looked genuinely flustered. “Curse it all! I had hoped we would have more time than this. Just as I predicted, Ulster is attacking, a fleet heading this way. We will sail out and meet it.”
“Ulster?” Elise repeated stupidly.
“Are ye deaf, woman?” Phillip snapped. “Now come. We dinna have much time.”
He grabbed her arm but she snatched it away again. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
He stepped close, his expression twisted into a snarl. “Oh yes, ye are. I’m not playing games here, and I dinna have time for yer theatrics. If ye dinna come willingly, I will have ye tied up and dragged. And Andrea and the rest of Dun Arach’s inhabitants will pay the price of yer defiance. Is that what ye want?”
Elise opened her mouth tell him to go to hell. But thoughts of Andrea’s terrified face stopped her. Andrea was her friend. The people of Dun Arach were her friends. She could not let Phillip hurt them.
Her shoulders sagged and Phillip’s mouth twisted into a grim smile. “That’s better. Come. A ship is waiting for us in the harbor. It’s finally time to put yer War Weaving to the test.”
*
Jamie watched thelast of Phillip’s—or rather King James’s men—board the ships and cast off. He’d watched from his hiding place amid the broken boulders of a long-fallen headland as Dun Arach had emptied and the traitors had come marching down to the harbor.
He and his handful of men had kept silent and watchful, hands never far from weapons, as their hated enemy had come within attacking distance. Jamie had clenched his fists so tight that he’d carved bloody gouges into his palms with his fingernails, fighting his every instinct that urged him to burst from his hiding place and carve bloody murder through the bastards that had taken his home.
But that was not the plan, and above all, he must keep to the plan. So far, it had gone smoothly. He and his men had sailedfrom Barra to Islay without discovery, landing on the far side of the island and trekking to Dun Arach on obscure, overgrown paths that he hoped Phillip didn’t know about.
Last night they’d bedded down in this hiding place, keeping a close watch on Dun Arach, awaiting the dawn and the commencement of their plan. The waiting had been agony, and he’d not got a wink of sleep. Knowing that Elise was so close, just beyond those castle walls, and not being able to do anything about it was torture of the worst kind.
He’d been close to the breaking point, ready to charge the castle and consequences be damned, when the warning bell had begun clanging from the keep above, signaling that Cailean and Rose’s “Ulster” fleet had been spotted.
He peered over the top of the boulder, squinting against the sunlight breaking through the thick cloud cover. The people boarding the ships were too far away for him to make out detail but he hoped Phillip MacClelland was not among them. He hoped the traitorous bastard had remained in Dun Arach. A reckoning with that snake was well overdue.
Around him, his men shifted, and he could feel their anticipation, their eagerness to be about their business. But still he held them. They had to time this perfectly. Move too early and those aboard the ships might spot them and come about. The minutes ticked by and Jamie could hear his pulse thundering in his ears, feel his heart thumping wildly in his chest as the king’s fleet grew smaller and smaller.
Then he raised his hand, giving a silent command.
Cailean’s warriors moved out without a sound, falling into formation around Jamie as they left their hiding place and wove through the huge boulders until they found a trail that climbed up the hillside. It was little more than a goat track that wound steeply up through tussocky grass and hardy scrub, but it was all they needed.
They climbed in silence, keeping in a half-crouch in case unfriendly eyes were watching, weapons already drawn. The path flattened out at the top, giving way to the scrubby hilltop upon which Dun Arach sat and they hunkered down in a thicket, peering through the thorny branches. The keep rose ahead, its sheer walls casting a shadow across the ground between.
Jamie studied his home. Phillip was no fool and had not left Dun Arach unguarded. Sentries walked the battlements wearing the colors of King James. Jamie counted them carefully, marking their positions and patterns of movement as they patrolled.
When the sentries were at their farthest point, facing out to sea where they expected an attack to come from, he raised his hand, three fingers outstretched in the prearranged signal.
He and his men went rushing from their cover, darting silently across the intervening ground and dashing into cover up against the base of the wall, trusting to the shadows to keep them concealed. Moving swiftly, Jamie led them around to the back of the keep to a tiny door in the base of the wall. Its hinges were rusted and ivy covered much of it. Jamie couldn’t remember the last time this postern gate had been opened. Certainly not since he’d become laird, although when he was younger he’d used it often, first to sneak away from his tutors when he was a lad, and then to keep secret trysts with local lasses when he was older.
