Jamie wiped his blade on his sleeve and looked around. Two of his men were down—alive, he saw at a glance, though one clutched his arm and was wincing in pain. The rest stood blood splattered and fierce eyed, chests heaving.
“Tie the guards up,” he ordered.
He stepped up to the door and kicked it in with enough force to splinter the wood. As he stepped through, the stench of damp and sweat hit him, along with the yeasty smell of dried grain. Dun Arach’s storerooms stretched ahead, barrels and crates stacked high.
“Come for more have ye?” a familiar voice bellowed from a room at the end. “Come on then! Ye’ll not take us without bloodshed, ye stinking bastard sons of—”
“Albie?”
There was silence.
Then, tentatively, “Jamie?”
He hurried into the gloom. Torchlight flared across familiar faces as he reached the farthest rooms—his men looking grim, hollow eyed, bruised but unbroken. Albie stood at the front, gripping the bars of the tiny window in the storeroom door, his beard wild.
“Ye took yer bloody time, boy!”
Jamie shrugged, giving a rueful smile. “Apologies. I was busy.”
Albie’s bluff features broke into a grin. “Aye, we heard. When all the racket started up, I thought it was the king’s dogs come to take us out for a hanging. I’m mighty glad to be proven wrong.”
Jamie turned sharply. “Keys.”
One of his men produced them, already stripped from a fallen guard. The lock clanked open, the door swinging wide.
Albie stepped out, straightening to his full impressive height, and clapped Jamie on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger.
“Ah, that’s better! We were starting to think we’d rot down here.”
“Not today,” Jamie replied.
The rest of the storerooms were thrown open, and Jamie’s men emerged—some limping, some swearing, some silent, but all with fury burning behind their eyes. They wasted no time grabbing weapons from the bound guards, looking eager for retribution.
Albie eyed the men who’d come with Jamie. “Barra lads unless I miss my guess?”
At Jamie’s nod, he waded among them, clapping them all on the shoulder. “No better fighters in all the Isles. Except for those of Islay, of course. I’ll personally buy ye all a drink when this is over.”
“Bloody hell,” another of Jamie’s men muttered. “Thisisa day for miracles.”
There was a round of low chuckling and Jamie felt some of his tension ease. But only some. He’d accomplished his first goal, but they still had a long way to go.
“Listen up!” he snapped. “The king and his puppet, Phillip MacClelland, hold Dun Arach, but, by God, we are going to take it back. Barra and Skye have managed to draw away most of the king’s men and his fleet. But we have to act swiftly. If we are to retake Islay, this is our moment.”
Albie’s grin turned savage. “Then we’d best not waste it, aye?”
Jamie nodded. “We move quietly, we move swiftly,” he ordered. “Our priorities are taking the gates and the battlements. If we meet resistance, we deal with it, but we dinna get pulled into a protracted fight. Clear?”
His men nodded grimly. Throwing the unconscious king’s men into the storerooms and locking the doors, Jamie led his men swiftly up the service stairs and back towards the kitchens.
As Jamie stepped through the door, he was almost brained by a rolling pin that came swinging for his head.
Tabitha pressed a hand to her breast. “Lord, dinna do that to me!” she cried. “I nearly ruined my best rolling pin!”
“Aye, and my head to boot,” Jamie replied. Looking around the kitchen, he saw at least twenty of the household staff taking shelter in the large room. They looked frightened, aye, but determined too, most clutching a weapon: a knife, a poker, a meat cleaver.
“Stay here,” he told them. “Dun Arach isnae ours yet and this might get bloody before the end.”
He slipped out the back door with his men. Ahead lay Dun Arach’s bailey, weak sunlight glinting off the wet stone. Shouts suddenly echoed from the far side and Jamie stifled a curse. Somebody had raised the alarm.
