Page 110 of Blood of the Thistle

Then something changed. Bram saw it first—a hesitation in the next wave of attackers. They came at a trot, not a run. One group advanced halfway, took a single volley of arrows, and broke back toward the village.

“Look at them,” Harsain said, his voice rough with exhaustion. “They’re nae fighting anymore, just dying.”

Bram watched them retreat, not yet willing to believe it. “Mayhap.”

Opening the gates now would be a fool’s errand. Craig na Coille’s walls were their greatest advantage, and he would not throw that away on a hunch. Raghnall could have another fifty men waiting beyond the rise, ready for the moment Bram was stupid enough to ride out.

“We hold,” he said.

And so they did.

Another quarter hour passed. The assaults were no longer charges, but half-hearted advances. Raghnall sent men forward twice more. The first group broke under a single volley from the wall. The second reached the abandoned ladders and then dissolved, men melting back toward the cottages. Shouts from the village drove some forward again, but they moved in loose, hesitant clusters, unwilling to close the gaps in their line. One man simply stopped, shield raised but feet rooted to the earth, until a comrade dragged him back. Then others followed, no longer needing to be pulled.

Bram watched it all without giving the command to pursue. Raghnall might be desperate, but desperation did not make him harmless, and Bram had already been surprised once that morning by the boats appearing beneath his seaward wall. He would not allow impatience—or the satisfaction of seeing his enemy finally bloodied—to make him careless now.

Gradually, however, it became impossible to mistake what was happening. Raghnall’s men were no longer falling back between assaults or waiting to be sent forward again. They were abandoning the fight.

No fresh ranks emerged from the village to replace those retreating from the field, and men who had already withdrawn showed no inclination to return. Raghnall’s voice carried above the confusion from somewhere among the cottages, first bellowing orders for them to hold, then commanding them back into formation. He couldn't hear the words, but he saw Raghnall's fury. The traitor seized a retreating man by the collar, shoving him back toward the fight. The man stumbled, regained his balance, and simply walked away, his back to his commander.

His archers were leaving as well. Some abandoned their positions among the cottages in small groups, bows slung across their backs, while others simply disappeared toward the far road. Below the seaward wall, the last boat had pushed away from shore and was laboring toward deeper water, carrying those fortunate enough to have survived the disastrous landing. Men appeared between the cottages leading horses, some stopping to gather wounded companions while others left everything behind but their weapons and whatever they could carry.

Raghnall shouted again, and this time Bram saw him among them, wheeling the gray horse across the road as he attempted to bar the path of several men determined to leave. One went around him. Another followed. Within moments the others had done the same.

Raghnall had brought an army to Craig na Coille that morning. Now Bram watched men peel away in ones and twos, drifting toward the tree line, not running, just gone.

Still Bram waited.

Then Raghnall’s banner moved. It passed behind one cottage, appeared briefly in the road beyond another, and continued steadily away from Craig na Coille. A moment later Bram glimpsed the gray horse beneath it.

“He's running,” Domnall said.

Bram watched Raghnall's banner disappearing beyond the farthest cottages and knew this time there was no feint in it. The bastard had spent scores of men against Craig na Coille, failed to breach either wall, and was now doing the one thing his own desperation had made inevitable once victory became impossible.

He was saving himself.

Bram’s decision was instant. “Harsain. The keep is yours.”

Harsain turned sharply toward him. “Laird—”

“The walls remain manned and the gates remain barred until I return.”

Bram turned toward the stairs. “Domnall! Three dozen men. Mounted.”

Harsain’s eyes widened. “Ye canna fight the hundred that remain with naught but three dozen men!”

Bram looked once more beyond the wall, toward the road upon which Raghnall was retreating.

“I dinna need to take on hundreds—they’ll nae fight for him again. I need only to reach him.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The great hall, so full of music and laughter the night before, was now a loud, crowded shelter. Anna moved through the chaos, the air thick with the smell of damp wool and fear. Families huddled on the floor with hastily gathered possessions, their children sleepy and fretful. Along the walls, the old and frail sat with a quiet resignation that felt worse than the children’s cries. It was a world away from the feast of just a few hours ago, and with every distant crash or cry from beyond the walls, the memory of that peace felt like a phantom limb.

Anna had hardly stopped moving since the fighting began, though at first there had been little for her to do beyond helping to settle the frightened people pouring into the hall. Mairead had taken command with an efficiency Anna suspected could have rivaled Bram’s upon the walls, directing villagers as they arrived, ordering tables moved and blankets brought down from the upper chambers, and sending several women to the kitchens for every vessel they possessed that might carry water. Fearchar came and went with messages and requests from outside, sometimes pausing only long enough to speak a few words to Mairead before disappearing again, and every single time the great doors opened, Anna looked toward them before she could stop herself.

Bram never appeared, though she knew perfectly well that he would not. He was upon the walls somewhere, and every crash and distant shout penetrating the thick stone of the keep reminded her of it. She had tried at first to distinguish one sound from another, imagining she might somehow determine what was happening by listening closely enough, but the effort only made her more anxious. At times the noise diminished almost entirely and she would begin to hope the fighting had ended, only for another tremendous eruption of shouting to rise outside.

The first wounded man was brought in perhaps twenty minutes after the fighting began. Anna had been carrying a pitcher of water toward one of the tables when the doors opened and two men appeared between them, supporting a third whose arms were thrown across their shoulders. Blood covered one side of his face and soaked the front of his tunic, and Anna’s heart lurched so violently that she nearly dropped the pitcher as her mind supplied dark hair and broad shoulders before her eyes had even properly registered the man’s face. A second later she recognized one of the younger men she had seen at supper the night before, and the relief that came over her was so immediate that she felt ashamed of it almost at once.