Page 80 of Leila’s Legacy

Leila shook her head as she approached. “We can’t go now. The castle is too heavily guarded. They intend to kill him at noon.” She swallowed. “We will attack then.”

Cat came to her and embraced her, something Leila wished she had not done, for it threatened to undo the composure she was working so hard to maintain.

“When they arrive at the gallows will be the best time to attack,” Cat offered with reassurance.

Geordie nodded. “Aye, and Cat will be able to snap the rope with her arrow.”

Brodie took off his helm. “There will be many guards, but some are no’ loyal to Armstrong anymore. Seeing what he’s done to Niall, what he did to Niall’s da…it’s raised many concerns among the men.”

“It will certainly be a number we can handle.” Ella ran a thumb over the edge of her battle axe. “If we thought we’d need our own soldiers, we’d have brought them.”

In the interest of preventing a war, they had decided to leave the Werrick Guards at home. Liddesdale might not care for borders, but their father was still an English earl and the West March Warden who oversaw the English side of the border. War was a very real concern. One their father was willing to overlook, but they would not allow.

“Dinna worry, Leila.” James ruffled her hair. “We’ll get Niall safely back to ye.”

Anice looked up at her husband affectionately and slid her hand into his large one. “It won’t be long; noon is only an hour away.”

Leila’s blood raced with such energy that she dreaded the hour she’d have to wait. Interminable though it might be, it would help them overall, for it gave them more time to plan.

There was no sensing the time of day in the blackness of the dungeon. Niall’s joints had long gone stiff with cold, though it did little to tell him the time.

Worse than the aching of his injuries from battle or the stiffness from cold were the thoughts that circled in his mind over and over and over. Or at least one thought.

Leila.

And losing her. Again. He rested his head against the wall behind him, eyes closed as if in slumber, as he sifted through his recollections of her. They started that first day in the village outside Werrick Castle, when she’d nearly killed him with a dagger to the head. He hadn’t been able to stop staring at those long legs in the red leather trews, and the glossy dark hair that spilled over her shoulders like a curtain.

On and on his memories of her surfaced. Her fearlessness when he arrested her, her strength against Alban, how the hardness of her features had begun to soften around Niall. God, he loved that woman. To the depths of his soul.

And he had let justice get in the way of the one good thing he had. That was the worst part of his time in the dungeon: not the pain of his injuries or the fear of death looming over him. Nay, it was regret.

“’Tis time,” a familiar voice said in the dark.

Niall looked up to find Lord Armstrong’s face in front of his cell. The old man’s face scowled down at him. “Ye killed my son. I trusted ye, and ye killed my son.”

“I trusted ye, and ye killed my da,” Niall spat back in return. “Ye lied to me about his death for years. Ye made me drown Leila, though ye knew her to be innocent. Ye—”

“Do it,” Lord Armstrong growled as he stepped back. A guard opened Niall’s door and several more guards entered the cell to haul Niall to his feet. A filthy cloth was shoved into his mouth, one tasting of the rancid fat used in tallow candles. It pressed to his tongue, cutting at the corners of his mouth, and was tied tight behind his head.

If his hands weren’t bound behind his back, if his feet weren’t chained, he would have been able to fight back despite his wounds. Except that they’d left him at such a disadvantage, he was at their mercy.

He was forced through the dungeon, up the stairs and through the castle with those heavy chains at his ankles. The villagers waited outside, just past the bailey, their expressions somber as he walked by, chains clanking. He had always been well-liked among them, just as Alban had been feared and despised.

Though they did not throw mud and food at him, he remembered Leila and how she had handled her torturous walk with pride and strength. She hadn’t even faulted the people for their wrath.

A drum began, low and ominous as it reverberated down his spine and thundered through his veins. His death was rapidly approaching.

The people followed him as he made his way through the streets, past the dead who lay waiting for removal, past the many homes now vacated.

The reivers stood a distance from the villagers, keeping a good amount of space between them to reduce their exposure to the great pestilence.

Niall was stopped at the stairs to the gallows and the chains at his ankles removed. He’d noted the shortness of the rope when he approached. A short rope, removing the extra weight from his person by taking off the chains… They didn’t want his neck to snap when the floor of the gallows dropped. They wanted him to slowly strangle, for it to be a long, painful death.

The wind picked up and billowed the sleeves of his shirt as he climbed the stairs. A shiver wound through him and his insides quivered: with cold, with exhaustion, with fear.

Leila.

Was this what she had gone through as she had been the focus of everyone’s attention? Their rapacious bloodlust made sharp and hungry by her impending death.