Page 97 of Steel & Surrender

“Is that it?” Ada gasped, her voice strangled as she still clung to her husband’s arm, her face white in the moonlight. “Did ye get them all?”

“For now,” Greig replied, breathing hard. “But the battle’s not won yet.” He turned to Brìghde then. Their gazes locked—heat, anger, and something far more raw flashing between them. “Go. Now. Run south and don’t return to the village until morning.”

She stared back at him, blood roaring in her ears. “And what are ye going to do?”

His face was stone-hewn. His gaze savage.

It was as if the time they’d spent together earlier that evening had never happened.

A warrior stood before her. The real Greig Maclean.

Not the lover who’d taken her so passionately in the forge.

He cast his brother a sidelong look then. Davy was bent double, panting, his lean face slick with sweat. “All right, Davy?”

“All right,” Davy panted. “Just catching my breath.”

Greig then turned back to Brìghde, stepping close. “Don’t worry about us, lass,” he said, his voice low and hard. “We’re going to finish this.”

27: PAYING MY RESPECTS

A PALE DAWN rose over Duart.

It wasn’t mist that drifted over the hillside though, but smoke.

Limping heavily, leaning upon a stick now, for his leg throbbed with every step, Greig moved through the ruins of the village.

Half the roofs were gone—collapsed into blackened ribs.

Timber could be cut again.

The dead couldn’t be revived though.

Greig halted, his gaze sweeping to where men, women, and children slowly emerged through the wreathing smoke; those who’d fled and come back at dawn to see the damage that had been wrought.

With any luck, Brìghde and her kin would return shortly too. Fortunately, their bothy had been spared, for it was on the outskirts.

He told himself it was relief he felt, nothing more.

It was a lie.

A woman’s wail split the morning. She collapsed beside a man’s body—shaking him, as if he might still rise.

Greig’s throat tightened, for he recognized him. Carr Maclean, a stout-hearted farmer who had stayed behind to defend his village and died as a result.

A few locals had fallen the night before, including some of the Duart Guard. But they’d beaten the MacDonalds in the end.

Turning, Greig limped his way back out of the village and toward the hillside before the castle, to where the ring of braziers still smoked.

Sprawled corpses littered the trampled grass.

What had been a scene of celebration and revelry had turned into a battlefield.

It had been clear from the first moments of the attack what the MacDonalds’ plan was: catch the clan-chief unawares and kill him.

Callum MacDonald wasn’t playing. He’d decided that to weaken the Macleans, he had to cut the head off the man who led them.

But he’d underestimated his foe.