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“Ye dinna ken what ye speak of,” Colum said. “People make mistakes, and God kens I will be paying for this one for the rest of my life. I swore my allegiance to the King of Scots, and I will die serving my king, my clan, and Scotland.”

Marcas spat on the ground, looking like he’d just smelled rotten fish. “I guess we will have to wait and see.”

Colum shook his head. “Either ye trust me or ye dinna.” He pointed with his sword to the south. “Because out there, when we’re in the castle and there are only three of us and the enemy all around us, there will be nae time for doubt. We have to have each other’s backs, and if ye dinna trust me to have yers, then how can we survive and rescue her?”

Marcas’s face distorted in contempt, and he shook his head. “This was a mistake. I shouldna have agreed to go into the midst of the enemy with an oath-breaker. I will tell the laird the mission has failed.” He looked at the young Highlander. “Are ye coming, Iàcob?”

The blond Highlander looked between the two of them, blinking, then his eyes went hard. “Nae. I am staying with the lord. Everyone deserves a second chance, and ye canna leave the lass in peril.”

The lass in peril… Was there a woman trapped in the castle?

“We wilna. Aulay and the Bruce will gather more troops fer a rescue. Going in with three men is a stupid plan, anyway.”

“I am staying. If the plan works, I will have a chance to prove myself. If it doesna, I will die saving a lass, serving my clan and my country.”

“Suit yerself.” The older man threw a last, hard look at Colum and a menacing one at David and walked away. After a few minutes, the sound of a horse galloping into the distance.

David’s stomach growled louder. He looked at the two men. “I’m not a robber, and I didn’t kill anyone to get this sword. Angus gave it to me himself, along with Daisy, my horse, and this armor.”

Colum and Iàcob exchanged a look and Colum put his sword back into the sheath on his belt. “Mayhap. Marcas is right nae to trust everyone, but we did just lose a man and ye said something about getting inside the castle. Tie yer horse here. We set camp, but horses canna reach it. Ye’re hungry. We feed ye, we talk, and ye tell me what I need to ken.”

Should David really be doing this? Did he even know what he was walking into? He missed Dùghlas. Two heads were better than one. Dùghlas would have probably told him not to go, to find an excuse to leave. What reason did he have to trust Colum and Iàcob if even their own man had just left?

But if they were breaking into the castle, to save a lass or whatever, they could work together to get in. David didn’t need to trust them for the rest of his life, just one day. This could be his only chance to find the rock.

He just needed to be careful.

He nodded and tied Daisy by a juicy patch of grass, then followed Colum towards a hill that became a cliff. They climbed a narrow path, and it sharply turned in to a sort of a corridor that opened to a flat space hidden from the woods by rock formations and bushes that grew from the stone. There was a small cave, and in that cave a small campfire burned below a field cauldron. Something gurgled beyond the cave, and when David walked twenty or so steps to the right of the entrance, he saw a small waterfall that fed a thirty-foot-wide round pond, which fed a brook that disappeared into a slit between rocks.

“Good place for a camp,” David said, his mind returning to the campfire and something delicious burbling in the cauldron.

“Aye,” Colum said as he sat at the campfire and poured some pottage into a wooden bowl and handed it to David.

David curled one hand around the warm bowl and, like a true medieval man, half ate, half drank the thick soup that had the salty taste of smoked bacon and a few roughly cut root vegetables and wild mushrooms. The liquid spread warmth into his body. Colum handed him a piece of torn bread, and David soaked it in the pottage and ate, gathering the last bits of the soup.

They sat around the fire, the other men eating at a regular, nonstarving pace. The cave around them was probably ten feet high, and there was plenty of room for the smoke to leave the space. There were two sleeping rolls on the floor and a couple of canvas bags leaned against the rough granite walls. There was little to see in the darkness of the back.

When David finished, Colum offered him another bowl and he couldn’t say no.

Finally, Colum set his own bowl aside and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So, how did ye find out about the secret passage into the castle?”

David drank a mouthful of soup. “I met a man on the road who told me about it.”

“And why did he tell ye that?”

David took another sip. “He owed me for the work I did on his farm. He knew I was looking for something that’s in Carlisle Castle.”

“What are ye looking for?” said Colum, narrowing his eyes at him.

His mind raced. He couldn’t tell them about the rocks, but he needed to give some explanation for why he had to get into the castle. He chewed the last of the springy mushrooms.

“Treasure,” he said. “The English took treasure that belongs to my clan. I am looking for it.”

Colum’s face changed into a grimace of disbelief. “Alone?”

David scoffed. “And you want to get a prisoner out with just the two of you?”

Colum exchanged a long look with Iàcob. “Fair enough. Only, there wilna be two of us nae more.”