Page 108 of Blood of the Thistle

Harsain leaned over the parapet. “Donnchadh! Move your arse!”

Donnchadh answered with an obscenity Bram could not quite hear and shoved Eòghan bodily ahead of him beneath the gatehouse. The last men followed, and at the shout of “Clear!” from below, Bram gave the order to close the gates. He watched until the great timbers met beneath him with a deep, reverberating thud and the heavy bar dropped into its brackets.

He finally turned from the parapet, his mind already placing his men. “Every archer we have to the landward wall.” He scanned the approaching force, noting the dark shapes of ladders. “Bring up every arrow from the stores. I want stones stacked high, spears at hand, and poles stout enough to push back whatever they raise against us.”

He glanced toward the courtyard. “Domnall keeps fifteen men in reserve, armed and ready, and six remain upon the seaward wall. Nae man leaves his post merely because the enemy stands before the gate.”

Harsain nodded and started away.

“And tell Fearchar to clear the courtyard of anyone who has nae business being there. Women and bairns into the keep. Anyone able to carry arrows, stones or water can help supply the walls, and have him make ready a place for the wounded.”

Harsain paused. “Anything else?”

“Have the horses brought into the inner yard and saddled. Then get back here.”

Bram returned to the parapet as Raghnall's men began entering the village, several mounted men riding first between the deserted cottages while the greater body remained beyond it. Bram didn't like the cover his own village afforded them; cottages, workshops, sheds and stone walls would conceal men from his archers until they emerged upon the nearer side.

More troubling was the fact that Raghnall knew this keep. He knew the landward approach was its strongest point, yet he had brought his army straight to the gate. Bram studied his own walls with a critical eye. Raghnall knew he was undermanned, but even so, the cost of a direct assault would be steep. Why this approach? What advantage did the bastard believe he possessed?

Raghnall was many things, but Bram had never known him to squander men without purpose. If the bastard meant to come directly at his gate, he had arrived believing he could take it.

Bram only wished he knew why.

His thoughts went briefly to Anastasia. She was safely inside the keep and, while she had not precisely promised to remain there, surely even Anastasia possessed sufficient sense not to argue with him while an army stood outside the walls.

The sky had lightened perceptibly by then, enough that colors began to emerge from what before had been only shades of gray, and Bram watched as Raghnall's men spread into the open ground between the outermost cottages and Craig na Coille. Some carried bows and others shields, while several groups farther back bore long timbers upon their shoulders. Bram recognized the first as a ladder and counted another and another behind it. They had not fashioned such things upon arriving. Raghnall had brought them with him, further evidence that he had come prepared not merely to threaten Craig na Coille but to take it.

Harsain returned to Bram's side, and together they watched the force arrange itself beyond the abandoned village. Men moved between the cottages carrying arrows and shields while mounted figures remained farther back beyond useful bowshot. There was an unsettling deliberateness to it all. Raghnall was in no haste now that he had arrived, seemingly content to let the sight of so many armed men gathered outside Craig na Coille speak for him while he made ready to attack.

Another rider appeared between the cottages, and Bram recognized the gray destrier before he could clearly distinguish the man upon it. An instant later there could be no mistaking Raghnall himself. He sat heavily in the saddle, broad through the shoulders and thick through the middle, his dark hair showing more gray than Bram remembered at the temples and his beard trimmed close along a square jaw. Mail showed beneath his surcoat, and a dark red cloak hung from his shoulders. He looked much as he always had—solid, prosperous and imposing, every inch the Scottish lord he had pretended to be while secretly selling other Scots to Edward.

Bram had wondered during his captivity what he would feel when he saw the man again and had expected rage, mayhap even some uncontrollable desire to cross whatever distance separated them and put a sword through him. Yet as Raghnall rode beyond the last cottage and stopped upon the open ground, Bram felt none of the wild fury he'd imagined. What he felt instead was closer to clarity—the same steadiness that had come over him in the pit when screaming had accomplished nothing and he had learned to go very still inside himself, to make himself small and cold and patient. Bram did not want merely to kill him. He wanted the bastard to answer for what he had done.

Raghnall raised his face toward Craig na Coille and surveyed the battlements until his gaze reached the gatehouse and stopped. Even across the distance separating them, Bram saw the instant he was recognized, Raghnall's shoulders drawing back while one hand tightened upon the reins. He had plainly heard that Bram had escaped and returned home, but seeing him standing alive and armed above his own gate was evidently another matter entirely.

For three months Bram had expected to hunt the bastard across Scotland if need be. Instead, Raghnall had brought an army to his door.

That satisfaction was short-lived. A stout gate and stone walls diminished Raghnall's advantage, but they did not erase it. Bram had seen stronger holds fall to fire or simple, brutal attrition. He could not afford a single mistake.

His gaze shifted briefly toward the keep behind him. Anastasia was in there, along with his mother and Etta, the bairns he'd watched running through the gate and all those who had trusted these walls—and him—to keep them safe. Raghnall had come because Bram lived and knew the truth of his treachery, and whatever he intended to do to silence that truth, Bram would not permit his family or his people to pay the price for it.

Raghnall would not come through those gates, he vowed.

Bram stepped nearer the parapet and made certain the man could see him. For a long moment neither moved, and then Raghnall wheeled the gray horse sharply and rode back toward his men.

Bram’s teeth showed briefly, more reflex than expression.

“He doesnae look a man greeting an old friend,” Harsain observed.

“Nae.”

“Poor bastard.”

This time Bram did smile, though there was nothing pleasant in it.

“Let’s disappoint him further.”

Raghnall did not keep them waiting long. His archers moved first, spreading among the outer cottages and low walls of the abandoned village while the men carrying shields and ladders gathered behind them. Bram watched the first bows rise and shouted for his men to take cover before the arrows came, a few snapping against the parapet stones and the rest sailing over to rattle down somewhere in the courtyard behind him. One found a man farther along the wall, burying itself high in his arm, but most accomplished little beyond forcing the defenders beneath the protection of the parapet.