The darkening sky increased Ian’s sense of urgency as he scanned the top of the walls of Knock Castle.
“Only two men on the wall,” his father said beside him.
Ian nodded. “Are ye ready, Father Brian?”
“Aye.”
Ian climbed into the handcart and crouched down next to the barrel of wine. God’s bones, what was he doing?
“We should have used the horse cart, so da and I could go in with ye,” Niall complained, not for the first time.
“The guards would be more suspicious of a large cart,” Ian said. “I’ll open the gate for ye to join us as soon as I can.”
The truth was that Ian did not know if there were two men or forty waiting on the other side of the gate, and there was no point in all of them being killed.
“God be with ye,” Father Brian said, and flung the tarp over Ian as if he were spreading a cloth over an altar. Then he tucked it around Ian and made sure it didn’t cover the wine barrel.
Their trick was as old as the ancient Greeks. It seemed unlikely, however, that Murdoc or Angus had studied the classics.
Father Brian grunted as he picked up the handles and pushed the cart forward. ’Twas a good thing the priest was a strong man, for it was a hundred yards from the trees to the castle out on the headland.
With the wine barrel sloshing next to his head, Ian wondered if the Trojans had been as cramped in their wooden horse. He held on to the edges of the tarp to keep it in place as the cart bumped over the boards of the drawbridge. When Father Brian brought the cart to a jerking halt and dropped the handles to the ground, Ian had to brace his feet against the sides to keep from sliding out the back.
Through a hole he poked in the tarp with the point of his dirk, he watched the priest bang on the wooden gate. A voice responded from the other side, but Ian couldn’t distinguish the words.
“I am making my rounds of Skye, as I do every year,” Father Brian said in his deep, rumbling voice. He gestured toward the cart. “I’ve a barrel of wine from the monastery on Iona I was bringing to my bishop, but it’s too far to carry. I’m willing to sell it to ye.”
The gate creaked open. Ian gripped the hilt of his dirk as Father Brian picked up the cart handles and pushed it forward.
“Since we’re celebrating a wedding, I’m sure ye will be wanting to make a gift of that wine,” a guard said.
The blood in Ian’s veins turned to ice at the mention of a wedding, and he prayed he was not too late to save Sìleas from rape.
“There will be no taking the wine until I have payment in my hand for the good monks’ work,” Father Brian said, as he brought the cart to a halt inside the bailey yard.
As Ian had predicted, the guards were not inclined to wait. When the first one lifted the tarp, Ian stuck his dirk under the man’s raised arm and killed him before he could utter a sound. There were only five other guards around the cart. As he sprang to his feet, he drew his claymore and swung into one of them.
The others who had crowded around the cart, intent on relieving the priest of his wine, stepped back quickly. The ever-helpful Father Brian stuck his foot out, causing one of them to fall backward with a shout. When one of his companions turned to look, Ian’s sword whooshed through the air, nearly severing the man’s head from his body.
By now, the other guards had their swords out and ready. There were only two of them standing, though. Ian moved toward the pair swinging, anxious to finish the job.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the man Father Brian had tripped get up and charge the priest with his blade drawn. A moment later, the guard lay at Father Brian’s feet, and the priest was wiping blood from his attacker’s blade on his robe.
Ian swung in a full circle, and one of his opponents shrieked as Ian’s blade struck the man’s side. Damn, they were making too much noise. The last guard charged, believing Ian would not be quick enough to recover from his last swing.
It was the last mistake the man would ever make.
Ian scanned the walls. When he didn’t see anyone, he assumed the two who had been on the wall earlier had come down for the wine and were among the dead. He ran to the gate and waved to signal his father and brother.
“Ye weren’t always a priest, were ye, Father?” Ian said, as the two of them dragged the bodies of the dead men into an empty storeroom built against the wall.
“I thought I’d put my fighting days behind me,” the priest said. After they had moved the last man, he crossed himself and wiped his hands on his robe. “There should have been more guards here. Where do ye suppose all the other men are?”
“Inside the keep.”
Celebrating a wedding.
Angus’s massive frame appeared at the edge of Sìleas’s vision. As if from a great distance, she saw him drop his plaid and lift his shirt. She shivered, her body sensing the danger, as she struggled to push aside the images of her mother and the weight of the grief that pinned her to the bed.
But when Angus’s beefy hands gripped her thighs, she came back to herself with a jerk. She could not bear to have this vile man touch her. Before she could gather herself to fight him, Angus looked over his shoulder.
“What?” Angus said. “Are ye going to stay and watch me?”
“I want to be sure it’s done. Capturing her does us no good unless she bears a child.”
She could not see beyond the mammoth man standing between her legs at the edge of the bed, but it was Murdoc’s voice she heard.
“I can’t do it when she’s staring at me like the dead,” Angus complained.
“We both know what ye need to take a woman,” Murdoc said. “So do it.”
At Murdoc’s words, Dina’s advice came back to her: Lie still. As Angus turned back to her with his arm cocked to strike her, she steeled herself to take the blow.
But then, Angus froze in place, his eyes fixed on something above her. As an eerie keening filled the bedchamber, Sìleas looked up to see the translucent form of the Green Lady floating above her. She was weeping, making a pitiful sound.
Angus staggered back from the bed. “The wretch has called up a ghost with her curse!”
Angus held his arms in front of his face as the Green Lady’s wailing grew louder. The sadness in the ghost’s voice was enough to make the angels weep.
“She’s coming for me!” Angus stumbled over his own feet as he turned and fled from the room.
Sìleas sat up and met her stepfather’s eyes. The Green Lady’s intervention had given her time to get her courage—and her anger—back.
“It is you who makes her weep,” she said. “You have always made her weep.”
Murdoc crossed the room in three long strides and shoved her down on the bed.
“Her weeping never stopped me before,” he said. “And it will not now.”
Sìleas stared up at him, terror gripping her heart. “I am your wife’s daughter. Not even you would commit such a grave sin.”
Murdoc held her shoulders fast and leaned over her until she felt the heat from his body.
“I will tell ye the same as I told your mother,” he hissed in her face. “I need a child of my blood.”
The Green Lady’s weeping had grown soft, as if she knew it would do no good against Murdoc.
“After being such an ugly child, ye have become a pretty thing,” Murdoc said, leaning back to fix his hard black eyes on her breasts. “If Angus can’t do the job, I’m sure I’ll have no trouble.”