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Gavyn kept an eye on the ring of fire burning atop blue hills shading to purple shadows where the heather grew in the cuttings running down from the top of Bienn á Bhuird.
A welcome? Never. Most likely a warning.
Remembering his parting from his wife, he doubted these signal beacons promised a celebration. Aye, it was all right deciding he’d been foolish not to send a messenger ahead of them. And why? Because his friend Euan McArthur had assured him that the clans to his northwest had been quiet of late. That the men he had scouring the borders of the McArthur and Comlyn lands had reported no unrest, the imminent harvest of this year’s crops being of more import than coveting another clan’s lands, animals, or women.
That brought his mind back to Kathryn—his wife in no more than name. He’d thought to surprise her.
It had amazed him how often his daydreams had turned in her direction while he was gone. A fleeting glimpse of gold hair, or a blue dress in the colour she favoured, and he’d remember her chin tilting up at him, gaze unwavering as it passed across the scarred side of his face.
If he disgusted her, she had refused to show it, even when he’d threatened her, warning her of what would befall if he found she’d taken another man between her legs.
Gavyn felt the blood flow into his groin as he thought of the night that lay ahead of him, though she wasn’t aware of it as yet. He thought himself a fair man, just; and because of that he had remained celibate all the time he had been gone. Foreign whores held no temptation while thoughts of Kathryn lingered in his mind, though he doubted she’d ever be persuaded to believe it.
He found justification hard to come by, for there was no love involved in such an arrangement, only convenience, and most of it Malcolm Canmore’s. However, unlike most of his mercenaries, he was aware that for all the fancy finery some lasses wore, lurking beneath the folderols, hid the French disease.
A gift his wife wouldn’t thank him for bringing home.
Home—Dun Bhuird—a place he’d lived for less than a senight. He glanced at the mountains. Wood smoke floated in soft grey clumps against the blue sky, like miniature thunderclouds gathering overhead, grey and foreboding. Aye only a fool would say the signs looked promising—and no, that didn’t include Nhaimeth.
On impulse, he called over his shoulder to his Lieutenant. “Guard the wagons. We’ll ride on ahead.” Finishing his thought by motioning Rob and Jamie forward, lads she might remember. “Rob, Jamie, you’re with me,” he shouted, and immediately set spurs to his steed.
Better to present a smaller threat by riding openly up the glen. Magnus, the constable he’d left in charge of Dun Bhuird should have no worries o’er the danger they presented.
The grain was on the verge of ripening, and hard seed heads bent atop the pale green stalks, whipping the feathery hocks of their mounts. Side by side they rode along the edges of fields that promised a good harvest, better than he had expected to see.
Kathryn felt the sun’s rays slant across the tops of her cheekbones. Fierce as it tried to escape the clouds, it burned red as a warning flag, over mountains as purple as a bruise.
Smoke from the beacons her people had lit on the ridges scented air that seemed to shrink around them. Kathryn pulled in a ragged breath, a mouthful of air torn and frayed around the edges by the surfeit of uneasiness shared by all those around her.
At last had come the moment she had prepared for, nae dreaded, since the lands of Bienn á Bhuird became her responsibility—to have and to hold while her erstwhile husband went to participate in some benighted French king’s war across the water. At this precise moment, it was as if she had always known today would come to pass.
As inevitable as night followed day.
Now she had to prove that she was the true head of the Comlyn clan—by right of blood—not Gavyn Farquhar. Not the mercenary the king had gifted with both her hall and her lands.
Low rays of sunlight cut under the base of the clouds and smoke the high hall’s shape firmed, its huge log walls limned in shades of bronze and black, the high hall crouched on its broad ledge, glaring down on the glen like a fierce lynx ready to pounce on the unwary.
Three sets of large hooves thundered atop the dirt trail in time with Gavyn’s heart. Both it and the other’s mounts sped faster the closer they approached Dun Bhuird.
Dust rose like smoke plumes around the feathered hooves of their mounts as he hauled back hard on the reins. With Rob and Jamie but a moment behind him, they came to a halt but six horse-lengths from the gatehouse.
His eyes were drawn again and again to the high hall as it glowered down at them above the jagged log walls of the palisade, its gates firmly shut against him as he pounded toward the barrier as if it didn’t exist.
It remained shut.
Kathryn stood steady, the mail weighing as heavily on her shoulders as her responsibilities—both tainted by the deaths of her father and brother. Her family were dead and the McArthurs bore the blame. Her breath caught on a shuddering sob she dared not give voice to while she … aye, she, was preparing to face the large band of men marching on the Comlyn stronghold.
With the light behind them, it was near impossible to recognise the ensign on their shields. It made little difference; no friend marched upon another without advance warning. And any chance of surprise had long since faded. That they were expected was without doubt. The beacons had warned not only those at Dun Bhuird.
The Comlyns had Right on their side, but history wouldn’t care for that if the last of them were wiped off the face of the Highlands. The thought wasn’t to be borne that she might go down as the one responsible for that tragedy.
She refused to consider that her father might be to blame for pursuing a war he could never have won.
Her thoughts raced, all of them bad. Meanwhile fate kept pace with her deliberation and arrived in the shape of the enemy. All too soon it was time for her, Kathryn Comlyn, to step up to the mark.
She strode to the edge of the rim, nocked her arrow—a signal meant for her men—and drew the bowstring until it quivered against her ear as she held her breath.
Out of the darkness below she beheld a black bird rising, a raven.
Kathryn’s cheek stung as her arrow flew.
Gavyn, lifting a metal-gloved fist, roared at the slight figure in fine silver mail on the edge of the rim outside the longhouse, demanding, “Open the gates for your laird.” The words had barely left his mouth when the arrow stabbed the ground between his mount’s hooves. It said much for Cloud’s training that the horse didn’t rear and unseat him.
Aye, he was well trained.
Howsoever, it would seem the same couldn’t be said for his wife.
A man might have killed him, or attempted to.
Not Kathryn Comlyn.
And somehow that didn’t bode well.