Suzanne Barclay - Pride Of Lions

Owen shrugged. “Possible. Though I’d not have thought lock so foolish as to trade openly with them.”

“The standard they carry, the black lion on red, I’ve seen it before,” said Black Gil.

“Where?”

“I do not know. ’Twas a long time ago, but I’ll remember.”

Owen scowled. “Mayhap we should stay and see what they do.”

“I say we go after those cattle,” Gilbert grumbled.

“Agreed,” Allisun said, but as the Murrays began to creep down the hill, she looked back at the armored knights walking their mounts over the drawbridge. “Those metal suits look vastly heavy.”

“Aye, and cumbersome. Ill suited to the sort of fighting that goes on hereabouts.” Owen kept pace with her during the descent. At the base of the hillock, he spoke gravely. “Once we’re back at Tadlow, I’m going to see about getting you and Carina away someplace safe.”

“Nay.” Allisun cursed and spun away from him.

Owen caught her arm. “Mind your tongue. Your poor lady mother is likely spinning in her grave to see how I’ve let you forget all she taught you about being a fine lady.”

“Lady.” Allisun spat the word. “What good are lessons in reading and playing the harp with my menfolk dead and the McKies hounding us? Better you teach me to wield a sword.”

“Nay.” Owen enclosed her icy, knotted fist with his warm, callused one. “I swore to Danny that I’d take you away to live in Edinburgh before I’d let aught happen to you.”

Allisun shook her head so vigorously her thick red braid beat against her back. “Never. I—”

“This is no’ the time, nor the place to discuss this.” Owen rubbed a hand across his whiskered jaw. “But our time is running out. Clearly Danny did not tell Jock where we’re hiding, but someday soon the old bastard will find us, and then—”

The McKie would not only kill them all, he’d discover the secret her father, brothers and countless other Murrays had died to protect. “Before it comes to that, I’ll take Will Bell up on his offer of protection,” she teased.

Owen’s eyes rounded in horror. “You cannot be serious, lass. Desperate we may be, but III Will Bell is—”

“A disgusting old reprobate.” And leader of the most infamous reiving family on the Borders. It had been her bad luck to be spotted by Ill Will one day when she and Danny were in Kelso fetching supplies. The old coot had . leered at her and offered to aid the Murrays in their little disagreement with the McKies. The price of that help had been patently obvious. Shuddering, Allisun thrust away the memory. “Come, if we’re going to lift a few head of McKie stock, what better time than whilst Old Jock is busy entertaining these knights.”

“Does it seem strange to be back here?” asked Gavin Sutherland as the party cantered over the wooden drawbridge.

“Aye. If Uncle Jock had not sent for me, I’d have been content never to set foot here again.” Hunter Carmichael’s mouth was held in a grim line, torchlight flickering on features as bleak as the land they’d traveled to reach this place.

Gavin knew full well what had caused his usually jovial cousin to look so dour. “Not since Aunt Brenna disappeared.” Though Brenna Carmichael McKie, sister to Hunter’s father, Ross, had not really been Gavin’s blood kin, the Carmichael and Sutherland clans were as close-knit as the dark Highland plaids both men carried rolled behind their saddles.

“Not since she was kidnapped—” Hunter corrected him “—by those cursed Murrays.”

“It has been a bloody feud.”

“One I vow to end—permanently.” Hunter’s oath echoed hollowly off the stone passageway that led them under the gatehouse and thence to the barmkin.

It was no idle threat, Gavin mused as he followed his cousin through the open meadow, bounded by Luncarty’s high walls and filled with grazing sheep. This second son born to Lady Megan and Ross, Laird of the Carmichaels, carried on the family tradition for valor and ferocity. While his older brother, Ewan, distinguished himself on the field of battle, Hunter was a warrior with words. Chief justice of King Richard’s high court at the age of five and twenty, so fiercely did he defend the cause of justice that he was often called the King’s Lion.

None outside the family knew that Hunter’s obsession with justice stemmed from the guilt he felt over that fateful moment twelve years ago when his aunt had been taken by the Murrays while Hunter, a youth of three and ten, watched helplessly.

He was not helpless now, Gavin thought as they passed under the portcullis and into the tower’s courtyard. Standing well over six feet tall, with muscles honed by hours of rigorous swordplay, and a razor-sharp mind, Hunter was a match for any man, be he statesman or swordsman. Almost, Gavin pitied the Murrays whom Hunter had come to punish for this latest outrage against poor Jock.

“Dieu, Luncarty’s a dour-looking place.” Gavin gazed up at three stories of sheer gray stone, broken only by a pair of tiny, shuttered windows on the uppermost floors.

“Aye, the peel towers are drear and poorly furnished,” Hunter said, glad for the change of subject. “Especially after what we’re used to at Carmichael Castle. And though you’ll not believe it when we get inside, Luncarty is finer than most Border peels. Uncle Jock’s a wealthy man. We’ve been riding on his land for nearly half the day, and those cattle herds we passed are his, too.”

“Pity he has no son to inherit all this.”

Hunter nodded. Walter, Jock’s son by his first wife, had died the year before he wed Brenna. That union had been too brief to bear fruit, nor had any of his mistresses quickened. There were some who speculated that Jock’s seed was dead.

“Why, ’tis wee Hunter, all grown-up,” said the old man who’d come out of the tower to greet them.

“Hutcheson, isn’t it?” Hunter swung down and handed the reins of his warhorse to his squire.

“’Tis Old Hutch, now, my lord. This is Young Hutch, my son. He’ll be steward after me.”

A skinny youth with his father’s pale eyes and hooked nose stepped forward and nodded. “We’ve put ye in the new tower.” He waved toward a two-story structure of gleaming gray stone.

Hunter smiled, grateful to be spared the room he’d stayed in the last time. “My uncle?” he asked anxiously.

“Ach, the old bird’s too tough to kill,” said Old Hutch. “But ’twas a near thing.” He shook his head dolefully.

“They say he’ll no’ walk again,” added Young Hutch. “The Murrays took a Jedburgh ax to him. Crushed his leg, it did.”

“Aye. He’s lucky to be alive,” said Old Hutch.

“He does not see it that way.” Young Hutch’s features tightened. “Better dead than crippled, he says.”

Hunter’s belly cramped, recalling the big, energetic man who had taught him to fish and trap. If only he’d been stronger, quicker himself twelve years ago, none of this would have—

“Hutch!” bawled a coarse voice from an upstairs window. “Is that my nephie come at last?”

“Aye, my lord,” the steward shouted back. “Just coming up.”

“See ye’re quick about it!”

Hunter smiled, the fear that had plagued him since receiving Jock’s call for help easing. “He sounds the same.”

“A bit testier is all.” Old Hutch herded them through the tower’s only entrance, a set of double doors, one of metal grating, the other made from thick oak planks banded with steel. “Go on up, ye know the way. Young Hutch’ll see yer men settled in the barracks building across the way. Tell Jock I’ll be along directly with ale and meat.”

“Come with me, Gavin.” Hunter led the way through a maze of kegs and oat sacks that filled the ground floor storage room to the turnpike stairs. The tightly coiled steps spiraled clockwise, so right-handed attackers would find their sword arms pinned against the wall as they tried to fight their way up.