“Aye,” Marsaili replied, her gaze moving past Isobel once more.
“What are ye looking at?” Isobel demanded.
“Hush,” Marsaili hissed. “Ye will attract the fools’ attention.”
Isobel glanced toward the guards who were facing each other and talking, then she looked back to Marsaili, who shifted from foot to foot as if anxious. A warning sounded in her head, and she whipped around and glanced toward the top of the wall where men stood on guard. Slowly, she crept her gaze along the wall as Marsaili began to tug on her arm.
“Turn around, Isobel,” Marsaili commanded, but Isobel ignored her as the warning in her head grew almost deafening. She counted five guards on each wall before Marsaili pulled her around with a jerk.
Isobel gasped at her half sister, and craned her neck to look behind her once more. Four guards! There were but four guards to the north. As she stared it became three, then two, then one, and then the wall was bare of guards. For a moment, she was not certain she could believe her eyes, but then the same thing occurred on the south wall. She sucked in a breath, turned toward Marsaili, and asked in a low voice, “Do ye stand with Father or against him?”
Isobel didn’t know what was happening, but she knew her stepmother and Lord MacLeod were evil, and Marsaili had been the only person willing to help her thus far. She didn’t know if she could trust Marsaili, but she knew she could not trust Jean or Lord MacLeod, and it seemed her father’s men were currently doing Jean’s bidding.
Marsaili locked gazes with Isobel. “I stand with ye, Isobel. I vow it.”
Isobel’s heart thudded in her ears, and she faced the wall once more. As the moon came out from behind a cloud, a very large, very powerful-appearing, half-naked man poised for battle with a sword in hand became silhouetted against the night. Her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly, he disappeared, dropping over the wall so quickly she would almost have questioned that she’d seen anything at all except another man scrambled over the wall, and then another, and another. Isobel didn’t know whether to scream in warning at an attack or sigh with relief at a rescue.
Marsaili gripped her shoulder from behind. “They are here to help us.”
Uncertainty froze Isobel as she stared at the largest man. The darkness obscured his features, but she could see him raise a finger to his lips in a motion for her to be silent.
Before she could decide what to do, one of the guards yelled, “Attack!”
At the same moment, somethingswishedby her ear. And then again.Swish.
The guard’s shouts abruptly stopped, and then athudresounded in the night, followed quickly by another.
She did not have to turn around to know Jean’s men were dead. Knots of fear formed in her belly as Marsaili moved to Isobel’s side and gripped her hand. Marsaili squeezed her fingers hard as the giant of a man she had been watching at the top of the wall came to a shuddering stop in front of them. Twenty men flanked his sides like a human wall of iron. Something about his presence commanded attention above all else. His cold, hard gaze did not offer comfort but only more fear.
“Isobel Campbell?” he asked with such contempt that she immediately took a step back.
She glanced to Marsaili for reassurance but saw a flash of guilt on her half sister’s face. “Ye deceived me?” Isobel asked and accused at once.
Marsaili bit her lip. “’Tis nae so simple, Isobel. Please, I mean ye no harm. I only seek to help ye. Ye must trust me!”
“Intruders!” a voice rang from the rampart.
A horn blasted, and before Isobel could respond, the giant swept her and Marsaili behind him. “Neil! Defend them with yer life,” he called to one of his men.
She was seized by strong hands and dragged to the side of the keep, along with Marsaili. The chapel door banged open, a whistle pierced the air, and men suddenly flooded into the courtyard from the main castle.
Besieged by doubt, Isobel stood by the man Neil and watched the battle. Her father’s men—they wore his plaid but did he have their loyalty?—fought against the men Marsaili had vowed were there to help them. Isobel’s heart raced as two warriors drew near.
Neil pushed her head toward the ground. “Stay low,” he commanded.
She bumped foreheads with Marsaili, and as swords clanked above them, Marsaili grasped her hands. “Whatever happens, stay with me,” Marsaili said.
Dismay filled Isobel’s chest. Had she made the best choice? Did she even have one? Cries filled the courtyard along with the hard clank of steel meeting steel. The heat of at least fifty bodies drenched in sweat obliterated the biting cold in the air. Men rushed by her toward one another and bumped into her. She looked to where Neil had been, only to realize he was no longer beside her. Instead he was fighting before her, protecting her and Marsaili.
She stood abruptly, bringing her half sister with her. Two men battled very near, and the taller of the two—a Campbell—lunged forward in an attempt to plunge his sword into a bald-headed intruder, but he missed and his blade sliced through the skirt of Isobel’s gown. The soldier’s eyes caught hers, and the desire to kill shining there made panic riot within her. This man was crazed with the need to kill, and she feared greatly she was about to be a casualty.
“Yer laird is my father!” she screamed, hoping to pierce through the haze that had descended upon the man, or perchance remind him where his loyalty should lie.
His answer was a jerk of his sword, which released her gown so that she had barely enough time to scramble backward against the hard stone wall just as her father’s soldier was cut down by the man he had been fighting. The Campbell man fell at her feet, and the bald-headed marauder who had killed him didn’t spare her or Marsaili a glance. He simply disappeared into the press of bodies, and Isobel stood shaking, taking a few deep gulps of air only to realize it was heavy with smoke.
As coughs wracked Isobel’s body, Marsaili tugged on her arm. “Isobel, I fear the men who came to help us will not triumph. We must flee!”
“Flee?” Isobel cried out, trying to stifle the building panic. “To where? Do ye ken where Father is? Or Findlay and Colin?”
