Twelve
Callum managed to kill the first two Gordons who attacked him, but when four more entered the cave just as he was yanking his sword from the last one he had felled, they advanced quickly under the shouted directives of Robert Gordon, Edina’s elder brother who despised Callum. Callum sliced one warrior across the chest, but before he could turn to ward off Robert, someone knocked him on the back of the head so hard that bright specs danced in his vision and the cave seemed to tilt.
He stayed on his feet for another breath, but then a second hit to his head came, causing pain so intense that he clenched his teeth and fell to his knees. His vision blurred, and he blinked his eyes to clear it as his left arm was grasped. He blindly swung his sword upward, felt it knocked from his numb hand, and then his right arm was restrained. Whoever stood behind him yanked his head back. He squeezed his eyes shut again, his vision starting to clear, and with a roar, he strained against the men holding him to no avail.
“I’d save yer strength,” Robert Gordon said, standing in front of him.
Callum gnashed his teeth as he tried to bring his head forward to glare at Robert, but the grip one of the Gordon’s men had on his hair prevented any movement.
“Leave go, Sully,” Robert ordered. Instantly, Callum’s head was released, and he brought his gaze to Robert’s.
“Where’s the lass?” Callum growled. Since the moment Marsaili had told him that she had loved him, he’d known he could not marry Coira, yet he could not repeat his past mistakes. He had to find a way to save his clan without the union and somehow break his promise to Coira without hurting her or making an enemy of her father. The tasks seemed impossible, but not fighting for what he and Marsaili had was unthinkable. He needed her. She had taken his heart the day he had met her, and without her, he felt empty inside.
Robert smirked. “Ye’re nae in a position to demand information from me. Does this lass mean something to ye?”
“Nay,” he replied without hesitation. If Robert thought Marsaili was special to Callum, he would purposely harm her.
As if Marsaili sensed she was being discussed, her scream of rage rent the air. Callum lost control, roaring in response and surging upward against the three men who restrained him. He managed to throw off the man who had been holding his left arm. He then drove his fist into the nose of his captor on the right. Bone crunched satisfyingly, and blood spurted from the wound. The man released him to grip his nose, giving Callum the opportunity he needed to gain his feet. He sprung up, spun around, and delivered two quick jabs to the windpipe of the man behind him.
The man fell to his knees, gasping and wheezing for air. Behind Callum, the air swished, alerting him to danger. He swung toward the threat, but he was not fast enough. He saw the hilt of Robert’s sword coming but could do nothing to prevent the blow. He was struck once in the nose, then on the side of the head, which sent his vision black once again. But this time, he felt as if he were suddenly floating in the darkest loch he had ever seen. The water was warm, and he could not fight the temptation to simply close his eyes and drift.
The grip on Marsaili’s chin made sharp pain throb on both sides of her jaw, but the tears swimming in her gaze were for Callum. He lay unconscious before her, blood trickling from a cut on his head and streaming from his nose.
“I’ll only ask ye one more time,” the redheaded man before her said in a calm and eerily patient tone. She sensed he would relinquish a great amount of time to happily torture her if he thought it would get him the answers he sought. “Who are ye? And who are ye to the Grant?”
Her thoughts seemed to collide with one another inside her head as she tried to determine the best way to answer. So far, she had refused to say anything, but that had caused Robert, as she’d heard him called, to have his men drag Callum outside the cave, his limp head banging against the ground as the men brought him to Robert’s feet. Who she truly was would both damn and save her. She knew the Gordons were her father’s allies, thus they would not kill her, but they would alert her father to where she was, and then any hope of escaping a life as the earl’s leman would be lost. Her father would triple the guards to take her there, and it would separate her from her son that much more.
“Have it yer way,” Robert announced, his voice cutting through Marsaili’s thoughts. He waved a hand at his guard. “Cut off one of his fingers.”
She gasped. “What? Nay!”
“Aye,” the man said in that same calm voice, but this time he offered her a distinctively cruel smile. “For every lie ye tell me, I’ll take a finger off the Grant.”
Her heart raced furiously in her chest. “Why?” she asked. “Why do ye do this?” She knew, of course, but she was desperate for time, any little bit she could get.
Robert drew her face a hairbreadth from his. “This man shamed my sister when he broke his promise to wed her. He took her innocence, got her with child, and then the child died shortly after he was born. It near killed my sister, and she has nae recovered from the loss. He deserves to suffer, and I see before me the perfect weapon to bring him more misery. What a happy chance, too!” Robert said with a guffaw. “So are ye or are ye nae Coira, daughter of the Earl of Ainsworth, whom the Grant intends to wed to secure an alliance with Ainsworth to fight against my clan?”
Marsaili had to clench her jaw against the desire to gape. Robert Gordon thought her to be Coira? He believed he had happened upon Callum with his soon-to-be wife? No wonder the man was gloating. He likely thought God had given him the perfect gift of revenge. It was both a nightmare and her only hope.
“Aye, I am Coira,” she lied. “Please, I beg ye, spare Callum’s life and take mine instead.”
“Dunnae fash yerself, lass,” Robert said, his voice baleful. “I’ll take yer life just to spite yer da, and I’ll spare the Grant so he may suffer the rest of his life without ye. He’ll ken well ye died a painful death because he’s going to watch ye die. It does nae matter how long it takes. And when ye’re dead, he’ll be a broken man, as my sister is a broken woman.”
With those ominous words, Robert made quick work of binding her hands and her feet, and then he slung her belly-down across his destrier. The wind gushed out of her lungs, and before she could even catch a breath, they were riding. With each jarring strike of the horse’s hooves against the ground, her head pounded, but she concentrated on one thought: she had to find a way to tell Callum he had a son in case she did not live to find the child herself.
Callum’s thoughts floated just out of his reach, and he could not seem to remember where he was or what had happened. Something was not right, yet he could not recall what, and there was a dull ache that seemed a constant part of him. In the distance, something hung in the air, dangling, and he thought he saw a woman floating. But that was not right. It could not be.
Heat washed over him for hours, light pressing on his eyelids, and then coolness came with dark and blessed silence. Then heat once more, brightness and noise. Time drifted by like this, repeating itself until he awoke with a start, rage and worry immediately washing over him and the realization that he’d been drifting in an out of waking, but for how many days, he did not know.
Trying to ignore the thundering in his skull, he opened his eyes, the sun nearly blinding him. Flies buzzed around the cut on his head, the one Robert had given him. He struggled to swallow, his throat raw and burning. His eyes watered as they tried to adjust to the daylight. He tried to move his hands but couldn’t, then tried his feet to the same effect. Looking down, he grunted.
A stake.He was tied to a stake! He brushed his fingertips against the unmistakable grain of wood that was often used for a binding stake. The familiar noises of a working castle surrounded him, like the sound of a smithy laboring with iron. He inhaled, and the scent of baking bread filled his nose. He was in the inner bailey of the Gordon castle. The questions now were what had Robert done with Marsaili and what did he intend to do next?
Callum’s eyes finally stopped watering, and when he opened them, he glanced immediately to his left and right. Guard towers stood on both sides of him. He craned his head back to see the roof of the gatehouse above him. Squinting into the sun, he looked across the bailey, where guards, servants, and members of the Gordon clan milled about. There was a small group of people straight ahead of him at the far end of the bailey. They seemed to be gathered looking at something. He swept his gaze around, searching for what they were watching, and when he saw a woman standing with a basket on her hip and her head tilted back as if staring into the sky, he quickly looked up. His heart lurched, and his breath left him. There, suspended from an iron cage from the castle wall was Marsaili.
He had dreamed she was floating, and she was, in a way. The cage was rectangular and not tall enough for her to stand. She had her face pressed against the bars, and her hands clutched the black iron on each side of her. At first, he thought she must be glaring defiantly at the crowd gathered to gape at her, but from the tilt of her head, it seemed she looked beyond them. Black rage choked him, and with a guttural cry, he lunged forward, only to be jerked violently back by the momentum of his own body.
“Callum!” Marsaili screamed his name. A shudder of relief coursed through him that she could call out to him. He opened his mouth to call back when she screamed again. “Callum! Callum, it’s me,Coira!”
