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His head pounding, Hunter sat up. He was alone beside the creek, his sword and knife gone.
“Aunt Brenna?”
Nothing.
His stomach rolling, his vision blurry, he crawled to the creek and submerged his aching head in the icy water. It cleared his head but did not ease the guilt strangling his very soul.
He had to find her. Pulling himself up on a rock, he took two staggering steps, tripped and rolled down the hill. The rocks battered him all the way to the bottom. Vaguely. he heard someone screaming and realized it was him. He landed in a heap against a huge boulder and lay there, too hurt to move. There was blood in his mouth, a sharp pain in his left leg.
“Hunter! Hunter, by all that’s holy!” Uncle Jock materialized out of the woods, a dozen McKies at his back. “Bloody hell, what happened to ye?”
“Aunt Brenna...kidnapped,” Hunter said weakly.
“The hell ye say.” Jock roared the orders that sent his men crashing through the woods. “Do ye know who it was? Where they might have taken her?”
“Two men ... Alex ... tall ... a nobleman, I think... red hair. The other...” Hunter turned his head and spat out blood. His uncle’s face was hazy, and he knew he was likely to faint again. “Black hair...ugly...Owen. Owen’s his name.”
Jock McKie cursed, leaped up and kicked a nearby rock. “’Tis Alex and Owen Murray. Bloody hell, I should have known, what with the way Alex was sniffing around my Brenna at the last Truce Day.”
“She knows him?” That made an odd sort of sense to Hunter’s battered brain. “Mayhap he won’t hurt her.”
Jock cursed again. “Faithless jade. I should have seen this coming.” He seized hold of Hunter’s shoulder. “Did she have anything with her? A ledger? Tally sticks?”
“Nay.” Memories dipped dizzily in and out of focus. “Wait. She... she was in your counting room for a time. When she came out, she was carrying the basket.”
“Dod! Where is it now?” Jock rose with a roar. He shouted for his men, and when they’d assembled, gave orders for some to carry Hunter back to Luncarty while the rest came with him. “Alex Murray’ll rue this night’s work.”
“You’ll get Aunt Brenna back, won’t you?” Hunter whispered.
“Aye, that I’ll surely do, then I’ll make certain Alex Murray pays for taking what’s mine.”
Chapter One
Scottish Middle Marches
August, 1393
A thin crescent moon shed pale light on the Cheviots. Desolate and treeless, the hills stretched toward the horizon like a great rumpled quilt, pocked by narrow valleys and steep bluffs. Atop the most prominent sat Luncarty Tower, its stark stone walls blending with the hillside that plunged fifty feet to the Lune Water.
Stretched out on her belly in the coarse grass of a neighboring hillock, Allisun Murray scanned the fortress domain of her clan’s most hated enemy. Jock McKie’s ancestors had chosen the site well.
Small ravines guarded the approaches on either side of the tower, and the only entrance was a winding trail up the face of the bluff to a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch. On the other side stood the tall gatehouse, its stout door tightly shut, a pair of arrow slits staring out like giant, malevolent eyes. A single McKie manned the open battlements above, his round helmet and long spear gleaming in the moonlight as he paced to and fro.
“It’ll no’ be easy getting in and back out again with our stock,” muttered Owen Murray.
Allisun sighed and shifted fractionally on the hard ground, her muscles cramped, her bones jarred by the hard ride from their hideaway at Tadlow. But she dared not let her fatigue show. Though the death of her brother, Daniel, had made her head of their small clan, no Scot would follow a woman into battle. She was here only because she’d insisted and Owen, Daniel’s captain, had backed her. “We must find a way,” she said.
“I’m for throwing our scaling hooks over the back wall, climbing in and fighting for what’s ours,” growled Black Gilbert, hunkered down behind a pile of rock to her left.
A murmur of agreement swept through the thirty Murrays sprawled along the hill’s summit, clad in riding leathers and armed for battle, their faces bleak with fury and frustration.
Allisun understood both. For twelve years the feud between the Murrays and the McKies had raged. She’d lost first her father, then her home and finally, her two brothers, Sandie and Daniel to Jock McKie’s punishing raids. Daniel’s death had cut the deepest, for he’d been only twenty and a gentle soul. “Aye, let’s give them a taste of Border justice,” she muttered.
Owen caught her arm with a wide, scarred hand. “Easy, lass,” he whispered. “I know how you feel, but ’twould be suicide. Getting ourselves killed will not bring Danny back.”
“Have you forgotten how that foul, deceitful old man lured Danny into meeting him with promises of a truce, then tortured and killed him?” She shuddered, torn by the memory of her peace-loving brother, lying broken and bloody in a high meadow twenty miles from here.
“Nay, I’ve not forgotten a single one of Jock McKie’s crimes against us. Each death is carved into my heart. But young Danny withstood Jock’s brutality for our sakes.”
Allisun nodded. She knew full well why Jock had tortured her brother—to learn the whereabouts of their camp so he might finish what he’d started so long ago.
“We cannot let his sacrifice be for naught,” Owen added. “You’ll be remembering Danny’s last words ere he rode out.”
She looked up at the weathered face of the man who’d been like a father to her since her own had been killed by the McKies five years ago. Before leaving to meet with Jock and, hopefully, forge a truce, Danny had ordered them not to avenge him if something went awry. “I cannot let it pass,” she said.
“You must. You and your sister are all that’s left of your family. What of her and the others waiting for us back at Tadlow Mountain?” Owen asked roughly. “Who will hunt for them, who will protect them, if aught happens to us?”
Duty dulled the hunger for revenge that clawed at her. Privately Danny had urged her to take Carina and leave the Borders if he was killed. That she could not do, but neither could she let Danny’s death pass. “They do outnumber us.”
“Pair of weak-willed women, ye are,” Black Gil taunted, his scowl as black as his hair. Though five years younger than Owen’s forty, he was as hard as the land, the wicked scar bisecting his cheek a memento of the feud. “I say we go in and kill as many McKies as we can.”
“Aye,” growled a chorus of Murrays.
“We’ve got to strike back,” muttered Wee Harry, the giant who served as their blacksmith. else they’ll keep picking us off one by one till there’s not a Murray left alive.”
That, Allisun knew, was Jock’s goal, his obsession. And Wee Harry was right. They had to do something to keep the McKies at bay. To do that, they needed food. Meat, preferably, to keep their fighters strong and their bairns alive through the long winter. They had no coin to buy sheep or cattle to replace those lost to McKie raids this year. Eighteen head, to be exact. Allisun was determined to get them back. “Where do you think he’s got the stock penned?”
“In the barmkin beyond yon walls,” snapped Black Gilbert. “Which is why we’ve got to go in.”
“What of that shieling we skirted on the way here?” Allisun asked, recalling the large huts they’d bypassed to avoid having anyone sound the alarm and alert the countryside to their presence. “I heard cattle near there. We could relieve the crofter of eighteen head to replace ours.”
“What of Jock McKie?” snarled Black Gil. “Does it not trouble yer conscience that he lives free and clear whilst yer father and brothers molder in the ground?”
“Of course it does.” Allisun felt the tears gather behind her eyes but blinked them back. “And we’ll have our revenge against the McKie. That I swear,” she added, looking around the circle of hard-faced men. She’d known them all her life, lived with them from the good days at Keastwicke Tower before the feud began and the McKies burned them out. They’d been driven from one hovel to the next, forced to take shelter in burned-out towers and abandoned huts. How hard she and Carina had worked to turn them into some semblance of a home, only to be forced out into the hills each time Jock found them.
Tough living, it was, and it had scarred them all. Short rations turned their bodies thin and wiry. The constant threat of discovery bred children who seldom cried and never laughed. Allisun’s heart bled for them. Somehow, someway, she was going to make Jock McKie pay for what he’d done.
Allisun glanced at Owen, drawing strength from the approval in his dark eyes. Throwing up her chin, she challenged Black Gil. “There must be a hundred McKies behind Luncarty’s walls. To venture within would be tantamount to suicide, and we can ill afford to lose even one man. Nay, we will wait till we can lure Jock McKie out into the open where we stand a fair chance of winning.” Seeing her men nod in agreement, she added, “Mayhap the raid on Jock’s herds will do just that.”
“Aye.” Gibb’s Martin, tall and lanky as his sire had been before he’d caught a McKie spear in the chest, turned to crawl back down the hill. “Allisun has the right of it. We’ll attack the croft, lure the bastards from their tower, then cut them down as they did our kinfolk.”
“Wait,” Allisun said as the others made to follow. “We’ll not succeed if we go crashing off through the woods. Let us ride to that hillock behind the croft. We will wait there while Owen and Mouse scout the area to judge where their guards are posted. When we’re sure of success, we’ll strike.”
Owen smiled. “Exactly right. You’ve as canny a mind as your da, God asoul him.”
Allisun flushed, warmed by his praise. Though her father and brothers had forbidden her to ride out with them, she’d spent many an hour listening while they talked strategy. Little did any of them realize she’d need those lessons.
Black Gilbert grunted. “I still say we should—”
A shout from Luncarty Tower sent the Murrays scrambling up the hill to observe a party of mounted men hailing the tower. Allisun counted twenty in the band. Even from this distance, their horses looked enormous, great black beasts draped in red blankets. Their riders were no less amazing, tall men clad entirely in metal that gleamed like fire in the moonlight.
“Who do you suppose they are?” she asked.
“Knights,” Owen replied. “French, likely. Or English.”
“English.” Allisun savored the word. “If we could prove Jock is treating with the English, Andrew Kerr would be forced to investigate, wouldn’t he?” The Warden of the Scots Middle March was charged with keeping the peace, but he had rejected the Murrays’ complaints against the McKies because Jock paid Sir Andy a handsome quarterly bribe.
“But we know proof is hard to come by,” said Owen.
“Aye.” How different things might have been had that not been the case, Allisun thought.
The guards at Luncarty called out, no doubt asking the identity of the newcomers.
The foremost man, more richly dressed than the others, his armor covered by a sleeveless tabard, removed his helmet and shouted something back. His reply was inaudible to the Murrays, but it sent the guards scrambling to lower the drawbridge.
Allisun eyed the leader of this band. His hair gleamed bright as newly minted gold in the light of wind-whipped torches, but it was his bearing that impressed her. He sat taller in the saddle than any man she’d ever seen, his back straight as a pikestaff. Arrogance, she decided. Aye, he carried himself like a man who owned the world., “Do you think he is an Englishman?” she asked.
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?”
