Loe raamatut: «Lion's Legacy»

Chapter One

Edin Tower, June 1381

Danger!

It whispered on the wind and moaned through the trees, making them sway around the tiny, moonlit clearing. Laurel’s heart leapt, then thudded wildly as she whirled around. “Who’s there?” she whispered, scanning the thrashing brush.

No one answered, yet she could feel something out there waiting, watching her. The hair at her nape rose. The forest seemed to press in on her from all sides, dark and mysterious. Then through the trees she saw Edin Tower standing out black against the gray sheen of the loch.

Home! There was home and safety. A single light burned in the tower’s uppermost window. ’Twas likely Aunt Nesta waiting up, wondering where she was. As Laurel unlocked her frozen limbs and took a step, the wind abruptly died away. In the terrible, unnatural silence that followed, she heard a sound. Halfway between a whisper and a whimper.

“Who’s there?” she asked, gooseflesh chasing down her arms and legs. No one answered. She tested the air like a hunted hare, smelled danger lurking beneath the innocent scent of rich loam and trampled herbs. Behind her, a twig snapped.

Laurel spun around, a scream lodged in her throat.

The brush parted, and a stallion stepped into the clearing. Black as the night that had spawned him, he halted at some unspoken command from his rider and pawed the ground, breath billowing like dragon smoke. Laurel’s eyes rose from the gauntleted hands that held the great beast in check to the man himself. He was big, his wide shoulders and thick chest encased in gleaming metal armor.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

If he heard, he made no reply, merely raised the visor on his helmet and stared in the direction of Edin Tower. Pale, eerie moonlight slanted across his features, illuminating them.

Sweet Mary! ’Twas him! The man who’d haunted her dreams this past month. Always before she’d viewed him from a distance, riding across a bloodied battlefield, standing in the prow of a ship as it braved the storm-tossed sea. Yet she’d sensed him drawing nearer and nearer. Now he was here.

“Who are you?” she asked again, voice raw with fear.

He turned toward her then, revealing a ruggedly handsome face framed by thick black hair, but ’twas his eyes that captivated her. They were a cool shade of violet, bright as gemstones, hard and glittering with a hunger that was more threatening than the gleaming length of steel at his waist.

“Why have you come here? What do you want?”

“Everything, ” he murmured, his voice dark as the aura of danger that surrounded them. “Everything you are and will be.”

Edin. He must mean Edin and her clan, for her home and her family were all to her. She backed up a step, then another. She turned and ran.

He came after her, the forest floor shuddering under the weight of his warhorse’s footfalls.

“Nay!” Laurel screamed, and wrenched upright in bed. It took her a moment to realize she was safe in her own bed. Shuddering, skin slick with sweat beneath her linen night shift, she wrapped both arms around her waist and tried to slow her ragged pulse.

“’Twas a nightmare, nothing more.” The words failed to reassure. She didn’t have simple nightmares. Though she railed against the Fates for cursing her so, the visions that disturbed her sleep were far more complex and mysterious than any mere dream. They were a portent, a glimpse into a future she was both unable to interpret and powerless to prevent.

Fear trickled down Laurel’s spine. When the knight had looked at her with those dark eyes, she’d felt...a jolt. A connection such as she’d never felt with another person, not even her Aunt Nesta, who was a seeress. Who was this knight?

“M’lady ? Are ye all right?” Annie MacLellan peered around the door, broad, freckled face scrunched with concern.

“I... I am fine,” Laurel replied, feeling anything but.

Annie frowned. “I heard ye call out”

“I had a dream..”

“Do tell.” Annie giggled. “What was it, another drought?”

Laurel sniffed. “I should think you’d be glad we had a wet spring, instead of the dry one I predicted.”

“Oh, I am, and I didn’t mean to hurt yer feelings, but I thought ye’d given up trying to foretell the future.”

“I have.” She’d stopped telling people what she dreamed. It was too humiliating. Truly she was a disgrace to those who’d gone before—the generations of MacLellan women who’d been gifted with the sight. Sight, bah! In her ’twas more like hindsight. After the fact, she sometimes found a grain of truth linking her vision to the actual occurrence. Small consolation. People expected better from the lass who should be their next seeress.

Mayhap if she’d been a conjurer like her Aunt Nesta, she’d have had more control over her visions. Instead, Laurel’s glimpses into the future came in dreams, unbidden, impossible to interpret and better forgotten. Still she couldn’t suppress a shiver at the memory of the violet-eyed stranger who’d looked at her so angrily yet so possessively.

“Why, ye’re quaking like a newborn lamb. Must be sickening with the ague.” Annie slammed the door and advanced, neat brown braid thumping against her slender back with every purposeful stride. “No wonder. Up half the night, riding the hills with the men.” She grabbed a sheepskin coverlet from the floor and bundled it around Laurel, tisking in fair imitation of Janet, her mother, who was housekeeper at Edin. “Indecent and unwomanly, wearing yer da’s chain mail and carrying his dirk and playing at being a warrior when all the while—”

“I do what I must to protect our people. If that means donning armor and riding into battle in Grandda’s stead, then so be it,” Laurel added. Not for the world would she admit to anyone how much she hated the violence and the fear. Not fear for herself, but the terror that cramped her belly each time she made a decision that sent the men of Clan MacLellan into harm’s way. Sweet Mary aid her, she was a healer, not a fighter. What if she made a mistake and it cost the lives of those she loved?

“There, ye’re trembling again.” Annie molded the sheepskin more tightly to Laurel’s body. “Bide here and I’ll nip down to the kitchens for a hot ale and a posset—”

“I’m just a bit tired.” Tired! She was weary to her soul, sick unto death with fighting and scheming to keep her people safe. “I’ll break my fast with Grandda, as usual.” Laurel threw off the heavy coverlet as she longed to do to the even heavier burden she’d been forced to take on when Duncan MacLellan had been ambushed and gravely wounded.

“Ye were so late getting in, ye should sleep till dinner at least,” Annie grumbled, not liking her lady’s pallor, nor the dark circles under her eyes, but judged the advice would go unheeded. Sighing, she moved to open the chest placed under the room’s single shuttered window. “What will you wear... the green gown or the blue?”

“Is the other set of da’s clothes clean? ’Twould save time if I put them on, for I must ride out again after mass.”

Simple, practical words, yet Annie saw the shadow they sent over Laurel’s fragile features, and her heart sank. How much more was her poor mistress expected to bear? Her parents dead these six years, her grandfather hurt two weeks ago, all of Edin Valley threatened by the reivers who’d done the evil deed and no one to lead the MacLellans save Laurel. ’Twas too weighty a burden for a lass of ten and eight, and her gently reared.

How Laurel found the strength to go on day after day, only God knew. In vain, Annie had tried to persuade Laurel to leave the fighting to the men, but she’d always been stubborn and independent.

“Ye know the laird hates being reminded ye’re determined to lead the men in his place,” Annie said quietly.

Laurel closed her eyes to hide the pain. It wasn’t only duty that made her don the clothes her sire had worn as a lad and ride out to try and catch the raiders. ’Twas guilt. She’d had a vision of trouble and warned her grandda not to leave Edin. The memory of her past inaccuracies flickering in his eyes, he’d patted her on the head, reminded her they needed the salt, spices and wine from Kindo’s merchants and gone as planned. And been ambushed.

Her vision had come true, horribly true, but because so many hadn’t, her beloved grandsire had brushed aside her warning and nearly died. ’Twas a lesson she’d not forget. She’d never again ignore her dreams. But what exactly did this latest one mean?

Laurel opened her eyes. “Men’s garb is more practical, Annie, but I confess I do miss dressing like a lass. I’ll wear the blue gown, then change before I go out again.”

Annie bent to the chest. “Ye’ll catch the fiends soon.” Stout words, yet threaded with the fear that haunted every MacLellan. Truly the reivers, whose sudden interest in raiding Edin Valley had cost Laurel’s kin so dearly, must be made to pay. No matter how unsuited she was for the task, Laurel vowed to hold them at bay until Duncan was well enough to take command.

If he ever was.

Nay. She mustn’t think like that. Suddenly the memory of this morn’s vision flooded back. Was the knight in her dream one of those who’d attacked her grandfather? Springing out of bed, she snatched the gown from the startled Annie and began pulling it on over her night shift.

“Here, here. Have a care or ye’ll rip it,” Annie chided. “Not that ye don’t have gowns aplenty, what with all the lovely things Laird Duncan had made when ye wed Aulay Kerr last year,” she added as she stripped Laurel bare.

It wasn’t the chill draft seeping in through the shuttered window that raised the gooseflesh on Laurel’s body as she donned a fresh shift. ‘Twas the reminder of her short-lived marriage and Aulay’s betrayal. ’Twas what came of trusting an outsider.

“New clothes are the only good thing that came of that sorry mess,” Annie murmured as she drew the blue wool gown over Laurel’s head. “I know ’tis a sin to think ill of the dead...”

“I’m certain the Almighty will make an exception in Aulay’s case,” Laurel said. Her late, unlamented husband had been far more the devil’s servant than God’s.

“Who’d have thought such a pleasant, mild-speaking man’d turn out to be rotten at the core. Too bad, too, for we could have used a strong man like him to defend us now.”

Aye. He’d been a strong man. Laurel’s throat burned with the memory of how Aulay’s hands had felt closing around it and squeezing like a vise. A strong, greedy man.

“He thinks ye should wed again.”

“What?” Horrified, Laurel spun to face her friend. “Who?”

Annie blinked. “Himself. He was telling the Lady Nesta so last eve when I brought him his broth.”

“Why would Grandda want me to wed when my first marriage turned out so ill?”

“’Tis yerself and young Malcolm he’s thinking of,” Annie said, laying a hand on Laurel’s arm to soften the blow. “So as ye’d have someone to protect ye when...if...” Her voice trailed off, but Laurel understood only too well what she meant.

If Duncan died, there’d be only herself to lead the MacLellans until her brother was old enough. Poor Collie, just seven this month, gangly and clumsy as a fawn, yet anxious to defend their clan. “I must see Grandda.” She tried to duck away.

“Hold still: ” Keeping a secure grip on Laurel’s hip-length red hair, the maid began working the tangles from it. ”There is no rush. Himself was just waking up when I came above stairs.”

“How did he seem?”

“Grouchy as ever. Mam says ’tis a sure sign he’s healing,” Annie said gently, for she knew Laurel’s eagerness to be away was born of fear, not lack of concern for her appearance.

Laurel turned as Annie finished tying a bit of gold cord around the end of her braid. It would have to be replaced with leather when she rode out, but Annie had the right of it. ’Twould please Grandda to see her properly gowned and coiffed.

The corridor was cold after the warmth of her chamber, and Laurel quickened her pace, lifting her skirts lest she trip in the narrow stone staircase that circled down to the first floor. A flood of torchlight and the muted sound of voices reached out to her from the great hall, where a score of men partook of ale and brown bread before riding out to stand watch. Pausing in the doorway, Laurel scanned their faces, old and young alike lined with worry and fatigue. Secure as it was, guarded by a narrow pass, Edin Valley wasn’t impregnable. Should the reivers decide to attack in force, Laurel wasn’t certain the MacLellans could hold out.

Sighing, she turned way from the hall and continued down the dimly lit passageway to the room that had been her grandmother’s solar in the days before the new tower housing the laird’s chamber had been added. ’Twas to the solar the men had carried their wounded laird two weeks past. Laurel’s hand tightened on the door as she recalled the many desperate hours that had followed while she and her aunt battled to stitch Duncan’s wounds before he bled to death. They’d managed to save him, but they still could lose him to blood-fever or infection.

Laurel was relieved to see him awake, propped up on several pillows to ease his breathing, for a sword had cut perilously close to his lungs. Duncan’s gray hair had been pulled back from his face and tied at the nape, revealing the sharp angles of the high cheekbones he’d bequeathed to Laurel and the hooked nose he mercifully had not. In the harsh glow of the candle set in a pike beside the bed, his skin looked chalky. The hooded eyes that used to sparkle with mischief focused dully on the hearth.

Following his gaze, she saw that despite the early hour, Aunt Nesta was already here. Dressed in her customary flowing black robe, she crouched by the fire, head bent over a bowl resting on a three-legged stool. Her auburn hair, hip length, unbound as a lass’s and free of gray despite her thirty years, obscured her profile as she leaned over the bowl.

“What do ye see, Nessie?” Duncan’s voice lacked the deep bass rumble of vigor and command it usually held.

“Naught.” Her aunt rocked back on her heels. “I’m that distracted I can scarce summon a proper conjuring.”

The word mocked Laurel’s shortcomings as a witch. Try as she might, she couldn’t summon an image in that ancient gold bowl.

“Try again,” Duncan commanded. “I must know where Kieran is before I worsen.”

Kieran? Who is this Kieran? Laurel wanted to ask, but she was reluctant to intrude on a conjuring in which she could take no part. Silence filled the chamber, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the rasp of Duncan’s uneven breathing.

“Ah!” Nesta exclaimed.

“Ye’ve seen him?” The rope-bound bed creaked as Duncan levered himself up for a peek.

“Aye.” Firelight glinted in Nesta’s red hair as she turned her head toward the bed. “I’ve found him, Da.”

“How far from Edin?”

“He’s on the far side of the pass, for I see the river and foothills beyond him. Ellis has met him, and they are talking.”

Laurel frowned. Why had the captain of Edin’s guard made no mention to her of meeting this Kieran, she wondered.

“And not a moment too soon,” Duncan muttered. “Well, don’t just sit there gaping, lass, tell me how he looks.”

Nesta turned back to the bowl, studied it for so long Laurel thought she’d go mad with the waiting. “Hard.”

“Hard? He’s no more than three and twenty,” Duncan said.

“Oh, his face is young, but his eyes are cold and har—”

“Mayhap ye’ve got the wrong man. Describe him to me.”

“Black haired he is, with strong features, a cleft in his square jaw and...and violet eyes.”

Violet eyes! Disbelief drove Laurel forward. Denial crowding her throat, she stopped beside her aunt and beheld an image floating in the murky water. ’Twas him. Recognition drove the strength from her legs and she sank down, scarcely feeling the cold stones beneath her knees. It couldn’t be, yet it was.

The man from her dreams.

“Wh-who is he?” Laurel murmured, transfixed by the sight.

“’Tis Kieran Sutherland,” Duncan replied. “The knight I’ve hired to protect us from those damned reivers.”

Laurel straightened. “You’d bring a stranger here?”

“He’s known to me. A mercenary whose exploits I’ve followed for some time.” Flushed with excitement, Duncan went on to enumerate Kieran’s feats in battle and on the tourney circuit. “He’s the grandson of a lass I’d a mind to wed. A few years ago I wrote her and...well, never mind that now. Suffice to say when a friend sent word Kieran was returning to Scotland, I took a notion to meet him. Never guessed I’d have need of his skills. Luckily my message found him still in Berwick. Luckier still, he agreed to take service with us.”

Laurel stared at the image, remembering her dream and the hunger in Kieran Sutherland’s eyes. “I want everything you are and will be,” he’d said. Greedy sot. Like Aulay before him, Kieran wanted Edin. “He cannot stay,” she choked out.

“I know ye’ve a distrust of outsiders, lass, but young Kieran’s our only hope.”

“He wants Edin,” Laurel insisted, and when her grandfather pressed her for details, she mumbled, “I...I dreamed about him.”

“Are ye saying ye had a vision of Kieran attacking me?”

“Nay, but he—”

“Is here to help us.”

“Grandda!” Laurel began, hurt and frustrated.

Nesta laid a hand on her arm. “What did ye see?”

Laurel sighed. It hadn’t been what she’d seen but what she’d felt. Danger. No one would believe her. She’d just have to find some way to prove Kieran Sutherland didn’t belong in Edin Valley.

Kieran squinted against the sun just peering over the jagged ridge of mountains that lay before them. As majestic as they were unexpected, the peaks seemed to leap from the rolling hills of the Border country like the teeth of some ancient beast roaring at the sky. So rugged was the terrain, that if he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought he was back in the Highlands where he’d been fostered, instead of two days’ march north of Carlisle. In fact, had Ellis MacLellan not hailed them as they rode along the river, Kieran would have passed right by.

At Ellis’s direction, they’d forded at a low spot in the rushing river and now faced a sheer cliff face. “Do you propose we walk up the side of that?” Kieran inquired.

The older man grinned, teeth gleaming in his russet beard, laugh lines crinkling the corner of his eyes. “Nay. The entrance to the pass lies just there.” With that, he kneed his horse around a bend in the trail and disappeared into a cleft in the rock.

Kieran’s gut tightened as he eyed the dark aperture.

“Let me go in first,” Rhys offered. A steel helmet obscured the young Welshman’s features, all save the black eyes narrowed with equal parts concern and determination.

“Nay” He’d not send another where he wouldn’t go himself. “You and the others wait here whilst I see what lies within.”

“Kieran, it could be a trap,” Rhys warned.

“Unlikely, but if so, you’ll be free and able to spring me from its jaws.” He scanned the fifty armored men who followed him, capable fighters all and his responsibility. “I’m not a hotheaded youth who charges rashly into danger.” Nay, he’d learned patience and caution the hard way, and they both knew it. “Stay here till I signal ’tis safe to enter.” Swinging his shield from shoulder to forearm, Kieran drew his sword and nudged Rathadack, his warhorse, into the cleft.

Darkness swallowed him up, pressing all around as Kieran moved cautiously forward. His eyes ached from trying to pierce the shroud. A hundred long paces later, his horse turned to the right. Ahead lay a patch of light. Silhouetted in its welcome brilliance, a single mounted man waited. Ellis.

“Takes a body by surprise,” Ellis called out as Kieran approached. Then his glance flicked to the unsheathed sword and his smile dimmed. “Did ye think we meant ye ill?”

Kieran shrugged, not the least bit shamed by his precautions. “I’ve learned to leave little to chance.” His words were lost in the clatter of hooves coming fast through the tunnel. Fearing the worst, he jerked around just as Rhys popped out of the darkness, sword aloft. Hard on his heels rode Martin and Sim. When they spotted Kieran, they ground to a halt in a shower of fine stone and ripe curses.

“I told you to wait,” Kieran shouted over the chaos.

Rhys lifted the visor of his helmet, completely unchastened. “Ye were gone overlong.”

“What if it had been a trap?”

“And ye caught in it. As your second-in-command—”

“Ye know there is no excuse for disobeyin’ my orders,” Kieran snapped, the Scots burr he’d tried to shake thickening.

“I’m sworn to protect ye, even from yerself.” Rhys glared at him as he used to when they were boys growing up at Carmichael Castle. Kieran, older by two years, had been the leader even then, but the Welsh were not easily led.

“You know the rules,” Kieran growled, furious that the rest of his men had followed Rhys and now waited to see if he’d enforce their strict code. Rhys had acted out of concern for his welfare, but discipline was what kept an army such as his in line. He couldn’t relax the rules. “The penalty for disobeying an order is five lashes. You all should feel its sting, but ’twas Rhys who led this revolt. I’ll defer punishment till we arrive at MacLellan’s Tower.”

Rhys nodded. “I will hold myself ready for ye then.”

“Now, now, surely that’s not necessary,” Ellis interjected. “He was only thinking of yer welfare, and there’s no harm done.”

Kieran turned on him with a snarl that made the man shrink back in the saddle. “My orders are law, as you’ll soon discover if your laird hires me to protect his holdings.”

Ellis blanched. “Aye, well, that remains to be seen.” He headed his horse down the trail, apparently uncaring whether Kieran and his men followed. Unfortunately, pressed as he was for funds, Kieran couldn’t afford to cast aside Duncan MacLellan’s offer of work. He needed every coin he could lay his hands on to finance the scheme he’d vowed to undertake.

“Made another friend, I see,” Rhys said cheerfully as they plodded along after Ellis’s reproving back.

“I’m a mercenary, not a courtier.” He found it best if those he commanded feared him. Still he regretted having to punish his only friend. Raising his visor on the pretext of scanning their surroundings, Kieran said stiffly, “I appreciate your concern.”

“I know.” Rhys glanced at the man whose back he’d guarded as they fought their way across the bloody battlefields of France. Tall and heavily muscled, Kieran was a born warrior, like his long-dead sire, the legendary Lion of the Carmichaels. Yet although he’d been gently reared by his aunt and uncle, “hard” and “cold” were two of the kinder things men said about Kieran behind his back. Rhys alone knew of the incident that had turned a happy, engaging lad of five and ten into an embittered man with but one goal... revenge on those who had betrayed him.

And yet, Rhys knew, too, that beneath the thick shell his friend had grown to withstand the pain of betrayal was a caring core. Though he feared that soon the canker eating at Kieran’s insides would devour even that sliver of gentleness.

Today was a perfect example. ‘Twas not his actions that had roused Kieran’s ire; ’twas the damnable situation Kieran found himself in. Back in Scotland after eight years’ exile, yet no closer to realizing his goal. Further from it, if the truth be known, for near every coin Kieran had saved over the years to finance his revenge had been spent to bring his little army hither when they’d been hounded out of France.

“Yon pass is well hidden.” Kieran’s overture of peace.

Rhys lifted his visor and smiled in acceptance. “’Twould be an easy place to defend, hell to try and invade.”

Kieran grunted in agreement and as they fell to discussing Edin’s natural defenses, the knot in his gut eased. He didn’t have so many friends that he could afford to lose one. Truth to tell, Rhys was his only friend... by choice. The fewer people a man let close, the fewer were in a position to wound him. His uncle’s deceit had taught him that those closest to a man could hurt him the most. ’Twas a lesson he’d never forget, a betrayal he intended to avenge...once he had Duncan’s coin.

“I didn’t realize the Borders sported such land.” Kieran scanned the sheer rock walls, crowding in so close it seemed the trail had been hewn straight through the mountain. In places it was narrowed by tumbled boulders. “You said you had patrols out, yet I haven’t seen any sign of them,” he called ahead to Ellis.

“Nay?” Ellis uttered a sharp whistle, and a score of men popped up from the nearby rocks. They wore conical helmets and the Scottish leine croich, a thigh-length quilted coat that offered less protection than the heavy metal armor Kieran’s men wore, but rendered them quicker and more agile. Each MacLellan held a six-foot spear over his shoulder, cocked and ready.

Behind him, Kieran heard his men gasp. Rhys gave a cough of something that was probably laughter. Kieran wasn’t amused, but he was impressed. His spine prickled with the possibility there was a spear trained there, too. “How many men have you?” Years of practice kept his voice steady.

“Thirty, Sir Kieran.” Ellis had turned in the saddle, his grin reflecting those of his men.

Their levity further roused Kieran’s ire. This was no game. “And how many men do you have outside the valley...in the woods by the river?” he snarled on a hunch.

Ellis’s smile faded. “None. After the reivers came and burned the pair of crofts along there, Laird Duncan thought it too dangerous to risk posting men in the open.”

“How can you know if the enemy is approaching?”

“We have lookouts in the rocks above the pass.”

“And by the time they scramble down and go for help, the outlaws could be through the pass and overpower your guards. Natural defenses alone won’t stop a determined foe.”

“Of course they won’t,” Ellis sputtered. “We have men patrolling the valley and another score billeted at the nearest croft in case they’re needed.”

“Insufficient. But we will look to improving things as soon as I’ve seen what we’ve got to work with. Martin,” Kieran called over his shoulder. “Take ten men and position yourselves on the riverbank below the entrance to the tunnel. I’ll send someone to relieve you at sundown.” Without looking to see that his orders were carried out, Kieran motioned for Ellis to lead on.