by Mariah Stone
After a short fight, it was clear to everyone that the Bruce and his army had won. Edward Comyn was gravely wounded and dying while his healer did his best to save him.
“There will be no marauding!” the Bruce cried, watching his men hold the captives under their claymores. “Ye all may take three things from the castle to reward ye for yer hard work. But Inverlochy Castle shall be, from now on, a royal residence of the Scottish king.”
Bruce turned and walked towards Craig, holding him with his eyes. Craig frowned.
“And the temporary commander will be Craig Cambel.”
Cambel men erupted in cheers. Craig’s eyebrows crawled up. Bruce came to him and looked him in the eye, approval and friendship lightening them.
“Are ye certain, Yer Grace?” Craig said. “Do ye nae have more experienced strategists, my father or uncle Neil?”
Bruce grasped his shoulder and squeezed it. “The man who risked his life to take the castle deserves the reward. If it wasna for ye, God kens how long we would have been freezing under those walls. I am very grateful, Craig Cambel. ’Tis yer reward—but also a heavy task. Now ye must protect the castle if the rest of the Comyns, the MacDougalls, or the English want to take it back. Because they will try.”
Bruce studied him intently. “What do ye say, Craig? Will ye take the mission upon ye?”
Craig inhaled sharply. That was a good question. He’d need to be especially careful about trusting people. Managing a castle and protecting it from a siege would require him to be even more observant, even more cautious.
Was he up to the task, to secure the first victory of the King of Scots, the victory that might lead to winning the whole war?
“Aye,” he said. “I wilna let ye down.”
Chapter 4
Amy tried everything. Kicking, moving the bed, yelling, which essentially was moaning, and therefore, useless. Nothing helped. The heavy wooden bed didn’t budge a bit. Finally, she decided to save her energy.
The only thing was, doing something distracted her from the terrible, suffocating tightness in her chest and the tension in her stomach.
The feeling that she knew all too well.
She swallowed, her mouth as dry as paper. At least it wasn’t an abandoned barn, she told herself. It was a castle, after all. There were people all around, and sooner or later, someone would come. Plus, there were windows. There was fresh air and light.
She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself.
Every single day, going out into the forest and the mountains in Vermont, she was running away from the feeling of being trapped. That was why she did what she did—rescuing people. Because she hated that there were people who felt abandoned and alone.
She wanted to give them hope. To show them that they weren’t alone.
Because once, a very long time ago, she’d needed someone like that.
And they hadn’t come.
As time went by, Amy sweated and breathed and repeated that this would pass.
From outside, the sound of a battle reached her. The clicks of something wooden hitting rocks. Arrows? People screaming in pain, in fury, metal clanking against metal. Then there was the scent of smoke. Then the sound of a battle grew louder, and it seemed it was right behind that door.
Her heart thumped, and her chest tightened more with every scream, with every clash. If another man with a sword came in… There’d be nothing she could do. She was completely helpless. Oh, how she hated that barbarian who’d tied her to the bed.
This hallucination or hologram was all too real. The sounds, the scents, the bindings on her wrists and legs—she doubted she could have hallucinated them. Maybe it was all a high-tech, super-advanced hologram experience. But a hologram wouldn’t be able to touch her like that man had.
And then a thought hit her. She hadn’t noticed it back then, because of the shock and the fear, and then fighting for her life—but when he’d talked to her, he hadn’t spoken English.
He’d spoken something else. Amy’s grandfather from the MacDougall side came to mind. He and Grandma had immigrated to the United States from the Highlands when they were young. Granddad had brought the ancient painting of the family tree going back to the Middle Ages. A MacDougall sword hung in the living room. And for as far back as Amy could remember, he had taught Amy Gaelic by telling her ancient Highland fairy tales and the stories of his ancestors in both Gaelic and English.
Yes, that warrior had spoken Gaelic to her.
And she’d understood it.
How? She’d never learned it to the point of fluency. She didn’t remember more than five or six words.
The door opened.
Speak of the devil—Amy’s captor loomed in the doorframe.
His dark hair was disheveled, and his face had cuts and bruises. Dirt and sprays of dried blood covered his skin and coat. There were also bleeding gashes on his shoulder and his ankle. The heavy quilted coat he wore was torn in several places. He slowly looked her over, his eyes dark and cold.
And smug.
Yeah. Self-righteous piece of garbage. Treating her like he could do anything he wanted with her.
We’ll see about that.
Ah well, he probably deserved what he got. Still, if he were any other man, she’d want to look at his wounds and see what she could do with her first aid kit.
“I came as soon as I could, lass.” He walked towards her and sank to his knees. “’Tis over. We won. I will undo yer ties now and remove yer gag. All right?”
She just gave him a heavy glance. She didn’t want to believe he was an all chivalrous knight. He also had some explaining to do about what the hell was going on around her.
He gently removed the gag, and Amy moved her tired jaw to ease the pain a bit.
“Are ye all right?” he asked. “I was worried someone else might have found ye.”
“Go to hell,” she spat.
Then frowned. She spoke Gaelic, too. How was it possible? Could she even speak English at all?
“Go to hell,” she repeated in English. It worked.
He laughed. “Dinna curse. I understood ye the first time,” he said in English, with that Scottish burr Amy knew from her granddad. “I shall release yer hands now, aye? But ye must ken, the castle is taken, it wilna help ye if ye try to resist. All I want is to take ye to yer family. The Bruce will likely release ye all. He dinna want more bloodshed than necessary. But the castle is his. Aye?”
He began undoing the ties around her wrists. Amy shook her head in disbelief.
“Do you think any of this makes sense to me? I have no idea what’s going on, and all I want is to return to my sister and her class.”
Her hands were free now and she rubbed them, enjoying the pure bliss of moving them, and the blood returning to her stiff muscles.
“Yer sister? She must be with the other Comyns in the courtyard.”
He started releasing the belt on her ankles.
“I’m not a Comyn,” Amy said. “My name is Amy MacDougall. My sister—”
He froze and stared at her, his moss-green eyes darkening, his high cheekbones gaining color. Amy shut up from the sheer intensity—no, hatred—in his gaze.
“MacDougall?” he hissed.
Amy swallowed.
“Did ye say MacDougall?” he pressed, one hand going to his sword.
Sweat broke through the skin on Amy’s back. “Calm down, buddy. I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re probably mistaking me for someone else.”
He looked her up and down, carefully, as though she was a predator he needed to assess. “I canna believe I have a MacDougall in my possession.”
“In your possession?” Amy gasped, then pulled her knees up to remove the belt herself.
The man’s hands covered hers.
“Free me right this minute,” Amy said. “I didn’t do anything to you or anyone in this castle. It was you who assaulted me, tied me up, and left me alone. I’m going home. In fact, I’ll do better. I’ll call the police
and they’ll arrest you. I’ll press charges, you’ll see.”
He beat her hands away and removed the belt.
“Are ye trying to trick me, Amy MacDougall, with yer strange words? I wilna be distracted.”
He grasped her upper arm and yanked her to her feet.
“And now I shall bring ye to the King of Scots and he will decide what to do with a member of the clan that stabbed him in the back earlier this year. It seems ’tis all ye MacDougalls are good for. Backstabbing and betraying.”
Amy listened with an open mouth. He led her down the stairs onto the ground floor. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just on a school trip in the Highlands. This is absolutely ridiculous. This strange role-play—”
They passed through the storage room, outside into the courtyard, and Amy stopped talking. There were a lot of people there—men, warriors—walking around, carrying things. Many stood guarding about a hundred men who were sitting in the mud, their heads bowed.
And then, there were dead bodies—real dead bodies. Their clothes were bloody, and they had terrible bone-deep gashes and wounds in their abdomens, legs, arms. Some had crushed skulls. Others were pierced with arrows. The smell—smoke and blood and feces—assaulted her.
Nausea rose in Amy’s stomach. This was all way too real.
This was all too much. Her knees weakened, and wobbled, but the medieval giant continued dragging her through the courtyard towards the biggest tower.
“What’s going on?” she whispered. “Where am I?”
He glanced at her. A shadow of pity crossed his face, but it changed into a hard, cold resolve. “Dinna think I’ll fall for yer lies and traps. Never again. Never for a MacDougall.”
They entered the tower—the door was open.
Two men stood there, talking “…and then once we’ve recuperated, we shall go on to Urquhart on Loch Ness. That is the next castle we shall take. Then Inverness.”
Amy’s captor coughed, and both men turned to him. The one who spoke was tall, dark haired with strands of gray. The other was older, in his fifties, but still powerfully built. He had the same moss-green eyes as the man who held Amy.
“Craig.” The man nodded and frowned, studying Amy.
So his name was Craig…
“I brought ye a MacDougall, Yer Grace,” Craig said. “I’m afraid we both heard ye discussing yer plans.”
The man who Craig had addressed as “Your Grace” frowned, studying her. Your Grace—was it the king? “She canna leave the castle if she heard what I said.”
Oh, how crazy was all this? They played at kings, and knights, and wars…and…
But deep down, her instincts told Amy this wasn’t a game. Those people outside were really dead and wounded. She’d seen enough injuries to know how they looked. And the attacks on the castle had been real—the stones had crumbled and fallen, and now some men were prisoners while others were victors.
The most logical explanation was the most insane one.
Because, based on what Sìneag had told her, the castle was built on a rock that allowed people to travel in time. She had said something about the river of time…and crossing it—and the rock had had that carving of a river and a path through it.
And then Amy had fallen into the rock.
And when she’d woken up, the castle was whole, and there was Robert the Bruce and Craig Cambel and men with swords and a catapult…
So the insane explanation was that Amy had fallen through time into the Middle Ages.
She shuddered. The floor shifted under her feet. Sweat broke through her skin all over her body. No matter how crazy it sounded, she just couldn’t think of anything else that would explain all this.
And if she was in the Middle Ages, she needed to return to her time.
“Aye,” Craig said, and his eyes weighed heavily on her. “She must stay now.”
Amy sucked in air. If she’d traveled through time by means of that rock, that was what she needed to do again. Therefore, staying in the castle was actually to her advantage. She just needed to access that underground cave.
“What is her name?” the other man asked.
“Amy. Amy MacDougall.”
“I am Dougal Cambel,” the man said. “Surely ye ken the name, lass?”
Amy shook her head.
“No need to pretend, Amy…” He rubbed his chin under his short white beard. “Aren’t ye John’s daughter? The one who is supposed to marry the Earl of Ross next year come spring?”
The other man—King Robert the Bruce—nodded. “Aye, I heard that, too. A very unfortunate alliance for us. It will make both parties too strong. I was hoping to negotiate with the Earl of Ross while our powers are equal, but if he unites with the MacDougalls, it will make my position impossible to negotiate.”
Amy couldn’t believe her ears. Should she say something? She wasn’t their enemy. She wasn’t who they thought she was—the Amy they talked about was probably safe at home. The dangerous alliance of the MacDougalls and the Earl of Ross was still taking place.
But if she told them she wasn’t the Amy they thought she was, what would she say? That she thought she had slipped through time? That she was from the future?
They’d never believe her. They’d think she was insane. Or worse, they’d become violent and imprison her somewhere in the darkness, where no one would come for her. A shiver ran through her, her whole body spasming.
“Well, we have her now,” Craig said. “I will keep her here, dinna fash, Yer Grace. She will be useful. We can negotiate with the MacDougalls and the Earl of Ross for them to hold their attacks.”
The king nodded thoughtfully, studying her.
“Aye. I will give it more thought. But it is a very good thing she is here. For now, lock her up. We have a victory to celebrate tonight and a feast to enjoy.”
Chapter 5
“Slàinte mhath,” Craig said.
“Good health,” his half brother Owen echoed.
Craig clunked his cup of uisge with Owen, then his other half brother Domhnall.
Across the table from Craig, Hamish MacKinnon and Lachlan Cambel sat. Hamish, a tall, strong man with black hair and battle scars on his face, had come to Bruce’s army recently with the MacKinnon clan. Lachlan was a distant cousin from Cambel lands. He had the Cambels’ dark hair, but unlike most Cambels, he had brown eyes.
The great hall still smelled like smoke and coals. Rain drizzled through the holes in the roof where fire had taken the wood and thatch, but it was rain that had made sure the fire didn’t take the whole building.
The atmosphere was cheerful. Someone at another side of the hall played a lyre and sang, although not as well as a bard. But in the times of war, this would do. The feast consisted of whatever Bruce’s cooks found in the kitchens—which was plenty more than the food they’d had while marching through the freezing Highlands.
“Tell me ye will throw better feasts, brother,” Owen said as he eyed a spoonful of the vegetable stew. His eyes sparkled with humor. They were green like almost everyone else’s in the family, but he had blond hair like his mother. “Isna a king’s feast supposed to have roasted boars, rabbits, and mayhap a grouse?”
Craig shook his head and hid a smile. Owen always said and did what he wanted.
“Dinna be a ninny, Owen,” Domhnall, Owen’s older brother, grumbled. Craig winced—Domhnall was usually the first to berate Owen. “’Tis war.”
“Aye, ’tis, brother,” Owen said. “But if Bruce hadn’t let go all the servants and kitchen maids, we’d have roasted meat, fresh bread, and fruit. Aren’t ye tired of oatcakes as hard as stones and dried meat? Of falling asleep alone at night?”
“Ye shall sleep alone for a long time, brother.” Craig chuckled through a mouthful of stew.
“There’s more chance of his farts smelling like roses than him sleeping alone.” Lachlan laughed and the whole table echoed him.
Lachlan was as tall as Craig, and looked enough like him that people sometimes mixed them
up when they saw them from afar. It was probably the blood of their common ancestor—Craig’s great-grandfather, Gilleasbaig of Menstrie, the first Cambel.
“I wilna hire any female servants as long as Owen’s in the castle,” Craig said.
The men at the table guffawed. Domhnall clapped Owen on the shoulder. “See, Owen. Even Craig wilna help ye.”
Owen threw his uisge down his throat. “Aye, aye, laugh, everyone. But dinna crawl to me on yer knees in a month or so, asking for me to introduce ye to a nice village lass.”
“Take me with ye, Owen,” Hamish said.
The warrior was easy to spot, always at least a head taller than anyone. Something about him made Craig glad to have Hamish on his side of the battle. Mayhap, the heavy glance of his dark eyes, like the man had already gone through hell.
“Keep yer cocks in yer trousers,” Craig said. “We let go of all castle servants to avoid treachery. Local villagers may spy for information for their previous masters—or other enemies.”
Owen shook his head. “I might go north with Bruce after all. Plenty of maidens there.”
“Dinna go, brother,” Craig said. “I need one of ye here, with me.” Someone I can trust, he thought. “And look at all this excellent Comyn uisge.”
“Aye, ye should stay, Owen,” Domhnall said. “I am to go north with father and Bruce.”
Owen held Domhnall’s gaze, then looked down and nodded, but Craig caught a glimpse of bitterness in his eyes, though it passed quickly.
“Of course,” Owen said. “Yer place is always next to father. I’ll stay.”
“’Tis his decision, nae mine.” Domhnall gulped the last of his uisge and rose from the table. “Dinna be a child. Enjoy the rest of yer vegetable stew. I’ll retire for the night.”
After he left, Craig turned to Owen and squeezed his shoulder. “Dinna fash, Owen,” he said in a low voice. “Yer time to shine will come. I dinna see a stronger or better warrior than ye. Father kens it. So does Domhnall. Ye’re still young. Yer time to command troops and lead conquests will come.”
Owen chuckled and Craig saw that his eyes had softened. “I’m not that young. Most lads of twenty-six are long marrit.”