The eagerness was starting to quicken the beat of his heart, and his hands were shaking, but the men only dared to walk the horses forward. A full gallop would make too much noise, sacrificing the blanket of secrecy that the darkness had draped over them.
Halfway to the castle, five of the men peeled off from the rest. While the main group would infiltrate the castle by going up and over the wall, the other five would guard the gates, preventing anyone from escaping.
When they were still fifty strides away from the walls, the men dismounted and pulled out their weapons. At night, the sentry circled the castle every four minutes. He had last passed three minutes ago, and, right on time, the soft glow of his torch began to emerge from around the side of the castle. The man looked tired, lazy, likely a bit too overworked to really care about his duties. He was an easy target.
Hugh stood up and pulled his bow down from his saddle, nocking an arrow and aiming it up into the air with a grace that Rob envied. Hugh was a deadly good archer, as were many of the best Highland warriors. Rob loved to watch him shoot. It was such an effortless way to kill.
With a thump, Hugh released his hold on the bowstring, and the arrow flew. A second later, there was another thump, and then a thud as the sentry collapsed to the ground.
Rob sprinted forward and stomped on the torch to extinguish the light. The sentry reached for him, channeling his last energy into a muted, gurgling moan. One of the men silenced him with the slip of his knife.
Hugh caught up to Rob and reached for him, and Rob crouched while his brother climbed up onto his shoulders. The wall was low here, low enough that Hugh could reach the top with ease from where he was perched on Rob’s shoulders. He heaved himself up and onto the ledge before turning back and taking Rob’s hand, helping him scale the wall. The rest of the men did the same, until, one by one, they all dropped as quietly as shadows to the grass inside Strathbogie’s walls.
They were near the stables, and a soft whinny of horses echoed through the yard. Quick as lightning, Rob took off toward the nearest castle door, eager to get inside before anyone came to see what was riling the beasts. The first door he tested was unlocked, and the room beyond was dark. He paused for a moment, listening for any trace of someone breathing, but all seemed quiet, so Rob turned back toward the wall and gave a soft whistle, hoping it sounded like a bird.
The men filed into the dark room and began fumbling around to try and find the next door, the passageway that would take them from wherever they were to the main rooms of the castle. There was a soft groan as Hugh found a door and pulled it open. A bit of dim light streamed into the room, and Rob rushed to Hugh’s side to try and see what was beyond. The room in front of them was massive, with ceilings that must have been nearly the height of the entire castle. A few large lanterns hung lit on the walls, but there wasn’t a soul in the room to enjoy them.
“The hall,” Rob whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “Let’s go; the entrance to the tower should be to the left.”
Rob led the group from the antechamber and into the main hall, searching in the dim light for any doorway or staircase that would lead him to the tower and the Earl of Huntly’s private chambers. He crept along the stone wall and hesitantly pulled aside a bright curtain that was adorned with the Gordon coat of arms. Sure enough, a passageway, lined with flaming torches, lay behind it.
This is almost too easy, Rob thought.
So, was it fear that was now making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up? Rob spun back to the hall, surprising a few of the men behind him. They were being watched, he could have sworn that they were, but there was no one else in the hall. No one he could see, at least.
“Lead the way,” Rob mouthed to Hugh, stepping aside to hold the curtain back for the men to pass under.
Hugh shrugged and did as he was told, clearly not feeling the same trepidations as his brother. The rest of the men followed Hugh, casting confused glances at Rob as they passed.
Rob gave one last scan of the hall before following. There was still no one; the only movement coming from the flickering light of the lanterns.
Nothing is wrong, he chastised himself, for making such a fuss over nothing.
He let the curtains fall back behind him, resisting the temptation to look back through them once more before he followed the men creeping up the stairs.
The first flight of stairs ended at a large, open solar. The walls were lined with shelves of books; a small fortune’s worth of books. There was a heavy wooden desk at the center of the room, and it was surrounded by sturdy looking chairs. A map lay open on the desk, and it was covered with small pieces to replicate the movement of small armies.
“Looks like a private office to me,” Rob whispered to Hugh, relishing in the subtle victory of Kenna’s information being proved true.
Hugh grimaced and whispered back, “Aye, but where is the Earl?”
Rob pointed across the room, to a second flight of stairs that spiraled upwards.
“How much do ye want to bet that his bedchambers are just one floor above his office?”
Hugh rolled his eyes, a silent refusal to make such a bet.
“Should we gather these papers?”
“Aye, may as well. No one seems to ken we are here.”
A few of the men overheard and began to slowly roll up the parchments that were scattered through the room, doing their best to do the task with as much silence as they could.
This is good, Rob thought. We gather the papers, grab the Earl, and make a break for it. Even if he sounds an alarm, we will already be done here.
Then Rob felt that soft prickle on the back of his neck again. Nothing was supposed to be so easy. Not when the stakes were this high.
Rob whipped his sword from its sheath and spun, and his steel found the steel of another. The man, nearly his size but with shoulders even an ox would have envied, looked surprised, but the feeling only held for a moment.
With a flurry of blows, he and Rob spun around each other. Rob was so caught in the moment, in the thrill of meeting such a good swordsman, that he almost missed the other man’s glance to something to their side.
The stairwell, Rob understood, and he tried to spin them back, to keep the stairs at his back. If one man ever stood a chance against twenty, it would be when he held the higher ground.
The Gordon must have comprehended that Rob had discovered his ploy because he shoved forward with all of his might and put Rob off of his feet. He sprinted for the stairs, but one of the Queen’s men intercepted him, blades raised.
“Go, find the Earl!” Rob ordered to the rest as he flew forward to help the Queen’s man.
Like rabbits scattered by a fox, the men pulled away from the desk, many of them still trying to shove bits of parchment in their belts as they began to rush up the stairs and out of sight.
The Queen’s man was good, but he was not as good as the Gordon, who was almost as quick as he was strong. The Queen’s man was doing his best, but he was tiring quickly, and Rob sprinted toward the pair as he watched the Gordon throw down a blow so ferocious that it sent his opponent’s sword skittering across the floor.
Defenseless, the Queen’s man paled. The death blow was already arching through the air; he didn’t even have time to jump back. Rob pulled back his arm and threw the sword forward, letting it fly through the air like a javelin toward the Gordon.
The Gordon, seeing the deadly flash, jumped out of the way, giving Rob just enough time to jump forward and claim the sword that the Queen’s man had dropped. He pulled it up above him just as the Gordon struck. It sent shakes through his arm, making every nerve tingle.
The pair exchanged new blows, swishes, and slashes from one being matched by an equal and opposite blow from the other. Neither could gain an advantage.
Wear him down, Rob thought, settling back to simply block and knock aside the Gordon’s furious strikes.
But even in their minds, they were matched, and the Gordon quickly under
stood what Rob was up to, slowing his pace and throwing only soft, chaotic strokes. He was taunting Rob now, creating openings that were so deliciously tempting.
Strike, he seemed to be saying. Take the offensive once more.
Rob tried to resist, but when he shifted his stance, widening the opening considerably, his sword hand moved of its own accord. The strike was blocked, of course, and Rob found himself now full of openings. The only chance he had was to become the aggressor, to set the speed of the fight with his own sword.
Now he was the one being worn down. Rob tried to pull back, but the Gordon advanced into him. They locked their swords together in midair. He continued to push into Rob, forcing him back until Rob felt the cool stone of the wall at his back.
It was down to no more than a test of strength now, one that Rob wasn’t sure he would be able to win. There was nowhere for him to go. No quick move or evasion tactic that wouldn’t result in him being cut into ribbons. If his sword slipped even an inch, the Gordon could just change his angle and drive his blade into Rob’s shoulder, effectively ending him.
Rob’s muscles started to quiver, crying out for him to stop, to do something to relieve them. He let his eyes meet that of the Gordon’s, hoping to see some sign of weakness in his gaze. But the Gordon’s eyes were like gray steel: cold, unyielding, and unbreakable.
Rob didn’t want to lose, but maybe he already had.
You have to come back to me, Rob Fraser, Kenna’s voice echoed through his mind as their swords continued to grind together. Her voice was louder than his doubts, forcing him to hear her and only her. Come back to me.
He forced aside the pain, forced aside every complaint that his body currently had, and felt renewed vigor flood him. With one desperate shove, he channeled the vigor into the muscles of his arms and pushed.
The Gordon staggered back, caught off guard by Rob’s sudden surge of renewed strength. Rob threw himself forward, twisting his blade down and then back up again in a deadly arch. The man moved his sword up, but he was still too off balance to move quick enough. Rob’s blade slicked through him with ease, and he crumpled to the floor with swift finality, leaving only the sound of Rob’s heaving breath in the air.
This was the part of a fight that Rob was addicted to. This moment of quiet right after the enemy finally fell. After so much action, so much fear and pulsing strength coursing through him, this moment of quiet seemed almost outrageous. But the quiet never lasted, not on a night like this. As his panting slowed, the sound of swords clashing from the room above broke through to his ears. Tired as he was, the fight wasn’t over.
And he didn’t want it to be.
Rob rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and found a small battle being waged. Hugh was the closest to him, a short sword in one hand and his curving dirk in the other. He was delivering blow after blow to a Gordon guard, but the man simply laughed it off. Rob and his men had come into the castle wearing nothing more than their kilts and leather vests, but the Gordon guards were all dressed in full armor. The blows that Hugh managed to land, the ones that weren’t batted away, glanced off of the armor as if it was a tree branch skittering across a window.
Rob pulled out a knife, short but sharp, and came up behind the Gordon, sinking it into the space between his helm and chest plate. Blood poured from the wound, and the man fell to the ground with one guttural moan.
“Thanks.” Hugh huffed, wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead.
“Where is Huntly?”
Hugh pointed to the back of the room, where there was a large, oak door, before he trotted forward to engage one of the other Gordons that was slowly overwhelming one of the Queen’s men.
Rob sprinted through the room, dodging the small clusters of men fighting, and threw open the door to the bedchamber.
Empty. There wasn’t even a guard.
One of the windows was open, and Rob rushed over and threw his head out. A long rope dangled down the side of the tower. A man, nearly at the end, looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes.
“Dammit to hell,” Rob shouted as he went to cut the rope, but then caught himself.
The Earl was so close to the ground now that he would recover from the fall and run off before Rob could run down the tower stairs. There was only one other way. After tucking his weapons back into their sheaths, Rob pulled himself up into the window and took hold of the rope.
Below, the Earl was already at the ground, stumbling as his footing failed him.
Rob groaned; this was going to hurt. He took a few final puffs of breath before he stepped from the window’s ledge, letting the forces of nature pull him toward the ground. The rope burned his palms, ripping away bits of skin as it flew through his grip, but he didn’t have time to climb down gracefully. All the rope was doing was slowing him enough to prevent a free fall.
He hit the ground and stumbled backward, but recovered quickly, turning and setting off at a sprint after the Earl of Huntly.
The best part about Earls, Rob thought as he noticed the gap between them rapidly closing, is that they all eat too much and exercise too little.
He was only ten strides away now. Soon it would be nine. This fact was not lost on Huntly, who started yelling and screaming for help. Three figures came running out from the castle, torches and blades in hand.
“Stop him!” Huntly shouted, his hand flying up in the air as if he thought it would actually help them see Rob.
The three figures rushed forward, intercepting Rob, who skidded to a stop. The three lads were hardly old enough to wield the crooked and dented swords that they swung before themselves. They pointed the pathetic blades at Rob, doing their best to pretend that they knew how to use them.
Rob sighed and swirled his sword in his hands in warning. He had no interest in cutting down boys. He would hold them back and knock them unconscious when he was given a chance. The Earl would hopefully keep running all the way to the castle’s gates, where the group of five men would catch him unawares.
The boys lunged, taking turns at testing Rob’s defenses. He swatted their blows away as if they were bugs buzzing around his ear.
Come on lads, hurry it up, so I can send ye back to yer mothers’ skirts.
Rob stole a glance in the direction of Huntly, expecting to see him still sprinting across the yard. But he wasn’t there.
Rob’s sword snapped up to beat back one of the boys with such force that the lad stumbled back and onto his arse.
Where the hell did he go? Rob thought frantically, his eyes darting around the yard before they finally found the Earl.
There, on a bit of wall a few dozen strides away, the Earl was climbing. The space of the wall was crumbling, creating hand and footholds that made it easy for someone to climb up, no matter how physically inept they were.
Then a flash of steel cut off Rob’s view, coming down right in front of his face. He leaned back, but not far enough. The slice went straight through his cheek with a sharp sting. The lad looked almost surprised, happy even, as if this was was a duel in the practice yard, and they were only playing until first blood.
The Earl had now reached the top of the wall. He stood on a part that was still sturdy enough to hold him, staring down at the space beyond, preparing himself for what would be a semi-painful jump to the ground.
The lads, encouraged by the sight of Rob’s blood, were pushing him harder now. They were starting to take more risks, blocking blows they could have simply dodged, and trying to slip their swords through gaps in Rob’s defenses that even the most skilled of swordsmen wouldn’t have been able to do successfully. Rob could still knock them out, but it would be harder now.
And the Earl was jumping.
Rob cursed and surrendered, disconnecting his mind from his body and letting his sword do what it did best. The blows the boys had thrown were like ripples on the surface of a pond, but Rob’s were like ocean waves during a storm, crashing against them with a speed and strength that they could not even h
ope to control.
When the last boy fell to the ground with a cry, Rob rushed after the Earl, climbing the wall and hoisting himself up to the top as quickly as he could. On foot, Rob knew he had the advantage; the Earl wouldn’t stand a chance against him. His vigor beat in his ears, his legs were throbbing in preparation of a good, hard run. But then, hadn’t he already been foolish enough to think that this mission was going too well?
“No,” he moaned, taking in the sight of the Earl of Huntly, his white shirt barely visible in the blackness of the night, galloping off into the Highlands. He must have hidden a horse there after dark; he must have known that the Queen would be sending someone to retrieve him eventually. The Earl had taken precautions, and taken them well, concealing his escape plan from men who had been watching the castle’s movements for days.
Rob groaned and collapsed against the incline of the crumbling wall, digging his fingers into the rough handholds as a form of self-punishment. He felt the calloused skin start to crack under the strain, and the soreness of his ripped palms from his descent on the rope started to grow. Even if he sprinted to his horse, even if his horse was by far the faster of the two, there was no way he would find the Earl before the Earl found his army. Not on a moonless night like this.
Rob jumped back into the castle’s yard at the sound of running footsteps, raising his sword just in case it was an enemy, but it was only Hugh and a couple of others.
Hugh took in the scene and sighed loudly. “Well, at least he was in that bloody tower.”
12
Kenna lounged back on the bed, letting the sun shining through the window bake her face and neck while she nuzzled deeper into the cushions.
A good nap can cure all evils, she told herself as she yawned and stretched.
Napping was all she had done the past few days. With Rob gone and the Queen’s court focusing all of their efforts on war preparations, there had been little else to do. Kenna, under the advice of her father-in-law, had remained confined to the inn and the small surrounding neighborhood. While the Queen had cleared her of blame, there were still quite a few who would be quick to point a finger should something go wrong. If she stayed out of sight, hopefully, she would stay out of mind.
Highlander's Haunted Past (Highlander's Seductive Lasses Book 1) Page 15