[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  Her wound ached, but it was healing with no signs of infection, thanks to the antibiotics. That thought served as a reminder to find her pouch belt and measure out another dose of everything and wash it all down with the water someone had left on the night table for her, next to a candle.

  Light poured in through the wind opening, so Emily didn’t need the candle. Her full bladder urged her to get out to the privy, though, and soon. She dressed as quickly as she could—which wasn’t too fast given she had to put on two skirts, a bodice, a muffin cap, and boots, not to mention she didn’t dare go anywhere without her belt and her brooch. She threw on her cloak and tied the extra shift around her waist under her skirts too, figuring she might as well keep all of her belongings with her.

  As soon as she opened the kitchen door, the snoring sounds assailed her. She was barely able to tiptoe across the kitchen/dining area to get to the front door, the wooden floor was so full of snoring men.

  Dall was one of them. He lay curled up in just his shift, using his kilt as a blanket and his pack as a pillow. Even sleeping, he simultaneously made her want to stare at him and cuddle him. She would have done both, but nature was calling her rather loudly now.

  She was on her tiptoes in the middle of that floor-full of snoring men when she heard the dog barking outside. It sounded distant, here in the warm kitchen with all the snoring bodies. It didn’t wake any of them. She tiptoed through them slowly in the dim light from the small wind openings, being careful not to step on anyone’s fingers.

  At first, the sounds Emily heard when she finally unbarred and opened the front door didn’t make any sense to her. She heard the dog barking, of course, but also horses running. A lot of horses. All these noises came from the far side of the white-wood barn, which stood against the green mountain across the green and colorful flower garden.

  And then she saw them all, her people’s horses. They were all tied together, and one sky-blue kilted man was riding the lead horse, away.

  Faced with a difficult decision, Emily did what any 21st century woman would. She ran to the privy and relieved herself first.

  “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” She rattled the pots and pans for good measure and dramatic effect. “He’s taking the horses. A Menzies man is taking our horses.”

  That got them all on their feet with varying degrees of quickness.

  Orson came down the ladder from the loft, telling the children in Gaelic to stay up there with their mother.

  Dall was up and out the front door in three seconds on his flat bare feet, which made Emily feel bad for pausing to relieve herself. She realized that Dall might have caught the guy if she hadn’t been so slow to realize what was going on… but it was over now. They had to deal with the situation they had, not the one they wished they had. Emily kept quiet about her guilt.

  “Should we run after them?” Dog asked when Dall came back inside.

  Dall stepped over to Emily and made a show of hiding their usual good-morning kiss behind his hat. “Nay, we canna catch them on foot, and I dinna wish tae try riding the cattle that fast.” With his arm around Emily, Dall smiled at Orson then, a thin ghost of a smile.

  Orson smiled back.

  Emily thought the two of them must have been loads of fun as children.

  Dall became serious, talking to the whole group. “We hae a long journey by foot, ye ken. We can make it in nine days, but…” He stepped up to Orson and put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I will na be staying tae help ye castrate the bull-calves. Perhaps next year, aye?”

  Orson smiled big at his cousin, and they clasped forearms.

  Dall turned to her and the bikers. “We can break oor fast, but then we had best be on oor way.”

  They said their goodbyes over bannocks and hot herb tea. Orson had several dozen head of cattle, so he had plenty of dried jerky, with which the travelers stuffed their leather bags and packs. A few more water skins like Emily’s bota bag were added to their water-carrying capacity. A few old cloaks were gifted to the men who didn’t have one to sleep in.

  When they were all ready to go, Orson spoke up again. “Wull ye take the direct way through the glens, cousin?”

  “Nay,” said Dall. “We wull climb up intae the crags, where nay horse can follow. I will na allow the Menzies tae use oor ain horses tae pursue us. Let them come on foot.”

  It was a decent temperature in the valleys in July, but up on the highland mountaintops Emily was glad she had her cloak, and she hoped the two guys who hadn’t brought cloaks were asking blessings on Orson for giving them some. The view, however, was glorious: green valleys with deep blue lochs at their bottoms and green mountains with cream-colored crags near their tops, crowned with white billowing clouds.

  With his sword sheathed on his back, Dall was in the front where he could lend her his arm over the difficult parts—which he did often, to Emily’s delight. Almost as often, their eyes met when she took his arm, and they smiled at each other. It wasn’t nearly so fun as riding on the horse together, but it was nice.

  All the archers followed the two of them, with Dog guarding their backs. The guys managed to talk almost the entire time. Emily mostly huffed to get enough oxygen in the thin air.

  Dog was saying, “This isn’t really mountain-climbing by modern standards. That requires pitons and rope.”

  The other guys commented.

  “No, but it’s a good workout anyway.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty pumped up.”

  “Hey, gimmie a puff of the pipe.”

  “You empty one of your own cigs for it. This one’s mine.”

  “OK OK, I see how it is.”

  Emily heard his lighter then, and a moment later she smelled cigarette smoke nearby.

  “What?” he said. “No one’s going to see us up here except Dall, and he’s cool.”

  Huffing almost as much as Emily, and giving her a weary smile, Mike spoke up. “It’s brutally physical up here, if you ask me. Like climbing stairs, first up and then down, over and over again, and we’ve been climbing for hours. I don’t know how you can smoke, too.”

  Emily gave Mike a grateful smile, then turned to Dog. “Just don’t leave anything from the future on the ground. Pack out what you pack in.”

  Emily huffed a bunch more, telling herself it was just to make up for the breaths she hadn’t taken while she was talking. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to climb like this at all at the beginning of her adventure.

  Now, after walking the stairs and hauling water from the loch at the castle for forty days and trudging over hill and dale with Dall for twenty days, she could hike almost as fast as the men wanted to go. If she huffed for breath.

  Dall squeezed her hand.

  She looked up at him.

  He spoke softly so only she could hear. “Dae ye need rest, lass? Can ye make it tae the top o’ the rise first?” He looked up to a point about ten more flights of stairs up.

  Trying really hard not to wrinkle her forehead with the worry she felt—because she didn’t want to look ugly in front of Dall—Emily spoke just as softly. “Do we have time to rest? We have to be at Kilchurn Castle in eight and a half days.”

  Dall sounded concerned when he whispered back to her. “We wull make the time tae rest, lass, if it means ye wull na be ill.”

  “What if I do get … ill?”

  “Then I wull carry ye.”

  She let him take away her worry, and she made it to the top of the rise.

  Dall then spoke for everyone to hear. “Well enough, let us stop now tae look oot upon the lochs and the moors while we slake oor thirst.”

  Emily collapsed on some soft grass. Once she caught her breath and drank her fill and took doses of her medication, she got a bright idea. She spoke to everyone, but she looked at Dall. “Guys? If the druids can hear us anyway, maybe we should ask them to send us some horses.”

  Displaying the leadership that Emily admired once more, Dall looked at everyone, apparently for their opinions.<
br />
  Most of them shrugged.

  Dog looked eager. “Yeah, they probably know right where we are, and they are the ones who want Dall back, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t ask for their help.”

  Dall made a show of keeping quiet and pointing to Emily’s brooch and then holding out his hand.

  Nodding her understanding that he wanted to be the one to speak to the druids, she unpinned the brooch and carefully handed it to him.

  Dall switched the phone on and watched the screen while it powered up.

  Emily thought he looked almost like a modern man while he did that—a buff and rugged modern man in a kilt, anyway. She felt herself smiling a goofy smile as she gazed at him. She saw that Dall brought up the Time Management app, and she nodded, thinking that was the most direct point of contact for the druids, absent texting Siobhan.

  And then Dall spoke right into the phone. “We ken ye are listening, Eamann. The Menzies hae taken oor horses. Send us maire. Ye ken where we are and the way we gae. Hae horses tae us by this time tomorrow. We wull check this map for yer answer this evening, and if ye hae na replied, then again in the morning. See that ye send enough sae all o’ us can ride togither. I will na leave any behind.”

  Admiring Dall, Emily took her phone back and powered it down to put once more in her boot. “Do you have family we can stay with tonight?”

  Looking down at the expanse of crags and valleys and lochs in the direction they were headed, Dall addressed them all. “Nay, na that we can get tae this day withoot horses. We wull sleep oot in the heather this night. We wull set watches and be wary.”

  They kept on hiking, with Dall’s arm always holding Emily up toward the end, she was so tired. She wasn’t complaining. At dusk, the bikers started to point out semi-sheltered places where they might all stop for the night.

  “That overhang looks promising.”

  “We could camp out under this big tree.”

  “This little canyon is protected from the wind.”

  Each time, Dall would glance over where they pointed and then reject it without much examination. “Och lads, we can dae better than that.”

  Finally, Emily voiced her suspicion. “You have a certain place in mind Dall, don’t you?”

  “Aye, lass. That I dae.”

  The guys loved to talk, though, so they started speculating on the type of place they would find up here in the windy crags.

  “Probably the old home of someone who liked the view but was too stupid to realize there wasn’t any water.”

  “Ha. Maybe they raised eagles. Seems like they’d be happy up here.”

  “Maybe it’s a beacon, like up on those hills in Lord of the Rings.”

  “Oh man, I hope so. A fire would be nice right now.”

  “Ha ha. You would be the one to light a fire and bring the bad guys right to us.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s why we’re way up here, isn’t it, to stay away from those bad guys.”

  They stumbled around in the near dark for a few minutes, and then one by one, they started using their phones as flashlights—except for two guys who had worn out their batteries playing some dumb game or other. Emily tried to recharge their phones with her touch while holding Dall’s hand, as she had with Dog’s phone, but nope, that didn’t work.

  “I guess it only worked with Dog’s phone because of that druid app Eamann installed, like Siobhan did with my phone.” She handed the guy’s phone back to him.

  Taking Emily with him as if they were dancing, Dall turned and faced the group.

  They all shined their phones on him.

  Looking like he was on stage in a dark theater, he said, “We are nigh upon the spot where I was planning on stopping for the night, lads and lass.”

  This picked up their spirits some, and they hurried a little.

  Around the next bend in the mountain crags, there it was. Emily could tell by the guys’ excited ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ that they all knew it as soon as they saw it: a stone structure built up so that a ledge in the crag formed its roof.

  Mike and Dog ran on ahead to check it out. They came back all smiles.

  Dog said, “There’s enough room for all of us to lie down inside, just barely.”

  Mike said, “I thought it was a house, but it’s a church. There’s the cutest little altar inside.” He gestured something smaller than a pillow.

  Dall was looking around at the surrounding hills as if he still expected the injured Menzies men to be following them. “Was there aught on the altar?”

  Dog and Mike looked at him with puzzled expressions.

  Dall tried again. “Ye hae the right o’ it. This is a kirk for the heathers. Any fresh offering inside wull be a clue tae warn us someone bides near.”

  Dog let out his breath. “Oh. No, there’s just a bunch of dried offering remains—flowers, and bones from a pigeon or something.”

  Breathing easier but still looking everywhere at once, Dall led everyone inside the small stone church that was built away from the prevailing wind. He and a few of the other guys crossed themselves upon entering, and they put some of their jerky on the altar for an offering.

  As soon as they had finished paying their respects and thanking their sovereign for the shelter, it started pouring rain outside.

  “I wull take first watch,” said Dall. He closed the door and stood with his back to it. “Can I see yer phone, lass? It be time tae see if Eamann answered me.”

  Emily dug her phone out of her boot, powered it up, and handed it to him.

  “Och, nay word yet.”

  Emily powered it down and put it back in her boot.

  She thought setting a watch was a bit excessive. The kirk didn’t have any windows people could attack through. The walls and roof were rock. And surely the rain would make anyone following the party duck under a tree or something until it stopped. Still, she was so sleepy, she only thought about it for a minute.

  And then all her thoughts went blank while she and Dall shared a tender goodnight kiss. “Rest easy, lass. Hae a pleasant night’s sleep.”

  “Wake the men up if you hear anything, Dall. Don’t go out there alone.”

  He squeezed her hand, and then she lay down on top of her cloak near him on the dirt floor of the kirk and fell fast asleep.

  Emily woke in the middle of the night, needing to go outside. Dall lay asleep next to her, curled up on top of his kilt. Dog stood at the door, holding Dall’s claymore. He waited for her to get up, and then he opened the door, headed outside in front of her, and closed the door again behind them.

  Pointing to a cleft in the crag, Dog whispered, “That’s where we’ve been going, so that if the mad Menzies men come, they can’t sneak up on us.”

  Giggling a bit at Dog’s nickname for their attackers, Emily was headed over to the cleft to do her business when Dog grabbed her.

  He put his hand over her mouth, saying, “Shhh.”

  Emily struggled. She had been starting to think of Dog as a friend. She stomped on his toe as hard as she could.

  “Why’d you do that?” he whispered.

  She couldn’t answer with his hand over her mouth, so she pulled her lips back and bit his hand instead, thinking if the worst happened, then at least she could empty her bladder all over him.

  And then Dog said something that didn’t make any sense. “I hear you over there.”

  Finally realizing that Dog was protecting her from the mad Menzies men and not trying to have his way with her after all, Emily relaxed and let him put her behind him against the wall of the kirk, where she squatted and relieved herself under cover of darkness—and her two long skirts.

  Dog said, “You better be gone when we come out with our bows in a few seconds.” Still facing the cleft in the crag, Dog gently shoved Emily toward the door into the kirk.

  Once she was inside, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and she stood there trembling.

  Having more wits about him, Dog said in a normal voice once
he was inside, “Get up. They have followed us here and they are outside.”

  Dall jumped up and wrapped his kilt about him in one fluid motion that took all of five seconds.

  For some reason, the ease with which Dall did it by comparison to backstage at the faire made her see this was reality and not some game—even better than had being in a position where she’d had to stab that one Menzies man.

  Meanwhile, half the men had gotten up and gathered their bows. Dog had handed Dall’s claymore back to him.

  Dall led most of the men outside, gesturing to the remaining three to stay inside and guard Emily.

  They finished getting their bows ready and their clothes back into day mode, and then they stood around facing the door with arrows cocked.

  Emily felt a little guilty for falling apart and needing to be looked after, but mostly she just felt grateful that the men were looking after her. She let herself step over into the corner, behind the door.

  To the light of someone’s phone, she and the remaining three guys just stood there watching each other listen for sounds outside. She was glad one of them was Mike, and at the same time she chided herself for not learning the rest of their names. She knew their character names from the play, but not their real names. She highly doubted these two wanted to be called Tybalt and Mercutio all the time.

  She was thinking about how disrespectful that was when they finally heard fighting outside: archers whooping and their targets groaning, mostly.

  With a big grin on his face, Tybalt started to go outside to get in on the action, but Mike grabbed his arm, pointing to Emily. The guy deflated, but then he gave Emily a small smile. She smiled back the same small way, as if to say, “Yeah, it’s probably more fun out there, but they might come in here, and I really would not be able to handle that, so thanks.”

  They waited there watching each other’s faces for alarm for what seemed like a long time.

  But then Tybalt showed them his phone. “It’s been fifteen minutes. Do you think we should—”

  And right then, the door opened.

  Scared out of her wits by the sound of the opening door, Emily cowered in the corner with her arms over her face.