Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

L iam could not relax enough to get to sleep. However many times he had slept out in the open, which, as the war leader for the Clan Lennox, was often, he was never fully able to relax, always highly alert to his surroundings. He turned over yet again in his endless quest to get comfy on his bedroll.

It was particularly frustrating for him because, in sharp contrast to himself, his friend, the Laird Knox Stewart, had dropped off with ease, judging by the way he was snoring loudly and regularly. It made Liam feel somewhat annoyed and a touch envious and the reverberating sound only added to the physical discomfort of his aching back and his cold-stiffened limbs, which were keeping him awake.

The pair were on the way from Castle Lennox to Knox’s castle, and despite the need for their urgent arrival there, they had been delayed by the bad weather and had reluctantly agreed to make camp for the night. As Liam moved restlessly in his makeshift bed, with Knox’s discordant symphony echoing in his ears, he considered the job ahead of him.

He had met Knox through his brother Tadhg, at his wedding to Alana four years before. Tadgh and Knox had been friends for a while, after having been through a few scrapes together, and Liam and Knox had also hit it off immediately.

A recent threat from one of Knox’s neighboring clans, the MacAlisters, had made the laird fearful that an attack by Laird Carson MacAlister, supported by his friend and ally Laird Gael Hamilton, was imminent. Both lairds were well known to be ruthless, power-hungry men looking to enrich themselves by expanding their territories. And it seemed that Knox’s Clan Stewart was high on their list of targets for a takeover, even if they hadn’t made any move yet.

However, Knox was not a man to just roll over and give up in the face of the threat. He was a bold, courageous fellow, a veteran of many successful battles. He wanted to get his army up to speed quickly and give his men the best possible training to increase the chances of successfully repelling an attack by the MacAlisters and Hamiltons. That was the reason he had traveled to Castle Lennox and offered Liam the job of being his war captain until the threat was dealt with.

Hence, as they had sat over the fire, eating bread and dried meat and drinking tea with whisky, both men had cursed the bad weather that was keeping them from getting to Castle Stewart that same night.

The fear they shared was that an attack could already have taken place in their absence and that they would be too late to stop the castle from being overrun. Liam wondered if they were being watched now by MacAlister spies, and it amazed him that Knox could sleep so soundly with that possibility hanging over his head as well as the danger of an assault on his castle. But Knox was a cool customer.

The concerns nagged at Liam’s mind as he sought restful sleep. When he heard a loud crack and a frightened whinny coming from his horse, he instantly snapped into full alertness. He sat bolt upright, his pulse beginning to race, his eyes raking the darkness over by the horses. Someone is there! He was about to gently shake Knox awake and signal to him not to make a sound when he realized his friend was already sitting up and was looking back at him questioningly.

Together, they stared towards the horses. With his hand on the pommel of his sword, Liam’s eyes continued to search the shadows surrounding the beasts. He inhaled sharply as he made out the outline of a person atop his stallion, Douglas. Someone was trying to steal his horse!

The figure seemed quite small, and he assumed it must be a youth from a nearby village who had seen an opportunity and been unable to resist the challenge.

He and Knox exchanged glances in the dim light firelight, and he knew his friend had seen it too. With a silent nod of accord, they moved swiftly to their feet and crept towards the horse-thief, who was poised to take off when they both leaped up and dragged him down heavily to the ground.

“And where d’ye think ye’re goin’ with me horse?!” Liam shouted as they pinned the struggling miscreant to the ground. As they wrangled him, Liam realized he was right; the would-be robber was indeed a small, skinny youth, but he could not see the lad’s face. It was concealed by a cap pulled low, and a kerchief was tied over the lower half of his face, concealing it.

“Who the devil are ye?” Knox demanded, shaking the boy hard by the shoulders as they kept him pinned to the ground. “A MacAlister spy, is that it?” the Laird went on suspiciously, shaking the thief violently again.

But the youth fought so hard to get away, he managed to get a hand free and groped for the pommel of his sword. “Watch him, he’s goin fer his blade!” Liam warned Knox, clamping his hand down on the thief’s wrist and twisting it sharply. The boy cried out in pain as Liam deftly disarmed him.

“Who are ye? Identify yersel’ at once, or it’ll be the worst fer ye,” he growled menacingly at the hapless youth as they hauled him roughly to his feet, firing questions at him. Again, the boy refused to answer any of them. He refused to speak at all.

“Skinny, is he nae?!” Knox observed, holding the youth by his collar so that his feet were dangling, and he was gasping for air.

“Aye, and small too,” Liam observed, inspecting the thief more closely.

“He weighs about as much a feather. But ye can be small and skinny and still make a bloody good spy,” Knox pointed out as, between them, they dragged the potential spy towards a tree. Knox held him, while Liam fetched some rope to tie him. The fight seemed to have gone out of the boy, for the moment at least, and he meekly allowed himself to be secured to the tree trunk.

“Maybe ye’re a spy, or maybe ye’re a light-fingered lad from a nearby village, eh? Which is it?” Liam shouted in the prisoner’s face, to no avail.

“He’ll answer nae questions, it seems,” Knox observed, growling in the boy’s face, “but he’ll soon talk, I reckon, after we give him a bit of a—Jaysus!” Knox cried out, stepping back, shock written all over his face. “He’s a MacAlister spy all right, Liam,” he hissed, as if just discovering he had taken hold of a poisonous snake. “Look at this!”

He held out the hand he had crushed within his own, where a golden ring glinted in the red firelight.

“What is it?” Liam asked, bending down to look where Knox was indicating.

“A ring with the MacAlister emblem engraved upon it.”

“Christ, is it?” Liam exclaimed in shock, examining the ring. In the flickering firelight, he could just make out the sigil carved into the ring’s surface, two bears caught in a deadly embrace. “That means yer clan could be under attack as we speak!” he cried, shocked to his core by the horrifying possibility, as Knox obviously was too, and with good reason.

“Aye, that’s what I’m afeared of,” Knox admitted, his face white as he stared at the prisoner.

Liam thought quickly, figuring that Knox would be wanting to get back to his

castle right away, to help fight off any incursion alongside his men.

“Look, Knox, I think ’tis best if ye take off now and ride on ahead for home as hard as ye can. If the castle is under attack as ye suspect, then yer men are bound tae be needin’ ye there tae lead them in the defense.”

“But what about ye and the spy?” Knox asked, his usually calm demeanor agitated.

“Dinnae worry about me, I can take care of mesel’ and him,” Liam assured his friend, jerking his chin at the captive. “Get goin’, and I’ll follow as fast as I can, with him in tow,” he told his friend, glancing back at the captive.

“Aye, all right, I’ll go straight away,” Knox replied, gathering up his stuff hurriedly, including his hat, which he rammed onto his head before running for his horse. He stowed his things quickly in his saddlebag and then, in one fluid movement, leapt nimbly into the saddle. “I’ll see ye at the castle as soon as ye can get there, all right?” he said, looking back at Liam and the boy tied to the tree.

“Make haste,” Liam shouted to his friend, watching Knox ride off, to be

swallowed among the trees.

When the his friend had departed, Liam returned to the captive. Filled with a fresh sense of urgency, he grabbed him by the collar, shook him, and bellowed in his face, “Who are ye then? Are ye workin’ fer MacAlister, eh? Are ye alone, or are there more of ye spyin’ on us? Answer me!”

Infuriatingly, the lad would still not say a word, so Liam decided to interrogate him further and force him to speak. “Ye give me nae choice,” he told the lad before punching him twice in the ribs.

As soon as he had landed the blows, he regretted it, for the breath whooshed audibly from the skinny body, and the boy let out a grunt of pain. He sagged against the ropes binding him to the tree, moaning softly.

Christ, he’s weak, all right. Maybe I shouldnae have hit him so hard. I’d best be a wee bit more careful, otherwise I risk knocking him out completely, and then he’ll be useless fer information.

He kept firing questions at the lad, but to no avail.

“Why will ye nae answer me? Are ye deaf or stupid or what?” he demanded. By now, he hardy had any expectation that the lad would answer, since he had been stoically silent for so long. Thus, he was genuinely shocked when he finally did speak.

However, the boy volunteered no information, as Liam had hoped he would. Instead, he gasped out in a high, strained voice that sounded weirdly artificial, “I’m nae a spy! I was just after yer horse! What are ye gonnae dae tae me?”

The lad hasnae even dropped his balls by the sound of it , Liam thought to himself, growing more puzzled by the second about this curious captive.

“There’s only one thing I can dae since ye willnae answer me questions,” he replied.

“I answered yer question! I told ye, I’m nae a spy, just a village lad and a horse thief,” the prisoner protested again.

Liam shook his head. “I dinnae believe ye. So, if ye willnae tell me otherwise, and ye’re wearing that ring bearing the seal of the MacAlister’s, I can only conclude that ye are indeed a spy workin’ fer Carson MacAlister. Ye leave me with nay other option than tae take ye tae Castle Stewart fer a proper interrogation.” He saw the youth’s dark eyes fly wide with panic as he added menacingly, “Ye’re our property now.”