Chapter 63

Morgan’s heart seized. His breath caught. His knees turned to custard.

Jenefer, however, didn’t even flinch.

“Archers, move in!” she ordered.

His jaw went slack. He didn’t know whether to be mortified or outraged. How dared the lass interfere with his command? What gave her the authority to tell his men—and women—what to do?

“Take your best shots!” she shouted.

His brows collided. He whirled toward her with clenched fists.

But Jenefer, fully engaged in battle, was blind to everything but the war being waged on the ground below.

Before he could bellow at her to go back to the great hall, he heard the random twang of bowstrings, followed by distant groans of pain. He ventured a glance over the battlements. To his surprise, the mac Giric archers had wounded several of the attackers.

He looked at Jenefer in wonder.

“Second wave!” she called out.

Though he was tempted to haul the lass off the wall, Morgan couldn’t argue with the effectiveness of her strategy. While the English, unprotected by their shields, attempted to recover from the archers’ attack, the lasses rushed forward to hurl stones, cups, and pots down at them.

As the English flinched and dodged the projectiles, unable to form an effective wall of shields in the confusion, the mac Giric archers took over again, stepping in to shoot at them.

To further confound the enemy and make their arrows harder to defend against, the archers didn’t release all at once in a volley. Instead, Jenefer had apparently directed them to choose a specific target and shoot when they had a single victim squarely in their sights.

Once their arrows were spent, with very few of them wasted, the archers withdrew from the battlements.

“And again!” Jenefer shouted.

The lasses moved forward in unison to pelt the foe with hammers and pans and platters. Those English who were foolish enough to fight their way through the falling objects were subsequently picked off when the archers took over.

It was ingenious.

Morgan looked at the lass with new respect. She was a warrior maid. Not only could she handle a bow. She could wage war. Indeed, he’d never seen a more capable commander.

He was about to tell her so when a sudden hard impact made the stones shudder beneath his feet.

Jenefer turned and caught his eye. “The doors!”

Morgan’s heart plummeted as his glance landed on the cart blocking the entrance. It was tipped at a dangerous angle, and his men strained to keep it from flipping. The rough point of the battering ram was visible between the splintered rift in the doors.

He clenched his jaw. He needed to get down there.

“Go!” Jenefer barked. “I’ve got this!”

He hesitated.

He couldn’t leave his soldiers in the hands of a lass.

Could he?

In the end, it was Jenefer’s steady, self-assured gaze, burning like fire, that convinced him.

“I’ve got this,” she repeated. “Go.”

He knew she was right. With a nod and an exhale to settle his nerves, he snatched up his claymore and raced down the stairs.

Stepping into the courtyard was like marching into hell.

Time screeched to a halt, dragging at Morgan’s boots as if he slogged through sludge, while he took in the turmoil around him.

In his shifted reality, panicked livestock kicked up clouds of dust at a snail’s pace while their keepers labored to keep them penned.

As if they moved through thick sap, breathless lads raced back and forth, fetching weapons from the armory.

Scowling men-at-arms shrugged slowly into their cotuns, snarling drawn-out oaths at one another to whip up their courage for the hand-to-hand battle to come.

At a sluggish pace, sweating servants piled barrels, chests, casks—anything heavy they could find—onto the cart to give it weight against the oncoming tide of English soldiers.

Then, in the midst of it all, appearing through the rising silt like a calm angel, rose Alicia. Oblivious to the pandemonium, she seemed as tranquil as the eye of a storm.

In this strange, stretched time, it felt to Morgan like he stared at her in puzzlement for an eternity, unable to comprehend her peace.

And then he glimpsed the bairn in her arms.

A prolonged, painful, rasping gasp racked Morgan’s chest. His precious son was in the clutches of the one who saw him, not as an innocent child, but as a hostage. Alicia was no heavenly being. She was the Angel of Death.

A calculating smirk slowly bloomed on her face. Her eyes closed down to scheming slits. Her hand drifted up to the back of Miles’ head.

An impotent roar choked Morgan’s throat as he saw his son frozen in time—red-faced, body arched, crying in terror, and helpless in the witch’s grasp.

In that protracted instant, he tried to gauge whether he could cross the courtyard to recover his son before she did him harm.

But before he could act, a mighty crash and a loud, grinding noise jarred him back to real time.

His gaze flew to the entrance of the keep.

The battering ram had splintered the doors.

The wheels of the cart were skidding back under the pressure, despite the efforts of his men to anchor them.

One more blow would let the English into the breach.

“To arms!” he bellowed to his men, brandishing his claymore as he thundered forward.

Jenefer heard the horrendous crack and felt the wall shudder. The English had burst through the doors.

It was time to change tactics.

“Archers, disperse along the walls!” she cried. “Guard the doors!”

The archers abandoned the battlements, facing inward and finding the best vantage points to keep the entrance in their sights.

As for the women atop the wall, though they would have no parapets to hide behind when the English streamed in, Jenefer felt they were safer up here than sitting in the great hall, waiting like lambs to be slaughtered.

Apparently, they agreed. Not a single one fled down the stairs. Instead, the determined lasses hefted up what projectiles remained in their arsenal and prepared to launch an attack inside the walls.

For one moment, her breast swelled with pride.

Then, with a brutal punch of its wooden fist, the battering ram shattered the doors. Her chest caved as the breath hissed from her lungs.

The cart keeled over and smashed onto its side. A man who didn’t dodge fast enough screamed as the weighted conveyance crushed his leg.

But what wrenched at her heart, making it knife sideways, was the sight of Morgan down there, in the thick of things. He and his men stood before the doors, baring their teeth and brandishing their claymores.

Too soon, like angry wasps knocked from their nest, the English began to swarm through the narrow opening and over the overturned cart.

She swallowed down her fear and stiffened her spine. I’ve got this, she’d boasted. Now there was no turning back.

At her direction, the women flocked to the section of wall directly above the attackers, lobbing rocks and dropping pitchers on them as they came through the entrance.

Her archers, aided by the disarray the women sowed, performed expertly. They wounded nearly half of the invaders as they slipped through the gap.

The English lucky enough to evade their arrows were met by Morgan’s claymore-wielding giants.

As for Jenefer, she gave herself the singular mission of keeping Morgan safe. She shot at anyone who came within a yard of him, not even noting or caring that she might have killed a man for the first time.

By some miracle, the Highlanders repelled the first wave of invaders and righted the cart again. Once the injured man was carried away, five men-at-arms shoved the cart up against the splintered doors and held it there with their backs.

It wouldn’t keep the enemy out forever. But now maybe Roger would think twice about the cost in casualties if he attacked again. A dozen bodies lay strewn about the courtyard, feeding the grass with English blood.

But one person in the keep wasn’t pleased with the outcome.

“Nay!” Alicia screamed, frowning in fury at the carnage.

Only one thing could make her that angry, and that was having her plans foiled. She must have been counting on the English to seize Creagor and take Morgan. She expected them to rescue her. Which confirmed that it was she who’d misled them, telling them Morgan had committed the murders.

Afire with rage at Alicia’s betrayal, Jenefer drew her bow, aiming at the treacherous woman’s back.

Then she hesitated.

She remembered what Bethac had said. Morgan would never forgive her for shooting Miles’ mother.

Her hands faltered on the bow as she saw Morgan turn toward Alicia, his blade still in hand, his chest heaving, his face grimy from battle.

Still Jenefer fought the urge to slay the woman where she stood.

But Alicia shifted her posture then, enough so Jenefer could see the bundle in her arms.

Alicia had Miles.

He writhed in her arms, bleating to be free.

Jenefer’s heart plunged. Her hands quaked. A knot of horror clogged her throat.

Bloody hell. What if Jenefer had fired that shot and accidentally hit Miles?

Before her grip could slip, before she could do something she’d regret, Jenefer lowered the bow. But her fingers still trembled on the grip. And her gaze as she kept Alicia and Miles in her sights could have pierced steel.

“Let me out!” Alicia snarled, clinging tightly to the babe.

At that moment, Danald came stumbling out of the great hall. He gripped his head in one hand.

“M’laird,” he grunted, “I lost him. I lost…” He stopped as he took in the situation and saw who had taken the babe from him. His brow clouded. “’Twas ye. Ye took Miles.”

Now all the men-at-arms faced her. Their blood was hot from battle. Their grim blades were bare. What was one more victim?

Alicia must have sensed their hunger for violence as well. It fueled her desperation. She slid a dagger from her belt.

“If you don’t let me go,” she bit out, “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill your heir.”