Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (20 page)

“
No.”

“
There wouldn’t be, though,
would there?” Cassie said. “If they’re in the lodge, they’re nicely
locked up, maybe in that smaller building against the eastern
fence.”

“
I’m sure you’re right,”
Callum said. “I’m worried that one or more of them are badly
injured. If that’s the case, their chance of escaping would be
pretty slim.”

“
What chance do we have of
getting them out?” Cassie said. “For sure, a direct assault isn’t
going to work.”

Callum continued examining the lodge
through the scope. “I think I remember seeing several of these men
at the fight on the road. It’s hard to tell since they’re not
wearing helmets today.” He handed the scope back to Cassie. “How
about you? Do you recognize anyone?”

Cassie put the scope to her eye.
“Maybe. I would say at least one. And … I think one of them is a
MacDougall cousin.”

“
Brilliant.” Callum rolled
onto his back and threw his hand across his eyes. “We need to talk
through this.”

“
Talk through
what?”

“
I’m just trying to get
straight what we think is happening here.” Callum shaded his eyes
as Cassie took off her backpack and scooted down to lie beside him,
with her bow resting on her stomach. Their closeness wasn’t
wise—she was way more attracted to him than she wanted to be—but
the rock wasn’t big enough for her to put more than an inch between
them. “It makes no sense for the MacDougalls to hide their captives
in a lodge belonging to the Earl of Lennox, who is loyal to Grampa
Bruce.”

“
The Earl is rabidly
anti-English,” Cassie said.

“
Up until now, clan
loyalties have trumped national ones every time,” Callum
said.

“
What I want to know,”
Cassie said, “is why Alexander MacDougall took captives at all once
he realized that King David wasn’t part of your
company?”

“
As leverage, like Robbie
said,” Callum said.

“
No.” Cassie shook her
head. “MacDougall has to know that Balliol can’t win the crown
through blackmail. It can’t happen.”

“
Okay,” Callum said. “Let’s
start at the beginning: our company was making its way from Glasgow
to Stirling, to help adjudicate the succession for the crown of
Scotland. First of all, who knew about that journey and when did
they know it?”

“
Everyone knew about it,”
Cassie said, “except they all thought King David was leading the
embassage, not Kirby.”

“
Second, Kirby disguised
one of his underlings in his own robes and set him on the
carriage,” Callum said. “How cold must his blood be to sacrifice
not only his nephew, but his own man, an entire company of the
king’s men, and James Stewart and Robbie Bruce for this
cause.”

“
Bad luck for him that
Robbie escaped and could tell us the truth,” Cassie said. “So that
leads us to a third question: Why?”

Callum’s eyes narrowed as he thought.
“Kirby gets MacDougall to attack my company, but intends for him to
leave no survivors, no proof left behind of what they’ve
done.”

“
Then Kirby goes to Daddy
Bruce and gets him to attack the Comyns followed by the
MacDougalls, and—” Cassie stopped. “I’ve got nothing.”

“
Um … all of Scotland rises
up against both Bruce and Balliol when the atrocities committed on
both sides exceed their tolerance,” Callum said. “How about
that?”

“
What does Kirby get out of
it?” Cassie said.

“
I have no idea,” Callum
said.

“
What if Kirby is up to his
old tricks again?” Cassie sat up straight. “Isn’t this what you
said Kirby tried to do for England? Clear David’s way to the
throne? What if Kirby wants a similar outcome here?”

“
Cassie!” Callum reached
for Cassie’s arm to pull her down beside him again, but she evaded
his hand and lay back on her own. She’d forgotten where she was for
a second in her enthusiasm for her theory.

“
If that hypothesis is
true, then if David had come north as he’d initially planned, none
of this would have happened,” Callum said.

“
If I’m right,” Cassie
said, “then Kirby may have thought he had a good chance of
manipulating him into taking the throne without
bloodshed.”

“
As it is, if David doesn’t
take the throne, how many possible outcomes of this dispute are
there?” Callum said. “I see war, war, and more war.”

“
How much better would it
be if David became the King of Scotland as the compromise choice,”
Cassie said. “I’d vote for that.”

“
Kirby is taking a huge
risk. He might find himself in the Tower of London,” Callum said.
“Not that he doesn’t deserve it. So many men died ...”

“
Regardless of the details,
he has to fear that we’ll tell King David what we know,” Cassie
said.

“
He should fear it,” Callum
said, “because we will tell him.”

“
Now I’m really glad we
came up here,” Cassie said.

Callum shook himself. “We’re getting
ahead of ourselves thinking about Kirby. Let’s deal with today and
let tomorrow take care of itself.”

“
Right,” Cassie said.
“Prisoners who need rescue.”

“
Prisoners Alexander
MacDougall took without clearing it with Kirby,” Callum said. “Good
for him.”

Cassie flipped onto her stomach again
and looked through her scope. “How do we get them out?”

“
What are our assets?”
Callum said.

“
I have a bow; you have a
sword,” Cassie said. “That’s it.”

“
No wheelbarrow?” Callum
said.

Cassie laughed.
“
The Princess Bride
. A quote for every occasion, even this one.”

“
Especially this one.”
Callum smirked and pointed towards the trees. Cassie scooted off
the rock and they ran back to the woods at a crouch.

Cassie pulled up. “What about going
for help?”

“
I’ve been thinking the
same thing,” Callum said. “But to whom? We don’t know who we can
trust. Grampa Bruce has allies in this area but so do the
MacDougalls and the Balliols for that matter. Nobody is neutral but
us. We’d have to go all the way to Stirling and by the time we
returned with an army, they might have moved the prisoners again.
Or killed them.”

“
I don’t suppose you have a
plan?” Cassie said.

Callum eyed her. “Have you ever killed
a man?”

Cassie almost didn’t want to answer
him because it was a way in which they couldn’t be equals.
“No.”

Callum nodded. “Let’s not have you
start now if we can help it.”

“
How are we going to get
the captives out without killing anyone?” Cassie said.

“
How about we at least try.
I’m working on some ideas.” Callum touched Cassie’s quiver. “Those
arrows are precious, but could you stand losing a few for a good
cause?”

“
The arrows I brought with
me from our world are long gone.” Cassie pulled out a shaft and
held it up. “One of the first things I learned was how to fill my
quiver.”

Callum fingered the fletching on the
arrow. “How many do you have with you now?”

“
Twenty.”

“
Then twenty will have to
do.” Callum let out a quick breath. “Here’s my plan: you’re going
to create a series of diversions and while the men inside that
lodge are worrying about the havoc you’re wreaking out here, I’m
going to get inside and see what’s what.”

“
How are you going to do
that?” Cassie said.

Callum pointed at the fort. “The
palisade was built to protect a hunting lodge from wild animals,
not humans. It’s not a fortress. Did you see how the fence protects
the front and sides but ends at the water’s edge?”

Cassie nodded. She had noticed
that.

“
We need to find me a
boat.”

“
Where are we going to find
a boat big enough to fit a dozen men?” Cassie said. “You don’t want
that. They’ll spot you coming in. You’ll never even reach the
shore.”

“
I just need a boat big
enough for me,” Callum said. “On the way out, we’ll probably just
have to get wet.”

Chapter Eleven

Callum

C
assie and Callum spent the next hour hiking along the loch,
looking for a boat Callum could borrow. They found one that would
suit him, finally, a mile along the shore to the west. It had been
pulled up among the trees and looked very much like a Native
American canoe, complete with two paddles. Cassie eyed it, her
mouth working in amusement. “Great minds think alike, I guess,” she
said.

They carried it back along the shore
in preference to getting in it and paddling right away. They both
agreed that the sound of their movements on the water would carry
to the fort more easily than if they traveled most of the way there
on land. Eventually, however, they reached a patch of thicker
undergrowth and were forced to get into the canoe.

Hugging the shore, they paddled to a
point a few hundred yards shy of the fort, though around a point of
land so that anyone standing on the shore within the palisade would
have no chance of seeing them. There, they left the canoe. Next,
they checked on the horses, moving them deeper into the woods to a
spot where they hoped they’d be safe. They’d forsaken the trail
from the start, thinking it too open, and on the return journey
reached a point fifty yards above it. It was only then, near the
overlooking piece of granite, that they encountered a patrol from
the fort.

Cassie spotted them first. “Get down!”
She tugged on the back of his surcoat. Since the day had remained
hot, he’d left his cloak with the horses. He wished it made sense
to take off his armor too, since it was like wearing a personal
sauna. At times, Callum wondered why it hadn’t fused to his skin
yet since he wore it constantly. The water in the loch had looked
inviting, but despite his offhand comment to Cassie about swimming,
the last thing he wanted was another fully-clothed soaking in a
medieval body of water.

Cassie and Callum hustled behind some
bracken. Three men strolled below them, one in front, hacking at
the underbrush desultorily with a stick, and two behind. They
chatted with one another, apparently unconcerned about being
spotted. If this was a patrol, they weren’t doing a very
professional job of it. They seemed to be headed back to the
fort.

“
The MacDougall is not
going to be happy when he hears of this,” the man in the lead
said.

“
How is he going to hear of
it unless you tell him?” one of other men said. “You’re the one who
saw the flash. We aren’t going to say anything if you
don’t.”

Cassie looked at Callum and
nodded. She didn’t need to say—
the
scope
—for both of them to know what flash
the man had seen. The patrol moved on, their footsteps plodding
away down the hill towards the fort. Cassie and Callum let the
sound of their movements fade completely before they moved
again.

“
We’re going to have to be
more careful,” she said. “Right now, they have nothing. If they get
another hint of something not quite right, they’ll be on
alert.”

“
So we take it slow,”
Callum said.

More wary than they’d been before, and
more glad than Callum could say that nobody on the fort’s ramparts
had their own scope, they set to work fabricating the diversions.
Callum’s grand plan was a matter of building a half-dozen piles of
brush and debris for Cassie to light, one after another, before she
directed her attention to the fort itself. They decided that she
should start her attack on the fort with ten fire arrows. Ideally,
between the bonfires and the arrows, the men inside would be so
busy putting out the fires and worrying about how many men were
coming at them, that they wouldn’t leave the fort.

What Callum was asking Cassie to do
would require as much effort as what his job entailed, but
hopefully it would be less dangerous. When she’d told him that
she’d never killed a man—and why would she have? She wasn’t a
soldier—he’d gone a bit cold. He needed a soldier today and was
sorry if she was going to have to become one because of
him.

Cassie checked the sky. “The afternoon
is moving on. It won’t get dark until nearly nine o’clock. We
should eat something and maybe get some sleep.”

Right away, Callum wished she hadn’t
mentioned sleep. He’d been holding his exhaustion at bay the whole
day. Granted, he’d slept a long time in her hut, but he’d awoken
nearly twenty-four hours ago and they’d come a long way since then.
They both needed to sleep.

They returned to where they’d left the
horses, and Callum settled into a hollow at the base of a tree with
the sack that Robbie had given him. They’d eaten during the journey
and refilled the water skins along the way, but now was the time to
fill up while they could. Callum had learned to close his mind to
whatever contaminants might be in the water he drank: not chemicals
or heavy metals like in the modern world, but if an animal had died
upstream and polluted the water, they could be in trouble. Callum
took a long drink anyway and held out the water skin to
Cassie.