Page 40 of Highlander Redeemed
“Aye, and with good reason.”
The two scouts looked at each other, and the younger one swallowed, then took up the report.
“Abandoned. One whole side of the curtain wall, the north wall, has collapsed, though from its position at the top of a steep embankment that leads down to the lake we do not think it was caused by a siege engine, or even by battering rams. The embankment gives no room for such an attack.”
“So it just fell?” Lord Sherwood asked. This man needed to get to the point.
“That is the only explanation we could arrive at.”
“And the rest of the wall?”
“It stands and for all appearances seems sound. There is a small tower that stands unscathed, and outbuildings that will provide shelter for your soldiers.”
“But?”
“But the only other building—the great hall by the size of it—is nothing but a burned-out shell. There are no useful supplies left.”
“So these rats of the Highlands abandoned their ruined castle and took everything of use with them.” Lord Sherwood could feel a twitch in his left cheek just where his jaws met. “Where. Did. They. Go?” He let each word drop like stones between him and the scouts.
The two men looked at each other again, and the story once more passed to the older one.
“We could not find them, m’lord. There was at least one watcher, perched up in a tree not far from the castle, and there must have been more, for the moment he spied us he started to cry warning, so Bryn shot him to keep him quiet. We looked for others but found none.”
“So they have not gone far if they still post watchers on the castle,” Lord Sherwood said, thinking out loud.
“’Tis likely, but we found no trace of them in any numbers.”
Before Lord Sherwood could frame another question the younger one cleared his throat. Sherwood glared at him but nodded for him to speak.
“M’lord, we did find out what happened to the last soldiers sent against the MacAlpins.”
When the man stopped, Sherwood just glared at him.
“There is a large meadow with one of those standing stones, marked with carvings, in the center of it. ’Tis clear there was a recent battle there, and we found graves in the wood nearby. It did not take much effort to determine the bodies were English.” His face turned a pale green and he swallowed several times before he could continue. The older scout kept his gaze focused somewhere between his horse’s ears, but looked almost as disturbed as the other. “Twelve in all,” he finally added. “Is that not the number that was sent?”
Lord Sherwood nodded. “Any Scots in those graves?”
“Nay,” the younger one replied, his color once more returned to its more normal pale appearance. “It seems unlikely they would have buried their dead next to English, though.”
He agreed. “Could you tell aught of their numbers, or their battle style?” He was getting rather desperate for information that would help him. Everything except the dead watcher seemed to weigh in the MacAlpins’ favor.
Once more the narrative shifted to the older scout. “It was hard to tell exactly, but it looked like they were probably evenly matched, or nearly so. The English appeared to have taken the high groundaround the stone. There are ropes still looped about the bottom of the stone as if they held someone prisoner. The Scots came from the wood near where we found the graves, but the odd thing was that the English didn’t hold their ground.”
“What?”
Both scouts nodded, and the older one continued. “They abandoned their position, or were driven from it, though we could not tell of anything or anyone that might have done that. They engaged the Scots near the Scots’ position.”
Sherwood tried to calculate how much time had passed since those soldiers had been sent in to do the job he had now been given—a fortnight at least. Long enough for the MacAlpins to regroup, to plan, to lay traps as he and his men had encountered many times along this godforsaken road.
“Is there any way we can salvage the castle?” he asked, his mind working furiously with what they had told him, looking for anything that might help him plan what looked to be more than a quickly fought battle.
The older looked once more at the younger.
“Aye, m’lord. Someone had started erecting a palisade of small trees to close the gap where the fallen section of wall is. If we put everyone but those required to keep watch to felling trees and setting them, I do not think it would take more than three days to finish that and secure the castle for our use.”
He realized the two were a good match for the job he had set them. The elder scout seemed well versed in battles and the younger in the finer points of castle defenses.
“What are your names?” he asked.
