Page 127 of Laird of Steel
“Six clans are here,” he told her. “I recognize Ferteth, the Earl of Strathearn. I don’t know the others.”
“Why have they come?”
He lifted a warning finger to his lips to caution her to silence. Then he called out to a passing archer. “Good sir, I’ve just come at the request of Strathearn.” He gestured to Merraid. “Do you know what he wanted with this monk?”
The archer screwed up his face in consideration. “Mayhaps to bless the siege?”
“Ah, of course.”
“‘Tis a siege?” Merraid whispered when the archer was gone. “Against the king?” That seemed unlikely.
“I’ll find out.” Adam snagged an ale from the tray of a passing maidservant and approached a pair of soldiers drinking from their own cups. Raising his cup, he toasted, “Here’s to our success! May the clans stay strong…”
The soldiers raised their cups in reply, and one of them added, “And may the king see the error of his ways!”
They all drank, and Adam gave them a salute of farewell.
Merraid was agog. How had this happened? How could King Malcolm’s subjects rise up against him?
She knew Lady Feiyan had been unhappy with the king’s behavior and the way he’d been sidling up to the English. But had things become so serious that clans were laying siege to their own liege?
Before she could begin interrogating everyone within sight, Adam dragged her back to the hawthorn to hide and consider their options.
By the time they reentered the woods, Merraid had already made up her mind. She wasn’t going to let a siege deter her. She’d come a long distance to seek an audience with the king. She wasn’t going to abandon her mission now. She was going to find a way into the keep. King Malcolm could deal with his disgruntled earls later. After he granted clemency to Gellir.
Adam had a different idea.
“We should go,” he said.
“What do ye mean, go?”
“Leave.”
“I’m not leavin’,” she said. “Not when I’ve come so far.”
“’Tis a bad time to ask the king for a favor.”
“’Twas always a bad time for me,” she admitted. “But I’m not goin’ to let that stop me.”
“How do you plan to gain entrance to the castle when ‘tis under siege?”
She glowered at him. The one time she needed him to be daring and impulsive, and he was naysaying her with rhyme and reason.
He rubbed his jaw. “Unless…”
“Aye?”
“We could wait out the siege.”
Her hopes collapsed. “That could be months.”
“There’s no other way.”
There was one other way. A conniving maidservant’s way. A few words whispered in the right ears could start a major battle among the clans. And while they were embroiled in their own skirmish, she might be able to slip into the keep.
But she quickly dismissed that idea. It was the sort of bold idea Lady Feiyan was always scolding her for. The sort of idea Feiyan called using a trebuchet to kill a fly.
So what would sly Feiyan do?
