She didn’t have time to get the doors closed, and it wouldn’t have mattered in any case because she wasn’t strong enough by herself to place the huge bars into their thick wooden slots on the doors.
She ran back to Mary and shook her, saying quickly, “Don’t be afraid, Mary, but there is trouble. I need you to get beneath this trestle table. The cloth on it is long and will hide you. Quickly, quickly.”
“But, Chandra, our men—”
“They’re dead. Hurry, Mary, you must hurry. You must protect your babe.”
Once Mary was beneath the trestle table, Chandra crept back toward the front doors of the Great Hall. More footsteps, at least six men, moving quickly now, with purpose. They must have discovered that there was no one in the Great Hall except two women. There was no more reason for them to hang back. How long had they been inside the walls?
She stood there, knife and sword raised, waiting, waiting.
Their leader came first through the front doors, and she saw him clearly in the dawn light, harsh now, steel gray, framing the wild-haired man dressed in his animal skins, his face pocked, his eyes flat and hard.
Even though she’d never seen him before, she knew immediately that he was Alan Durwald’s brother. Their features were so similar, even the way they carried themselves. It was like meeting the devil for a second time.
The devil had come for revenge. Someone had betrayed them.
He stopped when he saw her standing there, a boy facing him with a single sword and a single knife, both raised and ready to do battle, tall and slim, this boy, pride in those shoulders, pride bred into his very bones. What was he doing here?
“What,” Robbie Durwald said, coming to a stop, his voice filling the dead silence of the Great Hall, “a single little lad left to defend Oldham? What think ye of this, men?”
The men behind him laughed. Some didn’t because they were looking around, searching every corner of the hall, ready, nervous.
“A little lad,” Robbie Durwald said again, and he walked to the lad, pulling up a good six feet distant because he wasn’t stupid and the lad could be good with a sword. “Who are ye? Why are ye here? Sir Mark leaves ye here unguarded?”
Chandra said nothing at all.
“Come now, answer me. What do ye here, lad? Where is the lady of the keep? I was told only she and her friend were here.”
“She and her friend left hours ago for Camberley, for safety.”
“And why are ye the only one here?”
“I wanted to remain. I commanded the guards. You’ve killed them, haven’t you?”
“Aye, they’re all dead, the miserable English bastards. Aye, everything came to pass as I believed it would. Ye English have cocks for brains, so easy it was. And now there is only ye.”
Then she realized what had happened, how they’d been betrayed. The man-at-arms who’d told Mark that the Scots had fled back northward had not been wounded at all. He was the traitor. He’d opened the gates; he’d taken off the bars from the front doors.
“Well, lad, how wish ye to die?”
“If I die, it will be after I’ve ripped out your guts, you filthy bastard. You won’t feel it because you’ll be in hell with the devil, just watching and weeping at your failure.”
The man paused then, staring at the boy, and something sounded in his memory, something Alan had told him, and then he’d shown him that beautiful rope of hair he’d sliced away from her. No, it wasn’t possible. That girl couldn’t be here. She was a lady and at Camberley. But Alaric had said it was only two women.
“What be yer name, lad? Afore I kill an enemy, I like to say his name aloud and curse him to his death.”
“I am Alaric. Unlike the other Alaric, I am not a traitor.”
“Ah, the boy knows ye for what ye are, Alaric,” Robbie Durwald yelled behind him. “Come forward and tell me who this lad is?”
“No wound, I see,” Chandra said, watching the man stride toward them. She wished she could run the man through his belly.
“No,” Alaric said, “there is no wound. Wait, Robbie. I did not intend for Lady Mary to be harmed. Where is she?”
“She is gone, to Camberley.”
Alaric was shaking his head. “No, she did not leave Oldham. I was watching.” Then he stopped cold and stared. “You’re Sir Jerval’s lady. You’re that girl warrior.”