At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle 3)

He was afraid of that. Desperately afraid of that. But as the laird, he couldn’t admit to such, lest he put her in fear. To his people he could only speak confidently of the walls of the castle. About the food that was stockpiled. About the allies that would come shortly to their aid. He couldn’t show fear or his people would fear. He had to have courage for them to have courage. So he forced a confident laugh and said, “No, my sweet. What I want to know is would you want to sacrifice for me if I was not the Macrae but only John Alexander Ramsay Macrea.”

“It isn’t possible for you to be only anything,” she said, with a deep well of feeling in those violet eyes that stirred in him true courage, rather than the kind he had to feign. “Even if you were not a man with a castle to defend, you’re the man to whom I have pledged myself. The only man to have touched me. The only man I obey. I—I belong to you. I am yours complete. Can you not feel it even now with your scent on me and your seed warm within me?”

A flare of possessive lust and love burned a hole in him. Oh, yes, he could feel it. He could feel it, indeed. And it made him feel like not just a laird, but a king. “Aye,” he said, reverently stroking her cheek with his thumb. “I do feel it. And it’s good to feel it. Especially when others are trying to steal everything else that is mine away. Know that I protect what’s mine, Heather.”

He didn’t often use her name, and she seemed to melt to hear it, so he said it again, hoping to make her understand. “Hear me, Heather. I protect what’s mine. I pledge that I will do anything and everything to protect you. With everything I am and everything I have. With my last breath, if need be.”

She sighed contentedly, with heartbreaking trust.

A trust he viewed akin to sacrament.

She was a woman who trusted in him completely, which made him a man who must live up to that trust. He might not survive this siege; he might have to surrender his head to the enemy outside the castle walls who were clamoring for it. But before he did, he would make sure to secure the safety of everyone and everything that belonged to him.

Especially her.

~~~

The carcass lay broken and bloody in the snow. T’was a sheep, best as the laird could tell. Or at least what remained of one after having been launched over the castle wall.

“Cover it up!” the laird barked to his men, his voice puffing steam into the cold winter day. “Don’t let anyone touch it.” It was a diseased animal, for certain but the enemy hoped that his people would be hungry enough to eat it.

Fortunately, Clan Macrae wasn’t that desperate. Not yet. The laird had carefully stockpiled supplies enough to feed his warriors for a year. Unfortunately, the castle now housed more than just warriors. The villagers in the countryside had fled to him, and he took them in because he couldn’t bear to leave them to the mercy of the enemy. He could last longer if he put them out of the castle and let them be terrorized, but what would the point of having a castle if it wasn’t to protect people?

In any event, it meant every morsel of food needed to be carefully rationed; a thing the enemy knew as wel

l. And they flung this diseased animal into his curtain wall to taunt him. Well, the laird could play that game too. “Rodric, mount it up to fling back at them.”

Rodric nodded. The laird didn’t need to say why it was Rodric who would be doing this work, for the hapless young guardsman had fallen asleep at his post not two nights before, and was late to sound an alarm at the approach of boats near the sea gate. It was justice and it was fairness to make Rodric risk touching the diseased animal now.

It was a decision that no one would question.

The laird’s next decision, however, was sure to raise protests. “Oh, but first, fetch a nicely cured pork shoulder from the larder and launch that back at them too.”

The men stared at him.

It was his kinsman, Ian Macrae, who was the first to speak. “Our rations are more vital now than ever and you want to throw a ham at the enemy?”

The laird knew it would be Ian who would question his authority; it was always Ian. They’d been playmates growing up. Closer than brothers. But when it became clear that John would be his father’s only heir—some in the clan preferred that the leadership pass to Ian.

They’d been rivals ever since.

Ian had pledged his fealty and John had accepted it, but the laird was quite certain that at a time like this Ian was sure he’d do better in command. And that frustration was building up in his kinsman now—enough for Ian to question his chief in front of the others. “T’is bloody hubris is what it is, laird.”

“Aye,” John admitted. His men were used to open warfare. Sword against sword. Strength against strength. Ian was a good warrior too and had taken many wounds on behalf of the clan. But what the laird knew was that the siege of a castle wasn’t a test of muscle, blood and sinew.

It was a matter of mental fortitude.

It was a game won only by outwitting and outlasting the enemy.

And morale was everything.

If the people in the castle believed they could afford to toss a ham, then they would stay calm and sure of purpose. “Let the ham be an answer to them. They think we’re so hungry that we’ll dine upon diseased meat? We’ll let them know we’re well stocked to wait them out; we can afford to lose a ham.”

It was the fiery-haired and freckled Davy who picked up on the laird’s train of thought, and laughed a bit at the notion. “A tasty gift for the enemy. They’re camped out there in the snow, freezing off fingers and toes while we’re warm and toasty inside the castle. We can afford to be generous…and it ought to scare the piss out of them.”

Ian scowled and crossed his arms, but said no more against the plan. Meanwhile, the laird pulled his fur cloak round his shoulders and motioned to Davy to follow him inside, out of the light snow that began to fall. “I want you to give Malcolm command of guarding the larder,” John said. “Not a thing to come in or out without his say so.”

Davy grinned but scratched at the back of his head. “Malcolm makes a surlier watch-dog than I do, but we must suspect there’s a traitor inside the walls. If not, the enemy would never have dared a winter assault. The Donalds and MacDonalds must be waiting for the right time to strike at our food supply. Poison, or spoil, or steal it.”