Highland Warrior, McCollum, Heather [carter reed .TXT] 📗

to you in the palace really help?” Osk asked, his lip curling so his upper teeth sat exposed.

A lot could have happened since Joshua had woken Angus in the night at his cottage in the village beyond the palace where the soldiers and their families lived. Angus had asked his lady to journey back to mainland Scotland with him and Mathias after the battle, but she may have given him away to Lord Robert. Joshua had never met the lass, so he could not judge her heart.

“We will know if they are absent this morn,” Joshua said. “Then your small band must get my corpse out of there.”

“What if he wants your body to be hung, drawn, and quartered?” Osk asked. “He is calling you a traitor.”

“If the false symptoms and pretend gangrene do not deter them, Hilda took care of adding a definite symptom,” Calder said, flapping his hand toward Joshua’s kilt.

“What?” Osk asked, staring at the wrapped wool.

Joshua yanked up the edge of his kilt to expose his jack and ballocks. Nestled into the groin was a blackened ball that Kára’s grandmother had glued on.

Osk’s mouth dropped open. “My grandmother really did give you the plague.”

Joshua dropped his kilt. “Aye,” he said, his lips tight.

“You let Amma down near your ballocks?” Osk asked, incredulously.

The old woman had seemed to take great delight in pasting on the blackened nut while Joshua cupped himself. “One of ye will notice it when I am…defeated. Yell a warning.” Bloody hell, defeated. He had never been defeated in his life.

His father was surely turning in his grave. George Sinclair did not stand for defeat or weakness in any of his sons. And he had outlawed illness, saying God would never let one of his Horsemen die from disease. Yet here Joshua stood, feigning illness and defeat.

“You have brought the plague to Orkney,” Osk said, glancing back down the hill where the men who remained on Orkney waited. Half of those who’d battled for Geir had already journeyed on to Caithness.

Joshua looked over them, their weapons and attention ready. “Hilda visited several ladies in the village three days ago, asking if anyone was ill with it. That she’d heard it was moving up from the south and Pastor John had brought it with him from Edinburgh. Three days should be enough time for the rumor to have reached the palace.”

“Can you battle with that on you?” Osk asked, dropping his gaze to the front of Joshua’s kilt.

Joshua met his round eyes that were the same gray-blue as his sister’s. “I have battled with broken bones before. A nut is not likely to slow me down.”

“It better slow you down enough for Patrick to get in a strike,” Calder said as if reminding him. “Do not kill the bastard or you will have more problems.”

Merely thinking of the smug man made Joshua’s fists clench. Feigning weakness. Lord, help me do it. He was the Horseman of War, a warrior from the cradle, vengeance made flesh. Patrick deserved to die, along with his father, for the atrocities they’d brought down upon the people of Orkney. Like the rapist, Henry. Fury welled up inside Joshua as he remembered Henry slamming Kára against the chapel wall. He inhaled to rid himself of the image only to have it replaced with the vision of Patrick throwing her to the floor. And yet, Joshua must fall under his sword. For Kára and for Clan Sinclair.

…

“Here,” Amma said, nodding at Kára. “This will make you pale as death,” she said, mixing the paste in the carved bowl. “We will add subtle touches of gray where your flesh has begun to loosen.”

“And I will be lying on a dead, stinking seal?” Kára asked. Amma nodded. “And I will be buried alive?” Amma nodded again. “And this is the only way to stop Patrick Stuart from coming after me?”

“Death is the final escape from a determined madman,” Amma said.

Kára looked at the wavy reflection in the polished glass. “For both Joshua and me.”

“Aye.”

“The Horseman of War.” Kára shook her head.

“Will die for you this day,” Amma said and kissed her on the top of her head, taking up the paste-smeared rag.

…

“Patrick Stuart, come meet the Horseman of War.” Joshua’s voice boomed up at the men in the gate tower. “Pay for your crimes against Kára Flett, you murdering bastard.”

“Did your woman die from her wounds?” Angus yelled down, signaling that his betrothed had not given him away or he’d be in Robert’s dungeon. Hopefully, Mathias was also about the grounds.

“Aye, from the cruelty of Patrick Stuart against a woman. Tell him to come answer for his crimes,” Joshua yelled. He stood in a battle stance, sword in hand, feet braced, death etched into the lines of his face. At least this part he did not have to act. His hatred for Patrick Stuart and Lord Robert practically shot outward from him, making him intimidating enough that the five soldiers who came forward remained way back near the portcullis that was partway open.

In the week since the attack, Robert had ordered the men to work from sunup into the night to finish the defensive wall around his palace. Angus had told Joshua that Robert and The Brute had railed at them for not lighting the beacon that would have called warriors from the village to help. That they believed the Orkney warriors had numbered over a hundred strong, conjecturing that men must’ve marched up from the southern isle of Hoy and the East Mainland of Orkney to join the Birsay peasants in revolt. The farce had kept Robert from immediately ordering his men to give chase when the Hillside men retreated.

And now another farce must play out expertly, a farce on which The Art of War had no advice. Staging his own death.

Joshua stood strong facing the raised portcullis.

“Cough or something,” Osk whispered from behind and backed up as if afraid to get too close to Joshua.

Joshua coughed from deep in his chest, not