The anxiety racing through her calmed somewhat. Enough to steady her hands. She reached for an arrow, nocked it and gazed through the mass of people to find an English soldier as she’d been instructed.
Black smoke billowed toward her, stinging her eyes and making her throat raw. It limited her visibility, so targets came in flashes and glimpses. Her arm burned from the effort of holding her drawn bow with the weight of chainmail dragging at her. Frustration ground at the base of her neck.
There was not one solitary person she could sight in her aim. There was only chaos.
Blades flashing. People rushing by. Screaming. Blood. And through it all, a thick haze in the air from various huts that had been set aflame.
She searched through it to no avail.
The helm further blocked her sight and the huff of her own breath echoed in her ears. It was impossible to shoot with the damn thing on.
She wrenched the helm off her head. Her renewed senses were brilliantly aware suddenly, like having a candle lit in a dark room. She could see, hear. Focus.
Soldiers in different colored surcoats battled one another, but she wasn’t familiar enough to know many of them outside of the red and blue livery of the MacLeod clan. It was those colors she sought.
For if she could find her own army, she could easily find their enemy.
There.
A man in chain with a red and blue surcoat was shoved against the wall by a man in a yellow surcoat. Kinsey took aim and released her arrow. A screen of black smoke swept over the scene.
She squinted to see, her heart pounding. Had she hit the Englishman? Or her own man?
The scene reappeared for a blink of a moment. The Englishman lay on the ground with an arrow jutting from his back.
The air whooshed from her lungs with relief.
Her gaze darted through the hellacious scene, seeking out another man from their army to help her identify more English soldiers. On and on she went, repeating the action as she used her fellow soldiers to locate the English guards.
Her arm and back were on fire with exhaustion from drawing her bow repeatedly beneath the weight of the chainmail, but she kept on.
Suddenly, a woman burst from a smoking home, her mouth stretched in a scream, wild with fear. Chills raked down Kinsey’s spine and made the hairs along the back of her neck stand on end.
The woman stiffened and pitched forward as her eyes rolled back in her head. She fell into the dirt without ceremony. An axe handle jutted up from her back amid a dark stain of blood.
Kinsey gasped and involuntarily stepped backward.
The soldier behind her was one whose liveries she recognized. White stars on a blue background. One of Sir James’s soldiers. One of the men who fought to reclaim land for Scotland.
Bile rose in her throat. He had killed a woman. An unarmed woman. From behind as she ran.
Kinsey shifted her focus, no longer seeking soldiers to hit with her arrows, but searching for the townspeople. A man wearing a tunic and no weapon in his hand was run through with a sword. Another woman running, crying as another soldier chased after her.
This wasn’t vengeance.
This was a slaughter.
They were supposed to reclaim land under English rule by fighting soldiers, not by killing unarmed people.
A sudden rush of awareness tingled at the base of Kinsey’s neck. She spun about, narrowly missing the thrust of a blade at her back.
“Man or woman makes no difference to me,” the soldier wearing white and red livery bellowed as he swung his sword. “Die, Scottish whore.”
She leapt out of the way, heavier and more cumbersome in her chainmail. A breeze of air swept past her cheek from the weapon.
It had been close.
Too close.
She reached for an arrow, but before she could nock it, he was charging at her once more. There were only so many times she could evade his sword before her armor would cause her to be too slow.
Her fingers worked blindly over her belt as she spun away, freeing her dagger.
Agony exploded at the back of her head. She tried to jerk away, and the pain worsened. The bastard had her by the hair.
Drake had always taught them how to rush into an attack rather than from it. She did exactly that now, turning suddenly and racing toward the English soldier, her dagger locked tight in her right hand.
The bastard hadn’t been expecting the attack and didn’t have time to block her as she thrust the dagger up into his neck. Hot blood gushed out of his throat, splashing over her hands and face and soaking into her tunic.
She jerked in surprise, and he dropped to his knees. A strange, awful gargling sound rattled in his throat as bubbles frothed at the blood still gushing from the wound.
Her stomach roiled.
He pitched on his side, his blue eyes fixing first on her in uncomprehending surprise, then on nothing as his body slowly relaxed.
Kinsey couldn’t stop staring. He was dead.
She had killed him.
She staggered back in horror. His blood stained her hands, creasing in sticky folds at her palms, and the taste of it lingered thick and coppery in her mouth.
Her stomach heaved again, and she retched.
A new cry rose up from the city center, not one of terror or death, but of victory.
They had won.
Why then did it feel more like a defeat?
11
William lifted his arms in triumph with his fellow Scotsmen, but he didn’t join in their chants. His chainmail was still clean, absent any blood. He hadn’t spilled a drop. Not when so many had been unarmed.
Laird MacLeod stood several paces away, near the king, his chest puffed with pride.
How could his father stand it? To be part of a slaughter of merchants and families?
The city had yielded swiftly, the English soldiers and knights keenly aware of their defenses’ futility.
William glanced around at his men, confirming all were accounted for. They
