Laird of the Wind Read Online Free Page A

young comrade turned to run toward the stone-walled keep that towered over the center of the bailey yard, where the meat could be prepared.
    "Did you bring an army ready to attack the English?" Isobel asked then.
    "We are but five," Lindsay said.
    "There are a hundred English outside, and you bring us five men?"
    He arrowed his brows together. "We will bring you to safety."
    "I have heard that the best knights fly with the Border Hawk," Eustace said.
    "'Twas once said of us," Lindsay remarked. "We will leave here soon."
    "How? By the north face cliff?" Isobel asked, astonished.
    He nodded. "Aye, after you have eaten, and the darkness is deeper."
    "The English will take the castle if we abandon it," she said.
    "'Tis Scottish practice to render castles unavailable for Southron use. Either a castle is held by force of arms, or destroyed."
    "But—" Isobel began.
    James Lindsay brushed past her to climb the steps. Eustace turned to follow him. Isobel lifted her skirts and ran up the steps behind them both.
    Eustace turned. "Go to the keep, Isobel."
    "He means to ruin Aberlady!" she hissed.
    "This is necessary."
    "We cannot trust this man to help us! You know what they say about him now!"
    Eustace sighed. "He brings hope, where we had none."
    "Aberlady will be destroyed!"
    "I would have set fire to these walls myself when we left. It is our chance."
    She stared at him, stunned. He hurried away to join Lindsay, who stood behind a merlon stone, scanning the English garrison. Isobel hesitated, then ran after them, pausing by an embrasure in full view of the English soldiers below.
    Lindsay grabbed her arm, pulling her behind the merlon. "Are you a dimwit, to stand there?" he asked.
    "The English will not harm me," she said with certainty.
    "If you believe that, you are not much of a prophetess," he snapped, as he held her fast.
    "Watch this," Eustace said to Lindsay. "Each day, the English fill their ditches with bracken to smooth the incline for their siege engines. Each night, we set them afire, see."
    Just then, two men on the wall-walk lit arrows wrapped in cloth and pine pitch, touching them to a torch. They loosed the flaming arrows to sail toward the lower ditches, setting them ablaze.
    Held fast in the iron curve of Lindsay's arm, Isobel watched the fires spark and blossom. She saw Lindsay's men mount the steps and arrange themselves along the battlements.
    "When I let go of you," Lindsay murmured in her ear, "I want you to crawl along the wall-walk to that corner tower over there."
    "When you let go of me," she said between her teeth, "I will go where I please."
    "Do as he says," Eustace pleaded, as he loaded a crossbow. An English arrow whined overhead and slammed into the wall-walk. Two more clattered on stone and fell aside.
    Lindsay released her. "Go! Keep down!"
    Isobel rose up boldly to face the embrasure gap, sure that the English would stop when they saw her there. But an arrow slammed into her upper arm with tremendous force, and she spun with the blow.
    Lindsay grabbed her, pulling her down. Isobel curled forward in searing pain, and he supported her with one arm.
    "Isobel!" Eustace called. "Dear God, she stood too quick."
    "It is not serious." Deftly, Lindsay cracked the long shaft protruding from her arm, leaving the broadhead arrow embedded in the muscle. "Can you bear it for a while?"
    She nodded, wincing. Arrows fell around them in a cruel rain, smacking against stone and wood. Within seconds, an arrow whooshed through the crenel and glanced past the back of Lindsay's leather hauberk.
    Another broadhead bit hard into her left ankle. The shaft fell aside. Isobel flinched, grabbing her leg. Lindsay pulled her to him roughly, shielding her.
    "You will be killed out here," he growled, grabbing her closer. While arrows whined and clattered around them, he carried her toward a small corner tower, kicked the narrow door open, and brought her inside.
    He set her down on the stone floor of the tiny room and hunkered