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roof
    materialize from the darkness.

    It was a ruinous old structure nestled among the trees, a stout, near-windowless tower house, despite its grand title of Inveraray Castle. During the day, wooden steps bypassed the ground floor to lead to the entrance via the great hall on the second story. As such, invited guests wouldn't have to endure the unsightly cellars and vaulted kitchen, and the uninvited would be denied entry when the staircase was retracted at night.
    MacColla's laugh was low and quiet. He would, most assuredly, be considered among the uninvited, and yet the fools must've thought some removable steps to be adequate security, for there were no guardsmen to be seen.
    There were no suitable windows to climb to from the
    ground, leaving the roof as the second best access point.  He studied it from his perch. A dormer bearing a single  door was the only thing that interrupted the silhouette of  the sharp peak. A low stone parapet flanked a thin

    walkway along the roof's edge, presumably to prevent  guardsmen from falling the five stories to their death. Faint  starlight shimmered in small patches all around, captured  by the night's dew.
    Ah, and wet too.   MacColla thought with a smirk.   Tweren't simple nough to begin with.
    It was no matter. He'd risk life and limb without a thought to get to his Jean.
    He heaved his weight. Perhaps it was a good thing after all that Campbell's lair was in want of windows. As it was, he'd be lucky if none heard the tremendous creak the old tree's bones moaned into the night.
    MacColla leapt, hurtling his massive body through the air, crashing along the side of the roof and sliding down to land with an ungraceful thump on the narrow walkway.
    He stood and drew his dirk from his b elt. Speed and agility had been paramount, and he'd left his claymore behind.  Brushing the leaves from his tartan. MacColla curled his toes and adjusted to the feel of the slate tiles, cold and damp under his bare feet.
    He trained his eyes into the darkne ss, making sense of the terrain in the distance. The castle was nestled in Glen
    Aray, and the landscape was an almost impermeable black, punctuated only by the faint glimmer of Loch Fyne. a ghostly shade of dark silver in the far distance. He knew that squalid little huts clung to its banks in what constituted the village of Inveraray.

Certain now that nobody had heard his landing, MacColla made his way to the low entry cut into the dormer. “Och,” he muttered, jiggling the locked door, “'Twouldn't be that easy.”
    MacColla leaned on the stone railing and looked over the edge of the parapet. “I'll not be going down, I see.” The nearest windows were a row of thin arrow slits over one
    story below.
    He walked along the side of the ledge to where it ended, and looked around to the front of the tower. A small
    balcony was nestled in its triangular upper story. MacColla  looked at the slick roof behind him, then again to the front  of the building. Stones stepped inelegantly up to shape its  peak.
    “Nothing for it, then ,” he grumbled and, biting his dirk  between his teeth, scaled the stacked and tapering blocks  of granite until he was level with the small opening.  Gripping the protruding stones between his thighs, he  strained to reach the balcony. He grasped a crude ston e  banister in his hand and dropped, quickly grabbing on with  his other hand as his body swung out. Heaving himself up  and through such a tight space was awkward, and  MacColla had to shimmy on his belly until he landed in a  pitch-black upper chamber.
    He forced himself to pause, despite his eagerness to rampage Campbell's so-called castle. She was close now.  He could feel her presence, enduring God -knows-what at the hands of his enemy.

    Just as his father had. His father who'd been held captive by this same  man for so many years, in just such a tower, trussed like a savage. Campbell, who dared take another from Clan MacDonald