His Bonnie Bride by Hannah Howell (the beginning after the end read novel .TXT) 📕

"But will it be a full attack?"

"This time I think it will be, Tavis," Colin replied as the English force bellowed their battle cry and surged forward en masse, picking up speed as they went.

Beneath a murderous hail of arrows, the English force pressed on. Time blurred for the Scots as they fought to cull the English force and keep the walls of Caraidland from being breeched. They had barely enough men to hold the walls and all knew that if those walls were scaled, they would lose in the resulting confrontation. Falling back to the keep was an option, but it was also an admission of defeat and none of them wanted that. Such a retreat would also bring the enemy closer to the women and children.

Tavis moved along the parapets, viewing the battle from every possible angle. He did not need to urge any man on. They all knew they were fighting not only for their own lives but for the very future of the clan. No one doubted Sir Hugh's threat nor that any offer he made to deal for clemency or surrender was a lie, that he only sought to trick them into letting down their defenses. They had all taken a true account of the man he was, that he was not a man one could trust, not even if he swore on all that was holy to every man.

He reached one point where there was one man dead and another badly wounded. There was no one left to push the scaling ladder away, although the wounded man struggled valiantly to get to his feet and shove the ladder down. Tavis grasped the ladder even as the first man scaling it reached the top and desperately tried to stop him from pushing the ladder away.

As he started to push, Tavis looked into the man's eyes and wished he had not. There he read the fear nearly every man held, the one of falling. The man stared death in the face and could do nothing, only wait for his body to finish plummeting to the ground. Tavis felt something inside of him twist with horror at the thought of what he was about to do to the man.

"Ye have twa blinks of an eye to get closer to God's earth, man," Tavis growled even as he wondered what madness had seized him, a madness that was giving his enemy a chance to live.

The man blinked, then gaped in amazement, and then began to scramble down the ladder. He screamed at the others to hurry and back down. They hastily obeyed as Tavis began to push the ladder further away from the wall. When he judged them a relatively safe distance from the ground he shoved the ladder away, watching it and the few men it still held topple to the ground. He noticed that they made no attempt to put it or another up against the wall.

"Why did ye do that?"

Glancing at the wounded young man, Tavis frowned. "I dinnae ken. I looked into the man's face and ..." He shook his head. "I dinnae ken. I saw his fear ... I ..."

The young man nodded before Tavis finished stumbling through his disjointed explanation. "Ye cannae look at them. It isnae like wielding a sword, with the blood lust in your veins. Ye maun ne'er look. Just push." The young man's eyes closed and he groaned softly.

Yelling to a few men, Tavis soon had the weak spot covered. He put an arm under the wounded man's arms and nearly carried him into the hall. Upon entering the hall, he nearly screamed with frustration.

There were too many wounded. He knew there would soon be more weak spots along the wall than men able to fill them.

Storm was told that another wounded man had been brought in and hurried to lay out a pallet for him, a blanket all they had left to use. She did not realize Tavis was the one aiding the hurt man until she had spread out the blanket and looked up to see if she could help to lay the wounded youth down. For a long moment her gaze devoured the sight of his begrimed face as her mind reveled in this proof that he was still hale. It was another moment before she realized that the wounded young man was Jeanne's betrothed.

"How goes it?" she asked Tavis after calling for Jeanne and starting to cut away the blood-stained tunic young Robbie wore.

" 'Tis hard to say," he answered with a weary honesty. "So many wounded, yet the scaling ladders still clatter against our walls."

"But Hugh is upon none of them."

"Nay. The bastard rides about at a safe distance and drives his men on. I cannae help but think that if we could cut the whoreson down, it would end this attack."

"Aye, I think it would, and mayhaps he does too. 'Tis mayhaps why he stays away." She grimaced, hating to say anything that might be seen as even remotely favorable to Sir Hugh. "He is a low piece of scum, but I have ne'er noted that he suffered from cowardice."

"Nay, I dinnae feel he is a coward either. He cares little for his men's lives, though, simply keeps hurling them at our walls. Och, weel, I should be grateful that he has not the weaponry to hurl anything else at us." He shook his head as Jeanne arrived, and Storm let her take over the care of Robbie. "We hold, but 'tis all we do."

" 'Tis enough, is it not?" Storm moved to stand before him, as worried about possible defeat as he.

"Aye, if we can keep holding, but"—he looked again at the many wounded, few of them able to be patched up and quickly returned to battle—"I fear there will soon be more weak spots upon the wall than we have men to fill them."

"An I go to him ..." she began,