In truth, she couldn’t see the crazed leader of Clan Sinclair. “Three of his sons are around him, but their sire is not getting up,” she answered, watching the one brother who had risen to stare her way. He was tall and thick with muscle, leather armor tied about his bare chest and upper arms. The sight of the crown on top of his head and bow slung over his back made her breath catch.

There was no mistaking Cain Sinclair, the oldest of the four Sinclair brothers. She’d come face-to-face with him at a festival twelve years ago when she was a young lass and he was a lean-muscled, tall lad. He’d smiled at her until his father whispered in his ear, and Cain’s handsome features had pinched in disgust. Disgust? And that was before, when her face was unmarked.

Ella tugged on her leather mask, straightening it where it sat under her eyes, and looked away from him. She still stood on top of her mare, Gilla, booted toes secure in the specially made holds on the saddle. Her hand leveled against her damp forehead to block the sun as she surveyed the clashing men in the valley of the moor. “Blast,” she murmured, tugging on a wisp of hair that had fallen from her braid. Her army to the west was falling back under the Sinclair cavalry of bay horses.

“If his sons are down there…” Kenneth called up to her, his head snapping back and forth. “Get down,” he said, but she didn’t have to follow every order now that her father was buried and unable to punish her for her insolence. After all, she was the new chief of Clan Sutherland, at least for the time being.

Kenneth smacked at her boot, but she didn’t move as she watched the Sinclair advancement in the west. “I am too far away for their paltry arrows to reach me.” Maybe, maybe not.

“But the Sinclair horsemen,” Kenneth said, trying to grab one of her booted feet.

“Are only human, like you and I,” she said, dodging his hand by standing on one foot, her balance perfected over a lifetime of practice.

Kenneth snorted and dropped his hand. “Those monsters are nothing like you and me.”

Ella motioned to Ethan, her captain of archers, to prepare the line of men for another volley. She disliked using the archers at such a distance, because they could hit her own men or the horses from either clan. But releasing their deadly arrows overtop of her men to the west would hopefully stop the push of the Sinclair horde there. It was likely their last chance to divert them—or at least to slow the bastards—while Dunrobin Castle prepared for a siege.

Kenneth squinted out toward the battle. “Can the sons of Sinclair see ye?”