“Cutting down trees to build something,” he announced as another crash filled the air.

“What could it be?”

Rabbie shrugged at that. “A mangonel, perhaps. Who can say? Ye should rest,” Rabbie suggested. “If ’tis a mangonel they build, we’ll need our wits about us on the morrow to deal with the blighters.”

Sighing, Iliana nodded. A mangonel; tomorrow they’d be able to hurl missiles over the wall. “Call me if anything happens,” she murmured and turned to leave.

Iliana was not sure at first what had awoken her. She opened her eyes to see the first faint streaks of dawn as they crossed the sky, glowing orange and yellow…. Those streaks were moving much too swiftly. ’Twas not dawn streaking the sky, she realized with sudden horror.

“Fire!”

That panicked shout brought her rolling onto her back to see a man standing over her. For a moment, in the half light, she thought her attacker had returned to finish the job he had started the night she was stabbed. But then she recognized the voice shouting at her as Elgin’s.

“Rabbie sent me to fetch ye, me lady! That English bastard is shooting fire over the wall!”

Grateful that she had decided to remain fully clothed when she had retired, Iliana leapt from the bed and hurried toward the door. She had it open and was moving through it when she suddenly whirled toward the man following her.

“A plaid!”

Confusion covered Elgin’s cherubic face. “Me lady?”

“My attacker. The man who stabbed me,” she explained. “I just realized that he wore a plaid.”

Elgin’s eyebrows rose. “There was no plaid among his things, me lady. I was there when Laird Angus searched the body. He had naught but a few coins.”

Iliana frowned; then her gaze moved to the window as another fireball flew over the wall and a wave of screams rose from the bailey. “Damn!” she murmured, hurrying from the room.

“What is it? What is about?” Drawn by the shouts and screams below, Lady Wildwood came rushing into the hall, Ebba and Janna on her heels. At the same moment, Gertie and Giorsal appeared in the door to Angus’s room.

Shouting an explanation, Iliana hurried down the stairs with Elgin on her heels. Reaching the front doors of the keep, she pushed through them, then froze. Burning debris was strewn about the bailey, threatening to set fire to the many cottages within the wall. Women and children of all ages were running this way and that, attempting to douse the fire with whatever they could find.

“My God.”

Glancing over her shoulder at her mother’s whisper, Iliana saw that all of the women had followed, and were now crowded behind her and Elgin on the top step. She was about to order them back into the keep when the cook pointed past her.

“The stables!”