His eyebrows rose at that, but he moved past her and bent to retrieve a pitcher that she had not noticed sitting next to the wall. “It kept the nip off during the night,” he explained when she raised her eyebrows.

Lifting it to her nose, Iliana sniffed the contents, then glanced at him. “Do you suppose Laird Angus has a lot of this?”

He pursed his lips. “Well, that would depend on how much ye thought was a lot.”

Iliana turned to peer down at the catapult again before answering, “As much as you can bring me. All of it.”

“All of it?” He goggled at her, then narrowed his eyes unhappily. This wouldn’t have something to do with another one of theose plans of yours, would it?”

“Buck up, sir,” Lady Wildwood said cheerfully. “My daughter’s last plan worked.”

“Oh, aye I worked a’right. But it cost us our supper…Now she’s wantin’ the uisgebeatha.”

Chapter Twenty

“Do you understand what I want you to do?”

Rabbie nodded morosely. “Aye. But ’tis a fair waste o’ good whiskey if it doesn’t work.”

“Then we must pray that it works,” Iliana commented dryly, peering at the people lined up before her. Eight women and eight men. The women had resented being pulled away from the task of dousing fires below, until she had explained that she hoped that her plan would put an end to the volley of fireballs that continued to whiz over the wall. They had settled in to help with a small measure of contentment then. Ripping the linen Iliana had sent for into strips, they had wrapped them around the tips of arrows, then set them to soak in the half-empty barrel of whiskey she had had Rabbie split open for them.

Now the women waited by the barrel of soaking arrows, lit torches in hand, while the men stood by the eight barrels of whiskey that Rabbie had found.

“All right. Remember, you must try to get them as far as possible as quickly as possible,” she reminded them once again, then leaned to the wall to see what Greenweld’s men were doing. Seeing that they were about to light yet another fireball, she told the people on the wall to get ready, then shouted a warning to those below.

The people on the battlement pressed themselves close to the wall just as the fireball flew over, then hurried back to their places. The men rushed to the barrels. Working in twos, the four pairs picked up a barrel each and hurled them over in unison before rushing back to get their second. The women moved to the arrows then, each of them grabbing up a whiskey soaked weapon in their free hand and moving to the men’s sides as they hurled the last barrels over.