and Saidh and I can hold it up to give Evina privacy while Tildy tends her wound. Ye can stay.”
Saidh snapped her mouth closed, but continued to glower at Greer.
Biting her lip, Evina glanced at the pair silently. She could quite easily imagine this same argument cropping up between her and Conran if they married. Did she really want that?
“Why are ye stopping?”
Conran didn’t respond right away to Laird Maclean’s hissed question. He stayed still, never taking his gaze off the shifting darkness in front of them as he listened, but finally whispered, “I thought I heard a scuffing sound from ahead.”
They were both silent for a moment, and then the Maclean sighed and muttered, “’Twas probably me shuffling along behind ye. Sound carries oddly in here. A noise from behind can seem like it came from in front, and another from in front can sound as if it came from behind.”
Conran wasn’t convinced and waited another moment. But when he didn’t hear anything else, he started forward again. After another couple of minutes though, he asked, “I thought ye said there were stairs leading down just beyond where the passages separated?”
“Nay, I said they were a bit beyond where the passages separated,” the Maclean corrected.
“Well, what do ye consider a bit?” he asked with irritation. It seemed to him that they’d gone quite a distance since parting ways with Aulay and Rory.
“They should be just ahead. Here, let me lead the way so ye do no’ come upon them unexpectedly and take a tumble. They’re steep, the edges on the stairs deadly sharp. Ye do no’ want to tangle with them.”
Conran stopped and turned sideways in the narrow passage. Pressing his back tight to the wall, he held his torch high and waited for the older man to slide past. It was a tight fit, but the Maclean managed it. Although the wince that crossed his face, and his sudden inhalation halfway through the maneuver, suggested to Conran that the old man might have rubbed his injured behind up against the opposite wall in passing. Fearghas didn’t complain about it. However, Conran noted that he was hobbling a little more than he had before as he led the way to the stairs.
“It’s narrow and turns,” the Maclean warned, pausing suddenly. When he put one hand out to the side to brace himself, Conran suspected they’d reached the stairs and held his torch up a little higher. Over the man’s shoulder, he could see the steps hewn into the stone, and that they disappeared around a curve. They were entering the wall of the tower now, the stairs following the curve around the outside as they descended.
Conran waited, watching until the man was three or four steps down. He started to follow then, but a noise behind him made him hesitate. Turning, he held the torch up and started back the way they’d come, his eyes narrowing as he searched the shadows. He didn’t see anything, but something had made that noise.
“Oy! What’s happening? The light is dimming. Buchanan?” the Maclean shouted, sounding distressed.
“I’m here,” Conran reassured him, spinning back the way he’d come. He started forward, but a slight sound, almost like an exhalation, made him stop once more. Before he could turn again to look around, he was punched in the upper back.
Caught by surprise, Conran stumbled forward three steps. It was only three, because on the third when his foot came down, the ground suddenly wasn’t there. It was the first stair tread leading down, but by the time he realized that, it was too late. He’d lost his balance and was falling.
Conran shouted as he went. He heard the Maclean’s responding shout of alarm, and then he was crashing and rolling down the stairs, pain exploding in his head, his shoulder, his leg. He was vaguely aware of something catching at his plaid at one point, but it barely slowed him. A tearing sound rent the air as he continued careening down the sharp, hard steps. By the time Conran came to a halt at the bottom of what he’d begun to think was an endless stairwell, he was hurting everywhere. But he hadn’t been knocked unconscious. That was something.
“Buchanan!” That shout was followed by the sound of the Maclean hobbling quickly down the stairs after him and he wondered a little dazedly how he hadn’t knocked the man down in the narrow space, and sent him tumbling too.