Laird of Her Heart (Dundragon Time Travel Trilogy Book 1) by Sabrina York

she asked. “What’s happening?”
    “’Tis the Camerons,” she said. “They are approaching from the east. “It looks as though they’ve brought an army.”
    And that quickly, her delight at finally seeing her ancestral home deflated.
    They were under attack.
    As the last of the villagers scuttled into the keep, the portcullis rolled down in an ominous clank and the men pulled up the bridge over the moat. Men and women—farmers and milk maids, scuttled to the armory and began carting arrows and spears up to the ramparts.
    It seemed well-ordered and practiced. Dominic had, perhaps prepared his people for such an event. Or it had happened before.
    Pushing through the crowd making their way into the castle proper, Maggie headed for the rampart steps; she took them two at a time.
    The men stationed on the wall shot her odd glances, but said nothing as she made her way to Ewan’s side. She watched in silence as a wave of armed and mounted men in blue plaids swept across the plain.
    It was a breathtaking sight, but not in a good way. They pounded closer and then halted, about three hundred feet from the castle wall.
    “What do they want?” she asked in a whisper.
    Ewan frowned down at her. “You shouldna be here.”
    “Why not?”
    She expected him to spew some nonsense about women being helpless and frail, but he just said, “The Macintosh would no’ like it. He wanted me to keep you safe.”
    “I’m perfectly safe.”
    His nostrils flared. “This is an attack, in case you haven’t noticed.”
    “I have noticed. I’ve also noticed they stopped out of range.” While the Macintosh arrows could not reach them, the enemy, in turn, could not hit the broad side of the castle…at least, not from that distance. “Besides, I’ll have you know, I wrote an entire chapter in my Masters thesis on siege warfare tactics of the Middle Ages.”
    “The middle what?” His brow rumpled. “I have no idea what that means.”
    “It means I can help. So quit bugging me and let me think.” She thrust her hands out. “And untie me.”
    He frowned at her, but he complied. Then he turned to his men and began barking orders for them to finalize their defense. Maggie studied the movements of their enemies, as they surrounded the castle in a semi-circle and started setting up camp. Several large carts followed them at a distance. One carried the familiar lines of a trebuchet and another, with a domed wooden roof, was undoubtedly their battering ram machine.
    It was the beast that followed that made her heart lodge in her throat. These Camerons were serious. An enormous siege tower rolled onto the plain. It moved slowly on lumbering wheels, but that didn’t make it less ominous. She knew the damage a siege tower could wreak on a castle.
    As menacing as the battering ram and the trebuchet could be, the tower was the real threat. They had to incapacitate it at once.
    She turned to Ewan. “Do you have a ballista?” Like an overgrown crossbow, a ballista had tremendous force and could catapult lethal bolts much farther than a bow and arrow. It was usually used in offense, sapping walls and taking out castle defenses. But a weapon was a weapon. She would use everything they had to fight off this incursion.
    “Aye.”
    “Excellent. And a marksman with very good aim?” At Ewan’s nod, she pointed at the siege tower. “Have him target the wheels.” They were large, to carry the weight of the wooden tower.
    “The wheels, my lady?”
    She ignored the fact that he’d accidently granted her a title of respect. There was hardly time to gloat about winning him over. “Yes. If we can send several bolts straight on into those wheels, they won’t be able to move it. The tower will be useless to them.” As useless as a booted car in impound. “And get some more oil up here. We’ll need it when they drop their ladders.” They would likely be dampened, or covered with wet hides, but oil burned through hides. Men burned too. If they