by Alisa Adams
Swan knew he was actually swiping a tear away.
“I am fine dear Beak. They were just young men, starved, who had went to help their sister whose village was being cleared. They were exhausted and hungry.”
“Och, that is vera well then,” Beak said as he cleared his throat and looked bashfully at the ground. He awkwardly reached down to pull his sagging woolen hose back up to his knobbly knees.
“Aye, and ye gave them one of our rabbits milady, I saw ye,” Neely accused her.
Swan glanced at her with a frown.
Beak turned sharply to look at Neely. She blushed under his admonishing glare.
“But I suppose ye fought well, Lady Swan,” Neely said quietly with a shrug of her shoulders, which dislodged her torn tartan off her soldier. She pulled it back into place, nodded her head once in acknowledgment, grabbed the tartan at her shoulder when it fell again, and went back to her horse Teeth.
Kaithria looked fully at Swan. “Ye were impressive Lady Swan,” she said and smiled proudly at her for a brief moment before she turned to the children. “Come children, we must be on our way.” She too returned to her horse.
Swan was so stunned at Kaithria’s smile she could not react.
They traveled on and finally stopped for the night before the sun had set and they would no longer be able to see the bogs.
They were sitting around their evening fire with the children gathered close to Swan. She was their new hero. She was telling them for the third time what she had said to the three men and how Beans was so brave, and Peigi so calm, and how she had swung her tosg, and how in the end the three men were no different than they were.
Suddenly they heard a shout, then another, and then quite a bit of loud yelling and some very choice words.
Swan jumped up. It was coming from just over the next hill. She looked over at Beak and the two women with a worried smile. She was so exhausted. How much more could she take?
“Stay put, I shall see what all the noise is,” she said. She called quietly to Beans as she strode towards Peigi. She mounted the black mare and quickly made sure her tosg was still attached along the saddle, just where she could drop her hand to grab it again if needed.
She nudged Peigi into a trot along the road and up the track to the top of the hill. She halted Peigi and looked down.
There were two men on horses caught in the bog. The horses were struggling mightily, trying to get purchase on the floating peat to no avail. The men were urging them on to firmer ground, but with the waning light they could not see where that was.
Swan sat upon Peigi at the top of the hill. She could see the break in the line of the bog and the firm ground from where she sat. She studied the men, who had not noticed her yet.
They were going the wrong way.
Swan bit her lip. She did not want trouble. She had been lucky earlier in the day with Murchadh and his young companions. These men, well, they were men. They wore tartan kilts whose color she could not make out. They were well armed. And their horses were heavily muscled war horses. The men were big, also heavily muscled, warriors. That was clear.
She took a breath and tried to calm herself by singing softly in a whisper.
* * *
“Whate'er we see, where'er we go,
Who wander daily to and fro.
The ships that on the sea do swim,
And all the things the land within.
Say what ye will, do what ye can.”
* * *
At a splash her attention was drawn to the horses once more. They thrashed and pulled and twisted their bodies as their riders urged them on to get out of the bog. Their big bodies were covered in old scars and burns. Their eyes rolled back, showing terror at being caught in the peat bog. They threw their necks up and pulled with their massive chests and pushed and heaved with giant, muscled hindquarters at their riders’ strident urgings.
It was the terrified horses that made Swan change her mind.
They were struggling mightily to no avail and tiring quickly, their breath coming in harsh rasps now.
Before she could think about how she could help, one of the men suddenly saw her. He stilled on top of his struggling horse as he stared. He raised his hand to his face to shield the lowering sun so he could see who sat on top of the hill on the tall dark horse.
“Can you help us?” he called in a strong, deep, urgent voice.
Swan hesitated only a moment before she started down the hill.
“Ye are going the wrong way,” she said firmly to the warrior as she halted Peigi a safe distance from the thrashing horses.
“What?” the man yelled at her as his horse thrashed and struggled.
Swan looked only at his horse. “Turn him this way. The ground is firm here. Jump off him and pull him!”
When the warrior struggled to turn his horse Swan jumped down from Peigi. Holding Peigi’s reins in one hand she leaned over the bog as far as she could, stretching her hand forward until her fingers could grasp the warrior’s reins. She quickly closed the reins in her fist and pulled his big head around to her. The frightened horse saw her and started turning the rest of his body.
“That’s it me beautiful boy,” she said in a soothing, crooning voice. “Come to me, come this way, I have ye.” She eyed the warrior on the big horse’s back. Her voice changed from calm and soothing for the horse to louder and annoyed. “Twould help if ye took yer weight off him and could help pull. He doesnae need yer weight as he fights to get his feet back on firm ground mon!”
“Off him? How?” he yelled angrily. “Jump into the bog water meself?”
“Ye can make it to firm ground! Jump!” she said with surety and command.
The warrior looked at her with his eyebrows raised and his chin set in a firm line. He stood up in one stirrup, threw his leg over his horse’s back, and pushed off to leap towards the ground Swan stood on.
Swan held the horse’s head steady as the man leapt off him.
The big warrior quickly and roughly shouldered her aside and behind him as he took his horse’s reins from her hand.
“Come on Horse!” he yelled to his war horse. Then he looked over at the other man whose horse was equally as frightened as his. “Keir, bring your horse this way!”
The horse got one front hoof on the solid peat and heaved it’s big body in a thrusting lunge up onto the firm ground, crashing into the warrior with his big chest, sending him spinning around and to the ground.
With Swan underneath him.
7
Wolfram Gunn McKay stared down into perhaps the most beautiful face he had ever beheld.
She was staring up at him with shocked, wide, frightened blue eyes. The blue of her eyes was that heartbreaking color of the sky just as the sun was beginning to set, when the blue was strikingly vivid, almost turquoise. Her face was creamy white and smooth with just a hint of pink on her heart-shaped face.
His eyes traveled down her straight nose to her lips. They were full and in the most perfect bow shape that made him want to lean down and taste them.
On the ground behind her head were masses and masses of long curls.
This was the ethereal being he had seen sitting at the top of the hill on a massive horse, with the setting sun behind her, lighting her up as if she was an angel come from heaven. Or a female warrior valkyrie come to watch them die.
He shook his head like a dog, clearing the romantic thoughts from his head. What had he been thinking?
A loud snarling came at his left ear and he stilled.
“Ye should get off me,” came her husky voice. “Vera, vera slowly.”
“Is that your dog, waiting to take a bite of my throat?” His voice rumbled against her body.
“Och, nay, tis me loyal wolf,” she said slowly as she smiled fiercely at him.
Wolfram Gunn McKay stared at her. His heart thrummed in his chest. He no longer heard the snarls of the wolf, he only heard this woman’s husky, honey-sounding voice. It stirred his heart
in a way he was unfamiliar with. His breath slowed to a thud as currents of lightning ran through his veins and shot throughout his body.
Boots came into his vision on his right side. “There’s a rather large wolfhound ready to kill ye cousin. And no thanks to ye for yer help getting me and me horse out of the bog,” came a wry voice.
Wolfram took one last glance at the woman’s face. She was staring into his eyes. As captivated as he was by hers. Or so he liked to think. He slowly eased himself off of her delectable, lithe body.
He reached his hand down to her and the wolfhound’s snarling increased.
“Hush Beans,” she said soothingly to the dog. She spoke in the same soothing, velvety voice she had used with his horse when she had turned him toward better footing. The dog obeyed her as easily as his war horse, for it backed away and sat down obediently.
She looked up at him, reading his eyes, and then slowly, hesitantly reached up and took his hand.
Wolf paused, his hand closed around hers. A shock of lightning ran through his body as their hands clasped one another’s. He knew she felt it too. Looking down at the woman lying on the ground before him, he watched as her eyes widened at the touch of their hands. She stilled, like a doe caught by a hunter, as she lay on the heath in a shaft of sunlight, with her hair spread out in glorious disarray.
At Keir’s throat clearing he leaned down and carefully pulled her up. When she was standing he did not let go, but stood there.
Still.
His body was still.
Staring.
Though his heartbeat slammed so hard against his chest he swore she could hear it.
He slightly shook his head again. It was a weak effort to break the spell of this woman whose hand he held.
He cleared his throat.
“Did ye call yer dog Beans?” He said the first thing that had come into his mind. His voice was rough and deep, even to his ears.
“I did,” she said simply as she eyed his wet linen shirt with wide blue eyes.
He looked down, his damp shirt clung to his chest. His horse’s thrashing about in the bog had gotten him fairly soaked. His shirt had fallen open, the ties at his throat undone. His hair hung in dark, limp, wet strands around his ears, dripping onto his neck. He shook his hair back from his face, sending water droplets spiraling here and there. He grimaced, realizing too late that he had splashed water from his hair onto her.
He glanced at her blouse. The white linen was wet on the front from his own shirt and his hair, and now clung to her pert breasts. Her dark blue skirts whirled in the breeze, molding around her long, lean legs, where the fabric had gotten wet. She did not wear brogues, she wore leather boots.
“Did ye call yer horse ‘Horse’?” she asked him, ignoring having been splashed. She was nervous and was rambling, she knew.
“I did,” he said in a gruff voice, surprised by her question.
“He has no name?”
“Of course he does. Tis Horse,” he said with a shrug of his mighty shoulders.
“That is not a name,” she stated as she raised her pointed chin. “Tis what he is, but isnae a name.”
“It is,” he stated just as firmly.
She scoffed. “How long have ye had him?”
“Since he was born. Why?” he demanded as he secretly looked her over.
“Then he certainly is deserving of a name. It looks like he has been through hell for ye,” she said softly.
Wolfram ground his jaw together tightly. “Then that is his name, for it is true.”
Her eyes opened in surprise. “What?”
“His name,” he said. “His name shall be Hell.”
Keir laughed and turned it into a grunt.
Wolfram spun on him. “What is so funny Cousin?”
“Hell?” Keir asked with a grin. “Ye can do better for him than that, Wolf.”
“Wolf?” the woman asked with a startled look.
Wolfram turned away from Keir. He bowed slightly to the woman before him. “Forgive me, we have been rude,” he said with a glance back at Keir. “I am Wolfram Gunn McKay, and this is my cousin Keir Maxwell Gunn.”
She nodded at him. “I am Lady Swannoc McKinnon of Castle Brough of Dunnetts Head.” She paused, smiled guardedly, and nodded a greeting to Keir. Then she looked back at him. “He called ye Wolf?”
He bowed again and tried to smile, though it did not come naturally to him. It was more of a grimace with his lips slightly tilted up.
“Aye, I am called Wolf, Lady Swannoc,” he said in a deep gruff voice.
“And I am called Lady Swan.” She pointed to the huge wolfhound at her side. “This is Beans.”
Before Wolf could open his mouth to ask about that name, his cousin took a step forward.
Keir interjected, “Ye ride a great black horse?” he said as he nodded towards her horse.
“Aye, though she is young and new to being ridden,” Swan explained. “Peigi is learning.”
“They are war horses,” Wolf said with disbelief.
“Yes,” Swan agreed.
“Ye ride a war horse?” Wolf repeated, his voice deepening.
“All me people do,” she answered in her velvety voice. “We used to breed them as battle horses.”
“All your people do? Impressive,” Wolf growled with incredulity.
“Yes. We all do!” came a child’s voice.
Wolf spun around to see four ancient, black war horses with children piled on two of them. Another ancient, faded, black horse had the skinniest, apple-jointed old man he had ever seen with his white hair sticking straight up in the air. He wore a kilt and his hose had fallen down around his ankles to his brogues. He had what looked like a golf club pointed at himself and Keir. Two other women rode down the hill. One who wore a faded, black cloak that looked to be a nun, with the cloak’s hood pulled up, was with the children. The other woman was on a battered old horse with a mean expression. The woman, who also had a mean expression, had on a torn tartan, ripped blouse, and her light brown hair was sticking up in all directions. Wolf narrowed his eyes at the scene slowly making their way down the hill.
Wolf looked back at Keir to see his own startled look mirrored on his cousin’s face as he watched the group coming down the hill. “Children,” Keir mouthed silently to him, “and a nun?”
He looked back at Lady Swan with a question on his face.
“My people,” she said firmly. She raised her chin with what could only be called stubborn pride. “Or rather, what is left of them.” She nodded regally to him and then to Keir. “I bid ye safe journey to wherever it is ye are going.”
Wolf’s heart did a little flip at the look on this woman’s proud face.
She turned to mount the horse she called Peigi.
Wolf reached out and wrapped his fingers around her upper arm to stop her and she let out a hoarse cry of pain.
The hound she called Beans growled loudly and snarled at him. Wolf looked down at the huge dog and paused.
Instantly Lady Swan grabbed something from her horse and whirled on him with such speed and fluidity it caught him off guard. She knocked his hand off her arm with an odd-looking staff. He instinctively knocked the staff away from him and braced his legs apart, ready to take another blow.
She held the staff in front of her, pointed at his chest. He knocked it away easily once again, but this time she spun it in another whirling motion that sent her hair swirling about her head. He was too transfixed to act as fast as he normally would have. She pointed the other end of the staff that had a blade at his chest.
“Dinnae grab me,” she said in a low, husky voice.
The dog’s snarling increased.
“Sit, Beans,” she ordered firmly. The dog sat down obediently and ceased growling.
Wolf looked at the magnificent vision of elegance and grace wielding the odd staff whose blade was pointed directly at his chest.
He let out a short, deep laugh.
“Or what?” he asked quietly,
his voice deepening.
“Sards, I misjudged ye,” she said under her breath as her face went white. Then loudly, “Take the children and go! Quickly!”
“No one is leaving,” growled Wolf.
8
Swan looked up at the big Highland warrior staring down at her with narrowed eyes. She tightened her fist on her tosg and swallowed. He was an intimidating warrior; his face was chiseled and hardened with battle. His hair was dark and fairly short, winging out over his ears. He had grey at the temples and around his ears that only highlighted the unusual grey-blue color of his eyes. His square chin and sharp cheekbones were shadowed with dark stubble.
Her eyes drifted down to the blade of her tosg where it pressed against his chest. His linen shirt was still damp and clinging to a chest that was broader and more muscled than any man’s chest she had ever seen. It fell open at the neck, revealing tanned skin and the ghosts of many scars.
This wolf has seen many battles, she thought with a worried frown.
“Ye must not stop us,” she said as her voice lowered with conviction. “Peigi, come!” she called firmly to her horse, who trotted up beside her. “Beans! Guard him!” she ordered the hound.
The big dog stepped forward and stared menacingly at Wolf.
“Children! Go!” Swan ordered. Her eyes had not left Wolf. She saw Keir move out of the side of her eyes and spun on him.
Wolf instantly moved to grab her again but Beans’ snarling made him hesitate a moment. It was enough to give her time to whirl back towards him, slashing with her tosg. He jumped back out of the reach of her blade. She whirled her tosg and shoved him hard with the blunt end of the staff, pushing him back away from her.
Again, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Keir rush forward to grab her. She started to spin and send the staff of her tosg into his chest as well when she heard Wolf yell to Keir.
“Dinnae touch her!”
Swan spun to look at Wolf. He stood still, staring hard at Keir, his jaw in a firm, harsh line. She looked back and forth between the men. One, whose face was hardened and chiseled, who looked like he was used to leading many men and winning many battles. Whose commands brooked no objection. The other man was slightly younger, his hair longer, his face less weathered by time and the elements. He was massive as well and just as heavily muscled. He stared back at Wolf with a lopsided smile. Swan noticed then that he had a small dimple in his chin.