Temptation of a Highland Scoundrel

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  “Then come”—he started forward past the broken rocks at the base of Duncreag’s cliff—“it is time we avenge Niall and his men.”

  “And rid these hills of such a scourge.” Grim crept along beside him, bent low to take advantage of the sheltering rocks and scrub.

  They hadn’t gone far before two men stepped from a bramble thicket, barring their way with spears.

  “Looks like our pit is about to overflow,” the nearest man jeered, tossing a glance at his companion. “Wolf-men have come to visit the MacNabs.”

  “You’re headed the wrong way, my friends.” The second man grinned, jabbing his spear-point at Kendrew and Grim, who led their party.

  “He speaks true,” the first man sneered, thrusting with his spear as well. “You’ll find the MacNabs behind you, in the corpse pit.”

  “Then say them our greetings.” Kendrew returned the men’s grins.

  It was the last thing they’d ever see, because in that moment, Talon and another Mackintosh appeared behind them, clamping firm hands over their jeering mouths. In a flash, two Mackintosh war axes rose and fell, ending the men’s interference, silencing their taunts.

  “Wolf-men.” One of Kendrew’s warriors spat on the ground. “I’ll have that bastard’s skull for an ale cup when we’re done here.”

  “Drag them in the brush for now, lest anyone see them from above.” Kendrew glanced up at Duncreag’s ramparts. “The rain will keep them from peppering us with fire arrows, but I’d no’ have them see something’s amiss and start throwing down logs or boiling water to knock us off the rocks.”

  Craning his neck, he scanned the high walls, trying to see through the drizzle.

  All seemed quiet, but thick mist and cloud obscured the tower, making it difficult to see how many guards patrolled the battlements. The soft glow of a fire hazed the night sky where he supposed the kitchens lay, indicating the stronghold was occupied by more than the two men they’d killed.

  Somewhere distant thunder rolled and the wind picked up, the rain beginning to fall harder. Within moments, the stronghold’s massive outline blurred even more as great curtains of rain and mist swept in on the freshening wind. Icy water pounded them, washing away the peat-and-soot smears they’d so carefully rubbed onto their faces and arms.

  “Damnation.” Kendrew scowled, wondering why he hadn’t thought to bring swathes of black linen. Cloth they could’ve used to wrap around their sword and ax blades, and even themselves.

  He knew why he’d forgotten.

  Worry over Isobel dimmed his wits.

  Furious, he tossed a glance at his men. “We climb now. If any man makes a noise, my dog, Gronk, will have the bastard’s bollocks for his supper.”

  “And if you’re that bastard?” Grim cocked a peat-blackened brow.

  “Then he’ll have my bollocks, you arse.” Kendrew glared at his friend. “Now hold your flapping tongue and scale this slope with me.”

  Turning back to the bluff, Kendrew took the lead, putting his foot on a jutting rock. Quiet as the night, he hoisted himself up onto the steep rock face, and immediately stretched to reach the next toehold. The best climber of his men, he was halfway up the crag before the others had even left the wet, soggy ground.

  But they followed quickly, each man scaling the steep, rain-slicked rock as effortlessly as if they were walking across Nought’s feasting hall.

  Mackintoshes excelled at the like.

  The only thing they did better was swing their war axes, bringing death to their foes.

  So the day—or night, for the hour was late—seemed theirs when they at last reached the top of the crag and, with great stealth, slipped over the rampart wall and onto Duncreag’s battlements.

  “Ho, you there!” A guard came running, his sword already drawn.

  “I am Mackintosh.” Kendrew waited for the man to reach him and then swept his ax in a killing arc, slicing deep into the guardsman’s throat.

  He looked down at the dead man, wiping his ax blade on his thigh. “Blood Drinker thanks you—he was thirsty!”

  Looking round, he searched for other watchmen, but Duncreag was quiet. There was no sound except the hiss of rain on stone and the whistling night wind. But cooking smells drifted from the keep’s entrance, and it was in that direction that he now led his men.

  Surprise was aye good.

  Surprising men with full bellies and addled by wine was even better.

  But it was his turn to be stunned when the hall door flew open and two big-bearded men with wild hair and cold eyes appeared in the aperture, outlined by the smoking torchlight behind them.

  The men weren’t alone.

  They held Isobel and Marjory, dirks pressed hard against the ladies’ throats.

  Kendrew stared, disbelieving. Somewhere terrible thunder boomed, though in some still sane part of himself, he knew it was only the roar of his own blood in his ears. Chills swept him, hot and cold, his fury boiling and breaking free in a horrible roar so loud even the two men holding his women took a backward step.

  Torchlight from a wall sconce fell across Isobel then and he saw a trickle of blood on her neck.

  It was then that his world turned red.

  The Berserker rage took him.

  Bellowing, he charged across the cobbles, swinging Blood Drinker as he ran. To his surprise—or perhaps not—the men holding Isobel and Norn dropped their dirks and fled, racing across the bailey toward the outbuildings clustered against the curtain wall.

  A dozen Mackintosh blades stopped them, swords and axes wielded with deadly accuracy until both men lay sprawled on their backs, their blood staining the cobbles as they twitched and jerked in their death throes.

  Kendrew scarcely noticed, grabbing both Isobel and his sister and dragging them away from the open hall door.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” He pulled them into the lee of a wall near the gatehouse, his voice shaking with rage as he glared at them.

  “You’re cut.” He wiped blood off Isobel’s neck with his thumb. “It’s only a scratch.” Isobel caught his hand, kissed his fingers. “I’m fine.”

  Behind them, his warriors fought with the men pouring out of the great hall. Big, wild-eyed men with huge beards and, unlike the two guards who’d run from Kendrew’s fury, weren’t afraid to face Mackintosh axes.

  The ring of steel was loud, the sound of sword and ax blades slicing through mail and flesh, a sickening accompaniment to the clatter of falling weapons. Groans and cut-off cries filled the air as men thrashed on the cobbles, writhing in their final struggle for breath.

  “Tell me I’m no’ seeing you here.” Kendrew scowled at the two women, flashed a quick glance over his shoulder, relieved to see Grim and Talon holding his back. “I can only be having a fearing dream, for no female would be so foolhardy to walk into an ambush.”

  “You’re hurting us.” Isobel jerked against his fierce grip, pressing a hand to her breast when he released her. “We weren’t afraid, neither of us. We knew you’d—”

  “I dinnae matter!” Kendrew roared. “I’d hear why you’re not at Nought. Dinnae tell me you followed us?” He struggled against shaking the answer from her, fought harder not to grab her face and kiss her senseless, despite the danger all around them.

  Isobel was brazen enough to have trailed him.

  Norn was little better.

  But he could’ve wept to know them safe.

  “Answer me!” He gripped Isobel’s shoulders, fury heating his entire body like a raging flame. “How did you get here? Have your wits left your head?”

  “They came thanks to your stable hand, Angar.” A deep voice rose from the gloom beyond Grim and Talon. “The price of your ladies’ journey here was the promise of any wealth he wished from Duncreag’s treasure pit.”

  “Angar?” Kendrew didn’t know any such man. He did whirl to face a huge, thick-bearded man who seemed more amused than concerned that Grim and Talon held spear points at his mail-coated belly.

 
“I ne’er heard of Angar.” Kendrew tossed Blood Drinker from one hand to the other as he approached the other man, clearly a leader. “I would know who you are. I like to ken a man’s name before I feed his blood to my ax.”

  Thick-beard smiled. But it was a cold smile that only emphasized the hard glint in his eyes. “I am Ralla the Victorious, Laird Mackintosh.” His voice was smooth, confident. He was clearly unaware that he had only a few moments to live. “You’ve no need to know my name, because your gods in Asgard already do.

  “I’ve sent many men to Odin’s feasting hall.” He glanced to where Kendrew’s men still fought his own, shrugging when he saw that no Mackintosh had yet fallen. “Perhaps you will be the first of your race to reach Valhalla this night.”

  “Who is Angar?” Kendrew moved with lightning speed, setting Blood Drinker’s blade beneath Ralla’s chin.

  “He came looking for a new lord some weeks past, saying he needed work.” Norn stood next to Isobel, the two women holding hands. “He was so quiet, I forgot to mention him. Indeed, I’d forgotten him entirely until he appeared in the ladies’ solar, branding an ox knife and threatening to cut us if we didn’t go with him.”

  “Where is he now?” Kendrew pressed the ax blade deeper into the soft skin under Ralla’s chin. “I’ll show him why an ax is better than an ox blade.”

  Ralla laughed. “No need. He’s already dead. After he brought your women here, I told him he could choose his treasure from the Duncreag hoard pit.

  “He was surprised to learn that the treasure I’d meant was the MacNabs’ moldering bones.” Ralla’s voice turned cold. “I’ve no use for a man who’d betray his master.”

  “And I’ve no use for you.” Kendrew whipped back his arm, bringing Blood Drinker down in a vicious swipe that cleaved Ralla’s head in two.

  “Dear God,” Isobel and Norn gasped as one, turning away as the big-bearded man lurched awkwardly on his feet and then toppled onto the cobbles.

  Kendrew felt no such distaste, only the blind fury still roiling inside him. Striding over to his foe—the fiend who’d taken the two women most dear to him in the world—he placed his foot on the corpse, breathing hard.

  “Grim! Talon!” He called to his men. “Guard my ladies. We’re almost done here.” Then, not bothering to clean Blood Drinker’s blade, he sprinted across the bailey, eager to plunge into the fighting still going on near the door to Duncreag’s hall.

  The cobbles already ran red and the air no longer smelled of just the cold, wet night and cook smoke, but now reeked of blood, hot and metallic. The Berserker rage was on Kendrew’s warriors and they hacked and chopped like wild men at their opponents, men whose numbers were lessening with each furious drop of an ax blade.

  Losing heart as well as blood, the brigands grew clumsy, their feet slipping on the slick cobbles, a few men losing their grip on their swords—then paying with their lives when their weapons slipped from their fingers.

  “Fight me, you bastard!” A large man, Kendrew’s equal in size, leaped from the shadows, challenging. “I’m Ralla’s brother,” he snarled, swinging a well-reddened sword. “Let me send you to join him in hell!”

  “A pox I will!” Kendrew lunged, cutting down swiftly with Blood Drinker, but the man was quick, whirling aside and taking only a glancing blow to his shoulder.

  Kendrew hefted his ax again, grinning now. He appreciated a worthy opponent. “Your name, bastard,” he growled, sweeping his ax wide.

  Again he missed, Blood Drinker slicing only air. “I’ll cut you to ribbons, bit by bit, until you tell me.”

  “I am Atil.” The man spun a feint, whipping round and nicking Kendrew’s cheek.

  “Your people?” Kendrew ignored the hot blood trickling down his face.

  “I have none.” Atil sounded proud.

  “Then you’ll gain plenty in Valhalla.” Kendrew lunged again, meaning to send him there.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Atil danced around Kendrew, whipping his sword in flashy figure eight circles.

  “You’re the dead man, and after you, your warriors. Then my lord will give me—” He howled when Kendrew swung Blood Drinker, slicing his sword arm clean through.

  “Give you what?” Kendrew waited until the man fell to his knees, clutching his arm stump with his left hand. “Who is your lord?”

  But Atil clamped his jaw, glaring defiantly at Kendrew. “A man far greater than you.”

  “But no’ great enough to save you, eh?” Kendrew stepped back, holding Blood Drinker loosely now.

  To his surprise, Atil surged to his feet then, his sword gripped in his left hand as he lunged, swinging the blade in a wicked arc aimed at Kendrew’s neck.

  It was a foolish move.

  Kendrew might’ve let him live otherwise—he valued brave men.

  As things were…

  “Greet Odin!” Kendrew let Blood Drinker sing, whipping the ax with such speed and force that its long, curving blade sliced through Atil’s ribs, nearly lodging in his spine.

  But Kendrew yanked the blade free with even greater speed than he’d given the killing blow, and dropping to one knee as Atil fell, he grabbed the man’s left hand, clutching his dying fingers around Blood Drinker’s haft. “Live well, brave Atil, in the mead halls of Valhalla.”

  Ignoring his men, who must’ve finished off the remaining brigands, for they now stood circling him, looking on as he knelt beside Atil, Kendrew waited until the last breath rattled from Atil’s throat.

  Then he peeled the dead man’s fingers from Blood Drinker and jumped to his feet, looking round for the only person who truly mattered to him…

  Isobel.

  But she was gone again.

  Norn stood shivering against the curtain wall, clutching one of his men’s wolf pelts around her shoulders. Pushing past his men, Kendrew strode over to her. “Where is Isobel?” He roared the words, rage beginning to pump through him again. “Dinnae tell me—”

  “She’s there”—Norn lifted her chin, fixing him with the same cool stare she used on him at Nought when she meant to vex him—“with old Archie MacNab and a slave girl, taken by Ralla and his war band.”

  Kendrew blinked. “MacNab’s here?”

  Turning, Kendrew saw them now. Isobel, flanked by Grim and Talon, the old MacNab chief, looking more frail and gray than Kendrew remembered him. And a slender wisp of a flame-haired girl, dressed in tatters, and—like Norn and Isobel—clutching a peat-blackened wolf pelt around her shoulders. They made a motley sight.

  And Kendrew had never seen anything more beautiful.

  Nor had he ever lost anything so dear as the raven-haired woman standing so still on the entry steps of Duncreag’s great hall.

  Except that wasn’t quite true.

  Once, he had lost someone who meant the world and more to him. And now, after this night, he was more determined than ever that he’d never lose anything so precious again. He certainly wasn’t going to lose his bride.

  He might lose his face when he told her so.

  But that scarce mattered.

  What did was getting her out of the cold wind and rain. Somehow—he hadn’t even noticed—the heavens had split wide and rain now poured down in rivers, already washing clean men and the bloodstained cobbles. Wind howled, lashing at Duncreag’s walls, while above them, lightning streaked across the heavens, the thunder deafening.

  They couldn’t leave in such a storm.

  But he could get Isobel inside Duncreag, keep her warm, tend the nick to her neck, and—if she’d still have him—hold her in his arms the whole night through.

  “MacNab!” Kendrew started forward, sprinting across the courtyard, knowing the cantankerous old chief would accept only gruff respect. “I’d beg lodgings this night for my men and”—he reached the hall’s entry, ducking under its sheltering arch—“for my soon-to-be bride and myself, if you’ve room to spare for us?”

  “That I do, boy!” Archie stood straighter, lifting his grizzled chin. “You and your
lady shall have my best quarters. If”—he blinked, for a moment, looking shamed—“thon hell-bred brigands you’ve rid me of haven’t left the room in too great a ruin.”

  “I’ll see to the chamber.” The red-haired girl stepped forward, her voice revealing her to be Irish. “It’s the least I can do.” She glanced at Isobel and Norn, smiling warmly. “I know who you are from your lady and your sister. They spoke so highly of you. They gave us such hope, promising that you’d come and rescue us all.”

  “Is that so?” Kendrew lifted a brow.

  “Of course it is.” Isobel went to him, slipping her arm through his, heedless of the rain and the blood soiling him. “Could anyone who knows you ever doubt you? I even told Breena”—she glanced at the Irish girl—“that you’d arrange for Alasdair MacDonald to take her on one of his ships back to Ireland. But she—”

  “Aye, to be sure.” Kendrew turned to the girl. “MacDonald isn’t fond of me, but I doubt I’d have a problem persuading him to see you home.”

  “Thank you.” The girl bobbed a curtsy, but her gaze was troubled when she glanced at old Archie.

  “You don’t understand, my heart.” Isobel squeezed Kendrew’s arm. “Breena no longer has any family in Ireland. Ralla and his men sacked her village, burning everything and killing all but the few villagers they sold into slavery.”

  Kendrew frowned, fiercely. “Then she shall come to us at Nought.” He looked back at the girl, nodding as if it were settled. “You’ll be welcome there, lass. Ne’er you fash yourself.”

  “Kendrew…” Isobel nudged him, nodding her own head in the old chief’s direction.

  Archie MacNab seemed to have shrunk. His bony shoulders sagged and his rheumy eyes glistened a bit too brightly. He started shuffling his feet, his bristly chin lowering as he avoided gazes.

  “He’s become like a grandfather to the girl, see you?” Isobel drew Kendrew away from the others, speaking low. And finally, she saw the comprehension dawn on Kendrew’s face. At last, he recognized that with Archie having lost his sons and everyone else at Duncreag, and Breena seeing her village left a ruin, the old man and the young girl had no one else to call their own.