“I know, but you must pull it back, push it down. Do not let it free.” He bent as if to kiss her lips but whispered against them, “Not yet.” He kissed her quickly. “Can you do that, Rowan, Guardian of the Targe?”
It was like trapping a million tiny needles within her, each heated red hot, searing her from the inside out, but she nodded. “I can. I am, but I do not know how long I can hold it, Nicholas.”
“Not long—” He collapsed at her feet and she was suddenly looking into Archie’s wild eyes.
“It would appear the pagan stone is good for killing someone, too.” His grin was pure evil as he raised the stone as if to bring it down on her head next.
She flung her arms out to protect herself, and managed to grab the stone, though Archie did not let go. She held on when he would have raised it again and she let all the power that was burning to get out of her race into the stone in one sudden, focused burst. Archie was thrown backward by the blast, halfway across the clearing, landing in the mud near the boulder he had been perched on earlier, but Rowan’s hands were empty.
He’d managed to hang on to the stone, damn the man.
She crouched next to Nicholas long enough to determine that he still breathed. Then she stalked toward the stunned Archie, who still lay on his back, blinking up at the sky, his arms outstretched to either side, the stone gripped in his right hand. She stepped on his wrist and bent to wrest the stone from him, when suddenly he snaked his free arm around her, grabbing her, rolling with her in the mud until he ended up on top. He straddled Rowan and pinned her arms over her head with one hand the stone gripped in his other.
“Now you are both mine, witch, and King Edward will be most appreciative of my efforts, killing the spy who betrayed him for a Highland whore, and bringing the ‘Guardian’ and this hunk of stone to him. It will be the end of the Scots as a difficult, useless people. He will invade. He will be your sovereign, and I will be paid handsomely for making that possible.”
Rowan said nothing and kept her eyes on his, but a movement behind him had her ready to act.
Nicholas’s arm came around Archie’s neck, jerking him off Rowan even as the man tried to beat the Targe stone against his attacker’s head behind him. Rowan leaped to her feet and grabbed Archie’s flailing arm with both hands, hanging from it with all her weight, but still he was too strong for her to wrest the stone from him. She bit his forearm as hard as she could, almost gagging at the blood she tasted. He howled and began to flail the arm to get her off him until, as suddenly as Nicholas had dropped, Archie went limp. She caught the stone as it fell from his hand.
“MacAlpins, to me!” she yelled, hesitating only long enough for her Highlanders to run toward her before she let another blast of energy escape her through the Targe stone, shattering the ledge at the top of the stone face, and raining it down upon the remaining English soldiers.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE BATTLE WAS over. Nicholas threw the limp Archie into Duncan’s keeping, reaching for Rowan as her knees gave way.
“I have you, love. I have you. You did well.” He murmured to her as he leaned against the boulder and pulled her into the shelter of his arms. She was as thoroughly mud-covered as he was, but she seemed to be unhurt—just shaken.
Uilliam was busy sending a few warriors off to chase down any of the English who might have escaped. Duncan was trussing up Archie hand and foot. A few of the other MacAlpins were gathering their injured and two dead to take back to the castle.
“Do we bury them?” one of the men asked Uilliam, nodding toward the dead English soldiers, “or leave them for the animals like the carrion they are?”
Uilliam did not hesitate. “We’ll bury them right here. Rowan has already started a cairn for us. Pile them up. We shall gather the stone to cover them.”
Nicholas held on to Rowan, who was now starting to shiver in her cold mud-soaked clothes, trying to share what little body heat he could generate with her. “I need to get Rowan back to Dunlairig. She needs a fire, dry clothes, and food,” he said to Uilliam.
Uilliam looked about him at the industry of his men. “Let me see if any of the horses are lingering nearby. ’Twill be easier to load that one”—he glared at Archie who was beginning to awaken from Nicholas’s stranglehold—“onto a horse than to carry him back, and I will not chance an escape by loosing his feet.”
“If you find two, Rowan should ride as well.”
“Nay.” Her voice was stronger than he’d expected. “I am nearly recovered and walking will help keep me warm—warmer.” She smiled up at Nicholas. “Thank you, Protector. Thank you, love.” She kissed him lightly, mud flaking on both their lips.
When Nicholas looked up he found Uilliam standing there, a scowl so deep that his eyes disappeared under his bushy black brows and his mouth so pinched it was hardly visible either.
“Protector.” It was not a question.
“Aye.” Rowan stepped out of the shelter of Nicholas’s arms but reached for his hand. “But I wish to give my uncle time to bury Elspet first. We must all mourn her before any changes are made.”
“There may not be time for that, lass,” Uilliam said, the scowl loosening as he pulled on his beard. “I do not believe that this is the end of Longshanks’s plans for us and we must be prepared.”
Nicholas pushed off the boulder and looked about at the mayhem they had wrought. “I agree, but first we must finish this business and return to the castle before we lose all light. Kenneth will cast judgment. We must bury Lady Elspet. And then I would ask the entire clan’s permission and blessing to wed their Guardian, my Rowan.”
Duncan returned that moment, leading a brown garron, one of the small sturdy ponies preferred in the Highlands. “What is this about a wedding?” He tried to sound stern, but the smile on his face worked against him.
“All in good time,” Rowan said, grinning at him. “Before anything else we need to find the ermine sack. I have the Targe stone.” She held it up for all to see. “But not the sack.”
Nicholas let go of her hand and strode to a pile of travel bags, weapons, and tools the MacAlpins were gathering together. He searched amongst the bags until he found a familiar, well-worn, tooled leather bag that he knew Archie had traded for with a pilgrim who was freshly back from Spain.
He pulled back the flap and found the Targe’s sack balled up inside. He pulled it out and held it up for her to see.
“Let us return to the castle,” she said, taking it from his hand and settling the stone within it. “There is much this Englishman must answer to and I would not keep my uncle waiting any longer.”
Nicholas grabbed her free hand—she gripped the sack so hard in her other one her knuckles were white—and together they moved off toward the castle. Duncan, with Archie trussed belly down over the garron’s back, followed behind.
ROWAN WAS EXHAUSTED, dirty, cold, and yet there was a fire in her belly that energized her and kept her feet moving until they were within the remains of the castle wall. Denis cried out as they came through the torch-lit gate passage, alerting everyone within the castle of their arrival. Cries went up but Rowan could not tell if they were cries of relief or disbelief, for she was sure they all looked like they had bathed in mud. They stopped and Nicholas let go of her hand long enough to assist Duncan in getting Archie off the garron. Each man held the prisoner by an arm as he swayed between them, shaking his head as if to clear his vision. A roar came through the crowd, which parted, letting Kenneth through. His hair stood out in clumps.
He came to a halt next to Rowan. “Is this the man that killed my Elspet?” he demanded.
“Aye, Uncle, this is Archibald of—”
Before she could finish Kenneth drew his dagger and plunged it into Archie’s belly. Archie gasped. Nicholas blanched.
Kenneth roared at Duncan and Nicholas. “Put the bastard on the ground.” When they didn’t immediately obey, he lowered his head and cocked it a little to the side. “Do you disobey your chief?”
<
br /> “Nay, Kenneth, we do not,” Nicholas said. “But—”
“Down! ’Tis my right to pass judgment on this man and I have found him guilty of murder. The sentence is death by my hand. Do you disagree with my judgment?” He was bellowing at Nicholas and Duncan, but Rowan knew he also dared anyone else to gainsay his right to kill this man.
“Nicholas,” she said, trying to speak as calmly as she could when her heart was pounding loud in her ears. “Duncan. Put the man down.”
Kenneth moved with Archie as he was laid down, keeping his dagger set deep in the Englishman’s gut. “I would put this knife through your heart, bastard, as you did to my wife, but that would be too quick.” He twisted the hand that gripped the dagger and Archie could do nothing but let out a strangled gurgle. “I would cut your heart out, as you have cut out mine, but that, too, would be too quick.” Kenneth twisted the knife again and Archie managed a grimace.
“This is not over, Highlander,” he gasped. “The king will have the stone and the girl.” Kenneth pushed the dagger deeper and Archie’s eyes started to roll but he fought it, rasping out, “He knows—” A long rattling breath left him and he lay limp in a pool of his own blood. Kenneth stepped away, leaving the dagger in Archie’s body as he turned away and made his way back through the crowd, heading toward the tower.
It was only when her uncle left that Rowan was able to look away from the body. Nicholas was pale, but showed no grief over the death of the man. Duncan’s eyes were fixed, across the open center of the crowd, on Scotia, who stood expressionless.
Jeanette was not to be seen until Rowan looked up. Her cousin stood in the window of Elspet’s chamber looking down at the gathering in the bailey, and even from this distance the grim set of her mouth was plain.
“Betsy, Meg, will you take him and wrap his body?” Rowan said to two of the clanswomen standing nearby.
“You mean to bury him?” Meg asked, her voice disbelieving.
“Aye, with the men who died for him today. Duncan, when they are done you will take him back to the clearing, add his body to the cairn they are making there.”
Duncan nodded at her, then reached down and drew Kenneth’s dagger out of the body.
HOURS LATER, AFTER Rowan had helped Jeanette into bed, and Scotia after her; after Kenneth had made it clear he was not leaving Elspet’s side this night and Rowan had settled him in a chair next to Elspet’s bed, then she managed to change out of her mud-caked clothes and wash most of the dried dirt from her hair and body before she collapsed upon her narrow bed in the chamber with her cousins. Nicholas had refused to leave her and slept upon a pallet blocking anyone from entering the chamber. It seemed only moments after Rowan laid down when she woke with a start.
Looking around to see what must have woken her, she found Nicholas quietly snoring by the door and Scotia standing at the small window that looked out over the bailey. Rowan disentangled herself from her blanket and went to her cousin.
“Scotia,” she said quietly, not wishing to startle her. “Sweetling, what is it?” She expected tears but found instead a steely-eyed expression she’d never seen before.
“I wanted to go with you today. I wanted to see the man who… who… who hurt Mum. I wanted to kill him myself.”
Rowan looked at this lass she almost didn’t recognize standing before her, not manipulative or coy, but angry, determined, with vengeance on her mind and in her straight back and stiff shoulders. Rowan sighed, sorry that the immature Scotia seemed to have been killed with her mother, but proud that she was not buckling under grief, that she sought action as a balm for her broken heart, not pity. Rowan was sorrier that Scotia would not get vengeance upon Archie except through her father’s hand.
“You were needed here.”
Scotia scowled but did not take her gaze from the dark bailey. “There was nothing I could do here to change what happened to Mum.”
“Her death has been avenged.”
Scotia did not reply and now Rowan saw a lone fat tear roll down her cheek. “We will all miss her,” she said to her cousin, remembering when she lost her own mother. “It is a pain that will never fully heal, a hole in our hearts that will never completely close, but she died protecting the clan. Even in her state she would not give in to that man’s demands. She died as she lived, Scotia, protecting the people and the place that she loved.”
“She died too soon.” Scotia wiped the tear from her face with a knuckle. “She died too soon.”
Rowan tried to swallow around her own grief at losing a mother not just once, but twice, for Elspet had been every bit a mother to her since she’d first come to live here. She hugged Scotia’s stiff body to her and laid her head on her cousin’s shoulder. “Aye, it is always too soon to lose a mother.”
They stood there for a long time and finally Scotia relaxed and wound an arm around Rowan’s waist. “What are we going to do without her, Rowan?”
“I do not know. We shall muddle through as best we can. We still have Kenneth, and Elspet taught Jeanette much, so we yet have her knowledge if not her wisdom. We will have to find our way without her.”
“I already miss her.” It was the faintest of whispers.
“I do, too.”
They stood together, arms looped one about the other, watching as the moon set and the sky began to lighten with false dawn. Scotia’s stomach rumbled and for the first time Rowan realized that more had been lost than her aunt and a building. Their food stores had been in the larder, below the great hall. It was doubtful any of it had survived the fire and the water. Panic set up in her stomach, sending spikes of anxiety through her chest, constricting her breath. How would they feed everyone?
And then she felt the warmth of a hand on her shoulder, patting it, as if to calm her. She looked around to see who it was, only to find no one stood behind her and Scotia’s arm was around her waist, not over her shoulders.
Shaken, she realized the sensation was familiar, exactly what Elspet used to do when Rowan was young and newly come to Dunlairig. When Rowan would get worried, or sad, or angry, Elspet would pull her into her lap and pat her shoulder until she calmed down enough to think clearly. As she got older, she no longer sat in her aunt’s lap, but Elspet would still from time to time pat her on the shoulder, reminding her that things were not as bad as Rowan thought.
She smiled at the memory and the panic began to subside as she thought about what her aunt would do in this situation. Elspet would call upon those families who lived up and down the glen to share what they had with those who lived in the castle. She would send out hunting parties for meat, smoking and drying whatever was not immediately needed. She would send the women into the bens and the valley to find what was available to feed a hungry clan. She would have the milk from their cows and sheep made into cheeses.
They were lucky it was not winter and that the gardens and oat field had not been burned. The grassy shielings further up in the bens would provide good fodder for the animals over the summer, as they always did. It would be more work than usual, but not a great deal more. They would survive. By late autumn they would have their stores replenished enough to get the entire clan through the winter, they would have to.
Aye, that is what Elspet would do.
She was sure she would often look to her memories of her aunt for guidance as they all found their way without her. It gave Rowan a warm comfort to know that in this way at least her aunt would be with them always.
As the sky heralded true dawn, Rowan quickly donned a gown over her kirtle, and an old arisaid that she belted about her waist and drew up over her shoulders, fixing it in place with the pin that had been her mother’s. She realized that what she had told Scotia about losing a mother was true, the wound never healed, but it did grow fainter with time until it was more a gentle familiar ache than the sharp pain it once was. It gave her comfort to know they would never forget Elspet, but neither would they suffer without end at her loss.
She went to Nicholas, who was st
ill quietly snoring on his pallet by the door. His beard-stubbled face looked younger and unguarded in his sleep. She placed her palm against his warm cheek, stroking her thumb across the smooth skin above the beard. “Love,” she said, leaning down to kiss his brow. “The sun will rise soon. We have much to see to this day.”
He did not open his eyes at once but a smile spread over his face, and he captured her hand against his cheek with one of his own. “I would wake this way every morn,” he said, his voice thick with sleep, “with your hands upon me.” He cracked one eye open and his smile turned to a grin until he saw her fully dressed. She watched as the playfulness was replaced by grim determination. “You should have awakened me sooner.”
He released her hand and sat up, pushing his hair out of his way as he looked toward the window where Scotia still kept watch. He cocked an eyebrow at Rowan, but she shook her head. Scotia would grieve in her own way and own time.
A WEEK LATER Nicholas was shoveling rubble and ashes from the burned great hall, instead of moving rocks from the fallen curtain wall. Duncan worked alongside him and Uilliam oversaw the workers. It was oddly the same as when he’d first arrived at Dunlairig Castle more than a fortnight ago, and yet so much had changed.
He loaded up the cart and one of the older lads struggled to pull it toward the gate.
Elspet had been buried the afternoon after she died. Archie’s body had been returned to the clearing.
And now Nicholas and Rowan waited to be together, to be married.
Rowan did not want to rush her family into such a change even though it was inevitable. Truth was, Nicholas still did not think himself worthy of leading this clan so he was in no rush either, except that he desperately wished to wed Rowan, and she him. They had found little opportunity since returning to the castle to be alone together. A stolen kiss here and there was all they had shared and he found his patience growing thin.
“Nicholas of Achnamara.”
Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) Page 26