by Shana Ab
His hands knew how to move; his sword cut and tore and jabbed and sliced. He managed to catch glimpses of her beyond the fury, still standing, still wielding her axe, though she was not able to hold it as high as she should.
He killed the last Northman almost easily, then jumped over the body, searching through the wind. He found her by her hair, a banner of fire in this icy world, and charged over just in time to see her swing again.
The Viking staggered and went to his knees. Arion pushed him the rest of the way down, then dragged Lauren to his side, searching wildly for shelter for her.
She stared up at him, blood smeared across her face—her mouth and forehead and cheekbones—from where he had kissed her.
“What was it you said?” she demanded again.
His men were losing, and losing badly. Even worse, he saw no way to get Lauren away from this atrocity. They were outnumbered and surrounded, with more invaders joining in, death in their shouts, insanity in their eyes. There seemed an inexhaustible supply of them, and it filled Ari with deep despair. He would not be able to rescue her after all.
“What was it—” She began again, but the rest of her words were drowned out by a new sound, a new call. It was a rising surge of voices, the battle cry of a throng of men, and from the woods now rushed a promise of new blood: dozens and dozens of tartan-clad warriors, brandishing their own insanity with broadswords and mace and morning stars.
Arion pushed Lauren back until they were both against one of the massive boulders, wind and war baying around them, and then he turned to her, holding her shoulders.
“Stay here,” he ordered.“Do not move from this rock.”
“No,” she said, grabbing at the sleeve of his chain mail, slipping. “What are you doing? Wait for them to advance, to break through—”
“Do not move!” he called again, edging out into the storm.
And again it was nearly effortless to fend off those who were trying to reach her, to set himself up as her guard until finally he discerned a face he recognized through the snow and the shouts. Without losing sight of Lauren, he yelled out to the man.
“MacRae! Over here!”
The impetuous youth named Rhodric threw him a wild glance, fighting off two men. Ari joined in, and the men were wounded and then gone. Ari stopped the Scot from sprinting off to a new fight.
“Lauren is over there!” he shouted, using his sword to point at her, vivid against the rock. He supposed her arm was too badly hurt to support the axe any longer. She was stemming the blood with the hand that still clutched her dirk, ready to fight.“Help me get her out of here!”
And to his surprise Rhodric did not argue with him or show any shock at all to find her in the midst of this chaos. Instead, the man nodded and ran to her, and Ari followed. With one of them on each side of her, they began the mad exercise of trying to cut through the swath of men who were intent on destroying one another.
There came a point when Arion realized that the loss of his own blood was beginning to affect him. He was feeling a little too disconnected from the battle, he was losing the steadiness of his thoughts even as he was actively fighting. He kept worrying about Lauren beside him instead of the men in front of him … the pallor of her face, the darkened red of her hair, wet from snow and blood. She glanced back at him and Arion lost his focus entirely, thinking that he had honestly never seen anything more fair than she was, right now.
Someone pushed into him and he fell over on his back, abruptly seeing the sky instead of Lauren, and then the face of one of the savages, ripped and bruised, snarling. But the man's eyes widened; his mouth opened and blood dribbled out with a prolonged groan. He was gone, and there was Lauren again, beautiful magic. She pulled her dirk from the Viking's back, then leaned over Ari, trying to drag him up again.
“Leave him,” Ari heard someone command, and a hand reached out and plucked at Lauren, but she shook it off, her fingers wrapped around the collar of his hauberk.
“Arion, Arion,” she was saying, pulling at him, and he tried to follow her, he tried to rise.
The world swam, snow and water and trees mocking him, moving in such a strange whirl that he couldn't easily find his balance. When he was on his feet again he found a new arm around him, and looked to see his steward at his side, helping to support him.
“Go on,” said Fuller to Lauren and Rhodric. “Get her to safety. There's a break through the woods over there.”
“Yes,” Ari said, the word only slightly slurred.“Go.”
Lauren began to struggle against the Scot who held her, trying to reach Ari again, but Ari knew that the young Scotsman was stronger than she, and so it proved. He began to shove her roughly to the trees, and another Scot came and aided him, and together they were managing to move her.
Arion closed his eyes. Even the darkness moved and slid, so he opened them again.“Over there,” he said, and indicated one of the many rocks.
Fuller helped him stagger to it and lean there. The vast number of bodies lying everywhere turned the beach dark, and then light, as the snow came and covered them.
“A chest wound,” said Fuller.“And your arm.”
Ari stared down at him, confused. His steward seemed to be speaking through a wall of noise. It grew and faded with rhythmic certainty, matching his heartbeat.
“You must sit,” Fuller said now, and eased Arion down to the sand. His face was lined and exhausted. A vicious gash across one cheek had dried to a crust.
“How much longer?”Ari asked, and Fuller knew what he meant.
“Not long,” he responded, his hands busy doing something remarkably awful to Arion's upper arm, a tight binding that sent the pain throbbing.“Our men arrived half an hour ago, shortly after the Scots. But there are more Northmen landing. They still outnumber us.”
“Damn them to hell,” Ari said, with feeling.
“Aye,” agreed Fuller, and kept working at Arion's wound.
“Stop.” Arion tried to push him away with the arm that still worked. Fuller ignored him, eyes narrowed.
“Go back to Elguire,” Arion said. “Barricade yourselves in … be ready for …”
He lost his thought again, seeing the snow sifting past him, the dim shapes and noises that managed to penetrate the haze of his mind.
“Elguire is ready for a siege, my lord.” Fuller did that painful thing again, a cinching agony, and Ari let out his breath instead of yelling, as he wanted to do. “There is naught else to do for them.”
“Go back …”
“Nay.” The steward leaned back at last, his hands on his thighs, and Ari saw that they were completely red, dripping. For some reason it made him want to laugh.
Fuller stood now, his sword and shield raised again, his back to Ari. Arion wondered where his own sword was and was amazed to find it still in his hand, his fingers clenched around the hilt. That was good. That had to be a good sign, that he had not lost his sword….
There was a shift in the constant noise around him, a rise in it, and then a fall and a cheer, unlikely and interesting. It made him sit up taller, and then inch his way up the stone, fighting his own senses now, which told him to bend over and lie down to die.
“What is it?” Ari asked.
Fuller had run a few steps away from him, staring out to the ocean.
“More ships!” he cried.
Arion gritted his teeth together, trying keep his head straight. It was the end. He must meet it with distinction.
“Not longships,” Fuller continued.“Not Viking ships! They wave the Scottish flag, my lord! They're cutting off the invaders!”
Ari stumbled out beside him. He had to see for himself.
Out on the high dark waves, past the storm that was turning to sleet, was a battalion of war ships, large and impressive, moving toward and into the midst of the Viking ships. A portion of them split off, racing to Shot. The longships began to scatter.
The battle was turned. Even the invaders onshore seemed to feel it, the ren
ewed strength of the MacRaes and du Morgans, the rebounding hopes.
Arion found himself sitting, something solid at his back, and realized that Fuller was in front of him again, trying to get him to lie all the way down.
“No,” Ari protested.“I'm going to fight …” But the rest of his sentence faded away, tangled in the weight of his tongue, and he found himself adrift in a whirlpool of snowflakes that swept around him, until they dissolved to dusky nothing.
HE NEARLY MANAGED TO GET away from Rhodric and the other man when they were broadsided by four invaders, and everyone fought, Lauren forgetting her wounded arm in her desperation, using the dirk to cut her way out of the mess of them. But she could not leave her clansmen to fight alone, so she turned back to defend them, and saw that the Northmen were already down.
“Lauren, we must go on!” called Rhodric, reaching for her. She had already started her race back to the beach, back to Arion. Rhodric was there again, holding her, but Lauren struggled and cried:
“No, look! Look out on the water!”
And they all did, so they all saw the new ships come tearing in, pushing the enemy out to sea. Fire erupted on at least two of the longships, perhaps more, and three others were beginning to sink. It was hard to see past the falling snow but the hulking shadows of them soaring up to shore were unmistakable.
“Praise God!” exclaimed the man on the other side of her.
Rhodric let out a whoop, releasing Lauren and then hugging her to him; she pushed away from him.
“They're running!” Rhodric was laughing, shouting. “Look at them run!”
And it ended just that swiftly. The Vikings ashore had apparently assessed their new situation, and most were breaking off the fights, speeding back toward the water, and their boats there. Even still the Scots and English were chasing them, joined now by this new army of men, and fewer and fewer of the Vikings were making it to safety.
“Let's go,” Lauren said, and shouldered past them to return to the beach, not waiting to see if they followed.
“Lauren!” Rhodric was beside her.“You need to return to Keir!”
“It's safe enough now,” she responded, still moving.
“You're hurt, you need—”
She stopped, rounding on him.“You go back if you like. I'm going to see those Vikings defeated. Don't tell me you don't want the same thing.”
He hesitated, looking at the last of the battle, the fleeing men, the light of something hectic and feverish in his eyes. Lauren kept going.
She pretended to be heading toward where the new forces were landing, the way all the others were. But when Rhodric and the other man drew slightly ahead of her, entranced, she veered off, back to where she had last seen Arion.
Bodies were piled everywhere. Some were not yet dead, eerie moans rising over the wind and surf, and it was this that she feared the most, that he was alive and awake, suffering without recourse. The snow was mingled moisture on her face, cold wetness mixed with the warmth of her tears, her fear for Arion du Morgan.
Oh God, where was he? She couldn't tell, it was all blood and body parts and clouded eyes. There were others moving through the dead, like her, clansmen and du Morgans, finding the wounded, ministering to them. But where was Arion?
She found him slumped against one of boulders, a ragged bit of cloth wrapped around his arm already soaked with blood. Fuller appeared nearby, waving to someone, but Lauren barely saw it.
She knelt beside Arion, easing him down to lie flat in the sand, trying to staunch some of the flow of blood. He looked awful, worse than death, but he was breathing, she saw that right away, and felt a jolt of something severe and grateful jag through her.
“Arion?”
Slowly his eyes opened. The snow had frosted his eyelashes and the rest of his face, giving him the cast of marble, not flesh. She moved a hand to cup his cheek, to brush away some of the flakes.
“Lauren,” he said, barely audible.
“Yes.” She smiled at him, cradling his head.
“You're … alive.”
She couldn't stop smiling, though it was more anxiety than happiness she felt. “You're fine,” she assured him, and hoped the lie was more convincing than it sounded to her.“You're fine.”
“Lauren …”
She leaned down closer, trying to shield him from the elements.
“I'm here,” she whispered, very near.
He smiled up at her, bloodied and looking almost sleepy, snow falling all around them both.
“… love …”
His gaze moved beyond her, behind her.
“Lauren MacRae.”
It was a new voice, one she had never before heard, but it cut off her breath and made her spine go icy. Slowly she straightened away from Arion, then turned her head and looked up.
It was a man she didn't know. He wore a tartan of russet and brown. The brooch at his shoulder was a silver twig of rowan. He loomed above her and held out his hand to her, snow parting around him.
She stared up at him, immobile.
“Take my hand, Lauren,” instructed the man, and like a puppet she did so, rising as he pulled her up, feeling everything about her go sinking away to the earth, to where Arion still lay, until she was as empty as a shell.
The stranger brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it, and his beard scraped at her skin. There was a gathering crowd of people around them now, a mass of outlines in the coming night.
“I am Payton Murdoch, laird of the Murdochs,” he announced, as if she did not know that by now.
She couldn't think of what to respond, only stared at him, his brown hair and his blue eyes and the tan of his forehead. He did not deign to look at the dying man on the ground between them.
“We welcome you, Murdoch,” said someone else, a man behind her. It was James, stepping forward. “And we offer you our gratitude, as well.”
Payton Murdoch had not released her hand, and Lauren now moved her gaze down to it, his fingers firm and hard against hers, streaks and spots of blood marking her skin.
“She is wounded,” said the Murdoch, prompting the others around them to murmur agreement.
Lauren let her look drift past their connected hands, back to Arion in the sand, snow wafting over him, crouching Englishmen beside him. His eyes were green and shadowed. He was staring at her face, his own completely empty, just like she felt.
“Come away, child,” said the laird. “You are in need of aid.” He released her hand to put an arm around her, heavy and foreign, nothing right about it at all. Lauren broke off her gaze from Arion, looking away to the froth of the ocean, wanting the finish to whatever nightmare this was.
Ari watched the Scotsman move and embrace her, pulling her close against his side.
His world ended then. It was that sudden, and that final: just the sight of another man with his arm clasping her to him, so casual yet so completely possessive.
Arion felt everything in him dry to dust and then scatter. He couldn't look away from it, Lauren standing there next to Murdoch, her head at his shoulder, her fine copper hair blowing gently across the other man's tartan with the snowfall.
Then he looked back at her face, and knew that he had been wrong. Not everything was dust. It couldn't be, because one look into her eyes and all the pain he had ever conceived of flooded over him, an agonizing wash, far worse than any physical wound—misery, hopelessness, rage.
She stared back at him and Arion knew that only he could read her in this moment, only he could translate the faint, anguished curve of her lips, the glimmer of tears shining amid the rare gold of her gaze.
“Come, Lauren,” said the Scotsman, and he pulled her away from Arion, from all that he represented. He pulled her away and she let him, moving slowly, her usual grace transformed into halting steps amid the bodies and sand.
She turned her head and threw him one last look, but the copper strands obscured it, masking her face, and Arion couldn't tell if she meant to say good-bye
to him or just …
Nothing. There was nothing left to say.
She was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
LOVE YOU.
He had said that to her, she had heard him say it.
The Earl of Morgan had told her that he loved her, and now Lauren had to live with that bittersweet knowledge for the rest of her days.
He loved her. He would say it to her as the lifeblood flowed from his body, as he was most certainly dying, when she would think that he would be considering what truly mattered to him, what his life had meant before it ended. Arion du Morgan was an important man, with a history to him that she could only half guess at, kings and wars and courtiers and estates … all those things to consider as life faded away.
But he had told her he loved her.
Lauren hoped no one else had heard it. Certainly not Payton Murdoch, the laird who had arrived at Shot in such grand and lethal style. She didn't think he had; he didn't seem the kind of man to let such a slight go unanswered, to allow another man—an Englishman, no matter how noble—to say such a thing to his bride.
The Murdoch was very clearly a man of great pride. She saw it in the way he held his shoulders, so stiff and unyielding, and in the furrow in his brow, which remained there even when he did not have that ponderous look.
She had first noticed that furrow yesterday, when he had bent down close to her, his eyes fixed on the silver rowan brooch at her shoulder.
“You are wearing it incorrectly,” he had chided her in front of everyone.“The proper way is so.”
And he changed the angle of it so that it looked crooked to her, a way she never would have thought to put it.
No, the Murdoch had not heard Arion's whispered confession on the beach two nights ago. No one else had, only Lauren. That was as it should be. It was another secret to carry with her, another permanent wound to the ache that was her heart.
Indeed, no one seemed to want to mention the battle at Black Beach to her at all, which was strange enough. Lauren brought it up herself, as she was being bandaged yet again by Elias, wondering out loud how her clan had known to come to the aid of the du Morgans just when they had.