by Jackie Ivie
The man backed three steps into the hall, almost reaching the opposite wall as if Payton would really act on such a threat. He turned to his men and grinned.
“Na’ much for bravery, is he?” he asked.
“Do you want the trinket, or not?” the man asked.
Payton’s eyebrow rose. He stepped out into the hall, as well. “Trinket?” he asked.
“Of a sort.”
“Show me.”
The man put both hands out with nothing in them. “Do I look fain stupid enough to bring it with me?” he asked.
Payton pulled himself up straighter, folded his arms across his chest, and lowered his chin. Most challengers knew the look. This man was right. He wasn’t stupid. He immediately seemed to fold and looked like he was near tears.
“I only thought your lordship would want it because it belongs to the wife. Well…it used to belong to your wife, but I have it now. That’s all.”
Payton rubbed at the scar on his temple, and wondered if he was lucky enough to have his first ring sold back to him. He smiled.
“Give the man forty-two crowns,” he told Martin.
“The price is now forty-three.”
The man was standing tall again, which was Payton’s shoulder height. For some reason, he was reminded of an eel, a slippery slimy eel. His eyes narrowed. “Verra well. Give him forty-three.”
“But, how will we get the trinket?”
“Follow him. He fails to produce it, he dies. You want the chore, Seth?”
Seth-the-Silent played his part perfectly, going so far as to pull a skean from his belt and lick it across his tongue.
“Jesu’! All right. I have it. I do. Give me the crowns, and I’ll pitch it to you from the end of the hall. Right there. Should you not think it worth that sum, send someone after me. I’ll probably die of fright a-fore they reach me.”
Payton chuckled. The men about him did the same. “Done. Martin? Give him the gold.”
The bag they handed him was so heavy, the man’s arm dipped when he took it and he had to use both. He was grinning widely, before turning.
“Are na’ you going to count it?” Martin asked.
“No reason, is there?”
“What’s your name, gent?” Payton asked.
“Giles. And tell her I’m sorry. Truly…but I am desperate!”
Payton was frowning when Giles stopped exactly where he said. He bent down to put his sack of gold on the floor. Then he was fishing about in his waistcoat, for what looked to be a small trinket box. He pitched it at Payton.
Payton didn’t even have it in his hand before the man was picking the sack back up and running. Payton jerked his head in that direction and Seth took off.
Then he opened the box. And slammed it back shut. A horrible ache started then, stirring with each beat of his heart and getting more and more painful as it grew in volume and cadence and strength.
She is buying my death? Again? Even…the rabid challenger?
His heart couldn’t handle her betrayal. He couldn’t handle it. The beats got harder, thumping with painful precision within his chest, and then down both arms. Consuming him. Until it consumed his hearing.
“Nae!” The cry came from the depths of him then, erupting through the fire of red that filled his vision, making the hall dim and warp until it was her face…so beloved, beautiful…so eloquent as she spoke on her love again and again.
Pretending all the time. Which meant none of it…was real.
Payton didn’t realize he was crying until the moisture blurred the red into a haze. That was worse odd. The champion didn’t cry…and if he did, it should at least quench the burn erupting with each heartbeat, and getting thicker, denser, louder. More painful. More agonizing. That’s when he moved.
Voices bothered him. Yelling at him. Angrily hollering. He ignored them, and shoved anyone aside that tried to stop him. Every weapon he could carry, he loaded onto his frame. Skeans, three hand-axes, two claymores—one on either side of his belt. His sword. More skeans. The arrows…bow. If anyone tried to stop him, Payton slammed them to the ground. It was easy. Slam a foot to the instep of a challenger at the exact moment of impact. A man without a foot to move went down.
The Honor Guard went down. One after another. Again and again. Martin went down. Redmond. Alan was flung aside and glanced off a wall. Dugan went down. Four more clansmen went down.
Redmond again.
The red filling his vision changed to the blood-red ruby of her ring. Twinkling up at him from the box, instead of from her finger. The ring she’d vowed to keep on her finger for all time. She’d vowed it!
Payton gave a huge yell as he slammed through his chamber door and entered the hall. He didn’t know where they kept her. But he knew where she’d be…at the appointed hour.
The door to their special room crashed open, and this time the hinges didn’t just protest but fell, especially since Payton took a claymore to the wood until the door sagged in defeat. Then he moved on to the clock, making it a jumble of garbage metal. The settee. He took particular joy in smashing the padded settee into as many small pieces as possible, with an ax in each hand. And then he flung one of them at the other door. The one she’d come through.
His men caught up to him when he was sending arrows through the chamber, after dipping them in the lit oil in the sconces, until every tapestry in the room was alive with fire.
“Fire!”
He didn’t hear the cry, as a boom resounded behind him. He didn’t care either.
Redmond was in front of him again. And Redmond went down. Again. Payton held his man by the throat with his left hand, took a long-bladed dirk in the other, and affixed Redmond’s shoulder fabric to the perfection of the wood floor. Then it was Martin going down, again.
He saw a body running, silhouetted in the flames, and pulling a tapestry down to slap it against the floor over and over, killing the fire. Payton nearly sent an arrow through him, and sent it, instead, right through the center of a chair.
Someone threw water at him. Payton side-stepped it easily, and watched as it slid across the floor and leaked around the wall corner. Into the alcove. Their special alcove.
He threw his head back and yelled the pain at the ceiling, sucking in cough-inducing smoke from the fires his men were still putting out behind him. Then he had to wipe at the tears his body was still cursing him with, regardless of the fact they weren’t doing anything other than pouring acid through his soul.
He advanced around the alcove, with his sword in one hand and a hand-ax in the other, and then he was chopping at the bench where he’d found so much pleasure and so much bliss. Nothing changed. The anguish increased until he was bleeding it, and nothing changed.
Payton had the little wooden settee obliterated to little more than kindling, and he was still sobbing and hammering at each little piece, willing the solid ache of his heart into the same oblivion.
And nothing changed.
“Payton.”
It was Redmond. Payton pivoted on his knee and sent the hand-ax whirling across the floor, until it slapped against an opposing wall.
“Payton,” Redmond said his name again, using the modulated, calm, precise way of his.
Payton hardened everything. He started it with the area around his heart, since he couldn’t get that part of him to cease spurting pain with every beat, but the rest of his body he controlled. The sobs wouldn’t die, but he stood anyway, yanking a forearm across his eyes when he did, and faced the smoke-blackened faces of eight of his men. And more than a dozen Stewart guardsmen.
He lowered his chin, narrowed his eyes, and glared at all of them, heedless of the fresh tears that slid from his eyes and just kept coming. More than one of them backed a step. Then, another one.
“Take me to the king,” he told them.
“Now?” Martin asked.
Payton lifted the remaining hand-ax.
“There is no reason to take him anywhere.”
“All bow
! ’Tis King James Stewart!” The king’s announcer yelled it.
“Oh, cease that.”
The king was picking his way through debris with pointed-toed shoes and making clicking noises with his tongue as he did so. Then, he was at the front of the group facing Payton, although it looked to have swelled in number.
“What have you to say for yourself, Payton Dunn-Fadden?” he asked.
“You want a battle to the death?” Payton asked, with a growl throughout the words he didn’t need to force.
The king put his little finger against the side of his mouth. “What have you to offer?” he asked.
Payton lifted the hair from the left of his scalp and shoved his head forward. “Find the man that wears this ring…bearing the Dunn-Fadden clan crest. He’s in Kilchurning’s camp. Find him. And then match him with another man. I’ll take on two. Two to my one. To the death. That’s my offer.”
“Payton, nae.” It was Redmond, and now he sounded close to tears.
The king had lifted both eyebrows and he was genuinely smiling.
“Agreed,” he announced.
Payton snarled. “And what do you offer?” he asked, just as the king was turning around.
“You mean, aside from freedom from my tower over this…this…shall I say? Bit of destruction?”
Payton nodded.
“What do you want?”
“My wife.” Payton put all the hatred and anger and agony in the word. Everyone gasped. “Released to me.”
“Will she…be safe?” the king asked.
Payton narrowed his eyes even further. “The wife. Released to me,” he repeated. “Those are my terms.”
The king looked him over for long moments, while smoke-choked lungs led to coughing and sputtering about them, and then he nodded.
“Agreed,” he said.
Chapter 25
Dallis entered the room, with a bit of embroidered handkerchief in her left hand. It was better for concealment. And her latest letter to Payton in her right. Lady Evelyn was right with her as they beheld the complete destruction of what had been a rich and elegant room.
Dallis put both hands to her mouth as her eyes watered up, with the smoke-filled air and the emotion. And she knew exactly what had happened.
“Sweet Jesus. What’s happened?” Lady Evelyn was in shock.
“Payton,” Dallis replied, picking her way into the center of the room, and standing forlornly in the center as absolutely nothing looked the same. It didn’t seem possible to completely destroy a room, but it appeared Payton had managed it. There wasn’t even anything left to sit on. And no tapestries, other than the fire-ravaged bits of material littering the floor.
“Oh…dear God…why? Why would he do such a thing?”
Lady Evelyn just kept asking it. She must not be able to hear Dallis’s silent cries responding.
“I was hopeful you could tell me.”
Redmond MacCloud came from the alcove area, where he’d been sitting on the floor. He looked beaten. His face was smoke-blackened, which appeared to be covering over a blackened eye, that was near closed with the puff of it. His clothing was ripped, bloodied in places, and there was a large hole rent in the shoulder of his shirt that looked like it had been hacked away with a blade.
“Well?”
He was almost to her. Dallis was standing, her mouth open with the silent cries, and the bairn was kicking and pummeling her with his distress, as well.
“What could bring on such rage?” Lady Evelyn asked.
“Giles,” Dallis whispered.
“Aye. It was a fellow named Giles. Said to ask your forgiveness when he sold My Laird a nice trinket for forty-three gold crowns.”
“The little bastard!” It was Lady Evelyn. Going against all her teachings with the curse. There was complete silence for a span. “Well, he is,” she added.
“What did he sell Payton?”
Dallis still had her mouth open. She forced words. Nothing came. Lady Evelyn said it for her.
“The ruby wedding ring.”
Redmond’s face reflected nothing. No shock, surprise, or consternation. He nodded. “I guessed as much. Why would you give him Payton’s ring? I saw you with it. I’ve watched you twirl it. I doona’ understand.”
Dallis still had her lips open, and that gave her silent tears an avenue to run. She couldn’t answer anything. She was standing in place, and feeling a great numbness happening…coming from her ankles and moving up her legs, and she started shaking her head back and forth while her hands moved to clutch at the baby before the numbness reached there.
“Because the bloody bastard was black-mailing her.” Lady Evelyn spat after she’d finished. “Rotten, filthy, scum…! Slimy, black-hearted…bastard!”
“That pip? On what grounds.”
“I…have to see him,” Dallis mouthed the words, but they weren’t watching, and nobody seemed to care.
“That pip? Black-mailing a Dunn-Fadden? On what grounds?”
“Dinna’ you ever wonder why the Kilchurning laird never came to claim his bride?” Lady Evelyn asked.
Dallis watched them standing and conversing amid the destruction and it felt like they wavered getting closer, then farther. Closer.
Redmond smiled curtly. “Just tell me. I doona’ have time for games.”
He was closer with that answer, and Dallis moved her eyes to him, before shying away. Payton! Her heart was crying it, and nobody heard.
“’Twas due to my ladyship’s tongue. Her wit. Her habit of ordering others about. She was nearly shrewish at times. She dinna’ want Kilchurning.”
Dallis’s mouth closed, and she licked at the saltiness trailing from her eyes. The numbness faded slightly…hovering. At midthigh.
“He turned her belly the one time they’d met.”
“So?” Redmond replied.
“And she dinna’ want Dunn-Fadden, either. What respectable Caruth would?”
“Where is the black-mail in this?”
“The lone way to stay in charge of her estate is…widowhood. So, Lady Dallis starts sending every bit of funds that Payton sent her to Giles, that bastard, who’s been outcast from Caruth Clan. He purchased challengers that would take on Dunn-Fadden in the list. The plan was to get Dunn-Fadden killed so Dallis would be a widow. That way she’d keep her castle and her lands, and Kilchurning would be left out in the cold, with nae claim, whatsoever.”
“Payton…was paying for his own…fights?” Redmond’s voice was showing the surprise. Then he started snorting. “’Tis priceless!”
“Exactly. His gold was just circling about him, with him none the wiser.”
“The first ring? The one with the crest?”
“She sent it to Giles, as well.”
“So…to keep him silent now, she gave him the little ruby ring.”
“Near tore her skin off getting it to him, too. The craven little bastard.”
“Well. This is a puzzle now.”
“How so?” Dallis had her voice back. It croaked, but it was back.
“Payton has agreed to fight a battle. To the death. On terms.”
“What…are they?” she whispered.
“He wants the man who knocked the Dunn-Fadden crest into his head with a blow from his own ring.”
“That’s a crest…from the ring?” Dallis queried. “Dear God. All this time, and he…he thought—”
“He thought you traded it to Kilchurning. For the same result. His death. He may suspect the rest. He may believe you’d do it again. And that would make everything about you…false. Everything.”
Dallis had both hands to her mouth. She was shaking her head.
Redmond continued. “’Tis worse, My Lady. He requires the king to find the man with the ring. And another. Payton will only take on this challenge if the king puts forth two men at the same time.”
“Nae,” Dallis moaned it. “Please nae. You have to stop it.”
“I have nae power to stop it.”
�
�But he’ll be killed!”
“You should worry more over when he wins, My Lady.”
Her eyes went huge, and she watched as both Redmond and Lady Evelyn warped to farther away again, looking very tiny in comparison.
Why? Her mouth made the motion, but no sound came out.
“Because the king has agreed to Payton’s terms. You’re to be delivered to him. At the fight’s end.”
“’Twill give me time then! He’ll listen. I know he’ll listen.”
“Look about. We all tried to stop him. And a good force of king’s men. Does this appear a man who listens…a-fore acting?”
Dallis welcomed the numbness to her then, hugging it close to use against what had to be horror and fear. The room was swelling to a huge size, too, just before it started rotating, circling about her until it went dim. Then dark. It was still rotating when she crumpled onto the floor.
Demons had her body and were attacking from all sides, the blood they were spilling flying about to fleck the rooms she’d lived in for months now, with anguish and sobbed cries and hushed whispers.
“’Tis too early!”
“That bairn would na’ wait another moment. And you ken it!”
“Too soon…”
Then the room warped before her eyes, turning into the same one where she and Payton had met. For their hour of time. And then it warped again, the beauty ravaged and ripped to oblivion, and then sent even further than that.
Through it all banshees and gobbshites and creatures of the night continued their hammering at her body. Twisting her into contortions while they worked their evil on her. Dallis screamed long and hard and with a wailing sound that should have carried for leagues on the winds of a summer night…but nobody heard them.
Because nobody cared.
Rotate. Again. Dive. Belly-roll, to his knees. Leap back to feet. Knees. Feet. Launch to flat back landing, losing air and precious time. Twist to front. Push up with arms. Leap to feet. Sword at ready. Again.
Kill the agony of the heart.
Payton stood panting, letting the ground mists stirred by the rain-filled day caress him, cool him, and revive him. The moon had decided to come out, and had finally reached a high enough apex that light managed to filter through the walls of the enclosed barren garden the king had given him to use.