He stepped forward.
“Danny?” Fitz rose slowly. “I have no sword. Remember? If you are angry enough to challenge me—”
The lad did not seem to hear him, his eyes were empty, emotionless.
“Danny?” he repeated more loudly, an edge in his voice.
Danny paused, and frowned. “Hugh? I—”
NO, the angels shouted together. They flew all in his face, even the silent one.
LOOK!
It was not Hugh he saw. It was the bony thing from the cave, Hugh was gone, lost somewhere along the way.
There was no reason for this bony thing to live—and all the reason in the world for Danny to.
He would survive, as Hugh had taught him.
He raised his sword.
A scream, shattering the silence. Duncan ran clear of the trees and looked upriver.
By the light of the fire, he could see the young Immortal slashing at Fitzcairn who rolled away, narrowly avoiding the blade.
Duncan threw himself down the river bank, shouting first Fitzcairn’s name, then Danny’s. As he scrambled to his feet, one of his snowshoes, weakened by the fall, broke beneath him. He sprawled facedown in the snow.
As Fitz dodged the bright saber, he felt that surge of energy that a fight always brought forth. His hunger, his weakness, were forgotten as his body obeyed one single command— live.
But he had no sword, no weapon.
Wait—the katana! It was with MacLeod’s pack. If he could reach it, and hold Danny off until Duncan got to them—
Edging around the fire, he kept repeating Danny’s name. But the young Immortal’s face remained closed and set.
The patch of light he stood in now was full of sound—the voice of the thing that wasn’t Hugh calling his name, the shouts of the brown-eyed angel, urging him onward, the cry of the blue-eyed angel raised in battle song.
Of a sudden, everything went flat, like a scene done in bits of colored glass. He focused his attention on the two specks of bright blue that were the eyes of the thing he had to kill.
The sword sliced the air, cutting through his coat. If it had not been sewn of thick fur and hide the blow might well have taken his arm. As it was, he felt a sharp pain and a wetness that must be blood.
Blast! Danny was still between him and the Highlander’s sword.
Where in bloody hell was MacLeod? He’d heard him call, he must be coming.
And if he got the katana? Could he stand against Danny? He did not want to hurt the lad.
But he didn’t want to lose his head, either.
He risked a drop and roll, coming up with the battered pan of boiling water. He threw it full in Danny’s face.
As the lad screamed in pain, Fitz rushed him, trying to throw him off-balance. They fell together to the frozen ground.
A scream rang in his ears. His scream. Pain and anger surged through him.
FIGHT, the angels chorused. FOR YOUR LIFE.
They rolled together through the fire. Sparks flew, bits of gold in the darkness.
The thing had him down, straddling him, shouting in his face. It claimed still to be Hugh.
But Hugh would not have hurt him so.
BEHIND YOU, DANNY BOY! The brown-eyed angel guided his hand along the rocky ground, to a large rough stone. With a wild thrust, he pulled his arm free and smashed the face above him directly between the two specks of blue.
The thing slumped silent. Danny pushed it off and retrieved his sword.
He stood over the crumpled form ready to deal the killing blow.
The angels swooped about, cheering him on.
Without snowshoes, the going was difficult and treacherous. Awkwardly, Duncan ran through the knee-deep snow, shouting all the while.
Ahead, he saw Danny poised over Fitz’s prone body.
A cry of pain tore from his lips. Too far, he was still too far away!
From above the two figures, a streak of brown flew through the air, striking the young Immortal between the shoulder blades.
Vixen.
The fight between man and dog was brief and brutal. Duncan was witness to it all. Danny rolled to his knees. Vixen, with all of her instincts guiding her, went for his throat. He fended her off with one gloved hand, striking at her with the hilt of his sword.
But she was tenacious, holding on even as Danny got to his feet. He slashed at her viciously. She yelped in pain and dropped to the snow. With a roar that seemed to Duncan hardly human, Danny gripped the sword with both hands and plunged the blade into her body, She yelped again, and was still.
Brave dog, Duncan thought, a catch in his throat. Fitz’s sweet beastie. Not only had she saved his head, she had also distracted Danny. The young Immortal had not even noticed Duncan until he stood, katana in hand, between him and Fitz’s still-unconscious form.
“Daniel Patrick O’Donal,” he said. “I’m Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. And I challenge you here.”
Danny faced him, blood dripping from his sword. Absently, Duncan noted that, like saliva, it crackled when it struck the icy ground.
The man before him was a stranger. His jaw was tensed, the plains of his cheeks stood out like carved marble. The sparse beard that had added some years to a face that would be forever youthful now seemed a mask, hiding the young man who was student—and friend—to Hugh Fitzcairn.
He gave no response to Duncan’s Challenge save a sudden lunge forward. Steel struck steel. The battle was joined.
I am the angel with the sword. I will smite them all, all of my enemies.
Tom Kelly. John Kelly.
The list is an old one.
The Reb who killed me at Gettysburg. He is nameless, but he is on the list.
Michael Sheehan.
The list is a long one.
Jim Foster. Jeff Smith.
The list had grown with time.
Fergus Cooley.
I WILL SMITE THEM ALL!
Despite the wild emptiness in his eyes, the young Immortal was not fighting recklessly.
Duncan parried an overhead blow with the katana. Danny defended and fell back under a flurry of slashes.
The fight moved in and out of the flickering firelight. The play of shadow made it more difficult for Duncan to gauge Danny’s movements.
The ground beneath could not be trusted. Twice Duncan slipped, the second time falling to one knee. Danny took advantage, dealing a blow so fierce that the katana rang with it, numbing Duncan’s sword arm.
The horror he had felt when he saw Fitz close to a death he could not return from had energized Duncan. And the resources that he needed to fight this fight were always there, at the core of his being. They were a part of what made him Duncan MacLeod.
But he was tiring. The lack of food, the long deprivation of the trail had taken a toll on them all.
Yet Danny fought on, with an unnatural ferocity. As he had at the mock battle in the valley, he fought with a brutality that allowed no room for finesse.
There was no part of Duncan’s mind that stood outside watching the struggle. All of his being was focused on the man he fought. If there were, he would have judged it not a pretty sight. The two went back and forth, slipping and sliding on the ice, foundering into drifted snow that held them like toy soldiers incapable of movement, forced to flail at each other in place.
Then Duncan recognized that Danny was setting up for the low thrust that he had learned from Fitz. He quickly moved backward as Danny lunged, then forward with his blade, aiming for the heart.
Danny dropped his sword by his side and fell to his knees. Blood seeped through his fingers as he clutched one hand to his chest. He looked up at Duncan, gasping for air, his breath frosting as it left his lips.
Duncan stood over him, the katana raised.
All of his warrior blood cried out to him to strike. But the heart of him said otherwise.
This man—this boy—on his knees before him was not an enemy. He was the student, the friend, of Duncan’s oldest frien
d. What demons had possessed him Duncan could not say. But time could put them to rest.
His muscles slackened, his body began to relax. And Danny, moving more swiftly that Duncan would have thought possible considering his wound, snatched his fallen sword and stabbed upward with it.
Instinct took over. Duncan felt the blade pierce his side at the same moment as the katana bit into the young Immortal’s neck.
Hugh Fitzcairn moaned. He raised himself on his arms. The snow where his head had lain was stained red.
He turned on his side. MacLeod stood just at the edge of the firelight. He held his side with one hand and in the other was his katana, a dark stain on the polished blade.
As Fitz watched, a swell of white light poured forth from the crumpled form at MacLeod’s feet. It rose like a luminous mist in the darkness, enveloping the Highlander.
A wind rose, jagged lightning arched through the air.
He looked up at MacLeod, shaken in the middle of the vortex of wind and light.
And then he looked beyond. In the night sky, waves of colored light appeared. They covered the heavens, pulsating on and on, sweeping across the horizon.
The Quickening came to an end, all that had been Danny O’Donal was gone and done. MacLeod fell to his knees, still trembling with the aftereffects.
But the lights in the sky, huge and silent and splendid, continued to blaze. Rainbow bands, growing in intensity, until all of the sky seemed to be a riot of green and blue and gold.
Hugh Fitzcairn watched, weeping in sorrow. And in awe.
Chapter 12
“Requiescat in pace,” the grizzled old priest intoned.
“Amen,” Fitz replied.
Duncan bowed his head as the two Indian boys they had hired slowly shoveled the still half-frozen earth over Danny’s plain pine coffin.
“I wish I could have taken him to Darius,” Fitzcairn said. “I’d promised him they’d meet someday.”
Duncan put his hand on Fitz’s shoulder.
A simple wooden cross, all that could be had, marked the grave. Fitz himself had carved the name on it. There were no dates.
Fitz sighed and turned to walk through the gathering twilight. Duncan followed him. Around them, Fort McPherson was waking from the long sleep of winter.
It was early May. The ice on the Peel was beginning to break, the hours of actual light grew longer as the sun climbed ever higher above the horizon.
They entered the small windowless room where they had sheltered for the past months. The dog Vixen, curled up in a heap of blankets by the potbellied stove, rose to greet them. She limped across the floor, wagging her tail so furiously that it nearly threw her off-balance. Fitz knelt to run his hands through her fur. It brought a smile to his face, Duncan was glad to see.
After Danny had—died, Fitz’s grief had energized him to fight to save the mortally wounded dog. He had pressed Duncan to carry the beast the few remaining miles to McPherson. Somehow, he had found the strength himself to follow, though the way had been a nightmare of blood and tears that neither man would soon forget.
When they’d finally reached the Fort, both man and dog barely alive, Fitz had forced the doctor in residence to minister first to the stricken animal.
The Mountie captain had thought them mad then, and madder still when they had gone back into the wild some weeks later. They’d returned with Danny’s body, carefully shrouded in fur robes, hidden away from mortal eyes.
But Vixen had lived, though she would never again be of use as a sled dog. And Danny O’Donal, whose frozen corpse had lain the winter through in the icehouse, had at last gotten a proper funeral, laid to rest in the corner of the fort given over to the dead.
They’d taken off their coats and were sitting at the small table in the center of the room.
“Fitz?” Duncan asked, filling a glass from the bottle in front of him.
Fitzcairn nodded. Duncan filled a second glass, sliding it across the table. He downed it in one swallow.
“Swill,” he said, making a face. He slid the empty glass back. “More, if you please. If we’re to have a proper Irish wake for Danny, we’ll just have to ignore the quality of the whiskey.”
They sat silently as the level in the bottle gradually lowered. The room had been filled with such silences for the whole of the winter, filled with the things that they were not talking about.
“I never told you about my first student,” Duncan said, staring into his glass.
“The Frenchie with the fancy name? You most certainly did.”
“No, not Jean-Phillipe,” Duncan said. “My first student. His name was Devon Marek. When I found him, I was so pleased to have the chance to—well, to be Connor for another of our kind—” He paused.
“He was an evil man, Fitz. He took the best that I could give him and used it in the worst way possible.” Duncan drained his drink. “It nearly came to a Challenge between us, but he ran.”
“Danny O’Donal wasn’t a bad man, MacLeod,” Fitz said flatly. “It’s not considered good form to speak ill of the dead at the wake, you know.” His bright blue eyes were dangerous.
“No,” Duncan said, hastily. “That’s not what I meant.” He spoke haltingly, choosing his words with care. “There were things driving Danny that you couldn’t know, Fitz. Just as I couldn’t know the terrible dark heart of Marek. Or,” he added wryly “the thick head of Jean-Phillipe.”
He faced Fitzcairn squarely. This man was his oldest friend. They had waged a war of words for centuries, but at the core of it, Duncan knew no one that he would want at his side more than Hugh Fitzcairn.
He had killed his friend’s friend, his student. That would be forever between them. But it could be lived with, if they could get past the silences.
“If there had been any way, Fitz, any way at all. But—he’d gone mad at the end.”
Fitzcairn looked up at Duncan, anguish on his face. “Is that the truth of it? It’s surely what I want to believe …”
“Didn’t you see it in his eyes when he was standing over you?” Duncan asked softly.
Fitzcairn slammed his empty glass down so fiercely that it broke, cutting his hand. “Yes, by God, I did. But why didn’t I see it sooner? I kept making excuses, telling myself that he was sick from hunger and cold and exhaustion.” He held up his hand, watching the blood run down from a deep cut in the palm.
“If I had only …” he whispered.
Duncan reached across the table to examine his friend’s hand. The cut was already closing.
“We may be Immortal, but we’re only human, Fitz. We have no special powers to see into another’s soul. We take the measure of a man in the same way as any mortal would.”
Fitz pulled his hand back. He ran his thumb over the thin line of blood that was all that remained of the cut.
“You saved my life, Duncan,” he said. “Even if I’d had my blade, I don’t know if I could have—” He paused. “This Marek you spoke of—would you have taken him?”
“I don’t know, Fitz. I ask myself that still. To fight your own student …”
“I will say an Ave for you, Highlander, that you never need to answer that question.” His eyes filled and he swallowed.
“Pass me the bottle, MacLeod,” He said with a catch in his voice. “Let’s drink together. To having all the time in the world. And to losing it.”
They drank then, finishing one bottle and starting another. Fitz shared memories of Danny, and drew Duncan out further on the sore subject of Marek. Then the two talked of Connor and Henry Fitz, and of the stories Connor had told of his teacher Ramirez.
An hour had passed when Fitz rose abruptly. He took a few unsteady paces to the bunk beds on the back wall. Raising the thin mattress on the top bunk, he fetched out the small sack they had carried from the cave.
“Ah, well, MacLeod,” he said. “It’s past time to face up to it—we both know one thing that was driving Danny.” He threw the sack on the table.
“It was driving
us all, of course,” he added as he sat down. “But you had the right of it from the beginning—the fever burned far too high in him.”
“All that glitters …” Duncan murmured.
“Had we been as wise as bold,” Fitz continued. “Or at least as wise as old …” He hiccoughed. “I should warn you, laddie. I may be a wee bit drunk.”
Duncan smiled, and filled his glass again. “Had we but listened to Claire,” he added.
“Yes. Indeed. The lovely Miz Benét. I’ve been thinking of her quite a bit, as a matter of fact.” Fitz poked the sack with one finger. “Would my part of this be enough to enable her to be rid of her ‘uncle,’ I wonder?”
Duncan raised an eyebrow. One of the silences had been about the gold. They’d not talked of it at all. They’d not filed a claim nor made any attempt to return to the cave.
“I had a notion or two along those lines myself,” he admitted. “I may well deliver the last of my dispatches to her personally.”
“Well, I’ve no doubt that my consideration of her well-being greatly anticipated yours,” Fitzcairn asserted.
Duncan smiled. “Indeed. I should know after so long a time that I canna possibly outdo Hugh Fitzcairn in gallantry.”
“That’s the bloody truth, all right,” Fitz said. “And it’s a further bloody truth that all Englishmen are gallant by nature. For a Scot, such an attribute is mere artifice. Like—like a sheep wearing trousers.”
“A sheep in men’s clothing?” Duncan said. “I don’t know if I should be offended or not.” He felt absurdly happy. It was the first time in many weeks that Fitz had insulted him. It was a lame insult to be sure, but nonetheless welcome.
“Sheep—Scots—it makes sense to me.” Fitz shrugged. “Perhaps you’d better understand silk purses and sows’ ears, then?” he suggested, blue eyes wide.
Duncan sputtered, pretending great offense. Fitz laughed, and he joined in.
The sound of laughter had also been in short supply the last few months. It was also very welcome. Duncan was reluctant to break the mood, but he felt he had to ask.
“About the gold, Fitz.” He gestured at the sack. “Are you saying that you want none of it?”
Fitz stared at it, sitting in the midst of the empty bottles and shards of broken glass. He seemed suddenly completely sober. He reached over and opened the sack, spilling out a fraction of the contents.
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