“Ava! Why in the name of everything that is holy wouldn't you tell me about that?” Nicholas roared, his voice echoing off the cliff.”
From atop their mount's broad back, Ava tilted her head and looked at Nicholas curiously.
“Why would I? You were keeping well away from the left as I told you to do.”
“Because I might have liked to know that a sheer drop and a messy death were waiting for me on the left?”
“Because you are doing so well knowing now,” she said with that grin, and Nicholas entertained a brief but very pleasant image of pulling her off that horse, turning her over his knee, and making sure that she wasn't able to ride comfortably for a few hours at least.
“In the future, I would like to be apprised of anything that comes that close to us that could kills us.”
“Noted,” she said. “But would you tell your men why you had led them one way or another?”
“Perhaps not, but you are not my commander, and at the moment, I am no soldier. Now tell me what kind of horrors await us on the next step of this journey.”
Heaven help him, Ava looked as if she were actually thinking about it for a moment, and then to his surprise, she nodded up the path.
“Well, there's one now.”
Nicholas followed her gaze up the path. He could see that it widened not far up from where they stood, turning into something a great deal more like road. Standing at the center of that path, he saw, silent as a ghost, was a pale young boy dressed in the rough clothing of the Highlanders, a tall and lean wolfhound standing at his side, growling softly.
* * *
Riordan Hall was set back in the hills, shrouded on all sides by forests and steep ravines. The small cottages that were hidden through the landscape all had vegetable gardens, ones that were already tilled and growing with something or other even this early in the year, but Nicholas had no idea how the people of Clan Riordan lived until he glimpsed the herds of sturdy Highland cattle being carefully tended by the children who couldn't have been older than thirteen.
The closer they got to the stocky wooden keep at the heart of the community, the more Nicholas could feel eyes on him, unwelcoming and suspicious. Ava, for her part, continued as if there was nothing at all the matter, directing him to ride up to the main keep and then to halt at the gate.
“Ava, are we going to get shot full of arrows?”
“No. Probably not.”
“I usually prefer a little more certainty regarding whether someone is going to shoot at me.”
“Well, you've had practice at getting shot at with arrows. It should be normal for you now.”
“I don't want it to be,” Nicholas started, but then the gate inched open, and a tall woman crowned with a braid of iron-gray hair came out. She was short and nearly square in shape, and the glare on her face would have been the envy of every commander Nicholas had ever served under.
“Kait, it's good to see you,” Ava called down, but the woman didn't smile.
“Enough with your good to see you, Ava Fitzpatrick. Trouble's always on your tail, so what do you want here?”
“That's no way to speak to me after I brought you that big bull all the way from Killaree,” Ava said. “Unless I'm much mistaken, those are at least some of his calves in the herd I saw as we came up.”
“You keep your eyes in your own head, Ava, and you keep your hands to yourself. If there is even one less calf there than there was this afternoon...”
“Kait, I'm not here after your cows today. I brought this man here, looking for a child.”
The corner of Kait's mouth twitched a little.
“Well, we certainly have enough here...”
Nicholas decided that it was time to take matters into his own hands. He dismounted and started toward the gates, hands open to show that he carried no weapons.
“Please, madam, I am looking for a specific child, one who disappeared some years ago...”
The change was immediate. When she was talking to Ava, Kait Riordan was calm, if wary. The moment Nicholas approached her, her lip lifted in a snarl, and there was a shift from above. Nicholas looked up to see a woman standing above them on the wall. There was a bow in her hands, the arrow nocked. An experienced archer could get the bow drawn and fire the arrow in a matter of seconds, and Nicholas had no doubts that the woman knew what she was doing. He froze as Kait glared at Ava.
“What kind of spy are you bringing into our midst, Ava? Why are you traveling with an Englishman?”
“No spy at all,” Ava said. “If he were a spy, he would have a better story, and I brought him up the rear road, which will flood before the fighting gets underway anyway. Will you speak with us or should we go?”
Nicholas wanted to speak up, to deny leaving when Catherine might be here, might actually have found shelter with the Riordans, but he knew that he would only make things worse if he spoke. He watched as Kait stared at them both, eyes roving from Ava to Nicholas and back again.
“You can come in as far as the courtyard, and if I get any whiff of skullduggery from either of you, I'll have you both shot, and it won't matter who your father is, Ava.”
Only then did Ava dismount, smiling wryly.
“Welcome to the North, Nicholas. You should have stayed on the horse. If she had wanted to shoot at us, at least we could have gotten a head start.”
“I'll remember that for next time,” Nicholas retorted.
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chapter 9
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Ava knew that Kait Riordan, the current wife of the clan head, was a hard woman. When the men of the clan were away at war, it fell to her to make sure that the keep was kept in order and that the clan kept running.
Clan Riordan was small. It did not have the benefits of Clan Blair's mountains or Clan MacTaggart's great castle. Instead they stayed hidden, marching out when they needed to join the cause, and the rest of the time, they were quiet and gave what aid they could to those who needed it.
As it turned out, the people who needed it were often children.
“There are older ones who are about their chores,” Kait said, her arms crossed over her chest. “These are the fosterlings who have come to us or were brought.”
At the center of the courtyard, Nicholas was surrounded by a group of a half dozen little girls, joined by the boys as well to see what was going on. He was trying to tell them something about their feet, likely trying to figure out who had the birthmark he had told Ava about, but he wasn't having much luck.
“You have quite a few at the moment.”
“Is it any surprise? The Bruce takes our men, and he will not return them. The crofts are easy pickings for blackguards on both sides, and sometimes there is a lucky little one who survives to be brought here.”
Ava could hear the grief and sorrow that lay under Kait's hard tone. The woman might have a heart as great as the outdoors, but she could not afford to let it show very often, not in her position.
“Well, perhaps we can take one from you.”
“Perhaps, but I don't think so. I don't believe any of the young girls have a mark like the one he describes. Do you believe him, English as he is and with that story?”
Ava thought for a moment.
“I know he is no spy, and that I have heard worse stories while at war. If it's worth anything to you, I believe him.” She hesitated. “Do you?”
Kait shrugged.
“It does not matter to me. You say he will bring no trouble here, and I trust you at least that much. If he can take a child from here, one who is willing to go with him, mind you, one who willingly will leave our protection, that's at least one less mouth I have to feed. And this seemed easier than letting you go on yawping at the gate while honest people still have work that they need to be doing.”
Ava laughed a little at that. In front of them, Nicholas had removed one of his shoes, probably in hopes that the children would do the same, but he di
d not seem to be having much luck.
“Well, we'll get ourselves sorted and be out of your way.”
“What are you thinking, Ava Fitzpatrick, traveling with an Englishman?”
“Here now, Kait, I'm not one of your fosterlings or your daughter-in-law. You've no call to be clucking over me like a broody hen.”
“Someone ought to do it, and you put yourself in front of me today,” Kait snapped. “You know that old trouble is going to be starting up again. The southern cities are already under attack from the English, and Robert sent for the men to muster just a few weeks ago. What are you going to be doing when the land tears itself apart?”
“What I have always done,” Ava said with a shrug. “It doesn't affect me, especially not if I can get some men and do some raiding. If I can't, I'll come up with something else.”
Kait glared at Ava.
“A Blair through and through for all that you are a bastard. You all must come down from the mountain someday.”
Ava shook her head.
“Not my problem, Kait. I help where I like and move on when I'm done. What you all do down here has nothing to do with me, and it never has.”
It looked like Kait was going to argue with her, so she walked toward Nicholas, who was shaking his head over one girl's foot while trying to get another one to lift hers.
“Here, let me help with that..”
The little girl yelped and then crowed with delight as Ava scooped her up and swung her around in a circle, her feet flying out. Nicholas dodged with an offended shout, and the other children hopped up and down, eager for their turn.
Soon enough, they were done, the children entertained, and Nicholas disappointed. Obedient to Kait's words, they were back on the road as soon as they were done, though she relented enough to offer them a loaf of fresh-baked bread and some cheese from the larder.
“I hadn't thought that I would find her so quickly... but still I hoped.”
“There's nothing wrong with hoping, nothing wrong at all. After all, you might as well be lucky as unlucky.”
They led the horse between them, backtracking down the path they had taken to get in, and Nicholas was silent for a moment.
“All those children... where did they come from?”
Ava glanced at him curiously.
“Where do you think?”
“I'm serious.”
“All right. They came from the war. They were likely orphaned one way or another, and someone knew that Kait Riordan was a soft touch. They might have stumbled to Riordan Hall all on their own, or perhaps they were brought by some good Samaritan who did not want to see a child starve to death in the burned-out shell of her home.”
“You say that very casually,” Nicholas said, but Ava refused to take offense.
“Why shouldn't I? War has walked the land since I was a child, and at the end of it all, those children were the lucky ones. They were the ones who at least found a safe harbor with someone who wouldn't work them to death.”
Nicholas was silent, and Ava felt a strange anger in her, something that she would have said was gone from her years ago.
“The English come north, deciding that everything they can lay hands on belongs to them, and those children are what's left. Surely, you know that?”
“War is different for a man,” Nicholas said, and she could hear the discomfort in his voice. “It is formations and mud and battlefields, endless hours of waiting for two hours of terror and blades. Everything else is... gone.”
“War is different when you have to live in it without even being taught to use a sword to defend yourself.”
Nicholas looked at her curiously.
“Is that why you were given a sword, to defend yourself in times of war?”
Ava laughed, and she didn't care if he could hear the bitterness in her tone.
“No, I picked up a sword to defend myself from my own clan.”
They had just returned to the real road, and Nicholas looked like he was going to ask her more about that. Ava was still struggling with the fact that she almost wanted to tell him, but then the bandits found them.
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chapter 10
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If the men had passed them on the road, Nicholas wouldn't have given them a second glance. There were three of them, armed, but that was hardly unusual given the location and the rumbles of war that had begun in the South. They looked disreputable, but it wasn't as if Nicholas actually looked much like the knight he had been.
Ava was the one who alerted him to the fact that there was something wrong when she stiffened by his side.
“We should get off the road,” she murmured, but by then it was too late. The men had seen them, and they were coming up too fast to dart into the woods.
“Fine looking horse you have,” one of the men said, making a studied effort to be casual about it.
Nicholas scowled.
“And what is it to you?”
The moment he spoke, he realized that he should probably have found a way to avoid it. He had never been more conscious about his own accent. Someone from England would have guessed that he was from the West Country quickly, but here in Scotland, it mattered not at all. He was English, and as the men shot quick glances at each other, he realized that he might have made the trouble that they were about to get into much worse.
“Ava, I…”
His whisper trailed off when he realized that he was alone on the trail. Ava had used the cover of their horse's broad body to slip back into the trees and given the brown homespun tunic and trews she wore, she would be difficult to spot.
Well, she said she would lead me. She never said that she was going to do anything else.
“English,” one of the men spat. “What are you doing up so far, and without enough men to keep you safe?”
“I'm safe enough on my own,” Nicholas said shortly, and the men laughed.
“Oh, so that is what you think?” asked one, and Nicholas decided that this had gone on long enough.
He had always been taught to put off battle as long as he could, but once he knew that there was no other way forward that he was to commit himself utterly to being the only man left standing. He drew his sword and lunged at the same time, striking the first man a stunning blow with the blade. The man fell with a gurgling roar, and with the backstroke, Nicholas caught the second man with the pommel. It was good, as neat a piece of work as his own teacher might have done, but he knew better than to stop. The other man had run off a short distance, but there was a bow and arrow in his hand. Nicholas had a vivid memory of the last time he had found himself on the wrong end of an arrow, and with a roar, he started to lunge at the man, raising his sword high.
He might have reached the man in time or he might not have, because Ava rendered the matter moot. The man's fleeing had brought him to the edge of the trees, and Ava stepped out as quickly and neatly as if they had planned it. The man was so busy trying to nock his arrow that he barely even noticed Ava's hand rising up, her slender dagger in it. She brought his head back with her hand tangled in his hair in and then with a quick pulling motion, she slit his throat.
As easily as she might kill a pig.
Then she was shouting at him.
“Behind you!”
Nicholas snapped out of his surprise just in time to turn around and ward off a blow from the second man's sword. Nicholas caught a glimpse of a mouth that was all bloody and missing some teeth, and then he was back in the fight, leaning in and pushing hard against his opponent. The man was more skilled than the first had been, and he was in a red rage.
That fury was what saved Nicholas, who realized with a moment of dismay that he was nowhere near as strong as he should have been for this. His strength was fading faster than he could imagine it doing, and every time he lifted his arm, it felt as if it had been weighed down with lead.
The man was shouting something at him, something about a d
ead family and a burned croft, and finally, Nicholas was able to dodge and run him through. The man toppled to the ground close to his friend, and Nicholas fell down just a few moments later. He felt as if he were going to be sick, as if he was simultaneously too hot and too cold at once. He managed to hang on to his sword because it had been drilled into his mind since he was a boy.
You do not drop your sword. A fighting man is nothing without a sword. You must not lose it, no matter what...
As if he were in a daze, he raised his head to see Ava walking toward him. There was something at once beautiful and terrible about her, from the way she came to him with worry in her eyes to the way she moved so easily after killing a man.
A fighting man is nothing without a sword.. but what about a fighting woman?
“You look like you got kicked by a horse,” Ava said.
Nicholas shook his head.
“I'm fine. I'm fine.”
Ava looked at him more closely, and then she shook her head.
“You're not. Come on. Let's get you up on Cobie before you faint. I can't get you up there without your help. If you don't want to get dragged, come on.”
Getting dragged did sound rather terrible, so Nicholas allowed Ava to drag him up to the horse's side. He got mounted up with a minimal amount of issues, and then he blinked at her. He felt as if he were looking at her through a thick glass, as if she were certainly too far away to touch even though her hand was patting his knee comfortingly.
“Cobie? Is this horse's name Cobie?”
“It is now. I was tired of not being able to call him anything.”
That made sense. Nicholas nodded, and then he felt his eyes drift shut against the heat suffusing his body and the ache that seemed ready to utterly overcome him. He dug his fingers into the saddle to stay upright.
Ava made a worried sound with her tongue against her teeth.
“I'll only be a moment, and then we can... oh. Oh, well, that's a fantastic way to end the day, isn't it?”
The Highlander’s Promise (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book) Page 5