Haunting Warrior (30 page)

“Who are they?” Saraid asked, and her spoken words suddenly brought them back to their bodies, to the spongy soil beneath their feet. They were standing closer together, their breath mingling in the space between their lips, but that net of awareness was still cast, still filling with the sounds of the forest.

“Who were those men?”

Rory held a finger to his mouth and took her hand, the heat of the touch disorienting in the mind-world he’d entered. Quietly he led her in a new direction, tracking that stench of danger. Without another question, Saraid followed, instinctively stepping in his prints, avoiding the shifting hazards that spoke to him, and through him, to her, like a guide. Not even a twig snapped beneath their steps.

The men were far off, how far Rory didn’t realize at first. A part of him wondered at the impossibility of hearing them at such a distance while another part accepted it without issue.

Around him now the simmering emotions of the forest shifted and turned in his direction, following his progress like flowers follow the sun. The forest wanted him to find what had upset it. And if that wasn’t the craziest damn thought he’d ever had, he didn’t know what was. But it was true, nonetheless. He felt it in every bone in his body.

And there was more. Amidst his utter bewilderment there was strange joy, a mixture of intoxicating relief. It was insane and yet he embraced the new sense of this . . . this
other
world with something like guilty pleasure. The wash of emotions he shared with Saraid was sexual in its familiarity and it flowed beneath his skin, hot and silky, intimate and seductive. He knew she felt it, too—shared it, every nuance, every heated second.

They came to a point thick with gorse and broom shrubs, canopied by towering oaks and alders, yews and willows. The ground sloped sharply down to a shallow bowl and in it was a tiny clearing, barren of tree or bush, but surrounded by the earthen walls and wooded sentries. As if something here had prevented life from taking root and the forest had crowded up to its concave borders, trying to contain whatever malignance slept in the rocky earth. There was a large stone in the center of the ring and it gleamed black in the shrouded moonlight. From their vantage point above, they could see it all perfectly.

Saraid sucked in a silent but frightened breath, and Rory turned, meeting her eyes, asking the question without ever moving his lips.

“ ’Tis a Druid’s circle,” she murmured. “A place of sacrifice.” Rory had a vague notion of what this would mean to her, but it was the swelling fear of the forest that painted the true picture. In his mind, he saw the earth, rich, bountiful. Stained red with blood. Ancient fires burning at every edge of the wide circular clearing, taunting the dried foliage that crowded up to its rim with an errant lick and mocking spark. There were robed men—or women—the forest didn’t know and didn’t care. But those robed figures terrified every animal, every shoot and thistle, every quivering leaf.

A Druid’s circle was not just a landmark or place of interest. It was a shrine and a tomb and an execution chamber all in one.

There was only one fire burning now and the torch was held by a man dressed in a tunic and short pants, like Rory. No Druids. No robed men with scythes in their hands. They were soldiers, guards at least. His father’s men by their clothing, fearsome in their armory of shining chain mail over bright tunics.

Reluctantly Rory crouched behind a cluster of boulders with Saraid at his side. The powerful energy hovering around him withdrew just a bit, and he heard Saraid inhale deeply, as if it had taken that to allow her a breath of her own.

The group seemed to have stopped for more than a rest, and one man nurtured a flame from a small nest of dried twigs. As Rory watched, it caught and grew. With a grim smile, the man began to add to it until a small fire blazed bright in the darkness.

Rory began to back away, relieved that the men remained unaware of his and Saraid’s presence. They’d have the advantage of moving on while the men tarried. He drew even with Saraid, expecting her to follow, but she didn’t move. She seemed to be riveted to the spot, staring at the men like a mouse fixated on a swooping hawk.

He leaned close so he could see her face, but she didn’t look at him, didn’t turn away from the men standing in a half circle in front of the sparking fire. One of them kicked at a large bundle Rory hadn’t noticed on the ground at their feet. It looked like a rolled carpet, but it wiggled and gave a groan of pain.

The men gathered closer to watch the writhing shape on the ground. From the glow of the fire, Rory could make out the coarse sack with a drawstring on top. A braid of dark hair spilled from the top.

The largest of the men pulled out a long knife and cut the bag down one seam and then jerked the free edge, rolling the contents out into the rocky dirt. The squirming mass was tied at wrists and feet, gagged with a filthy rag. It was a boy, long boned with big hands and feet that didn’t fit his scrawny frame. His shoulders were narrow, his body wiry. His face was blotched, smeared with dirt and grime and streaked with tears. Even from the distance, Rory could see eyes red rimmed and blazing with rage. The men yanked him to his feet and his head barely reached the chin of the shortest of them. This made the other men laugh and jeer.

The boy was shouting something, but the gag garbled the words. Rory didn’t need to hear them to know they were curses and the kid was hurling them like weapons for all the good they would do him.

“Shut the fook up,” one of the men said and belted the kid in the gut. The blow took the wind out of him and bent him in half.

“Put him on the rock,” the man who’d punched the boy ordered. “And hold him still.”

He was a big man, full of muscle and mass, gone to fat around the middle but not soft. Rory could tell just by looking at him that he was so solid it might have been stone he wore packed there. With purpose he moved to the fire and squatted down, pulling a dagger from the scabbard at his waist. He held it out over the flame, watching it heat.

Beside Rory, Saraid gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. Whatever the big man had in mind, it wouldn’t be pretty, and Rory figured it was best they didn’t stay around for the show. He gripped Saraid’s arm and began to pull her back, away from the clearing. She whipped her head around, staring at him with shock.

“Go,” he mouthed at her.

She shook her head furiously and scrambled back to their vantage point. What was wrong with her? Didn’t she have the sense to see what the men were up to?

He moved closer. “What are you doing?” he breathed into her ear.

“ ’Tis Liam, my brother.”

Rory frowned. Her brother? He’d met her brothers at the wedding, and this kid wasn’t one of them. Then he remembered. They’d left one behind, just in case.

Saraid tore her gaze from the unfolding scene and said softly, “We have to help him.” Her eyes were wide with terror and tears, and she looked at him with hope and expectation that felt like a punch to the gut.

Hell.
What did she expect him to do? There were four of Cathán’s men, all of them armed to the teeth. Odds only an idiot would take. He’d done what he could for her other brothers, but they didn’t stand a chance of saving this kid. It would just be suicide.

He tried to pull her back, to tell her, make her understand, but she fought, as silent as she was determined, and squirmed free. She scurried to the next rock and then moved closer still to the next one.

Fuck!
There was nothing he could do but stare at her retreating back in disbelief. She was a lunatic, that’s what she was. And he’d be damned if he was going to let her crazy ass get him killed. But even as the angry words filled his head, he knew he couldn’t walk away—not from the kid and certainly not from Saraid.

He felt the forest gathering up around him as he hesitated, felt the sting of its disappointment and shook his head at the thought. It was ridiculous imagining emotions from trees. He glanced at Saraid, crouched a few feet in front of him. There was no way to sneak up on these men because the clearing was in a depression and the only way to get to them was to slip-slide down the dirt walls. But it looked like Saraid planned to do just that.

It would be suicide
, he thought, angry with himself for caring so much.

The whisper of a breeze through the leaves seemed to catch the thought and throw it at him.

No. She isn’t
, he tried to argue. But it was pointless. Now that he’d held her, kissed her, felt her heart beating next to his . . .

He cursed again as a wind came from nowhere and shuddered through the trees. In the next instant, Saraid was moving once more and he knew, stupid or not, he was going with her—but not the same way. The best chance they stood was if he circled around and came from behind.

Before he could inch forward to tell her, she darted farther away, and he knew there wasn’t time to chase her down and explain his plan to her. She’d think he left her when she saw him go, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Hoping it was the right thing to do, he circled in the opposite direction.

S
ARAID glanced back just as Ruairi disappeared in the trees. He’d left her.

For a moment, the pain of that froze her in place. He’d left her. After what they’d shared in the woods, after all they’d been through, she’d expected more. She’d begun to believe that he might truly be the man she’d hoped him to be. A man who deserved the growing admiration she’d begun to feel. A man to trust with other feelings, ones that ran too fast and fierce to scrutinize.

As she watched the leaves settle behind him, she saw what a fool she was. The hurt went deeper than disillusionment, hit her harder than disappointment. She felt it in her heart. How could that be? How had she let the Bloodletter come so close that he could touch her there?

She hadn’t, she corrected, unable to lie even to herself. She’d let Ruairi get that close, not the Bloodletter. She’d been hurt by Ruairi, the man she’d begun to think of as her husband.

Cursing the tears that stung her eyes, she peered through the brush at Liam as he struggled against four men—all of them at least twice his size. He was just twelve, still a boy, though he tried vainly to hide his fear. How had they found him? And where were her other brothers? What of them? The Druid’s circle was not far from the waterfall where they were to meet with her brothers. She scanned the distance, praying Tiarnan would come riding up to save Liam.

Saraid recognized the enormous man who’d struck Liam in the stomach. He was known as Scar-eye by her people because his favorite torture was to gouge out the eyes of his victims and leave their sockets as ragged holes that healed with horrid scars. Scar-eye was not likely to show mercy to her brother, no matter what his age, and the thought of Liam’s beautiful blue eyes being turned to bloody pulp was enough to send her screaming mad into the circle.

Scar-eye held his blade over the fire before pulling it out to study it for a moment. Apparently satisfied, he glanced at her brother and stood.

“No,” she whispered. In her fear she beseeched the gods and goddesses of the old ways, hoping they might still linger in this mystical place of the Druids.

A wind gusted across the clearing, pulled from a still night to whisk around the fire. It lifted sparks into the air and crackled the silence. Scar-eye jumped back to avoid being burned, but the brief show of the gods did not deter him. Saraid bit her lip to stop her cry from escaping, but she could not swallow the tears that welled in her eyes as she watched her youngest brother fight to keep his honor as Scar-eye stopped before him.

“Open his hand. The right one,” Scar- eye ordered, and while Liam struggled to keep a fist, the other men forced his fingers wide. With a cold smile, Scar- eye pressed the flat of the hot blade into Liam’s palm, holding it down while Liam screamed in agony, the gag still over his mouth only muffling the sound.

“Now the other,” he commanded. He gave Liam no chance to recover from the searing pain before he pressed that hot blade against his left palm.

“You’ll not be raising a weapon to me for some time, boy,” Scar- eye said, leaning in close. “And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you’ll not be seeing yer way home, either.”

Liam kept his eyes shut, his mouth clenched tight.

“I don’t want to hurt y’,” Scar-eye said, and it seemed that he meant it. “I don’t like killing children. But I’ll do it if I must.”

Scar-eye grabbed Liam’s face in a rough grip and removed the gag. Still, Liam said nothing.

“Y’ can tell me where the Book is and be on yer way, easy as that.” He paused, giving Liam a chance to respond. When the boy clamped his mouth shut, Scar-eye took a deep breath and shook his head. “If y’ don’t talk, young son of Bain, before I’m done with y’, yer hands will be dangling from my saddle for all to see. Y’ won’t be missing them because yer head will be hanging beside them to keep them company.”

The men behind Scar-eye laughed at that, and Liam—furious, terrified, stupid Liam—laughed as well. A long, harsh laugh that silenced Cathán’s men. Saraid’s heart swelled with pride at her young warrior even as she shuddered in fear. “
Do not provoke them
,” she mouthed to herself.

“Where is the Book?” Scar-eye said.

“Fook you.”

Scar-eye’s face turned a nasty shade of red. “Hold him up.”

The men pulled Liam to his feet, and Scar-eye smashed his fist into the boy’s face, pulled back, and hammered him again and again until Liam’s face was a bloody mess. Saraid covered her mouth with her hands to hold back her scream. She’d helped her stepmother raise Liam, stepped in as a surrogate when Liam’s mother had died. She loved him like he was her own.