Highlander Avenged (3 page)

He did as she asked while she pulled a rolled-up strip of linen from the bag and used it to secure the moss in place.

“You must come to the castle with me,” she said, rising and brushing sandy grit from her skirts. “You will need that arm seen to for a fortnight at least, maybe longer.”

“The castle? What castle would that be?” He tried not to smile as she watched him don his tunic. He also tried not to wince when he raised the arm she had just tended to slide it into a sleeve. He refused to let pain keep him from doing anything—well, anything but training with his claymore. His will, it turned out, was stronger than his arm, or his hand. But if she could heal his wound, finally, then it would not take long before he was back in fighting form. As he tucked his tunic back into his plaid, she seemed to realize she’d been staring and she pushed past him, out of the sheltered area and back out into the sunshine.

“Dunlairig Castle,” she said. “This is Ben Lairig.” She raised her hands to indicate the mountain they stood upon. “The valley that runs from its foot, west toward the sea, is Glen Lairig. This is the home of Clan MacAlpin of Dunlairig.”

“And you are?” he asked.

Her breath hitched as he stepped into the sunshine next to her.

“I am the one who will bring a warrior, trained to fight the English, to a clan who desperately needs one.”

“Why would your clan be fighting the English? I have heard that King Robert clashes with them in the south of late.”

She looked at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “Suffice it to say, they have attacked us once, and we expect they will attack again. Will you lend your experience to us, and your sword, in exchange for my care for your wound?”

“You say ’twill take a fortnight to heal my arm?”

“Aye, maybe more.”

He looked away and considered her request. Clearly he needed a healer’s care since neither the old man who had tended him after the battle and sheltered him through the winter, nor he himself, could keep the thing from festering again and again. But he would not promise more than he could deliver.

“I will gladly share whatever I can from my experience fighting the English, in payment for your healing care, but I cannot offer you my sword.” He held out his right hand and did his best to make a fist but his fingers would not obey his command. His hand closed only halfway, making it impossible to grasp the two-handed claymore.

She looked from his hand to his face and back, nodding a little.

“Then we shall have to work on your hand, too.”

He laughed at her confidence. “Aye, that we shall.”

“So we are in agreement?”

“There is one other thing,” he said. “My duty is to return to the king’s army as soon as I am able. When my arm is healed and I can once more wield my sword, I must take up that duty.”

“So you will help us until your arm is healed and strong enough to fight and I will do everything I can to make it so as quickly as possible. Are we in agreement now?”

“Aye, we are. Shall we seal our agreement with a kiss?” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her, charming a smile out of his angel.

She shook her head as if he were a naughty lad, then headed down the same trail he had taken to the spring. He quickly looped his travel sack over his shoulder, grabbed his claymore with his good hand, and hurried to catch up with her.

After they had been walking quickly down the ben for a while, he began to wonder how far the lass had come from her family all alone. He looked down the trail, hoping to catch sight of this castle she was taking him to but the trees crowded close, their thick leaves and the underbrush of holly and juniper obscuring any view beyond the next curve.

“Tell me about Dunlairig Castle, lass.” He caught up with her, walking by her side in spite of the narrow path. “How far away is it?”

“Not much farther.”

“What is the best thing about it?” he asked, hoping for something more than a terse reply.

“It still stands,” she said quickly. “Mostly.”

He laughed, well acquainted with the never-ending maintenance required for castles of any size. The Highlands themselves seemed to lay siege to any structure men had the temerity to build.

As they reached the bend in the path where it curved around a huge lichen-dappled boulder, the sharp snap of a branch had him reaching for his companion, even though he could not grasp her arm as she had his earlier.

“Wheesht!” he whispered when she started to complain. “Stay here.” He merely mouthed the words but she nodded once to show she understood. He handed her his claymore, as it was more of a hindrance than a help right now, then motioned for her to move into the thicker brush of the forest as he drew his dirk, a long thin dagger, crept up to the boulder, and peered around it.

Hellfire and damnation!

There, just stepping out of the wood to stand in the middle of the path, looking directly at him, was an English soldier, his sword drawn and a grin slashed across his face.

CHAPTER TWO

L
ONG HABIT HAD
Malcolm reaching for his claymore, but the sharp pain of his wound speared up into his shoulder and stopped him just as he remembered that he had given his sword to the woman.

“Who are you, ye feckin’ bastard?” The English soldier scowled at him and waved his scrawny weapon around as if he knew what to do with it. The soldier glanced all around. “Where’d the bitch get to?”

“I saw a lady, but no bitch,” Malcolm said, correcting the man, earning himself another scowl. He dared not look behind him, but he hoped his angel had slipped off the path and into the wood. If she was smart, she would be on her way down the ben to her castle. At least there she might be safe if he could not best this man. His task now was simple: he needed to kill this soldier, as he’d killed so many before. He missed the weight of his claymore in his hands but he’d make do.

“ ’Tis a poor excuse for a sword, you have,” Malcolm said. He grinned at the soldier as he slid his dirk back into its sheath, then flipped a branch up from the ground with his foot, deftly catching it in his left hand. It wasn’t his claymore. It wasn’t even the cheap sword the soldier had, but it was better than his dirk, if only because his reach with the branch was longer than the soldier’s with his sword.

The soldier smiled broadly, showing a dark gap where his two front teeth should have been. “ ’Tis better than yours.” Gaptooth advanced up the path toward Malcolm, the light of victory already gleaming in his eyes.

Malcolm judged his position: The large boulder on his left would block the swing of the soldier’s sword. He took half a step backward to give himself more coverage from the boulder, then held the branch as if he planned to swing it like a sword, though his right hand upon it was all show and no grip.

“You think you can best me?” Malcolm taunted the soldier. “Malcolm of MacKenzie, son of the greatest chieftain in the Highlands and favored warrior of King Robert of Scotland? I have killed a score of your lot single-handedly”—the irony of his words was not lost on him—“on a bad day, more on a good one.” He knew his boasting would bring the man closer and raise his ire. An angry man was not a good fighter.

“Aye. I know it for a fact.”

The man advanced slowly as if he toyed with his prey, his confidence lending him a smug air. Malcolm waited, holding his position, conserving his strength.

Another step, two steps, and the soldier was in Malcolm’s range. He lunged for Malcolm, his sword work hindered by the boulder. Malcolm swiftly shifted the branch in his good hand and, using its greater length, shoved the broken end of it into the man’s unguarded belly like a pike.

The soldier staggered back just as Malcolm’s angel erupted from the wood behind the man, screeching like a banshee, Malcolm’s claymore in her grip, but upside down so that she held the sheathed blade. The soldier swung around to face his new assailant and the woman swung the sword like a war hammer, hitting him solidly on the side of his head with the thick pommel. Gaptooth grunted and crumpled onto his side, his sword clattering to the ground at the same time.

“I am so sick of smug Englishmen thinking they can best a Highlander,” she said.

Blood gathered on the soldier’s temple before spilling down his face to puddle on the ground. Malcolm approached the woman slowly, not wanting to startle her into swinging the heavy pommel at
his
head.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

Malcolm tossed the soldier’s sword out of the man’s reach in case he wasn’t, then turned him over and listened for his breath.

Malcolm smiled up at his boon companion. “Nay, lass, he is not, but I doubt he’ll come around anytime soon.”

Consternation clouded her face. “I meant to kill him.”

“You did?” he said, surprised by her reaction. “Why did you not swing with the blade if you wished him dead?”

As if she just realized what she had said, her face went white and she shuddered. She shoved the claymore toward Malcolm and he took it from her, laying it next to Gaptooth’s sword.

“Lass? Are you well?”

She shook her head slowly, side to side, staring at the unconscious man as she put more distance between herself and him. “I have never wished to kill anyone before.”

“I can believe that. ’Tis not something healers are wont to do.”

“Aye, ’tis not, unless they have been driven to it by dire circumstances.” She looked at him then and the rosy glow of righteous anger, mixed with a sadness that weighed heavily in her eyes, replaced her pallor. She squared her shoulders as if remembering who and what she was. “Still, I would have him alive so he could be questioned.”

“Better to have him dead.” Malcolm rose to his feet and grabbed the man’s much lighter sword, surprised at how heavy it felt, despite its inferior size and quality. He had lost more strength over the long winter than he had realized. It did not matter. It did not take control to drive a blade into an unconscious man’s chest. “I doubt he will tell us anything, even if he were to awaken. Better to end him now.” He placed the tip of the sword over the man’s heart, just where it would slide between the ribs.

“Nay!” The woman leapt up and wrapped her hands around his that gripped the pommel, pulling him away from their captive. “Any information about the English’s plans for us, even something small and seemingly inconsequential, might be the key to divining our best defense against them. We need to get him back to the castle.”

She knelt beside Gaptooth and began going through the leather sacks that hung from his belt just as Malcolm heard something . . . voices.

“We must go, angel,” he said very quietly. “Others approach.”

“English?”

“I cannot say, but we will not wait to find out. Leave him.” He handed her the soldier’s sword, picked up his claymore, and urged her off the trail and into the deeper shadows of the wood.

“We should stay close and discover who else is trespassing on MacAlpin territory this day,” she whispered to him when they were out of sight of the trail.

“Nay, we need to get to the safety of your castle as quickly as possible.”

T
HE SHAKING SNUCK
up on Jeanette as she and Malcolm made their way down the thickly wooded ben. First her hands began to tremble, and then it seemed her whole body was racked by trembling as if she shivered from a fever.

But ’twas no fever that took hold of her.

The fury that had gripped her when she had seen the English man standing there sneering at Malcolm, and calling her a foul name, had blinded her to anything but making the man shut his mouth. She had not so much as thought about what she was doing beyond choosing which way to hold the claymore. She had wanted to hurt the man, to take his life, just as the English had hurt her family.

Now, as the fury subsided, the danger of the situation, the folly of her actions, took hold of her thoughts. She gave thanks that she had only injured the man, not taken his life, though honestly she could not say if she would regret it if she had. Perhaps she was more like her impulsive sister than she believed. Nay, Jeanette was not a prisoner of her emotions, as Scotia was. Jeanette was the thoughtful sister, studying all sides of a thing before reacting to it.

But not this day. She had sought calm and instead she had helped a strange man because her instincts told her he was no danger to her. This day she had attacked an English soldier because she was angry at his king. This day she had acted from her grieving, angry heart, not from her head, and she did not understand why.

She did know she was lucky, that no harm had come to her or her companion from her rash actions . . . so far. It did not appear that they had been followed by whomever Malcolm had heard, but they still had to get back to the castle and warn her family that the English were back. At least one of them was.

But she could see that Malcolm was nearing the end of his strength, and it would take them longer to return home through the wood than by the trail. Though he was not admitting such to her, he had started to stumble over tree roots and let his arm hang, weighed down by the claymore, rather than holding it more closely to his body to keep it from damage or tangling in the wood. His right sleeve showed speckles of blood where her dressing should have protected his wound.

Jeanette knew a burn ran down the mountainside not far in front of them. If the man’s pride, or stubbornness—she didn’t know him well enough yet to judge which—kept him from admitting he needed to rest, she was not so encumbered.

“I
AM THIRSTY
,” Malcolm’s companion said from behind him, her voice still wisely quiet, but it held a tremor he had not heard before. He stopped to let her catch up with him. “There is a burn not far ahead. ’Twill not delay us long to quench our thirst,” she said. She looked pointedly at his injured arm. “ ’Twould appear I need to re-dress your wound, as well.”

“ ’Tis a good idea,” he said. The idea of sitting for even a few minutes, and slaking a thirst he had not been aware of, sounded like a reprieve from the lethargy that was quickly overtaking him. “Why do you not lead the way?” He motioned for her to pass, giving him the opportunity to see if she was as fatigued as he.

She clearly wasn’t fatigued as she strode by him. She was pale, though, even for her, and her hands trembled. He recognized the signs of the shock of battle settling over her. He had seen it many times with lads after their first battle was finished and the surge of battle lust subsided, leaving trembling limbs and queasy stomachs in its wake. She was a brave one, this lass whose name he had yet to learn. Strong, steady, and the look in her eye when she had felled the soldier was no less satisfied than any warrior’s he had seen taking down a foe. Until she’d realized what she’d done.

It was clearly not in her nature to hurt anyone, yet she seemed to feel no remorse over felling the English soldier. There was much to this woman he did not understand and he found that remarkably intriguing.

Before long they came to the burn, which was still rushing with spring runoff between steep banks. His companion looked at him, then back at the burn and sighed.

“If we follow it down a little ways, it comes to a clearing where the banks are much more gentle,” she said, and she headed almost straight down the ben now, following the burn so quickly it was as if she raced it.

Malcolm had to push himself even harder to keep up, losing sight of her in the thick foliage now and then, until he almost ran her over when she stopped suddenly.

“Angel, what is wrong?” he whispered near her ear.

She was standing statue still, her breath hitching as if she could not draw air into her lungs, still trembling like a leaf in a summer gale. A beautiful clearing opened up before them, the burn running strong on his left, but with a bank so gentle, he knew the clearing must flood at times. When he glanced at her again, her eyes were fixed upon a set of three large boulders to her right and her blue eyes were filled with a misery he did not understand. Was she suddenly taken with remorse over the soldier?

He touched her shoulder lightly, earning him a startled look as if she had forgotten he was there.

“What troubles you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.” She walked into the clearing, knelt beside the burn, then began to wash her hands, using the coarse sand she found along the edge of the water to scrub them clean. Malcolm looked at his own hands and discovered they were blood-splattered and dirty from their scuffle with the English soldier. He joined her at the burn, scrubbing as best he could with a hand that did not function well. Each movement pulled at his wound, making it ache even more. He clenched his teeth and finished washing, determined, as always, not to let the wound get the better of him.

When he was done, the woman pulled her cup out of the fold of her arisaid and filled it with the crisp clear water, and offered it to Malcolm without a word.

“I thank you,” he said, letting his fingers brush hers as he lifted the cup from her hand, hoping, as his touch had done a moment ago, the contact would pull her out of whatever evil thoughts held her hostage. He drank deeply, then rinsed the cup out, refilled it, and handed it back to her. She took it and drank, but the haunted look in her eyes did not fade, though the trembling had mostly subsided.