The Highlander's Triumph (15 page)

H
is mother was strong on the inside for being able to take his father’s abuse, but Brandon often questioned why she allowed it to continue, why she never ran away. ’Haps her own mother, his grandmother, had instructed her much the same as Mariana’s mother. Or maybe it had been because she had no other choice, no place to go. And then, he’d also blamed himself. She stayed to protect him from much the same abuse. Rage against his father boiled anew.

If only he’d understood more, had insisted his mother run away, to her family, the church
, anywhere. Compelled her to believe there was always a choice better than being abused. He’d have protected her. He’d have stood up to his father and forced the man to let her be. But he hadn’t. The few times he had stood between his mother and father, the beatings had been severe, leaving Brandon bloody and swollen, and his mother had paid for it brutally. She’d come to Brandon, insisted he stop, that it only enraged his sire more.

Brandon
obeyed his mother, not wanting her to suffer more than she already had.

“I know
a woman’s duties well enough,” he finally answered, his mouth turned down as a bitter taste coated his tongue.

Mar
iana gave him a quizzical look, her lips parted to ask him a question when a whistle from ahead sent a cold shiver of dread down Brandon’s spine. ’Twas not Wallace’s call for speed—but something worse. The men all slowed their horses. He gripped the claymore at his back and pulled it free, the metallic zing as he did so a welcome echo.

“Stay close to me,” he said to her, reaching with his free hand to grasp her reins and pull her mount tight against his.

Their legs brushed, sending a frisson of desire straight to his groin, but he willed his cock to tame. Now was not the time to be thinking with his ballocks instead of his brain.

Mariana
’s gaze focused on the road ahead, her hand squeezed his. “I will.”

A retainer near the front turned and rode back toward Brandon.
As he approached, Brandon recognized him as Luke, one of Wallace’s squires. The man stopped beside him, leaned over and said in low tones, “Wallace believes we are being followed.”

Brandon’s jaw muscle ticked. He drowned out the sounds of the horses and men and hone
d in on the surrounding area. ’Twas hard to tell if anything were out of place. He’d been so focused on Mariana, he’d not been paying attention. Yet another reason they were bad for each other. He trusted Wallace’s instincts, and if he had to stake his life on it, he was certain of who they were being followed by.

“Ross,” he said.

“Aye. No English could be so silent.”

Brandon agreed. Only a
Highlander knew these woods well enough to keep quiet and stalk a hundred ambitious warriors.

“What are Wallace’s instructions?” Brandon asked.

“He’s sending out scouts now. We are to await their return.”

Brandon nodded and grinned
, his stomach growling. “I’d enjoy nothing more than taking Ross out before I break my fast.”

Chapter Fifteen

F
rom the corner of her eye, Mariana spied an arrow whizzing toward her. It’s point slicing through the air straight for her face.

“
Mon dieu
!”

She ducked just in time, the tip
riffling the hair just above her ear before skimming a stinging path on her cheek and finally sinking into the neck of her mount.

Shrieking, she
jolted backward as the horse reared up, whinnying its own scream.

Everything happened at once.

Brandon’s battle cry pierced the air. His leg brushed over hers. Hand pulled free of her grip. His cry was followed by dozens of others, and answered by men who poured from the trees. A nightmare come to life. Dressed in Highland garb, plaids of various colors, these were no English soldiers, but Scotsmen attacking Scotsmen.

Clashes of metal
echoed in the early morning, sparks flashing with each ensuing clang. The hazy gray of predawn was replaced by the orange glow of the rising sun. Shadows danced like fire through the budding trees.

Wallace had been right. They were being followed, and Brandon was dead on. Ross walked from the trees, surveying the chaos around him. She’d recognize him anywhere. Long grey hair, greasy and unkempt. Weathered skin, wrinkled and sallow. Belly round from too much whisky and ale.

His pale eyes locked with hers and a cruel smile curved his lips. She’d known the man was evil when she met him for the first time in Kinterloch. The way he’d laughed and kicked at the servants. How she’d heard a woman’s screams from his chamber later that night. At the time, Mariana even planned to return to King Edward to tell him, when she overheard Ross explaining Edward’s plans to burn the village and its people, in an effort to lure Wallace from his camp.

Edward had always been harsh himself, but he didn’t necessarily like his vassals to be brutal without his explicit directive.
A man who took it upon himself to act as God, often forgot his place as servant to the king. Edward’s chosen hound would turn on him at any given moment, biting the hand that fed him.

Mariana gripped tight to her mount’s reins, her thighs clenched around the animal as she felt herself being pulled backward
, Ross no longer in her sights. Turmoil ran rampant all around her. Wallace’s crew fought fiercely against those who’d ambushed them. ’Twas hard to tell who was a friend and who was foe. Looked only like Highlander against Highlander.

She
scanned frantically about for Brandon as the horse pounded back to earth, only to rise up again, her view of the morning sky clear. He’d been beside her to the right, and she saw that he still was, surrounded by at least four men who sought to take him down from Checkmate.

She watched for only a second as he sliced through one man, blood spraying from the cut in
his foe’s skull, before her mount once more reared, his forelegs curling and pawing at the sun-kissed morning. Oddly tranquil in this brutal battle.

Blood trickled from the horse’s wound.
The arrow still protruding six inches below his ear.

“Steady,” she called, her voice wavering. The animal could sense her fear as her limbs trembled, only exacerbating its
terror.

Even a warhorse would react when wounded
, but this was no warhorse and so the wound, the battle, her fear, was only making matters worse. She had to calm the animal.

Swiping at a tickle on her cheek, she noted blood
on her knuckles. Just a scratch, she told herself. Nothing more.

Mariana grappled with the reins, taking them into one hand and somehow manag
ed to grasp the arrow. Warm blood on the cool shaft, made it hard to grip. She tried to yank it out, her hand sliding up over the feathered fletching. Cursing under her breath she tried again, but the scared animal reared again, and having only one hand on the reins, she slipped back further on the animal’s haunches. He pounded his forelegs back to the ground and she nearly went over his neck. Her thighs burned from clenching tight.

At last she found a good grip on the arrow, and yanked it from the animal’s neck. He whinnied in pain again, and this time when he reared up, she was ready, though her body protested every clamped muscle. B
ut, Mariana mastered the animal, just as she did back in France on her family’s land. She could break even the most ornery of stallions.

A skill she prided herself on, but not one she often shared.

“
Aller, maintenant!
Go, now!” she shouted.

The horse flared his nostrils, snorted, but beneath her, his muscles bunched tight before he bolted through the throng of battling warriors.

Through the drowning noise, she thought she heard her name called. Then louder still. She turned around, looking to see if it was Brandon, wanting to give him a signal that she was headed for safety, but that brief moment proved to be her undoing.

She caught sight of Brandon, his face c
ontorted into a ferocious frown as he ran toward her. Frozen in fear, she watched his approach. A second arrow hissed past her face slamming into the other side of her horse’s neck. The horse bucked, reared, unsettling her first forward and then backward. The animal lurched onward, and Mariana jostled in the saddle, the reins sliding through her fingers and over the horse’s neck.

Arms flailing out, her fingers slid
ing into the horse’s mane, she tried to find purchase, but the animal was too bouncy, and all her work to calm him didn’t seem to help. They’d already gone too far. Too much fear filled his blood.

Mariana clung to the wounded animal, but the blood flowing from both sides of his neck and his frantic movements,
impeded her grip. Her hands and arms slipped with each frantic attempt to hold on. There was no stable anchor. Her thighs screamed in protest. She yanked her feet from the stirrups and hooked them under the pit meeting the horse’s forelegs and belly, trying somehow to maintain her seat before she was tossed into the midst of the battle.

“Mariana!”
Brandon’s bellow sent a chill through her, settling in her gut.

“Brandon.” She tried to call loudly, but her voice came out in a gasp as she clung to her horse. “Steady,
mon garcon
,” she crooned.

Beneath her bloody fingertips, the horse’s withers shivered. The animal tried valiantly to remain calm but the chaos of their surroundings
and his pain continued to destroy his reserve.

All around her men fought for their lives, fought to gain control of one another, and someone, whoever was behind the bow that had now shot her horse twice, wanted her dead. If she fell now, she would likely die. Trampled by the horse, or crushed under the feet and swords of those who fought.

Mariana lurched forward once more as her mount leaped over fallen bodies. This time, when her arms slid around his bloody neck, she laced her fingers together and held on for dear life.

Searing pain wrenched through her arm
, the backlash of someone’s sword. A scream tore through her throat, and it was only after that she realized she’d called out for Brandon.

Her horse stumbled,
on what she couldn’t see as her eyes had become hazy with tears of pain. Could have been that animal was simply succumbing to his injuries, maybe even shot again by whoever wanted to see her taken down.

When her horse stumbled again, the pain tearing up and down her arm made her fingers tingle with numbness and try as she mi
ght, she could no longer hold on. But it didn’t seem to matter as the horse pitched forward.

“Mariana, fall backward.”
Brandon’s voice cut through the fog of her fear.

She shook her head. Wrenched around to see where Brandon was.
Wanted to hold her arms out to him, to have him catch her from falling for the second time since they’d met. But he wasn’t there, and she couldn’t see him. And she was falling, but she landed hard on the ground, screaming as her arm bent in the wrong direction. The resounding pop sent shivers up her spine, and made her stomach churn, bile rising up her throat. The ground was cold, wet and vibrated beneath her.

The mount fell hard beside her, his breath puffed
violently against her cheek. A whispered prayer of thanksgiving that he hadn’t landed on her tumbled from her mouth. She blinked away her tears, meeting the poor animal’s eyes. Pain was etched in their depths.

“Hush,” she crooned, soothing herself as she calmed him.

Mariana reached her uninjured arm toward the animal, brushing her fingers over his velvet soft muzzle. His hot breath puffed onto her palm.

Suddenly, she was wrenched into the air, and another scream pulled from her throat.
A hard arm circled around her belly, fingers digging uncomfortably into her ribs. Her mount took a last breath, his eyes glassing over as she was slammed, belly down, onto someone’s lap upon another horse. The man forced her face down toward the ground, his leg covered in blood smearing onto her cheek. The scent of death filling her senses. She grew dizzy as he lurched forward, jostling her. Her arm throbbed, pinned to his smelly, loathsome body.

Mariana was able to peer to the left only enough to see the horse’s hind legs working as it ran. Beyond the moving
ground she saw a pair of familiar boots running toward her, her name shouted on the wind.

“Brandon,” she whimpered.

“The king’s been wondering where ye were, bitch,” said her captor.

Mariana swallowed back her pain and fear. Just as she had the ability to calm a horse, there was always the chance she could charm a man into keeping her safe. The only thing was
, she was not entirely certain whether the man who held her now had been the one shooting at her, and who had ordered her killed. The sour knot in her belly, had fear swelling thick inside her.

If Longshanks wanted her punished, it would not be a pleasant experience.

Her captor kicked his horse hard, his spurs digging into the animals flank and drawing dots of blood against his chestnut fur. Mariana closed her eyes against the horse’s pain and her own. There was no escaping this man’s hold. The best she could do now was rest, and gather her strength for what was to come, for it would certainly not be enjoyable.

“Bastard!”
Brandon bellowed. “Stop! Put her down!”

His feet pounded into the ground as he ran after Mariana. Ross had scooped her up from the ground like she was no
heavier than the arrows that felled her horse. His heart felt like it had stopped beating, and he ran until he could no longer breathe. Until Mariana and Ross were no longer in sight.

A whistle sounded, not a signal Brandon recognized. When he turned back toward the fray, Ross’ men were retreating back into the forest, leaving in their path a ho
rde of angry warriors, blood soaked earth and no Mariana.

“Brandon.” Wallace raised his hand as he approached.
The man was covered in blood and muck, his breathing as labored as Brandon’s.

“Wallace, I have to go after her.” He s
hoved his sword into the ground, put his hands on his hips, forcing himself to regain his breath. “I canna…”

“’T
is all going according to plan.” Wallace seemed convinced.