Warrior Untamed (7 page)

He remained where he was, his cheeks drained white from his exertion. “I found Mathew. Seems he’s joined company with another young man. One of rather ill repute, I fear. And as to what’s happened to me . . .” He glanced to the small cut on his shoulder, pulling aside the cloth of his tunic to inspect the wound. “The Sword of the Ancients has happened to me.”

“Mathew did this to you? He attacked you?” She could not bring herself to imagine sweet, gentle Mathew harming Halldor—or anyone else for that matter.

“I don’t believe it was his intention. I think he meant to help me fight these men, but the sword was more than he could control.”

Brie leaned into Hall, brushing aside his hand so that she could better see the wound for herself. It was small, but it appeared red and swollen, as if infection had already set in.

“We need to do something with this. I dinna think I’ve seen a wound go bad so quickly. And never in one so insignificant as this.”

Halldor leaned back against the tree, allowing his eyes to close for a moment. “A wound from the Sword of the Ancients is hardly insignificant. It’s fatal. It’s betony and yarrow I need now. Agrimony and vervain. Perhaps even a pinch or two of joy-of-the ground.”

“Herbs?” Brie choked out, Halldor’s calm pronouncement ringing in her ears.

He had to be wrong. She wouldn’t accept his having been struck with a fatal blow, not even from a weapon as mysterious as the Sword of the Ancients.

There had to be something she could do to slow the progress of whatever evil the sword had left upon his body.

“Honey smeared over the opening would do more good than yer weeds. If only we weren’t caught in the dead of winter, I might find an active hive.”

“If we weren’t caught in the dead of winter, I’d have my herbs.”

Wishing for the impossible wasn’t going to do a bit of good, so she’d have to make do with what she carried in her provisions. She might not have honey, but she did have the next best thing.

Brie hurried over to her horse and dug through her pack of supplies to find the flask she sought. Returning to Hall’s side, she pulled out the stopper and poured a bit of the contents onto his wound.

His eyes flew open and he jerked away from her, sniffing the air. “Mead? I’d be better off to have that inside my body rather than poured upon it. At least drinking it might afford me some relief.”

“Honey ale,” she corrected, turning her concentration to his shoulder.

With her tongue pressed against her teeth, she made a
tsk
ing noise, and pressed a tentative finger to the wound. The opening seemed to sizzle as if she’d poured the ale into a hot pan.

One thing was clear to her.

“This is beyond my abilities.” She waited for his sarcastic response, but none came. Apparently he agreed. “We need to get you back to Castle MacGahan.”

“Eventually,” he said, pushing away from the tree to stand on his own two feet for the first time. “But first we need to see if our young friend left anything behind. Ah, I see he’s abandoned his fine, fine steed.”

Hall’s strength might be returning but his good sense had taken its leave. Brie shook her head as Halldor slowly made his way across the opening to the worst example of horseflesh she’d ever seen. Not even old Cook would be seen on such a pitiful excuse for a horse.

Halldor unlaced the bag tied to the saddle and
poked around inside, turning a worried frown in her direction as she reached his side.

“The sword and the scrolls have escaped our grasp, but not the jewels. All the jewels are here, save for the one I already carry.”

That was excellent news, but to look at the big man next to her, she’d never have guessed it. “I’d think you’d be happy to retrieve at least part of what you set out to find.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “The jewels serve as a guard upon the sword and the scrolls. A barrier to control their power, like guards around a prison. Without the jewels, there’s no telling what mischief their evil can cause.”

Explanation enough for his frown.

He reached for the palfrey’s reins and headed toward his own mount, stumbling halfway there.

Brie was at his side in an instant, dipping her shoulder once again under his arm, ignoring him when he tried to push her away.

“There’s no dishonor in accepting assistance from an ally.”

A trace of his earlier smile reappeared when he looked down at her, bringing with it the odd tightening in her chest.

“Wise words, little one,” he said at last. “I’ll try to remember them. I’d be grateful for your assistance so that we might be on our way.”

“Good.” This new, reasonable O’Donar was quite the surprise. “Yer sure you can ride?”

“I can ride. We’ve wasted more than enough time here.”

They had indeed. She needed to get him home, where someone could deal with his baffling injury.

He swung up into his saddle with only one short pause and urged his horse onto the trail, heading west.

“Hold on,” Brie called as she finished tying the lead for Mathew’s horse behind hers and mounted. “Where do you think yer going? MacGahan lies in the other direction.”

“Mathew is on foot. If we put ourselves to it and scour the woods, we can catch up with him. Maybe even before nightfall.”

The old O’Donar had returned. Stubborn, stubborn man.

Brie grabbed his reins as she reached his side, pulling them from his hands. That, as much as anything, convinced her that his strength had not really returned. And if that tiny cut on his shoulder could rob a man such as Halldor O’Donar of his strength, she could only imagine what else it might do to him if they didn’t seek the help of a healer. His prediction of
fatal
could well be accurate.

“There are men from MacGahan on the trail as we speak, headed to this very spot. We’ll no doubt cross their path as we return.”

“We aren’t going to—”

“Do you remember saying to me that I should try, for once, to do as I was told without a blighted argument?
Well, I’d give that same advice to you now. Yer in no shape to win such an argument. Not with me or anyone else.” Brie tugged on the reins she held to emphasize her point. “Besides, what good would it do you to reach Mathew and the weapon if you’ve got no strength to take it from him? We need to get you back home. To get you to a healer.”

She knew she’d won when his shoulders slumped and he stared into the distance.

“As you say,” he sighed. “I cannot fight you on this. But I suspect there’s none that can heal what ails me.”

Brie handed back his reins and pulled her horse up next to his, refusing to accept what he said. By the Seven, she would not give up on him so easily.

T
HEY RODE IN
the wrong direction.

It hung in Hall’s craw, gnawing at his guts like a diseased worm. He’d been so close. He could have taken the sword from boy but he’d chosen to protect him first, planning to reason with him after. His failure lay bitter in his mouth.

“Bah!”

“What’s that you say?”

Bridget pulled her horse closer to his and reached out a hand to brush his forehead with her fingertips. He ducked away, too slow in his movements to effectively avoid her touch.

He needed to think clearly and her touch had the uncomfortable effect of muddling his thoughts.

“Move away from me if you like, but it does yer argument no good. I can see the fever in the color of your face.”

As if he needed her to tell him he had a fever. The burn spread out from his arm to consume his whole body, like a dry forest under siege of wildfire.

“We should have stayed on the sword’s trail,” he muttered, knowing she would hear and take the bait. Anything to distract her from her constant hovering. He could deal with her irritation; it was this tender worry that drove him to distraction.

“There’s no point in yer wasting yer breath on it, O’Donar. That discussion ended miles back down the road.”

“I’d reopen it, then. I’m feeling better now.”

A truth, more or less. Though he had little hope of recovery, he did feel much stronger than he had immediately after his injury.

“Oh, of course you are.” As if sarcasm hadn’t hung heavily enough in her tone, her accompanying snort clearly carried her opinion. “If yer so much better, then answer me this. Why is it that yer clearly burning with the fever? The way you felt to my touch, we’ll no even need to build ourselves a fire this night. We’ll just heat our meal by holding it close to yer skin.”

The chuckle rumbled up from deep in his chest and out into the open, beyond his ability to stop it. Damn, but the woman lightened his spirit, even when she was angry.

“You think any of this is funny? This is
not
funny. It’s damned deadly serious.”

Perhaps most of all when she was angry.

“You’re correct. Our situation is no laughing matter.” He allowed a moment to pass before he circled back to the conversation she wouldn’t like. “But neither can we continue to ignore that which is most important. We must have the sword and the scrolls. We cannot allow them to fall into the wrong hands. And while we bicker, they travel farther away from us with each step we take.”

She shook her head, stubbornly refusing to look over at him. “No. I’ll hear none of it. Any moment now, we’ll cross paths with Patrick and Jamesy and all the others. We’ll tell them what happened and they can go after the sword. We’ve a more important challenge ahead of us. You put yer mind to yer healing.”

The men from Castle MacGahan were not nearly so close as Bridget hoped. He’d been listening for them to no avail for quite some time. Them and the other party of riders Torquil had sent out.

“By the time they could reach the sword, it might well be too late.” He breathed deeply before forcing himself to confess his darkest distress. “How can I make you understand, Bridget? I need to go after it myself. It was within my reach and I let it escape me. How am I to go forward, knowing that?”

Beside him, Bridget jerked on her reins, stopping her horse to turn a powerful glare in his direction.

“You go forward exactly as I have. Do you think yer the only one to carry regrets on yer shoulders? I not only allowed the sword to slip through my fingers, I missed the opportunity to kill the Beast who owns it. Twice.”

“That’s different.” She’d had no way of knowing what the sword—or Torquil, for that matter—was capable of. And when she’d tried to kill him, she’d very nearly ended up dead herself.

“
Different?
And exactly how is my failure any different from yers?” she ranted, holding up a hand to silence him before he could answer, anger flashing in her eyes. “No. Dinna you even bother to answer that. I’ll hear no more from that bucket of cold slop you men are determined to serve me.”

She’d completely misunderstood him, but there was no reining her in now.

“Here’s the way I see our predicament, O’Donar. We could turn around and follow the sword and wait for you to die along the way. But since I’m no willing to drag yer sorry dead arse back to Castle MacGahan, that’s no going to happen. So that leaves us with only two viable choices. We can continue in this direction and hope to find help before you keel over, or I can go after the sword and you can continue on without me. You choose.”

Let her go back to confront Mathew and the inevitable reinforcements Torquil would send to reclaim the weapon? Never. The fact that she was right made his options no less bitter to swallow.

“Presented as such, I can see I have no choice at all.”

“And about damned time you realized that, too.”

With a jerk to her reins, Bridget set her animal in motion and he followed suit. His only hope lay in a small band of men supposedly heading in their direction.

He tilted his head, straining to hear far into the distance, praying that if he did hear riders it would be the men from MacGahan, and not those Torquil had sent.

There was no band of riders within his hearing, but something else lay ahead of them. A familiar tinkling sound he recognized immediately.

By Hela! Even approaching his end, he couldn’t escape the damned Fae.

A
ARGH
!”

Torquil covered his eyes and stumbled away from the fireplace, gasping for air. There were few things he disliked more than being in a mortal’s psyche at the moment of death. It was a disorienting jolt like no other.

“So close,” he moaned, sagging into the nearest chair.

His sword had been there in the clearing, almost within his reach. He’d seen it with his own two eyes. Rather, he’d seen it through the guardsman’s eyes.

The scrolls must have been there, too. If not for the big warrior, he would have had them all.

There was something familiar about the big man, as if he’d seen him before. No doubt he and Torquil had crossed paths at some point before Fenrir had taken full control of this body’s consciousness.

What had happened to his foolish guardsman, anyway? He’d watched through the man’s eyes as his companions had been cut down. He’d seen the big warrior drop to his knees and the youth wielding
his sword run away. He’d felt his guardsman’s gleeful anticipation as the fool prepared to take the big man’s head.

And then, without warning, a blinding flash of light and intense pain, followed by the all-consuming darkness of death, had driven him from the man’s mind.

Foolish, careless mortal. He had allowed himself to be so consumed by his own plans, he’d forgotten to watch for what others might be planning.

Torquil sighed, rubbing his fingers against his eyes to clear his vision. He had long known these pathetic beings were incompetent. It was for that reason he had sent more than one hunting party.

As soon as this weak body he inhabited recovered from the experience, he would seek out one of the others. It was the only way for him to direct their progress in securing the treasures. Without them, and the jewels to control them, his freedom, his very existence, was in danger.

S
OMEONE
’
S COMING
!”