Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
T he sound of Freya’s frightened scream might have been the most terrifying thing Nathan had ever heard in his entire life. It wasn’t that either of the men who were presently fighting with him were talented, or even spectacularly difficult but they were persistent. It was clearly the fuel of their own indignant irritation that was making them seem more tenacious than they actually were.
There were too many limbs in too many places, in what should have been a much faster fight than it was turning out to be. Nathan grit his teeth, his muscles taking over. Flashes of training as a child started to surface, causing a pounding in his head, a throbbing right behind his eye that was making seeing things clearly rather difficult. Every time he dodged one of their swords, the pain surfaced again like a hammer to the back of his skull.
Still, he moved.
Whoever he had been before, had clearly trained extensively in hand-to-hand combat. It suited him very well right then, and while he managed to catch more than one fist to the gut, they weren’t strong enough to hurt too badly. He dodged a knife, and managed to catch one of them in the jaw, hard enough that Nathan felt the crack before the man fell down to the ground and didn’t come back up again.
All he knew was that he had to get to Freya. He just had to make his way over to her to get that man away from her. He couldn’t allow anything to happen to her.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear screaming. It had nothing to do with what was happening right in front of them. It had nothing to do with the fight but rather with the memory of him in a field, surrounded by other soldiers. He could feel the memory more than he could see it. It almost felt like he was looking at somebody else. Like he was seeing a ghost, or witnessing a play. The memory hammered against his head, hard and fast, and then it was gone just as quickly.
Something cut his hand, making him groan in pain, and making a fist was more difficult now. He could still hold his dirk, and that was all that mattered. With his teeth grit together, he turned and swung, hitting the taller man against the temple with the pommel of his dirk, and down he went.
He wasn’t going to be able to reach his horse in time and so he took off on foot, running after Freya who was actively fighting off her captor as best as she could. He admired her tenacity and strength. He appreciated that she wasn’t just going to roll over and take it. She was doing whatever she had to do.
The man shouted, so she most likely had injured him in some way.
Good. It was the least he deserved.
Nathan was on him quickly, grabbing him by the back of his greasy hair and yanking him away from Freya who quickly scrambled back and away from him, clearly terrified. Nathan’s eyes honed in on the man, and the hammering was back. Recognition and bitterness that didn’t even feel like his own bubbled over, borrowed emotions swelling up inside of him that he couldn’t seem to force down properly. He had to handle the present issue before anything got worse. The man swung wide, but couldn’t get enough force to loosen Nathan’s grip. Nathan hurled the man toward the nearest tree, not caring about the way the man’s head crunched upon collision, or the red that now stained the tree bark before the man’s body slid down the rough surface and collapsed in a heap on the ground.
“Are ye all right?” Nathan asked, sinking to his knees, and reaching for Freya.
Her eyes caught on the way his hand was covered in blood, seeming to run in rivets down his wrist and forearm. He couldn’t feel the pain of his wound. Perhaps that was good, because at present that was not his problem.
“Are ye hurt? Did he…” Nathan trailed off, unable to say the words. He couldn’t make them leave his lips and Freya shook her head frantically.
“Nae fer lack of trying,” she heaved, her breath still erratic. She was sucking in deeper and deeper breaths, to the point he was worried she was going to hyperventilate.
He scooted forward on his knees, moving closer to her—and then there was the hammering in his head.
Somehow the feeling of his knees against the still damp morning grass triggered something inside of him, and his eyes instantly glazed over, unfocused. They drifted in the direction of the man presently on the floor and he was certain from the awkward way he was heaped that he wasn’t breathing any longer.
It wasn’t his death that bothered him; it was the familiarity of the battle, the way his body seemed to know what to do before he even had the chance to think about his next move. It was the natural instinct to fight, to wield a blade.
Memory rushed back to him in waves—brutal battles fought in the past, the clash of steel against steel, the smell of blood heavy and sickening in the air. He remembered the battlefield, but he also remembered a castle, its stone dark and shining under the morning sun; a pair of hands tenderly cradling him as a boy; faces that resembled his own. Each flash of memory brought back with it yet another, the recollection of his past happening so fast that it seemed to be almost instantaneous.
And with the rush of memory came the knowledge that the town they had just been in was not a safe place to be. He recognized it now. He knew to whom the land belonged.
“Nathan? What’s wrong?”
He knew Freya was speaking to him, but it almost felt as if she were underwater. He couldn’t seem to focus on her words—couldn’t process the information as he stared at the red stain on the tree.
“Nathan? Are ye?—”
It was like her voice was fading in and out. He couldn’t absorb anything. Even when he was able to drag his eyes back to her, he almost felt as if he were looking at a different person entirely. He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t properly verbalize it. She was still Freya, but he was no longer him.
He could blame the overly protective instincts, or the level of adrenaline and rage he felt, perhaps. He could place the blame anywhere that he wanted—but now he knew.
He wasn’t Nathan. He could never be Nathan again, not really. Even if before this moment he had entertained the idea that even remembering who he was wouldn’t mean anything, that nothing would change. He had thought he would be able to choose who he was and what happened next. He was so naive, so foolish; because he wasn’t Nathan, he was James MacGregor, the oldest son and heir of Laird MacGregor. The firstborn who had been through battle after battle, who had defended his clan and his people from harm time and time again under his father’s guidance, along with his brother. He was meant to be a laird one day, and that had made him plenty of enemies in his lifetime.
And he had unwittingly brought Freya into the heart of the territory of one such enemy.