Chapter 25
Boom! The horses stomped like a victorious war drum, amid the panting of all Scots who still stood.
Her eyes were only for Aonghus when he turned toward her from the archway with an anguished look written across his face at the sight of her.
Hell, she must look like she had lain her cheek upon a bee’s hive.
In a blink, he bolted to scoop her close into his embrace. Clad in only his damp tunic, the pound from his heart echoed her ears when she pressed close. They were safe. Together.
What happened to the shadow-glance? A dread covered her soul. Lady Fate had decided to remain cast. Fickle wench. She pressed closer into Aonghus’s weighted embrace; they still drew breath, they still were strong, and they still would fight another day!
Her knight paused, then stepped back. He began gently wiping the blood from her chin with a cloth strip he ripped from his tunic while explaining, “Lady Maise happened upon Sir Brayden in a passageway leading toward the gardens. We discovered a threat lurked when she stated Sir Brayden had summoned her.”
Her caretaker then proceeded to run his fingers over her arms and shoulders in an awkward way. Was he afraid she had been hurt more than the chin?
Clasping his wrists for a brief second, she halted him. “I am well, only a wee scratch upon my lip,” she assured him. Best to leave out the portion her face felt the same as though the bees had become the devil who had hit her with his brimstone.
“Callum,” she called while tearing at her wimple, seeing him bleed upon the floor behind Aonghus, “requires more tending than I.”
The elder MacCade gave his first grin showing he possessed teeth. “Nae, my lady, ’tis only a wee scratch,” he reflected the words at her.
Aonghus stepped aside after she completed ripping the last linen from the wimple. This would do well to bind Callum’s arm and slow the blood trickling.
Callum extended his injured limb; she began covering the wound, but his words extended toward Aonghus who stood behind her. “Shite, I have beheld that look upon your brow before, wee brother. What troubles you?” he asked.
Sir Brayden handed her back the amethyst dagger after wiping it clean.
“Thank you,” she murmured. If only she could block out the morbid feel at the last time she utilized the blade.
Her brows knitted harder as she cut the linen’s edge from the wimple into two strips.
These will cover Callum’s wound with a tie at the top.
She turned toward Aonghus, who had wiped his sword blade clean before replacing the weapon into the scabbard with his eyes darting over the fallen warriors.
Sir Brayden finished checking to make certain the enemies had taken their final breath.
“What if Seumas was not referring to the Northmen’s superior numbers in warriors but something else?” Aonghus questioned. The hairs prickled on her neck.
“The traitor declared, ‘Your precious King Alexander is doomed to fail even before the first sword is raised,’” Sir Brayden repeated and added, “It was a boastful phrase.”
Aonghus nodded, then continued staring at the bodies in various contortions unleashed by death. “Sturan’s hair.”
“Aye.” Callum’s words sounded curious. “’Twas a deep brown.”
“Aye,” Aonghus concurred, “same as his brother.” He kicked the traitor’s dead foot before looking back at the remaining fallen. “The others present here only carry a flaxen color, not like Sturan.”
“Shite, the brother to Seumas,” Callum concluded Aonghus’s suspicions. “Sorley is not here.”
Her swollen lip pinched with pain when she gasped. She locked eyes with Aonghus. “The night-glance! ’Twas Sorley who took aim at the king!” she cried frantically. The king. Sorley is going to kill the king!
Aonghus bolted toward Laoch, untying the stallion’s reins; the stallion was already saddled by the stable marshal for the midday training to come.
“What night-glance?” both Callum and Sir Brayden questioned at the same moment while they bolted for chargers of their own.
“Cluaran beheld a night-glance a time back.” She nodded; Aonghus had no choice but to lie about the origins.
It was the king’s command. “A warrior stood beside a stream we know to be upon the king’s hunting grounds.
The warrior was taking aim with his arrow toward something unseen beyond the trees.
He bore the same color hair as Sturan and this gutter rat,” he finished and said to her with angst, “You must be my eyes to track the exact angle he was taking.”
“Aye!”
He grabbed a fistful belonging to Laoch’s mane, then threw his leg over the saddle.
He reached his arm down for her with a clear admiration in his eyes toward her.
For a moment she was a butterfly in the air at the ease he settled her behind him.
Placing her skirts stronger beneath her thighs, Aonghus took the reins in one hand and grasped her fingers with the other after her arms circled his waist. Watch his sword.
She shifted her leg beneath the blade’s sheath.
The stallion’s hide was the same as a prickly woolen upon her exposed ankles.
As they trotted past the pair of knights who were mounting up, Aonghus ordered, “Bring full quivers and your strongest bows,” his tone dire at Callum and Sir Brayden.
He kneed Laoch into a gallop after they lowered to clear the eave and burst free from the stables.
Save the king!
***
Did the sight of Keirah with blood trailing her chin still stoke his rage? For all fuking time! Blood pumped in his veins savagely. The need to slay the final traitor, who had brought her nothing but torment since the night-shadow, was about to commence!
Her fingers tightly woven around his waist, they galloped over the meadows and forests and streams as if they were a gust of wind at the speed the stallion traveled.
He looked over his shoulder; Callum and Sir Brayden’s steeds were falling behind at the pace Laoch commanded.
Aonghus closed his fist on the reins, slowing the beast, when they neared the place Keirah had described in the night-glance they had sought the previous eve.
The grounds were soft from the rains the day before.
Did it muffle any rustle of hooves? Aye, good.
They rode through the vista, blanketed by oak leaves or bramble or stale scented ferns.
Shite! Any clear view was blocked by the shades from greenery, but whoosh, there was the waterfall alongside a rushing brook sounding clear as a bell on a silent night.
He halted Laoch, with Callum and Sir Brayden catching up and doing the same on either side of them.
Both brother and knight pulled their bows as they began to ready an arrow from the quivers upon their saddles, anticipating the battle to come.
He fetched his sword. If only he had Vengeance in his grasp!
But the sword’s balance was brilliant; it would do in a throw if needed.
At his action, Keirah pressed closer toward him, then leaned to peek over his arm.
“This is the terrain from the night-glance?” he murmured over his shoulder to her in a concealed tone. She nodded, her chin against his outer bicep.
His eyes searched the forest as he growled the words inwardly: Sorley, you sack of swine shite, where are you?
A slight catch in breeze caused the tree limbs to whimper, with the movement from the leaves giving a dance in the sunlight.
There. A glint of metal shone in the veiled distance – that was not an object born from nature.
The same moment, she whispered then pointed at where he looked.
“MacCade, he lies in wait there.”
Callum appeared about to charge, but her next words stalled him.
“Callum, ’tis more than a lone warrior.” This was why Keirah had oddly collapsed all her weight against him on the final stretch of their ride here; he had tightened his grip at the moment, ensuring she had not fallen.
That must have been the moment she held another shadow-glance regarding the siege to come.
Her next words toward them, thick with worry, confirmed his suspicions.
“There are three,” she said. His eyes scanned the forest, which was thick as an emerald blanket with foliage, but she pointed toward the left.
“The first is settled behind a boulder closest to the far side of the stream. The second is upon your right, Callum, nearest the waterfall’s edge, high on that ridge.
He has the best angle and will shoot the king first with his arrow.
Sorley is the one you spied, my knight, beyond across stream with his aim second for the king, who stands in the distance beyond, within the meadow, with a falconer at his side. ”
If not for the circumstances, Aonghus would have taken better notice of the pure shock on both faces flanking him from the sheer power she harnessed.
Time to slay. His brother was the best archer, even wounded.
Aonghus raised his palm pointing toward the falls, indicating for Callum to travel – There, brother, and intercept the gravest threat.
His older brother nodded, his face a mixture of death with determination.
Good. Aonghus then pivoted toward Sir Brayden, who nudged his horse south, headed for the enemy closest to him, after Aonghus tilted his brow in that direction.
“Keirah,” he breathed the words solemnly, “close your eyes, my Cluaran; I do not wish for you to see death twice when I slay Sorley.”
The brush from her lips pressed against his tunic-covered shoulder before she pulled herself tighter while burying her face against the muscles upon his back.
Good, he could at least spare her some fragment of peace.
His fist loosened on the reins. Laoch took the slack while he squeezed his heels onto the stallion’s ribs as he unleashed a Gaelic cry, which matched his older brother, who had taken his aim up on the ridge and released the arrow on the first warrior – impaling him, from the wail the enemy gave.
The stallion will clear those raging waters!
Charging over the terrain, the stallion hit the banks of the rapids, and Aonghus leaned closer toward the beast’s neck, taking Keirah with him, as the creature fit for a giant soared through the air, jumping the full stretch.
As they landed on the far side, Sorley turned their way; his face blanched at the newfound sight.
The arrow Sorley had nocked for the king, who was now in his viewpoint upon the meadow below with Sir James at his side, became aimed at him and Keirah instead! No way, traitor!
Time. Distance. Angle. He had all three.
A vicious roar tore his lips as he sent the sword soaring the air toward the chainmail-clad warrior’s weakest spot.
Sorley’s neck appeared chopped the same as a tree limb from Sorley’s body.
Thud. The lifeless traitor dropped onto forest floor, and the legacy from three Scottish brothers turned traitors to the crown collapsed.
Sir Brayden’s aim was true when his opponent cried out before annihilation, and the knight’s words rang the trees proclaiming, “Victory! To the King of Scots!”
Aonghus and Callum yelled in unison from their flanks declaring, “VICTORY! TO THE KING OF SCOTS!”