Chapter 4 #3
Blood gleamed on Niall's leg where the tusk had cut. Crimson stained the sword he wielded against the massive animal. Slashes gushed blood amid the black- bristled coat as boar and warrior fought, knowing that one of them would die.
Niall dodged and struck, his muscles shiny with sweat as he leapt out of the boar's path yet again, every movement drawing the beast closer and closer to the cliff—or was it farther and farther away from Caitlin? Nay, that was madness.
Niall could not be doing so on purpose. He wanted her dead! It made no sense! Caitlin's hand knotted into a fist, her knuckles pressed tight to her lips.
"Caitlin, run!" Niall shouted, barely evading another slash of the deadly tusks. "A tree—climb a tree!"
God in heaven, what was he doing? He wanted her dead, and now he was risking his life to help her get away?
She started to stumble backward, saw Niall glance at her for a dangerous moment, his eyes filled with something she could not name, his face hard and desperate, resolved and, filled with a pain far deeper than any wound could reach.
The boar swung about.
"Niall! The boar!" she shrieked.
He braced his legs apart, his body now far too close to the edge of the rock ledge. The boar stormed toward him with the might of a hundred fiends. Caitlin saw the flash of Niall's sword, heard the horrific sound as boar and man slammed together.
Blood gushed from the boar's throat, its great head slashing about in agony. Caitlin cried out as the beast shuddered to its knees, lashing out in its death throes.
A guttural cry split the night as the boar's hindquarters slammed into Niall. Caitlin's heart froze as she watched Niall fight for balance on the edge of stone. She screamed as he fell backward into darkness.
If she lived a thousand years, Caitlin would never forget the sound of flesh striking stone, the hideous crash, the cry of pain torn from Niall's throat. The most horrific silence she had ever heard.
She bit her knuckle, her whole body shaking as she stared at the boar, which at last lay still, Niall's sword still embedded in its body.
Dear God, what should she do? If she had not awakened, that sword would have been buried in her body.
She would be the one lying in the spreading pool of her own blood.
She had seen Niall looming over her, sword in hand, hard intent in his eyes.
She had run for her life, and he had chased her, grim with determination to kill her.
But why, if the chieftain had sent him to guard...
Horror streaked through Caitlin. She feared she would retch.
Only one thing could drive a man like Niall to kill.
The order of his chieftain. A duty he had admitted to Reverend Mother meant more to him than heaven or hell.
Certainly more than the life of one young woman he scarcely knew.
She should grab the sword, now. Take it and flee. She could lose herself in the wilderness, vanish. By the time Conn realized what had happened, no mortal living could find her.
The decision was simple. The only thing she could do.
She crept nearer the boar, grasped the sword hilt, and, with a mighty tug, ripped the weapon free.
But as she started away, a tusk caught on her leine.
She bent down to untangle it, stared transfixed at the glistening white tusk, sharp as any blade.
To save her, Niall had risked the horrible death it could deal.
There was no other explanation. It would not matter to Conn how she died, as long as she was dead.
Even if Niall had felt some odd shame, allowing the boar to do the bloody deed Conn had commanded him to do, it would not have mattered.
Niall could have held his silence. No one would ever have known.
Tears welled up in Caitlin's eyes, burned her cheeks. "What am I to do, Reverend Mother?" she murmured, turning instinctively to that presence that had always helped her sort out the tangles of her life. "I do not know what to do!"
Leave him, and he will surely die, a voice whispered in her head.
"But why should I help him?" she whispered aloud. "What if he attempts to kill me again?"
Images poured through her, unwelcome but vivid—the sea, Niall's gruff indulgence, the reluctant smile on lips she knew instinctively curled too seldom in pleasure.
And another vision she would never forget, frozen in the instant before the boar crashed into Niall for the final, deadly time.
Torment—not fear of death but, rather, a desolation, a reaching out of the soul.
He bled for you, Caitlin, she told herself. He fought for you. He might even have died for you. And if you leave now, you may never really know why he tried to kill you. You will be running from it for the rest of your life.
Swallowing hard, Caitlin edged toward the rim of the cliff, stared down its moonlit expanse. He lay on a ledge as far down as the length from the abbey tower to the ground below. Surely, even a man such as Niall could not fall so far and live. She could say a prayer for him and then leave.
Yet she had barely made the sign of the cross when she heard it. Faint, barely carried to her in the stillness of the night. A moan.
Niall was alive.