Chapter 3 #2
Another arrow flew across them, this time snagging his shoulder and tearing through his shirt. A bloom of bright red blood spewed from the spot that had been torn. She gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth, and he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him.
“Stay close to me,” he ordered.
This time, she did not think to fight him. He might have been a danger to her, but at least he was a danger she understood. Whoever was shooting arrows at them, she was not sure she could trust herself with them.
He drew his sword in a single motion, the dark metal glinting like bared teeth in the shadows cast by the trees. Just then another arrow whipped out through the foliage, and he moved to shield her again. He let out a loud grunt of pain as the wound spewed more crimson blood.
He forced her behind him as he took off through the trees, searching out the cause of the attack. When he found a man hidden in the bough of an old oak, he grasped him by the hair and yanked him down, bringing him to his knees before he forced his sword to his throat.
“How many of ye are there?” he barked through gritted teeth.
She peeped around his shoulder and could see the terror in the man’s face as he realized just who he had managed to attack.
“Five, but—”
Tavish did not hesitate as he dragged his blade across his throat in a single motion, and the man clasped for his neck, trying to contain the pouring scarlet that tumbled from between his fingers as he fell to the ground.
His bow dropped from his shoulder, the arrows spilling out across the ground below, and all she could do was stare in horror as Tavish caught her arm.
“Only five,” he muttered as he drew her close again.
She could feel his heart pounding in his chest, but he showed no fear or pain on his face, containing it like he was nothing more than a vessel for such terror.
“But there’s only one of ye, Tavish,” she hissed at him, keeping her voice low so as not to attract more attention.
“It’s enough,” he replied, moving through the forest and back towards the road with the practiced skill of someone who knew exactly what it meant for the hunted to turn into the hunter.
His eyes were cold and nearly black as he cut down another man from the trees, running him through with his sword without a word, and snatching up the man’s fallen dagger as he tumbled from the branches.
The way he disposed of each of them was as if those lives meant nothing to him. She had heard of his skill behind a sword, but it was quite another thing to be faced with it so blatantly and so brutally with no warning like this.
Blood bloomed over the fabric of his shirt as he finally pushed her before him, driving her back towards the road, where the guards were dispatching the last of their attackers.
She stumbled forward, shock and panic still coursing through her like the most potent of poisons, as Tavish strode out to finish the last of them off.
She watched in horror as the final attacker, who had been knocked to his knees, gazed up at Tavish in panic.
The expression on his face told her that they had not expected it to be him who answered their attempts on the carriage.
They had likely seen her running through the woods and thought that it would make for an easy robbery.
She had heard of bandits doing such things up and down these parts, though she had never encountered them herself.
However, now that she saw them in the light, they did not look much like bandits. There was something more to them; tartans wrapped around them to keep out the cold. She squinted at it, trying to make out who it might have belonged to.
Was that… MacCairn tartan?
Tavish did not give the man a chance to catch his breath before he took the dagger he had stolen from his last victim and drove it into the throat of the man before him. He tipped over sideways to the ground, scrabbling for his throat, gasping and wheezing as blood pooled below him.
She stared, hardly able to take her eyes off it. She had never seen such death before, let alone delivered with such nonchalance, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Perhaps, she supposed, to Tavish it was.
But to her, it was nothing of the sort. Sickness twisted in her guts, her knees weak at the sight of so much blood, so much death.
She had seen her fair share of hunts over the years, rabbits carried back on racks to the kitchen, but this was different.
These were once men who’d had their lives snuffed out in a matter of moments, their glassy eyes staring up at the sky above, praying that the heavens would reach down and take them.
And she was to be married to the man who had left them in this state. Married to the bloodthirsty killer who had executed them with no trial, no warning, no regret, not so much as a second thought—
“Lass,” he muttered, catching her hand. “Ye’re pale as the moon…”
She looked over at him, the concern on his face, and it struck her that he did all this to save her. Not as some murderous death knell to send out across the county, but because he had wanted to keep her safe.
“I’m fine,” she replied, doing her best to make her voice sound certain.
He didn’t look convinced, but he did not argue with her, either.
“Ye’ll ride wi’ me now,” he told her, his voice leaving no room for argument. “I cannae trust these men with what’s mine,” he finished up, firing a furious look at the guards before he climbed back on to his horse.
And, deciding it would have been foolish to make him wait any longer, she hurried to his side, wanting to put as much distance between herself and this carnage as possible.