Chapter 40
Baird advanced.
Each step was deliberate, as though the stones themselves waited to see which laird would claim them. Around the edges of the courtyard, Sinclair’s soldiers had driven Baird’s men back from the gates, forcing them into brutal, grinding combat among the rubble.
Ewan Sinclair shifted his stance, waiting with his blade lifted and ready.
That was when Baird noticed two of Sinclair’s soldiers dragging Davina forward. The men he had assigned to keep her safe, lay dead on the ground. Her wrists were held by the two ruffians at her sides. She stumbled once as they dragged her to Sinclair, but she caught herself before she fell.
“So,” Sinclair said, circling, “Kincaid finally shows himself now that I have something he wants.”
“Davina!” Baird shouted her name,
“I dinnae ken yet,” Sinclair mused, and his voice carried in the wind like deadly arrows, “but I might take yer wife fer me own when she becomes a widow.”
Baird did not answer or slow as he advanced. He had had enough of his enemies pressing knives to Davina’s neck. His entire mind glowed red as he kept rushing, determined to end everything and everyone who stood in the way of the woman he loved.
“Ye should have stayed on yer own land!” he roared.
Sinclair laughed and struck.
Steel met steel in a shower of sparks. The impact jarred Baird’s arms clear to the shoulder, but he held, turning the blow aside and answering with a cut meant to test, not finish. Sinclair parried cleanly, quick as a snake.
“Still hiding behind walls?” Sinclair taunted, lunging again. “Or have ye learned tae fight like a man at last?”
Baird drove forward, forcing Sinclair back a step, and away from Davina, if only a little. “I learned tae protect what’s mine!”
Their blades rang again. They were both fast and ferocious, each strike precise and unforgiving. Sinclair fought with ruthless economy. His every movement seemed honed for killing. Baird matched him blow for blow, anger lending strength but not haste.
“Ye sent a knife tae me wife,” Baird said through clenched teeth as he blocked a savage downward strike.
Sinclair’s cruel smile flashed. “A pity it failed.”
Davina stiffened as the soldiers tightened their grip on her arms. Baird’s vision narrowed. He shoved Sinclair back with his shoulder, swinging hard. Sinclair barely caught it.
“Ye mistake mercy fer weakness,” Sinclair said, breath quickening at last. “I have none.”
“Nor dae I,” Baird replied.
They clashed again, their blades scraping and locked so close Baird could smell iron and sweat on the man. Sinclair twisted free and slashed, grazing Baird’s arm. Pain flared, hot and bright. Baird welcomed it. It woke him up. It reminded him what mattered, what he needed to protect.
“Every step ye took toward this keep,” Baird said, pressing forward, “was a step too far.”
Sinclair snarled and attacked in earnest now, raining blows meant to overwhelm. Baird yielded ground only to take it back, parrying, countering and always angling the fight away from where Davina stood captured.
“Ye think this ends me?” Sinclair spat. “There will always be another.”
Baird’s sword flashed, driving Sinclair back again. “Then let them come,” he said without remorse. “They’ll find what ye did.”
As they continued to fight, with neither of them willing to yield, Sinclair’s breathing had changed. Baird heard it between clashes. He heard the sharp edge creeping in, the rhythm breaking. He felt it, too, in the way Sinclair began to give ground not by design but by necessity.
Sinclair knew it as well.
“Ye’re slower than ye were,” Sinclair sneered, circling wide, buying time. “Age catching up, Kincaid?”
Baird did not answer. He didn’t want to waste breath and strength on retorts. Instead, he pressed forward, forcing Sinclair back toward the shattered edge of the courtyard where debris lay scattered and footing was treacherous.
Sinclair’s eyes flicked past Baird, at Davina. Baird saw it a heartbeat too late.
A fallen dagger lay half-hidden beneath a broken shield. As Baird struck, Sinclair twisted aside not to parry, but to kick the dagger up into his free hand. In the same motion, he feinted high with his sword.
Baird blocked on instinct, and the dagger came low. Pain exploded along his ribs. It made his vision all white, stealing the very breath from his lungs. Sinclair sliced the blade across Baird’s sides. Baird staggered back a step, his teeth gritting hard enough to creak.
“There,” Sinclair hissed with savage triumph flashing in his eyes. “That’s how men like us win.”
Blood soaked rapidly through Baird’s tunic, and warmth spread where the cold air should have been. His left side burned. Every breath was a sharp reminder of flesh torn and muscle split.
He straightened anyway.
“Ye mistake treachery fer strength,” Baird growled.
Sinclair laughed. “Dead men dinnae judge.”
He lunged again, pressing his advantage, blade flashing for Baird’s weakened side.
Baird met him without hesitation. The wound screamed with every movement, but Baird locked it down, forcing pain into something usable.
He transformed it into fuel rather than weakness.
He shifted his stance, favoring one side.
His eyes never left Sinclair’s. He knew well how dangerous that would be.
Every breath burned now, because every movement was pulling at torn flesh, but Baird did not slow. If anything, the fight grew even more savage. Steel crashed with a fury that drew men back from the circle they were carving into the courtyard.
Sinclair pressed him hard, sensing weakness, driving blows toward the wounded side again and again.
“Ye’re bleeding,” Sinclair was breathless. “Did ye think ye’d win this cleanly?”
Baird parried, countered, then forced Sinclair back a step despite the pain screaming through his ribs. “I didnae come fer clean,” he said. “I came fer ye.”
Sinclair laughed incredulously. “Still playing the dutiful laird? Still pretending honor means something when men are dying all around us?”
Their blades locked for a heartbeat, and their faces were inches apart.
“I wonder,” Sinclair went on softly and cruelly, “if Malcolm wanted tae scream when he realized he’d been fooled.”
The name hit like a blow. Baird’s control wavered, just enough for Sinclair to see it.
“And the girl,” Sinclair continued, twisting the knife with relish. “Davina. sweet thing. Me men fought hard fer her. She screamed fer ye, Kincaid. Did ye hear her?”
Something in Baird broke. Actually, it didn’t just break… it shattered.
The world narrowed to red and white and fury so absolute it burned the pain away entirely. Baird tore his blade free and surged forward with a roar that ripped from his chest, driving Sinclair back in a relentless storm of blows.
“Say her name again,” Baird growled, striking hard, “and I will tear it from yer mouth.”
Sinclair barely parried now, surprise flickering across his face as Baird pressed him without mercy. There were no measured steps and no careful economy. Baird was rage incarnate, controlled just enough to kill.
“Ye think ye understand loss?” Baird snarled. “Ye understand naething!”
He slammed Sinclair backward.
“Ye murdered me braither!” Baird snarled, each word driven home with a strike. “Ye threatened me wife!”
Sinclair stumbled. His breath was shorter and shorter, and finally, there was fear creeping into his gaze. Baird kept advancing, a force that was bloodied and unstoppable. Even the courtyard seemed to hold its breath.
That was when Sinclair lunged. It was a desperate, reckless charge. There was too much force and too much certainty born of panic rather than skill. His blade came straight for Baird’s heart, a final gamble meant to end it in one brutal stroke.
Baird saw it clearly.
He shifted not back, but rather into the attack, turning his body just enough that Sinclair’s momentum betrayed him. Steel slid past where it would have killed, scraping armor instead of flesh. And Baird struck.
He drove his blade forward with everything he had left, the impact shuddering up his arm as steel sank deep into Ewan Sinclair’s chest. The sound was dull and final.
Sinclair froze. Baird froze. Everything stilled.
Disbelief spread across Sinclair’s face, his mouth opening as though words might yet save him. His sword slipped from numb fingers and clattered to the stones. He sank to his knees.
Baird leaned close, his breath harsh in the dying man’s ear. “This ends here.”
Sinclair looked up at him once. His eyes were empty now and the fight in him was gone. Then, he collapsed forward, lifeless, with the red of his banner darkening beneath him.
Baird stood over him, blood dripping from his side to mingle with his enemy’s on the stone. Around them, the battle faltered. The Sinclair laird was dead.
He glanced toward Davina. Sinclair’s men had released her from their grip, and she rushed to him, wrapping her tender arms around his weakened body. He allowed her.
“Baird…” she whispered, and that was enough for him to know that it had all been worth it to save everyone, to save her.
His hand went instinctively to his side, pressing hard against the wound. The pain was sharp again now that the fury had burned down, but he stayed on his feet, breathing through it, forcing the world to hold steady.
He lifted his head. The courtyard had gone eerily still.
Sinclair soldiers stood frozen where they were, with their blades half-raised. Their eyes were darting between the body at Baird’s feet and the bloodied laird still standing over it. Some looked barely more than boys. Others were gray at the temples, and had exhaustion carved deep into their faces.
For the first time since the gate fell, Baird did not see enemies. He saw men. Men with homes beyond those walls, with mothers who had once pressed kisses to scraped knees, with wives who waited, not knowing if they would return, with children who would ask why their fathers never came home.
The realization struck him harder than any blade.
Baird drew a slow breath and straightened as much as his wound allowed.
“Yer laird is dead,” he said, and the wind carried his voice all across the courtyard.
No one moved.
“The heart of this attack has stopped beating,” he continued. “There is naething left here fer ye but more death.”
A murmur rippled through the Sinclair ranks. Baird recognized it as fear, confusion, and dawning grief. He tightened his hand against his side.
“Ye showed nay mercy when ye came fer me people,” he reminded them, but there was no fury in his voice any longer. “Fer our homes, fer me wife.” He paused, wanting to be perfectly clear, wanting them all to hear him. “I will show ye mercy now.”
The words fell heavy and unmistakable.
“Lower yer steel,” Baird commanded. “Leave this keep. Go back where ye came from and never return.”
Silence stretched taut. Then, a sound filled the air, the sound of steel meeting stone. One sword fell, then another… then many.
The Sinclair soldiers began to back away.
They appeared slow and uncertain at first, incredulous at the chance they were given.
Their eyes never left Baird, as though he might change his mind.
They retreated through the broken gate, some helping the wounded, others simply fleeing.
Even their banners were sagging, because their will was now gone with their laird.
Baird did not move. He stood there, with blood still seeping through his fingers, watching until the last of them crossed the threshold of the courtyard. Only when the final Sinclair turned and vanished beyond the walls did he allow himself to breathe again.
“Baird.”
Kenny was at his side suddenly, gripping his arm. “Are ye… are ye all right?”
Baird nodded once. “I will be.”
Kenny glanced at the wound. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
He did not move. He turned his head slowly, looking around the courtyard one final time.
He saw broken weapons, fallen men, Kincaid soldiers standing stunned and bloodied but victorious.
Only when he was utterly certain that no Sinclair remained within his walls, did he finally allow his shoulders to unwind.
Then, and only then, did Baird Kincaid turn toward his wife.