11
THE men were armed with knives, wooden staffs, and a makeshift pike. Hampered by having Amber in his lap, Duncan wasn’t able to fight effectively. Leaping and snarling like wolves, the outlaws dragged Duncan from the horse, and Amber with him.
When one of the outlaw’s hands closed around Amber’s arm while he clawed at her valuable necklaces, she gave a terrible cry. Part of her hoarse shout came from pain at being touched. Much of it came from pure rage that an outlaw would dare to take the sacred amber pendant from her neck.
The flash and slice of Amber’s dagger drew an answering scream from the outlaw. He jerked his hands away from her, but only for a moment. She saw his fist coming and managed to turn aside as it struck. Despite her quickness, she was so dazed by the blow that she fell full-length on the ground.
The second time it was a dagger rather than a fist that the outlaw raised against Amber.
Even as she gathered herself to turn aside from the attack, she heard the eerie steel moan of a war hammer slicing circles from the air.
There was an awful crack as steel met flesh. The outlaw fell like a stone.
When his limp hand touched Amber, she felt nothing at all. The man was quite dead.
She jerked her hand back and began scrambling to her feet. An unexpected shove kept her flat, but no pain came from the contact. It was Duncan’s hand that had touched her.
“Nay!” he ordered, standing astride Amber. “Stay down!”
She needed no explanation of why the ground was safer for her at the moment. The hammer’s deadly humming had begun once more.
Through a veil of her own hair, Amber watched outlaws surge forward again in a ragged charge, their staffs held like lances. Stout wood splintered as though it were charcoal. The single pike was destroyed. Another outlaw fell. He neither moved nor made a sound.
The heavy war hammer was a lethal steel blur circling Duncan’s head. The remaining outlaws hesitated, then gathered themselves for another overwhelming rush such as they had used to drag Duncan and Amber to the ground.
With no warning, Duncan leaped forward. The hammer became a lightning bolt, striking in the blink of an eye. The outlaws yelled in outrage as another of their own fell and didn’t rise again.
Duncan leaped back, standing astride Amber once more, protecting her in the only way he could.
“Get behind him,” shouted one of the outlaws. “He won’t leap so high-and-mighty with his hamstrings cut!”
Three outlaws broke from the pack and began moving to Duncan’s rear, careful to remain beyond the deadly reach of the hammer. Duncan couldn’t watch the circling outlaws and the men in front at the same time.
“Duncan, they will—” Amber began.
“I know,” he interrupted roughly. “By all that’s holy, stay down!”
Amber clenched the dagger in her hand and prepared to defend Duncan’s back as best she could. The dagger’s red eye glowed balefully as she shifted the blade, following the progress of the closest outlaw.
As the hammer wailed of coming death, Amber’s voice rose in eerie consonance, cursing the outlaws in a language forgotten by all but a handful of Learned.
One of the outlaws stared at Amber in sudden horror, understanding too late whom he had dared to attack in his greed for wealth. He dropped the splintered end of his staff and ran.
The remaining outlaws paused in their ragged charge, but only for an instant. The men standing in front of Duncan feinted with staffs, seeking an opening in the deadly circle made by the hammer’s swift, vicious flight. Other men moved well away from Duncan, angling toward his back.
Suddenly two men rushed in from the rear.
“Duncan!”
Even before Amber’s cry left her lips, Duncan leaped and turned about in midair. So great was his strength and his skill with the hammer that the weapon’s deadly hum never hesitated during his turn.
The hammer swept around in a savage arc, bringing death to the two outlaws who had thought that Duncan’s back made a safe target. Before the other outlaws could take advantage of his turn, he had leaped and faced about to confront them again.
The hammer hummed once more its song of death, whipped in circles by Duncan’s tireless arm.
His shocking skill with the weapon broke the outlaws’ will. One of the men made a lunge for Whitefoot, but gave it up when the mare shied violently away. The remaining men turned and ran for the cover of the surrounding mist and forest, leaving their dead behind.
Duncan watched for the space of a few more breaths before he allowed the hammer to fall silent.
A flip of his wrist slackened the chain.
Instead of flying in deadly arcs, the hammer came obediently to rest. He slung it over his shoulder, balancing the weight of the ball in back with that of the chain in front.
Should he need the weapon again, it would instantly be ready.
And deadly.
With shadowed golden eyes, Amber watched the man with no name who had come to her in shades of darkness…and whose true name she had just discovered, her greatest fear come true.
Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer.
“Are you hurt?” Duncan asked. “Did those carrion eaters touch you?”
The caress of his fingers on Amber’s pale cheek made her want to weep for all that could never be.
Soul mate and enemy in one.
Her beloved foe kneeling next to her, concern darkening his eyes while currents of warmth and pleasure coursed through her at his simple touch.
“Amber?”
The last frail reed of hope was splintering in front of her eyes. Though Duncan had shown traits of Learned schooling, and the Scots Hammer had never been Learned, she could hardly deny the deadly skill with which Duncan had wielded the hammer.
There could be no more doubt, no more denial, no hope of error, no excuse not to tell Erik that he had saved the life of his greatest enemy and brought that enemy to Amber.
Who had then betrayed Erik by keeping her deepest fears of Duncan’s identity secret.
I can betray Erik no longer.
But how can I betray Duncan, my love, my enemy, the very blood in my veins…
Powerful arms lifted Amber. Gentle lips brushed her cheeks, her eyes, her mouth. Each caress was a separate knife turning in her soul.
“I am…unhurt,” Amber said raggedly.
“You’re very pale. Have you never seen battle before now?”
She fought for breath, saying nothing.
“Dinna worry, precious Amber,” Duncan whispered against her cheek.
Unable to speak, she simply shook her head.
“You aren’t frightened, are you?” he asked. “I can protect you from worse than that worthless lot of outlaws and thieves. You know that, don’t you?”
Amber laughed almost wildly. Then she turned her face into Duncan’s chest and wept.
Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer. Aye, I know all too well that you can protect me.
From everything except the prophecy.
And from myself.
That most of all. How can you protect the heart from the very flesh surrounding it?
Soul mate.
Foe.
Lightning split the day from sky to ground. A savage peal of thunder came right behind.
“The horses,” Amber said.
“Stay here,” Duncan said, setting her down. “I’ll get them.”
As Duncan turned away, Amber saw a patch of red on his tunic.
“You’re wounded!” she said.
He kept walking.
“Duncan!”
Heart beating frantically, Amber ran after him.
“Easy, lass,” he said, catching her up in his arms. “You’ll scare the horses.”
“Put me down! You’ll hurt yourself more!”
Duncan’s smile flashed whitely beneath his mustache as he saw the concern in Amber’s eyes. He set her on her feet, took a few quick steps, and grabbed Whitefoot’s rein.
The mare minced nervously but didn’t fight Duncan’s hand. He turned, lifted Amber, and set her astride her mare in a single easy motion. Then he smiled up at her.
“Simon’s blow hurt more than—” Duncan began.
“But you’re bleeding,” Amber interrupted.
“I’ve let more blood to a leech than to that outlaw’s pig sticker.”
Before Amber could say anything more, Duncan turned, caught up his own horse, and mounted it with muscular ease. His actions belied the red stain on his tunic.
“Which way to the Stone Ring?” he asked. “Yonder?”
Amber didn’t even look which way Duncan was pointing. Her only thought was to get his wound cared for.
“The keep is that way,” she said, pointing.
Lightning cracked and thunder shook the earth.
“The storm is that way, too,” Duncan said. “Is there any shelter nearby?”
“Stone Ring has a mound at the center and a room inside.”
“Lead us there.”
For a moment longer Amber hesitated, watching the sky with uneasy eyes. The sense of imminence that she had often known in Ghost Glen or other sacred places was growing within her now.
Yet she wasn’t standing within an ancient place where stones had been placed by hands long since dead.
“Amber? What is it? Don’t you know the way?”
A dazzling bolt of lightning sliced through the day, brighter than a hundred suns. Thunder split the sky and rolled like an avalanche through the glen.
The hairs on Amber’s nape stirred. The lightning had struck near the path back to the keep, as though in warning against going back.
But we must go back! Duncan is hurt.
Another bolt lanced down, closer this time.
Amber felt herded, harried, prodded like an animal into the mouth of a funnel whose narrowing walls she could sense but not see. The feeling of imminence grew and grew in her until she felt she would burst.
“We must run for the keep!” Amber said, setting her heels to Whitefoot.
Lightning lanced down directly ahead. Whitefoot took the bit in her teeth and bolted in the opposite direction while thunder rolled behind.
At first Amber fought the horse for control. Then she gave in to the animal, accepting what she couldn’t change. A glance over her shoulder told Amber that Duncan’s mount was following at an equally frantic pace.
Stone Ring was upon them before there was any chance to turn aside or choose another path. Whitefoot raced between the outer ring of stones, not slowing until the inner ring was reached. There the horse calmed immediately, as though flight was suddenly the last thing on its mind.