Chapter 17 #2
He looked to Logan, standing by his mother as
he always had and always would, and dipped his head in thanks and
farewell. He looked to his Uncle Bryce, who’d offered to help him
fight his way free as they rode from the keep this morning, with
Niels and Grant offering their sword arms as well. Men he liked and
respected. Men who knew the truth of almost all that had happened.
Men he’d made swear not to raise arms against his family or
Roger’s, lest the alliance he was willing to die for splintered and
broke. Men to whom he nodded his farewells.
Refusing to even look at Roger and his family
of lying, vindictive snakes, Roark looked to his father, who stood
as stiff and unmoved as he had yesterday. Roark had lived his
entire life aware of his father’s indifference, yet it still gutted
him. He sucked a deep breath of salt-tanged air in and blew it out.
At least his mother, Logan, and Uncle Bryce, the three people
closest to him in the world except for Alina, believed the best of
him.
Alina.
He’d told her he would fight to stay alive
for her, to be with her again, and he hadn’t kept that promise. He
couldn’t. Not without causing even more harm and death to his
family and hundreds of others. He’d apologized to her so many times
in his mind and heart over the last several days and nights he
thought surely her soul had heard his.
He knew she would understand why he’d done
what he had, as he knew she would grieve him for the rest of her
days, and she would haunt him in the otherworld. They’d loved each
other body, mind, and soul, and he would never regret it.
The hangman stepped up next to Roark and held
out a black linen hood. Roark gave him a grim grin and shook his
head. He wanted his last sight of this world to be one of light,
not darkness. With a shrug, the hangman tossed the hood to the
gallows deck and then tugged down on the rope, testing its strength
before looping the noose around Roark’s neck.
Roark closed his eyes and saw a pair as
bright and green as new spring grass smiling into his. He felt her
soft, warm skin beneath his fingers, tasted her kiss, her flesh. He
breathed in the scent of sweet cherry blossoms and earthy woman,
and heard her throaty laughter.
He saw her walking out of the woods toward
him, singing “Somebody,” her voice pure and lilting. He watched her
racing along the sea’s shore on her mare, her long legs bare and
her mane of cedar blowing in the last, brisk breeze of winter.
He saw her lift her face to the sun and felt
its warmth on his. He smiled. At peace.
A flash of light streaked across his eyelids
and he opened them and looked out over the sea of people waiting to
watch him hang. A ship was docking at the pier.
The Rover.
He opened his mouth to call out that there
would be witnesses onboard and felt the jolt of the hangman’s hand
hitting his back and shoving him into oblivion.
***
“Rrroooaaarrrk!” Alina’s scream tore out of
her throat as Roark’s body swung out over the gallows and fell with
a jerk. “Nnnooo!” The spyglass dropped from her hands and she ran
down the gangplank as it was being lowered, jumping the last three
feet to the ground. “Han, Bors,” she yelled. “With me.”
She raced for the gallows as factions of the
crowd ran screaming from the armed men flanking her, giving her a
straight path to Roark, whose body twisted and turned in the
air.
“Help him,” she cried.
A man grabbed Roark by his thighs and held
his body up, taking the pressure from his neck, while another
red-headed man held off two of Roger’s men, who had their swords
pulled but made no effort to fight or stop them from helping
Roark.
Two other men jumped up onto the gallows and
sawed at the rope with their short swords, cutting through it as
Alina reached Roark. Her heart stopped as Logan and Bryce lowered
an unconscious Roark to the ground and loosened the noose from his
neck.
Alina dropped to the ground at Roark’s head
and pressed her fingers to his throat as the shouts of men and
scraping of blades rang out.
“I can’t feel a pulse,” she cried. “I can’t
feel a pulse.”
“He isn’t breathing either,” Logan said.
“No.” Alina squeezed back tears. “No.” She
straddled Roark’s belly and pressed her hands palm down on his
chest as she’d seen Hamar do with a newborn foal who hadn’t
breathed on its own in a timely manner. “No.” She pressed down on
his chest again. “You cannot die on me.” She pressed on his chest
again and again. “Not now. Not like this.” She pressed on his chest
again. “You will not die on me, Roark MacInnes,” she whispered
savagely. She pumped his chest again and again, stopping to watch
for his chest to rise on its own. “Please, Roark,” she cried when
his chest lay still. “You promised me.” She hit his chest with her
fist. “You promised me.” She felt hands on her shoulders, heard
kind voices telling her to let him go. She shook the hands off and
lowered her mouth to Roark’s ear. “Come back to me, sir stag,” she
pleaded. “Come back to your lady owl.”
He lay there unmoving, his eyes closed, his
face ashen.
Gentle hands pulled her up and she stared
into the grief-stricken eyes of Lady Brianna. Into Roark’s
eyes.
“He’s gone, Alina,” his mother said. “Roark
is gone.” She hugged Alina to her and whispered in her ear. “He
sacrificed himself to save you, to save all of us.”
Alina went ice cold, and then she went raging
hot. She stepped back from Roark’s mother and met his father’s
stony gaze. “He died for you,” she seethed. “Your son died for you.
To keep the alliances between your clan and Roger’s intact. To keep
the hundreds of families dependent on your houses from suffering
the consequences of such a breach. And you stand there like a, a
bloodless statue.” She shook her head and swiped at the hot tears
falling down her cheeks. “What manner of man are you to have never
seen what a good, honorable man your son is?” she said, her voice
cutting. “What manner of man he was.”
“Ali girl?”
Alina’s sob stuck in her throat and she
whipped around and dropped to her knees beside Roark, who lay
watching her with a quizzical expression on his face.
“I though you dead,” she cried, her tears
flowing freely. “We all thought you dead.”
“Dead?” he rasped. He started to raise his
head and stopped, put a hand to his bruising throat, and another to
his ribs, which Alina had been pounding on. He turned his gaze to
Bryce, Logan, and his mother, all of them kneeling around him, and
Alina knew the moment he remembered where he was and why by the
pain reflected in his eyes.
“Help me sit up,” he croaked to Logan, who
stood and lifted him by the shoulders until he could sit on his
own. He lifted an arm and Alina scooted under it, nestling into his
side. “I don’t know how it is you’re here and I’m alive,” he
whispered hoarsely, “but I’m glad on both accounts.”
“As am I, my love.” Alina exhaled, her voice
as shaky as her body all of a sudden. “As am I.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder and
became aware of her father’s Northmen holding Roger’s men and the
few villagers who hadn’t fled at sword point. The two men who’d cut
Roark loose from the noose stepped down from the gallows, their
short swords in their hands, their long swords still sheathed.
“Niels, Grant,” she said. “It’s good to see
you again.”
“Princess Alina.” Niels tipped his short
sword to her.
“Help me stand,” Roark said, and she scooted
out from under his shoulder as Bryce and Logan pulled him to his
unsteady feet. He leaned on their shoulders as Alina’s parents
approached, flanked by three Northmen bristling with swords and war
axes. Roark’s father stepped over to stand by Roark’s mother.
“Roark,” her father said in the Northern
tongue. “It’s a good thing you have a strong neck.”
“So it would seem,” Roark answered in kind.
“Thank you, King Jerrik, for coming, for saving my life.”
“Thank our daughter.”
Roark nodded and stepped away from Logan’s
and Bryce’s support to stand before her father. “I owe her more
than my life, King Jerrik. I owe her my soul.” He looked at Alina
and smiled, slow and melting. “She already owns my heart.” He
turned back to her father. “I owe you an apology and an
explanation.”
Her father held up his hand. “All of which we
will deal with later,” he said. He turned toward where the
MacKinnons stood, perusing Roger, Lynette, Donald, Myrna, and
Gwyneth one by one. “Rigil Fenrirson,” her father said in the Green
Isles tongue for all to hear. He lifted his chin toward Donald.
“Delling Fenrirson. I told you both if you ever came after me or my
family again, I would kill you, did I not, cousins?”
Alina’s jaw dropped as a great buzzing
swarmed through the crowd.
“Rigil is Roger?” she asked Roark, who didn’t
look half as surprised as she felt.
Roger drew himself up. “You have no power
here, Jerrik the Usurper,” he declared.
Alina’s father simply raised a brow and
glanced around the square, where his men held Roger’s at sword
point. He turned toward the dock, where one of his warships was
being pulled up onto the shore by four Northmen. The second
longboat had stayed with the Sea Eagle where it lay anchored
at the port’s mouth, which was where they’d intercepted The
Rover as she was heading out to sea and boarded her, sailing
her into the North Shore port with Alina, and twenty armed Northmen
hidden aboard.
“You, Rigil, are the one with no power here,”
her father said. He turned to address the gathering. “These men are
Rigil and Delling Fenrirson, my cousins. Sons of a dead father
killed by my hand twenty years ago for murdering my father, my
mother, my two brothers, and my wife’s brother, and for attempting
to murder me and my wife, all to sit on a throne not rightfully
his.” He paused for breath and effect and Alina smiled. Her father
knew how to capture a crowd’s attention. “I banished Rigil and
Delling and their families for their parts in their father’s
murderous schemes on the condition they never return or bother my
family again.” He glared at Rigil and shook his head. “In return
for my letting them live, he had my only daughter kidnapped, not to