They watched the two figures set out at a dead run. Moira possessed both speed and endurance. Farlan kept up with her, and they streaked toward the loch.
Everyone on the ramparts leaned over the wall. If Rhian had thought watching torturous before, this became a livid agony.
The crowd around Rory and Saerla had moved in tight. Battle had more or less ceased.
All at once, someone erupted from that tight knot. A man—Rhian could not at this distance identify him. Ewan, perhaps. He broke from the group of warriors and ran toward the keep. Toward Moira and Farlan.
They met less than halfway. The watchers on the walls stirred and muttered.
“They be talking,” said the man next to Rhian. “Bargaining.”
Battlefield negotiations were rare but not unheard of. If they failed, new bloodshed would break out. With Saerla at the center of it.
Rhian wanted to pray. She did not know quite for what to ask.Saerla’s safety. The devout wish came from her. Only that.
The discussion among the three came to an abrupt end. They all ran toward the stronghold.
Rhian watched them pelt in, Moira with her plaited hair flying. She heard her sister shouting orders. Her own feet took her down the stairs from the wall.
Moira looked flushed, desperate, and determined. Her gaze met Rhian’s briefly when she said, “He has Saerla. He wants to trade.”
Everything within Rhian tensed. She knew what Moira would say next, even before she heard the words.
“Go get the prisoner. Rory is willing to trade Saerla for him.”
Leith. Leith for Saerla.
“Nay,” Rhian said, beyond desperate. “He is too sore hurt. No’ ready to travel—”
“I do no’ care.” Moira seized Rhian’s shoulders in both hands. “I do no’ care if he dies as soon as MacLeod has him. He has Saerla, Rhian. Saerla!”
Rhian swallowed hard. There was naught she could say.
Several members of the guard stalked off toward Rhian’s chamber. Farlan stepped forward.
“I will go. Try to explain to him—”
He moved off. Rhian stumbled after.
Leith. The other part of her, the man rooted to her heart. The father of her child. She must have a moment with him. She must—
But there would be no time. She knew that even as she followed Farlan’s broad back. She understood the impulse that moved him, the same as her own. The guards would haul Leith out from her chamber, beat down the door if they had to, without regard for his condition. If he resisted, they would batter him ruthlessly.
The thought gave her feet wings. She outdistanced Farlan and the guards and arrived first at her chamber door.
“Leith?” She flattened herself against the boards. “Open. Lift the bar.”
“Rhian?” Wha’ is happening?”
The guards reached her then, nudged her aside, and pounded on the door. “Is it barred from within? Open!”
He did. He kept the bar in his left hand as a weapon, if a poor one. His gaze flew from Rhian’s face to those of the guards and then to Farlan.
“What is it?”
“Do no’ fight them, Leith,” Farlan bade him. “Ye be going back home.”
Chapter Forty-Six
