Should her compassion be bound by who was MacBeith, and who MacLeod?
“Go, Alasdair,” said Moira after a swift glance at Rhian. “Ye do no’ belong here, and ye tak’ up too much space.”
He rumbled in protest. The dirk still rested in his fingers.
Rhian turned to face him. “Go, and let me do my work.”
Few men chose to defy her when she had a certain glint in her eye. Alasdair backed down now, though he did not look happy about it.
When he’d gone, Moira puffed out a breath. “Aye, sister, do your work.”
It would not be Rhian’s hands that saved this man, if he lived. His life, as she felt quite clearly, lay in the hands of a far higher power.
Chapter Six
Leith wandered ina dark place, far different from the gloaming where the MacBeith war party had caught him and driven him to his knees. That had contained pricks of light. Flares from torches carried by his enemies. The vast field of stars overhead. Glints of their reflections in the far-off loch waters.
When he was young, he used to love standing and gazing up at the heavens. Back in the old days this was, when he, Rory, and Farlan were lads, after the old chief, Camraith, took Farlan in to raise alongside Rory. The three of them would sneak out long after they were meant to be abed and lie on their backs in the green sod. He would let his mind wander, wondering how it would be to have a boat that could sail through the firmament. Rory would talk about how he would one day own the whole glen, be the monarch of Glen Bronach. Leith barely listened to him.
He invariably became lost in the beauty of that sky.
Now, however, he existed in complete darkness. Lost. He could not tell up from down or forward from back. He did not know where safety might lie.
Perhaps there was no safety. Mayhap this was death.
Och, and he’d hoped for better of it. A warrior thought about death, to be sure he did. No man, lest he be a fool, could take to battle with a sword in his hand and fail to wonder if he would come back home again.
But aye, he’d expected something better from the brink of heaven. Hillsides full of flowers, perhaps, or streams of light. Rich beauty spread before him. The singing of angels.
There had been an angel.
She’d bent over him there in the field, before he’d come to this dark place. He summoned her up before his mind’s eye once again. An oval face, a pair of eyes filled with somber compassion. A vulnerable mouth and a wealth of hair, the color of which he could not tell. Soft, gentle hands with caring in their touch.
Ah, and if he lay now in the very clutches of death, there was much he would grieve at losing. Sunlit days with friends. Evenings drinking ale by a warm fire. The laughter.
He would grieve losing the chance to see her again, most of all.
What would his mother say when he failed to come home? She was born sister to Rory’s father, and in a way had mothered them all. His da was gone—gone on ahead of him, as it now seemed. Would he meet his da again when he crossed to—
Where? Where was this plane of death?
Perhaps all the dark around him argued he headed not to heaven. Quite possibly he did not deserve that place. He’d never done any man deliberate harm, save with a sword in his hand. As a warrior, he’d killed a few. Aye, more than a few. He’d never hurt the women with whom he dallied. They had been happy in his company, had enjoyed sharing laughter and occasionally other pleasures.
He’d never left them weeping. But nor had he ever found that one who would take ownership of his heart. Keep the fire on his hearth and give him the bairns he desired.
Och, he did not want to die alone. No one in sight for good or ill. Cold and forsaken.
“Here now,” a woman’s voice crooned from out of the dark. “Do no’ greet.”
Had he been greeting? A fine thing if so, for he’d not shed a tear since childhood. But surely he knew that voice. Why could he not open his eyes and see her? Mayhap his eyeswereopen. Yet still he could not see.
He could not see, no, yet the terror of the darkness eased. It eased because she was beside him. He knew her, surely he did.
Hands touched him. Gentle hands. One brushed at his cheeks—aye, he must be weeping. Another pressed against his upper arm.
Pain exploded there.
It erupted from out of the darkness, from all around him, and latched on to his right arm with sharp teeth. So severe was it, it drove the breath from him.
