A prayer.
Their archers all fired. Rhian was nudged out of the way by one of them and fell back. She did not see what happened next, but a cry went up. A cry of victory.
What did it mean? Had Rory MacLeod been struck? Had her anger, like an arrow, struck him down?
It was not right to wish for anyone’s death. Except, perhaps, his.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Was he struck?”
“Aye!”
“Is he dead?”
The questions flew when they met, the four of them, in the great hall during the aftermath of the battle. Moira, Saerla, Rhian, and Alasdair, whose wounds Rhian treated even as they spoke together.
Farlan was not there. Rhian did not know why and half feared to ask after him.
Those standing at the battlements—from whence Rhian had been pushed back—had seen an arrow take Rory MacLeod in the back. They’d seen him crumple slowly, and his men mobbing around him, shielding him from further missiles and eventually bearing him up. His second-in-command had given the order to withdraw.
No one knew whether Rory lived or died.
Rhian tied off the bandage around Alasdair’s brawny arm and shot a look at Saerla. Her sister had muttered something there at the end. A curse after all?
But Saerla did not believe in issuing curses. She’d reminded them all many a time that what a person put out into the world—good or ill—came back upon her threefold.
None of them wanted more ill fortune.
Saerla, though, was not saying a lot, not now. She seemed almost stunned by the battle just behind them. Rhian had tended her wounds, which proved minor. She’d tended all of them in turn, Alasdair, as always, being the last to accept care.
“If Rory MacLeod be dead,” Moira declared, “’twill change everything. ’Tis he, so Farlan says, who has been carrying the banner against us.”
As if the speaking of his name summoned him, Farlan entered the hall. His gaze flew immediately to Moira, and hers to him. When he reached her, they touched hands as if they just had to make certain of one another.
Such a love,Rhian thought.Despite everything.
Farlan bore a big, bloody gash on the side of his face that started next to his eyebrow and descended into his brown beard.
Rhian motioned him to her. He sat before her stoically, his gaze steady, while she began to clean the wound.
“We are striving to determine whether or not Rory has been killed,” Moira informed him. “Could ye tell?”
“Nay. Rory will, though, be a hard man to kill. His ambition sustains him.”
“Aye, so,” Alasdair said. “But I say we may ha’ succeeded this morn. That arrow went straight into his back. Deep.”
“’Tis no’ a matter of if it went into his back,” Rhian said, “but what it struck there. A rib? He will likely survive, unless poisoning sets in.” Her thoughts flicked to Leith, lying seared by fever. “A lung? He has even chances o’ surviving. His heart—”
“I do no’ think it struck his heart,” Saerla said. They all stared at her. Did she think, or did she know?
“Sister—” Moira began.
Saerla shook her head. “I ha’ no’ been given that knowledge.”
“Well, Mistress Saerla,” Alasdair said, “ye might well seek it. Rory MacLeod’s death could save us.”
He looked at Farlan, who still sat quiet beneath Rhian’s hands.
