“I fear he will cost Moira her place at the head o’ the clan. And I struggle wi’ finding any reason Moira would risk losing our MacBeith lands.”
“Aye,” Saerla agreed. “When it comes to love, there maun be some magic in it.”
Chapter Four
Three times, Leithnearly went down there in the dark. Once he tripped over something he could not see and kept going, stumbling forward. After that, with his blundering and trying desperately to find his way, increasing weakness hampered him, twice almost taking him to his knees.
That, and the pain.
He was a strong man, renowned for it. His cousin Rory often joked that Leith was a kitten in the body of a bull. If ye had the will for it, man, ye’d be dangerous.
Leith did not have the will to savage, to attack or slaughter. He’d much rather laugh, sing songs, and court women.
But others, looking at the size of him, took him as formidable.
And he thought, as he stumbled away through the gloom following his encounter with the MacBeith angel, perhaps he’d taken his own strength for granted. Relied upon his stamina and the muscles that sustained his great frame.
For now, when that strength deserted him, he was ill prepared.
The wound in his upper arm was a bad one. He’d known that the moment his opponent, a MacBeith warrior screaming his head off, plunged the blade into his arm. It had been Leith’s own weight, or so he figured, that did much of the damage. He’d fallen toward the man onto the blade. When the fellow stepped back and wrested the sword away, it had twisted and ripped, gouging the flesh. Leith had fallen where he stood—the very place the angel had found him—and others had died atop him.
He’d been fighting on the flank when it happened, where Rory usually assigned him. So it went—Leith on one flank, their aging war chief, Murgor, on the other, Rory at center with his close friend Farlan at his side. The way it had always been.
Until now. Leith, staggering, trying to locate the rest of the MacLeod forces by sound as much as sight, grimaced. Farlan had lately defected, renounced his place in Clan MacLeod, and abandoned Rory. All for the sake of a woman.
Leith’s thoughts flickered back to the merciful lass who’d tended him there on the field. Was Farlan’s woman equal to her? If so, Leith could almost understand it.
Rory, however, could not. He’d denounced Farlan as a traitor and declared he’d strike him down if they ever met in combat.
Leith did not quite believe that. The two of them had been near inseparable since boyhood. But Rory was very angry. And hurt.
More to the point, Farlan’s abandonment of his clan had put Rory in a vile mood, a persistent one. Which was good for no one.
And Rory’d had to march out without Farlan at his side. Was that why they’d lost this battle that they should have won?
Leith stumbled to a halt, gasping for breath. He could hear that the bulk of his company even now retreated, moving steadily away from him. He might follow, but he would have a vast distance to cover, a loch to cross, before he reached home.
If he failed to make it back to the MacLeod stronghold, Rory would not know what had happened to him. He would have a pretty good idea when no one who had been assigned to the right flank with Leith returned, for his companions had all perished.
Rory would not know if he’d been captured, or lay dead.
He had to make it home. Since Farlan had renounced his birthright, Rory had relied even more heavily than usual upon him. Aye, the three of them had always been close, in friendship and in strife. In war and in mischief. Rory needed him.
That conviction allowed him to get moving once more despite the great pain of his wound. His right arm hung limp as a hunk of meat, and he could feel that blood had soaked through the bandaging placed by the merciful woman.
Perhaps he would die here, out in the center of the glen. He did not particularly want to die alone, but he could tell he trailed the main part of the retreating army.
If he went down here, he would not get up again.
At least he would perish out under the sky in the glen he loved. He glanced at the firmament above him, spangled with stars that looked like bright eyes gazing down. The gloaming had faded as much as it ever did at this time of year, and he found himself gazing at eternity.
Ah, and who had thought it would end this way for him? It did so, aye, for many a warrior. But he’d wanted much more from his life. He’d always thought he’d stop playing and settle down someday. Have a family, a crop of laughing children and a wife who cared for him. That,thatwas why he’d fought—to secure this glen for MacLeod and make an enduring home.
Now the blood—his life’s blood—seeped from him as steady as his heartbeat, and his life with it.
Ahead of him something stirred in the shadows, and hope leaped within him. Perhaps after all he’d caught up with their retreating men.
It allowed him to force his body back into motion.
