Aiming for his head.
With no hope of blocking such a blow in time, he stumbled back, his shield flying from his arm. The point of his enemy’s sword caught his left cheek and laid it open from his ear to his nose. He did not feel any pain, but aye, he faced his own death squarely in that moment. Wondered if it had come.
His opponent gave a cry—not like the bellows he heard all around him. This sounded high, like the scream of a hawk—and whirled away again.
Off balance, Rory did not give him time. He leaped and tackled the MacBeith warrior from behind and, rather than raising his sword, caught the man against his own body with his shield arm wrapped tight.
Which told him his opponent was, in fact, not a man.
He believed he knew her in that instant. For she’d been in his possession once before, if only briefly. She felt small, held there against his body. Small and full of desperate fury.
His sword came up of its own accord. He could lay it against her throat, could hold her fast. But he could not kill a woman.
In that mad instant, he forgot his intention to do just that, to slay the infernal woman who’d set herself up as chief. She, being a chief, did not seem like a woman by any account.
This person in his arms, this woman who’d tried to take his life, did.
“Be still,” he growled into her ear. “Be still! I do no’ wish to hurt ye.”
She either did not hear him amid all the clashing and screaming, or failed to heed. She struggled like a fury in his grip, and he could feel her, by God he could. The flex of her lithe body. The heat coming off her skin. The hate that was not hate so much as focused terror.
He lifted her off the ground. It was not difficult, since she weighed less than half of what he did. She kicked her feet wildly, bashing him in the shins. In the thighs. Between, which forced a grunt from him.
The MacBeith warriors all around had stopped pushing in upon him. The battle slowly died and a preternatural sort of silence fell.
A warrior—the female chief—came racing out of the fighting to face him. She bore a scar on one cheek, and her left arm ran with blood. She looked furious enough to gut him.
“Let her go!”
Not a plea but a command. Yet Rory saw the terror in her face. Three sisters MacBeith, Leith had said. One of them was already at MacLeod. Another—Farlan’s bitch—stood before him. Did he hold the third in his arms?
He gave a harsh laugh. “Nay.”
“Ye will let her go!”
Farlan came running up, skidding to a halt in the wet, bloodied turf. He appeared incredulous at what he saw.
“Rory—”
The last person Rory wanted to see. He pressed the sword tighter against the throat of the woman in his arms.
“Mistress Saerla!” someone called out.
Aye, so, Saerla was what Leith had called the one sister. The one he claimed was a Seer, of all things. Rory had garnered a prize, indeed.
And this time, this time he had no intention of letting her go.
Chapter Seven
Saerla closed hereyes against the sickening fear pounding through her, the horror and dismay. Och, what had she done? In trying to slay her enemy, she’d gone and placed herself directly in his hands.
She’d meant to behead him. To remove him as a threat.
Perhaps she still could.
She opened her eyes and looked at her sister. Moira stood poised before them, her stained sword in her hands and stark terror in her eyes. She did not know how to handle what she saw in front of her.
Her sister in the monster’s hands.
