Her short-lived joy evaporated when he laughed, a humorless, vindictive sound, as he twisted one of her arms up behind her to immobilize her by leaning his weight against it. She gasped for air, feeling as if her arm would rip from her shoulder, and choked as her lungs filled with the acrid taste of smoke.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t catch her breath to scream. Her only escape was to plunge headlong into the rage-filled chasm within her mind.
OceanofPDF.com
Thirty-seven
FOUR OF THEMfollow us.”
Chase nodded in acknowledgment as Halldor pulled up beside him. They’d almost reached the gates of Tordenet.
“Five. Sorry,” the big man corrected with an embarrassed grin. “Two of them canter in unison. It’s an easy enough mistake.”
The guy must have the most sensitive ears of anyone ever born.
“How much time before they get here?”
Chase wasn’t concerned about dealing with five men; he and Hall could make a quick enough business of them. But once Ulfr’s men arrived, Chase had little doubt they’d put up a call of alarm—and fighting his way through an entire garrison while he hunted for Christiana would slow his efforts considerably.
“Not long. I say we head for the keep once we’re through the gates. I’ll take the laird’s tower. I’ve an interest there of my own.”
“Fine,” Chase agreed. “I’ll take his solar—and hisbedchamber. And I swear to God, if that’s where I find her, there won’t be enough left of that son of a bitch to fill a piss pot.”
“Best you hold off on confronting Torquil until after I’ve been to his tower, aye?”
They’d reached the gates, leaving Chase no opportunity to pursue Hall’s odd piece of advice.
“Open!” Hall’s command boomed up to the guard on the wall walk and the chains rattled in response.
As soon as the metal grate rose high enough, Chase urged his horse forward quickly, Hall at his side matching his pace. They rode straight to the keep, and at the base of the stairs, he leapt from the horse’s back, hitting the steps at a run. Hall’s feet hammered behind him as he reached the top landing and fastened his hand upon the door.
“Go on,” the big man urged. “I’ll slow them down for you.”
Chase turned and saw five riders galloping toward them, their horses covered in lather.
“Go!” Hall yelled over his shoulder.
With one last scan of the courtyard, Chase pushed on the heavy door and slipped inside. Once the door swung shut, no sound but his racing steps echoed off the stone walls. In the quiet seconds, a tiny spark of discord stirred in the back of his brain, as if he’d seen a picture with something out of place. But no time to worry about that now. Whatever he’d seen out there would have to be Hall’s problem to deal with.
He pushed all thought away to concentrate onhis anger as he hit the door to the laird’s solar at a full run, drawing his sword as he entered.
He skidded to a stop just inside the room, where the grisliest of blood-spattered horrors greeted him.
Chase had experienced gruesome on multiple levels in his life. He doubted anyone could pull two tours in a war zone and avoid it. But to stumble into a scene this grotesque when he’d expected something so totally different shook his resolve and rattled his momentum.
Or perhaps it was just the fear that if this could happen to whomever that head had belonged to, it could as easily happen to Christiana.
His stomach roiled at the thought and he backed out of the room, tamping down all emotions. What was left in there was somebody else’s problem, not his. Christiana’s safety was his only consideration now.
She filled every corner of his thoughts as he ran to the stairs and started up them. Scenes of her flitted through his memory like a movie trailer on fast-forward. Her eyes as she lay beneath him in the room upstairs. Her laughter as she sat on the bench in Orabilis’s animal shed. Her smile as she stood at the door of her tower.
As if a computer inside his head finally loaded the site it had searched for, the discord eating at the back of his mind blossomed fully, and he stumbled to a stop midway up the great staircase.
The last glimpse of her tower, when he’d quicklyscanned the courtyard, replayed in his mind. He’d spotted smoke wisping out through the ground-level window.
She was in her tower—and in danger. He knew it as if he could hear her calls for help.
He raced down the stairs, leaping from the third step to hit the floor running, and flung open the massive entry door. Hall held his ground on the top stair with his sword, fending off the two men on the steps below him, holding them back as he’d promised.
