CHAPTER 6
Evander watched the arrow fly.
Thunk.It embedded itself into the side of the litter, inches away from Skye’s temple. A little more to the right, and it would have gone straight through her eye.
The color drained from her face. Her eyes widened as her brain began to absorb how narrowly she’d avoided death.
He forced himself to turn away from her. Every instinct screamed at him to dive forward and seize her shoulders, to shake her for being such a damned fool and then to hug her tight in relief that she wasn’t dead.
But sentimentality on a battlefield was the best way to get killed, and now thiswasa battlefield.
Swallowing down a growl, he scanned the landscape around them. The archers, whoever they were, huddled in the trees.He saw movement, the same movement that must have alerted Angus.
On cue, an arrow shot out of the trees. It went wide, missing him by several feet. Whoever the archers were, they were poor shots.
Angus lay on the ground behind the litter, groaning faintly. He wasn’t dead, then. That was good.
Two riderless horses stood nervously several feet down the road. Evander thought he could see the motionless figures of the riders, his men. When had they been shot? Before or after Angus?
It didn’t matter. Those were details that would be worked out later.
He took a half-second to remember the names of the men who had traveled with them today—Matthew and John, brothers—and then turned to face the problem at hand.
No more arrows came flying out of the woods.
“Quivers empty, then?” he called, his voice ringing out. Silence followed. “I’ll take that as an aye.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Skye creep toward Angus’s supine form. She knelt beside him, her hands hovering over his chest, where the arrow protruded.
I could have told her nae to bother. That arrow is fatal. If Angus isnae dead already, he will be soon.
Something inside him railed at the unfairness of it all. Angus, faithful Angus, with his keen eyes and unwavering loyalty, did not deserve to die.
And yet here we are.
Regret—one more thing that was out of place on a battlefield.
Dropping his hand to curl over the hilt of his sword, Evander took a few slow steps forward, reaching the empty stretch of road in front of the litter.
“Here is what I think,” he continued, his voice calm. “Only one of ye has a bow and nae quite enough arrows to keep shooting. One is embedded in me driver and the other in the side of me litter, so I can assume that the rest are sticking out of me two soldiers. Let’s get to business, then, shall we? Ye daenae intend to let me go further, so how about stepping out and letting me face me foes?”
For a moment, there was silence. He wondered briefly if the men had made the admittedly wise choice of retreating, to either get more arrows or more reinforcements. In that case, he’d have to put himself and Skye on the riderless horses and abandon the heavy, slow-moving litter. They’d have to ride fast, eyes peeled for an ambush.
Then a twig cracked in the undergrowth, and a man stepped out.
Perhapsmanwas not the right word.Boywas more fitting. Evander guessed that the fellow was no older than eighteen, with a head of wild red curls and an ugly fuzz of red stubble on his cheeks. His skin was bad, red, and pitted with acne like a strawberry. He clutched a bow in one hand and a short sword in the other, and an empty quiver hung on his back.
He met Evander’s gaze, his thin lips curling back in a sneer.
“Ye will go no further,” he stated.
“Who are ye?” Evander demanded. “I daenae ken ye. Ye can have no quarrel with me. If ye do, state it now. I daenae care to take lives unnecessarily.”
“The only lives taken here will be yer own.”
The boy was confident, no doubt. Perhaps a littletooconfident. His gaze faltered only for a split second, slipping over Evander’s shoulder to look at something behind him.
At once, Evander knew what had happened. Putting one’s back to an opponent was folly, but in this situation, it was unavoidable.
