Page 3 of Leila’s Legacy

He stepped around a body with a painful looking lump thrusting out from the skin of their neck and shuddered. Mayhap it would not.

There was naught within the village but death. Prior to their arrival, he’d been so certain of his purpose: seek out information on the dark-haired daughter of the Earl of Werrick. There would be many dark-haired lasses in the village.

“Water.” A croaking voice pulled Niall’s attention to an old man sagging on a bench, wavering forward.

Good sense told Niall to keep walking, but there was a deeper part of him, a thread of genuine kindness from his father that stilled his steps. He pulled the stopper of his flagon free. “’Tis ale.”

The man’s thin lips curled into a smile under the wispy strands of his beard. “All the better.”

Niall handed the skin to the man who accepted it and drank in great gulping swallows. The villager sighed in satisfaction and held it out to Niall with a shaking hand.

“Ye can keep it.” Niall stepped back from the flagon and the man, both likely contaminated with pestilence now. But he did not leave. Not when the villager might be good for information.

The five reivers with Niall held back, fear passing between them in side glances.

Niall wouldn’t be cowed thus. Instead, he regarded the villager. “I hear ye had warning of the plague. Is it true?”

The man’s gaze turned suspicious. “Ye want to steal our food stores?” He tightened his grasp on the ale.

Niall shook his head. “Nay, we’ve plenty of food. We’re searching for the reason why the pestilence has swept upon us.” And they did have plenty of food. For the first time in decades, no one complained of an empty belly. There was more food than they could possibly consume, for there were too many people dying.

“Tell me about the warden’s daughter,” Niall said. “Yer lord.”

The villager blinked slowly, as though on the edge of sleep. “He’s got several daughters.”

“Ye know which one I mean.” Niall spoke loudly this time in an effort to wake the villager.

The man’s eyes blinked open. “Lady Leila.”

“The one with dark hair?”

The villager nodded slowly.

Leila. Such a benign name for one who had sent the pestilence streaking through Scotland. But Niall knew better than to trust benign.

“’Tis rumored that she warned the castle, as well as the rest of her family, of the pestilence before anyone fell ill,” Niall said. “’Tis said she knew it all, for she brought it. Is she a witch?”

The man’s mouth curled up in a smile, revealing yellow teeth. A low whimper sounded in his chest and grew into a chuckle.

Niall folded his arms over his chest. “Ye think I jest?”

The man tipped the flagon to his mouth and drained the ale as he slowly dipped to the side of the bench.

Niall took a cautious step back, lest the man fall forward and touch him. Something flew in front of Niall’s face. Exactly where his head had been. It slammed into the wall at his right with a hollow thunk.

A dagger jutted from the white-washed surface. A dagger?

Niall darted behind a cottage and pulled his dagger free. His body acted before his mind fully wrapped around the idea that someone in this death-ridden village was healthy enough to fight them. He peered out in the direction the dagger had come from. A tingle at the back of his neck alerted him to danger, and he jerked back as the next blade sailed past him.

He nodded to his men, motioning for them to go around the opposite side of the building. They would be a distraction while he moved closer. No villager would throw daggers at his head and live to laugh over it later.

He dashed forward, ducking behind buildings and abandoned carts as his men obeyed his orders. The clash of steel told him his men had arrived. No longer needing to mind his back, he ran toward the hut and charged toward the whoreson seeking to attack.

Except it was no bedraggled man fighting off all five of his warriors.

It was a woman.

A bonny woman at that, with streaming black hair and long, lean legs encased in red leather trews with a belt fastened over a loose leine. She kicked a lean leg high into the air and caught one of Niall’s men in the side of his head. The man dropped like a sack of grain.