Page 32 of Dorchad

Everything that had happened between them tonight was more than she’d ever dreamed possible.

The sweat pouring off her skin should have embarrassed her, but the chieftain didn’t seem to mind it. He rubbed her all over with his hands as if so delighted with her body he couldn’t stop touching it. From his reaction to her it was as if everything was happening for him the first time, yet how could he be so good at making love without any experience?

Maybe he’s thought about it a lot like me.

“I terrify wenches,” Dorchad said, his voice little more than a whisper. “Before I joined the clan, I paid hoors to share my bed. Ever they looked away and took no pleasure in the act. You’re the first brave enough to come to me, and the only wench I’ve pleased.”

“Good.” She lifted her head to frown at him. “I’m not willing to share you with other women.”

“Greedy thing.” He brushed her curls back from her eyes. “What of the MacRune who wished for you?”

Rebecca kissed his chin. “He’ll have to ask the magic cloth for another girl.”

Chapter Eight

Cath divided the patrollers into three groups, sending one into the shadows of the forest and the second to scale the trees nearest the troll’s ha’. The rest fanned out around him in front of the cave, standing ready as he chose a clear swatch of ground and built a small fire with the kindling and some deadfall in a spot where the breeze would carry it inside. As thick white smoke funneled into the rough opening in the rocks surrounding the mouth, one of the men with him stepped up and pulled a long narrow object wrapped in sacking from behind a rock near the entry.

“War Master.” The patroller brought the thing to him. “’Tis a dirk.”

The weapon Cath pulled out of the sacking had been sheathed in dark brown leather inlaid with black crystals that glittered with copper-violet glints. The hilt, which had been skillfully carved from a thick yellowed bone, had hundreds of tiny eyes carved all over it. When he gripped the hilt to unsheathe the weapon, the eyes blinked against his flesh. The blade, some two hands long, had been hewn from a single flake of pale green Fae crystal. Dark streaks of dried blood mottled its transparent surface.

In Elphyne Cath had seen such weapons, all rendered by a clan of trows that smithed all the weapons for the dark Fae court in exchange for servants, usually females that had fallen out of favor with the queen. What the trows did to those females no one knew, but once sent to their kingdom, the servants were never again seen.

The dirk likely had been given to the thieves as payment for some service to a dark Fae.

“Mayhap the bastarts didnae come here to hide.” He hung the dagger sheath from his belt.

The smoke did its work, for soon coughing sounds echoed from deep within the cave. Rather than alert the thieves to their presence, he made a hand signal for his men to ready themselves for disarming and disabling the intruders.

In Elphyne Cath would have gone inside and killed them all before they could attempt to escape, which was what he badly wanted to do now. Yet the weight of the dagger at his hip stayed him as much as his vow to protect all mortals. Whoever had owned the dagger would have been too strong for the thieves to overpower and rob.

How had this weapon fallen into their filthy hands?

The first mortal to stumble out appeared scrawny and smelled as foul as his garments looked, and opened his mouth as if to screech a warning. Cath clapped a glove over his maw of broken, blackened teeth and used a quick, leashed blow to the back of his skull to render him unconscious. After passing him to one of the patrollers to be gagged and bound, he caught the second and third that emerged, slamming their heads together and hurling them aside to parry a blow from the pitted blade of the fourth.

Another four barreled out of the troll’s ha’, all swinging what weapons they had and shouting with false rage. One dropped his pitchfork and pissed himself as he was pinned between the points of two patrollers’ spears. The clansmen in the trees dropped down to help subdue two more, but the last man out of the cave darted through their ranks and disappeared into the brush.

“Mine,” Cath told his men as he stomped out the smoking fire. “Bind the others and take them to the docks. We’ll transport the lot off the island on the laird’s boat.”

He strode after the escaping thief, wrinkling his nose as the mortal’s pungent stink provided an almost tangible trail for him to follow. When he reached the next clearing, the patrollers he had sent into the woods now formed a living wall that shifted to block the thief, however he attempted to go around them.

“You think to outrun us all on our island, eejit?” Cath asked. As the thief turned around and hurled a sledge at him he easily caught the weapon and slung it back so that it slammed into the mortal’s knee.

The satisfying crunch of bone that came just before that thief’s howl of agony made the patrollers grin with dark delight.

The thief dropped onto his side, clutching his leg and writhing. “Mercy, my lord, for we’re but poor, starved farmers driven from our land. We’d work, only no one trusts us now that we’re reduced to begging–”

“Enough.” Cath grabbed him by the leine and pulled him up as he unsheathed the dark Fae dagger and showed it to him. “Who gave you the dirk?”

“I cannae tell you,” the mortal said instantly.

“Why did you hide the blade outside the cave?” When the man remained silent he shook him. “’Twas giving you nightmares, aye?”

When it became obvious the thief would saying nothing more, Cath dragged him back to where the patrollers had just finished tying the other thieves.

“Send word to the magistrate,” he told his patrol chief. “Once we cross the loch we’ll cart them to his jail.”

“Dinnae take us back,” the thief he’d crippled suddenly begged. “Our master, he’ll end us all.”