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As he had expected, there was a flurry of shouts and the company gathered, then charged across the glen, shouting and waving a variety of weapons, claymores and axes and hammers, even a scythe.
“Hold,” Niall said. “Let them come to us.”
His men ranged on either side of him, spreading out so that they weren’t clumped together and thus couldn’t be flanked. They held, the horses stamping restlessly and tossing their heads, while the screaming attackers poured across the misty, sun-dappled glen.
But a good three hundred yards had separated the two groups, and three hundred yards is a long way for a weary man to charge, especially when he has been about the tiring business of raiding all night and has not slept, and has been traveling hard to evade pursuers. Those on foot soon slowed, and some stopped altogether. Those who pushed stubbornly on were no longer shouting, no longer borne onward by battle fever.
So the host of horsemen who charged ahead of the stragglers barely outnumbered Niall and his men. Niall’s gaze targeted a bullish young man who rode in front, his wild tangle of sandy hair flying behind him. That would be Morvan, the Hay’s ill-tempered, brutish elder son, and the spit of his father. Morvan’s small, mean eyes were likewise locked on Niall.
Niall raised his sword. The claymore was, for most men, a two-handed weapon, but his strength and size gave him the power to swing the six-foot blade one-handed, freeing his left hand for yet another blade, or a Lochaber axe. Seizing the reins with his teeth, he took up an axe. His well-trained horse quivered beneath him, muscles bunching. When Morvan and his men were a mere thirty yards away, Niall and his men charged.
The impact was swift and staggering. Once he had fought with shield and armor, a hundred pounds of mail weighing him down, but now Niall fought free and wild and savage, his eyes burning with a fierce light as he blocked a sword with his axe and then went in under the man’s defenses with his own sword, spitting him. He always fought silently, without the yells and grunts of other men, instinctively sensing the next attack while he was still dealing with the present one.
Before his sword was free he turned, swinging the axe up to block another blow. Metal clanged as a sword struck the axe head, and the force of it jarred his arm. One powerful leg pressed and his horse turned, bringing him around to face this new challenge. Morvan of Hay pressed forward, using all his considerable weight in an effort to unhorse Niall.
Niall shifted his horse back, away from Morvan’s weight. With a curse the younger man straightened, his yellowed teeth bared as he drew back the claymore for another attack. “Diolain!” Morvan hissed.
Niall didn’t even blink at being called a bastard. He simply swung his own sword to parry, then buried his axe in the oafs head, cleaving it almost in two. With a jerk he freed his weapon and turned for another adversary, but there was none. His men had worked as efficiently as he, and the Hay clansmen who had been mounted were no longer astride their horses, but lay sprawled in the indignity of death, limbs exposed, their blood turning the sweet earth to mud. The familiar stench of blood and waste marked their death.
Niall’s black gaze swept over his men. Two were wounded, one seriously. “Clennan,” he said sharply, drawing the attention of the man who had taken a wound in the thigh. “Care for Leod.” Then he and his thirteen remaining men charged to meet the Hay clansmen who were on foot.
It was a rout, for a man on horseback had an enormous advantage over one afoot. The animals themselves were weapons, their steel-shod hooves and massive weight simply crushing those who could not move out of the way. Niall vaulted from his horse’s back, the blood lust singing through him as he swung sword and axe, twisting, parrying, thrusting. He was a dark blade of death, unutterably graceful as he moved in his lethal dance. Five men fell before him, one beheaded by a massive sweep of the claymore, and Niall did not even feel the shock in his sword arm as the blade sliced through bone.
The carnage lasted two minutes, no more. Then quiet fell across the glen, the clash of swords replaced by an occasional moan. Swiftly Niall took stock, not expecting his men to have escaped unscathed. Young Odar was dead, lying sprawled beneath the body of a Hay clansman. His clear blue eyes stared sightlessly upward. Sim had taken a sword cut in the side and was cursing luridly as he tried to stanch the flow of blood. Niall judged him well enough to ride. Goraidh, however, was unconscious, his forehead bloody. All suffered from small cuts and bruises, himself included, but those wounds were as nothing. With two wounded in the first attack, he had ten healthy men remaining, and two would have to stay behind to help with the wounded and herding the cattle back to Creag
Dhu.
“Muir and Crannog, remain with Sim and Clennan to help with the wounded, and the cattle.” The two he had named did not look pleased at having to remain behind, but knew it was necessary.
They could not ride as hard as they had before, for the horses were tired. Niall kept them to a steady pace, his warrior’s heart beating fierce and wild in his chest as he rode to another fight. The wind lifted his long hair, drying the sweat of battle. His thighs were clamped to the powerful animal beneath him, heat meeting heat, flesh against flesh. The thick wool plaid kilted about his waist gave him a freedom that braies and hose and hot sheepskin undergarment had denied him, and he exulted in his unfettered wildness.
He had easily cast aside the physical accoutrements of the Knights, let his hair grow long, shaved his beard, discarded the hated sheepskin. Though he had become one of them, there had always been a place in his soul that yearned for Scotland, for the wildness and freedom, the mountains and mists, the sheer lustiness of youth. The life of warfare offered by the Knights had appealed to him, and as he had grown older he had learned what they did and accepted the burden, the sheer faith, but still Scotland had lived within him.
He was home, and though he reveled in his physical freedom he was bound now by a far heavier burden, one that ruled his life far more rigidly than before. Why had Valcour chosen him, an unwilling though faithful Knight? Had Valcour suspected how easily and eagerly he would rejoin his former land and life, giving no hint that he’d once been a Templar and thereby better protecting the Treasure? Had Valcour guessed the secret relief with which Niall had accepted his freedom from all his vows, save one? But that one was the greatest of all, and the most bitter, for it served to protect those who had destroyed the Order.
Why could not Artair have been chosen? Of necessity he had shaved his beard and grown his hair, for to do otherwise would have been courting death, but other than that he held still to the vows he had taken, to chastity and service. Artair never doubted, never cursed God for what had happened, never turned from the faith to which he had sworn. If he had hated, at first, he had long since found peace and released his hatred, finding solace in prayer and war. Artair was a good soldier, a good companion.
He would not have been a good Guardian.
Niall had not forgiven either the Church or God. He hated, he doubted, he cursed himself and Valcour and his own vow, but in the end he always came back to the same truth: he was the Guardian. Valcour had chosen well.
To protect the Treasure, Niall rode to face Huwe of Hay, well aware that a blood feud had started that day and determined that most of the blood would leak from Hay clansmen. Huwe wanted war? Very well, then, there would be war.
Part Two
Niall
Chapter 12
“FEAR-GLEIDHIDH,” GRACE MUTTERED TO HERSELF,MOVing the words around on the computer screen and trying to make sense of the sentence. Fear-gleidhidh meant “guardian”; she was familiar enough with that word to recognize it at a glance. Over the past several months she’d spent so much time with these blasted Gaelic papers that she’d learned to recognize a lot of the nouns, though sometimes the spelling threw her off. Even with the help of a two-hundred-dollar set of tapes that promised to teach her how to speak Gaelic, and which she’d bought in a useless hope that it would help clarify the murky medieval Gaelic syntax, it could still take hours to translate a few sentences.
But what on earth did cunhachd mean? Running her finger down the page of the Gaelic/English dictionary, she couldn’t find any such word. Could it be cunbhalach, which meant “steady,” or cunbhalachd, which was “judgment”? No, it wouldn’t be the first, for if she was reading it correctly the sentence was “The Guardian has the Cunhachd.” The capitalization didn’t necessarily mean anything, but the sentence certainly wouldn’t be “The Guardian has the Steady.”
“The Guardian has the Judgment”? Grace rearranged the words on the screen once again, wondering if she had misread the verb or tangled the syntax for what seemed like the millionth time. Without the benefit of classes, it was taking her more time to learn Gaelic than any other language she had studied. She was getting better at it, though.
She rechecked the paper, bending close and using her magnifying glass to study the faded letters. No, the verb was definitely “has.” Cunhachd was the stumbling block. She turned her attention to it, and noticed that the n was smeared. Could it be an m instead? Returning to the dictionary, she looked up cumhachd, and a surge of triumph went through her. Cumhachd meant “power.”
“The Guardian has the Power.”
