by Linda Howard
“How did I come to this?
“A rhetorical question. I know how it happened. I watched it happen. I saw Parrish kill them both.
“There was no transition between before and now, no time to adjust. I went from respectable to fugitive in the space of a few shattering minutes. From wife to widow, from sister to survivor, from normal to… this.
“Only hatred keeps me going.
“It’s a hate so strong and hot and pure that sometimes I feel incandescent with it. Can hate purify? Can it burn out all the little obstacles that might keep you from acting on it? I think it can. I think mine has. I want Parrish to pay for what he’s done to my life, pay for the deaths of those I love. I want him to die. But I don’t want Ford and Bryant to have died for nothing, so I have to go after the Foundation too, not just Parrish.
“I don’t know how long it will take me to reach my destination. I don’t know if I can do it in time (a bad pun) or if I’ll die in the effort. All I can do is try, because hate, and revenge, are all I have left.
“I must find Black Niall.”
She stopped typing, staring at the words on the screen. When she was in college she had kept a paper journal, with a butter-soft leather cover. Ford had given it to her the first Christmas after they started dating. She had intended it to be a record of her work, her thoughts on it, how the research and translations were going; instead it had become a diary of her private life, and when she switched to a laptop computer the habit had carried over to the electronic page.
In the journal she had recorded her flight from Parrish Sawyer. In it, too, was the only relief she had from the grief she kept bottled inside, for only there had she mourned Ford and Bryant. She had also chronicled her deepening fascination, and her warring senses of disbelief and awe, with what she had discovered in the old manuscripts for which Parrish had killed. She had wanted to dismiss them, but she couldn’t; there were too many details that tied together, too many coincidences for them to be mere coincidences after all. Certainly Parrish didn’t dismiss the secrets contained in the documents. And in the end, she too had believed.
Carefully she closed the file and turned off the laptop, setting it safely aside. She didn’t know if any of the articles she had gathered would make the trip with her, or if she would arrive there—or was it when—without anything, even a stitch of clothing. She hadn’t been joking about being stark naked.
She didn’t know anything for certain, not even if the whole damn procedure would work. If it didn’t, at least only Harmony would be a witness to what a colossal fool she made of herself. And if it didn’t work, she would find some other way to stop Parrish and the Foundation. But if it did—
She took a deep breath. She had everything ready. She had checked and rechecked her figures, then checked them again. She had found the correct mineral surroundings, the rocks, for better conductivity. She had drunk the correct amount of water, calculated according to her weight and the time she needed to travel, so much that she felt bloated. She had eaten the correct things, subtly altering her body chemistry. She had prepared herself mentally, rehearsing what she would do, the sequence in which she would do it. Even the weather was cooperating, with the offshore storm advancing nearer and nearer, so that the air was crisp and crackling with electricity. The storm wasn’t needed, but its presence seemed like a blessing.
It was time.
Grace picked up the big, rough burlap bag she had sewn herself, and hugged it to her chest. She and Harmony had also handmade the heavy, old-fashioned garments she wore, though neither of them was particularly skillful at sewing. At least early-fourteenth-century fashions had been simple. She wore a plain cotton gown, with long sleeves and a scoop neck, not formfitting at all. Over it was another gown, a sleeveless one, of good, soft wool. The undergown was called a kirtle, the overgown a surcoat. In the bag was a heavy velvet surcoat, should she need to convey a bit of status. A length of wool was folded in the bag, to be used as a shawl should she need it.
She had taken the precaution of buying a pair of handmade moccasins while she was in Tennessee, and the soft leather molded to her feet. She wore long white stockings, secured with old-fashioned ribbon garters which she tied above her knees. She wore no bra or panties, for there hadn’t been any such thing as underwear back then. There were no elastic bands or garment tags to make anyone suspicious. Her long hair was secured in a single thick braid, in the style she had worn a long time ago—before. She covered her head with a thick cotton scarf, tying the ends behind her neck.
The only thing she carried in the way of money was a few pieces of jewelry, the earrings and wedding band set she had been wearing when it all happened. There was nothing about her appearance, she hoped, that would be glaringly out of place. What she carried in the burlap bag would be enough to get her burned for witchcraft if she were caught.
The storm was growing closer, thunder echoing like a brass gong. Now or never, she thought. She had to hurry so Harmony could collect the laptop; rain wouldn’t do it any good.
Carefully she placed her foot on the pressure switch she had rigged, holding her weight just short of tripping it. She could feel the electrodes where she had taped them to her ankles, and wondered how they had managed this in the days before electrodes and batteries existed.
Closing her eyes, she began breathing deeply, slowly, and forced herself to focus on Black Niall. She had done all the right things so she should go back exactly six hundred seventy-five years, but she felt as if she needed a target. He was the only target she had, this man who had lived almost seven hundred years before. There were no portraits of him, not even a crude drawing such as had been common back then, for her to bring to mind. All she could do was concentrate on him, the man, the essence of him.
She knew him. Oh, she knew him. He had haunted her for months, owning her waking mind while she struggled to decipher the ancient documents, then invading her dreams with images so vivid that sometimes she woke herself talking to him in her sleep, and always—always—she felt as if he’d just been there. He had made love to her in her dreams, tormenting her with her subconscious’s sensuality. Black Niall had in some ways been her savior, for he had given her hope. The force of his personality, of the bigger-than-life man he had been, had reached out to her across the span of seven centuries. He drew her, somehow, and kept her from sinking into the tar pit of despair. There were times, during these past months, when he had been more real than the world around her.
His image began to fill her mind, forming against the darkness of her closed eyelids: a man as vivid as the lightning, as forceful as the thunder. Dimly she was aware that it was dangerous to focus on her imaginary picture of him, rather than on facts, but she couldn’t change her mind to a blank screen. She could feel him, drawing closer. He was there, he was there…
Breathe, deep and slow. Draw the air in one nostril, circle it around, expel it out the other nostril. Complete the circle again and again. Breathe. Breathe…
She saw his eyes, black and piercing, burning through the fog of time until it was as if he glared straight into her eyes. She saw the high, thin blade of his nose, the thick mane of his black hair as it swung against his muscled shoulders, the small braids that hung on each side of his face in ancient Gaelic fashion.
She saw his mouth open as he roared a command. She faintly perceived around him the din and horror of battle, but he was the only clear figure. She saw the glint of a weak, watery sun on his sword blade as he swung the massive weapon with one powerful arm. The other arm wielded a fearsome axe, rather than a shield, and both weapons were stained with blood as he hacked and parried, felling one foe after another.
In. Out. The air circled around and around inside her, drawing ever smaller, tighter, her mind fastening ever more firmly on the man who was her target. The spiral began to shrink, hugging around her, creating a sense of suction, and she knew she was almost ready to go.
Niall! Black Niall!
Mentally she called to
him, screaming his name, her yearning so fierce and intense that it ached in every cell of her body. There was a sensation of being compressed, condensed, concentrated. In her mind she saw his head jerk around in surprise, as if he heard the distant echo of her cry, and then his image too began condensing, tugging on her, pulling her down into a pit of darkness. She fastened on the pure beacon of his essence, like a pilot surely guiding an airplane down on a beacon of radio waves. With her last remnant of consciousness she let her foot relax on the pressure switch, and the world exploded in a flash of blinding heat and light.
Chapter 19
GRACE LAY ON HER SIDE IN THE COOL GRASS. SHE FELT DAZED, bruised. Around her she heard a confusion of noises but they came from a great distance, and she couldn’t quite tell what any of them were. Her mind, lingering between times, struggled to grasp any detail of existence. She felt as if she were waking up from anesthesia, aware first of external details but with no clue of who or where she was. Then details began seeping back; first was a vague “Oh, yeah, I’m Grace” moment of self-recognition. After a moment, or an hour, she wondered drowsily if the procedure had worked or if she had merely succeeded in shocking her ass, as Harmony had phrased it.
She became aware of various aches, as if she had been beaten, or had rolled down a hill.
The noise was steadily growing louder. The din became annoying, and she struggled to open her eyes, to gain control of her body so she could sit up and tell whoever was yelling like that to shut up. Then the smell hit her, and she gagged.
That involuntary reaction seemed to complete the transition from unconsciousness to complete awareness. The noise exploded into a roar, a horrifying din of what seemed like hundreds of men yelling in battle, screaming in pain. The discordant clash of metal against metal hurt her ears. Horses thudded the ground with steel-shod hooves, neighing shrilly. And the smell was an unholy combination of hot, fresh blood, urine, and emptied bowels.
She sat up, then gasped and hurled herself to the side as two dirty, long-haired, plaid-wrapped Scotsmen clashed almost on top of her. A bloodstained blade swiped through the air, barely missing her.
Dear God. She had landed in the middle of a battle.
Her breath caught. She had seen Black Niall in a battle, focused on him, and the procedure carried her directly to the place in her mind.
He was here. Somewhere. An almost painful excitement seized her insides.
Clutching her bag, she scrambled farther away from the clash of bodies. She stumbled over something soft and heavy and pitched hard onto her back. Winded, she sat up and saw that her legs were draped over a bloody dead man. A shriek caught in her throat, hung there unvoiced. Instead she hastily jerked herself away and came to her feet, swaying unsteadily as she swiveled her head, trying to orient herself.
They were in the glen, just below the rocks where she had gone through the procedure. The scene was madness, some men on horseback but most afoot, running, attacking, pivoting, slashing. Panic seized her; she couldn’t see Black Niall anywhere, couldn’t find a big man with a flowing mane of black hair, who effortlessly swung a huge sword with one hand. God, oh God, was he lying somewhere in the middle of this carnage, his own blood adding to the red flow?
Reality asserted itself with a thud. Despite her dreams and imaginings, she had no idea what he really looked like. The Guardian wouldn’t glow like an archangel with a fiery sword; he would look just like everyone else. He could have been one of the grimy combatants who had almost stepped on her and she wouldn’t have known him.
So how was she to find him? Climb the hill and scream “Black Niall!” at the top of her lungs?
“Niall Dhu! Niall Dhu!”
She heard the screaming, the sudden roar from one end of the battlefield, and all the seething bodies seemed to surge in that direction. Grace backed up, climbing a little way up the hill so she could have a better view.
“Niall Dhu!”
She started, the hoarsely screamed words suddenly making sense. Dhu meant “black.” They were yelling his name.
Blood drained from her head. Had he fallen under a sword? She stumbled forward, her feet slipping in the red mud created by many feet churning a blood-soaked ground, driven by an insane need to reach his side. He couldn’t be dead. No. Not Niall. He was invincible, the most fearsome warrior in Christendom.
The surge abruptly reversed, coming back to her. Grace halted, transfixed by the sight of all those screaming, dirty, long-haired men, bare legs flashing as they ran toward her. Hard reality slapped her. She was in the middle of a fourteenth-century battle, and if any of these men got their hands on her she would likely be raped and killed.
She turned and ran.
It was like waving a cape at a bull. They were already in a blood lust, and a collective roar burst from a hundred throats when they saw her. Grace pulled up her skirts and hurdled bodies, the bag she clutched in one hand banging heavily against her legs. She struggled to draw breath but panic clutched her throat, squeezing, threatening to cut off her breathing altogether.
The ground shook under a horse’s thundering impact and a beefy, bloodstained arm swept around her. Grace shrieked as the world abruptly whirled off kilter and she was jerked into the air, flailing, to land heavily across a stinking, wool-covered lap. The man roared with laughter, roughly fondled her rump, then kneed the horse around. He yelled something, his tone obviously gloating, but she couldn’t understand anything he said except “Niall Dhu.”
Helpless, upside-down over a horse, all she could do was hang on to the bag and hope against hope that the ruffian who had captured her was Niall himself. She had caught a glimpse of a beefy face with a dirty beard, a dreadful disappointment compared to her dreams, but if he were Niall at least that would save her the trouble of hunting him down.
She didn’t think she was that lucky.
The bastard was in high spirits, laughing and yelling as he rode. Others on horseback were around them, but most of the men were afoot. There was a great deal of activity in a group just out of her limited view, more yelling and laughter.
The man holding her put his hand between her legs, roughly feeling her through her skirts. Fury swept over Grace in an abrupt, unthinking tide, and swift as a snake she turned her head and sank her teeth into his bare, dirty calf. He roared in surprised pain and jerked on the reins. The horse half reared, neighing, and its hooves hit the ground again with a bone-jarring thud, jerking her teeth out of the man’s leg. She gagged at the taste, and nausea overwhelmed her. She began to heave, and vomited over his foot.
Laughter rose around them, men pointing and howling with glee. Her captor seized her and furiously jerked her upright, his fetid breath hitting her full in the face as he roared at her. She couldn’t understand a word he said, but his breath made her gag again. Hastily he pushed her off the horse and she sprawled in the dirt, landing with the bag under her stomach and knocking the air out of her.
She was jerked upright, held there while she swayed and gasped for breath, and a rope was tied around her waist. The beefy man tied the other end around his own waist and kicked his heels to the horse’s sides, and she had to walk or be dragged. She walked, wheezing, desperately clutching her bag in both hands.
She expected the bag to be taken from her at any moment, but the men evidently didn’t see any need to carry anything extra when she could do it. She wasn’t going anywhere, and they could relieve her of her possessions whenever they reached their destination.
At least now she could look around. She didn’t know if it was morning or afternoon, so she had no way of telling in what direction they were traveling. Not north or south, though, because the sun was behind them. If it was morning, they were traveling west; if afternoon, they were going east.
Behind her, a group of men were carrying a long bundle, completely wrapped and tied in a motley collection of dirty plaids. The bundle heaved occasionally, and was rewarded by a thump from one or more of the men. She looked around and one of the men me
t her gaze, grinning to display a few remaining teeth, the rest rotted to mere stumps. “Niall Dhu,” he said proudly, indicating the bundle.
Aghast, she stopped walking, and was jerked forward when the slack was taken out of the rope. Niall! She looked over her shoulder at the bundle, struggling to make sense of the situation. These couldn’t be his men, or they wouldn’t be hitting him. Obviously he had been captured, and his own men hadn’t been able to pursue for fear he would be killed.
Her mind buzzed with possibilities. He might be ransomed, or his captors might take pleasure in torturing and killing him. If he were held for ransom, he would likely be well taken care of; she thought she remembered reading that medieval Scots had practiced kidnapping as a fairly normal means of income, which of course would work only so long as the captive was returned unharmed. If killing them had been routine, obviously no one would have been willing to pay their hard-earned gold to no avail. The Scots were too practical for that.
But if they intended to kill him…
She had to find some way to help him. The problem was that she was a captive herself, and whenever they reached their destination she was likely to find herself in much more dire straits than she was in now. She was a captured woman, vulnerable, nothing more than a piece of meat to these men. Grace knew she was facing rape, probably multiple rapes, unless she could come up with some miraculous plan. Fear chilled her, but she forced it away. She was here. She had actually traveled through time. The circumstances weren’t good, but she had found Black Niall almost immediately. Whatever happened later, she had to keep her mind focused on her objective. If necessary, she would endure. She would survive.
