The Hunter

by Monica McCarty

  “ ‘We’?”

  Something flickered in his gaze. “Bruce’s army,” he said quickly, but she had the feeling that he had been referring to something else.

  They were silent for a while, the sounds of the night enveloping them. It was so quiet. Almost eerily so. “Do you think we are safe?”

  “Aye, lass. Lamont’s the best. It would take more than luck for the English to find us now.”

  “And Magnus and Eoin?”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry about them. They can take care of themselves. MacLean probably already has picked out the perfect place for a surprise attack. The English don’t stand a chance.”

  “But forty against two?”

  “Hopefully they caught up with Douglas—Sir James,” he clarified. But he needn’t have. The Black Douglas was well known along the Borders. “But even if they didn’t, forty Englishmen aren’t enough for two Highlanders.”

  Janet dismissed his boasting as typical Highland hyperbole. It had to be an exaggeration, didn’t it? Then why did he seem genuinely unworried?

  Ewen returned a few minutes later, and she heaved a sigh of relief.

  “I think they took the bait,” he said. “We can rest here for a few hours. In the morning, I will see about finding some horses in the village.”

  She nodded and laid her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. The difficulty of the past few days seemed to catch up with her all at once. She didn’t notice the hard ground, the stony pillow, or the cold, and didn’t even bother to lie down, all she could think about was sleep.

  Feeling the weight of his gaze on her, her eyes flickered open just before she was about to doze off. Something fierce and poignant passed between them. Something undeniable. Something that made her feel safe. “Sleep,” he said.

  And for once in her life, Janet obeyed without argument.

  She woke with a start. With a premonition. With a feeling of dread. It was almost dawn, and a quick glance around told her that once again, Ewen was gone. Sir Kenneth had been asleep, but he stirred at her movement.

  “What is it?”

  Janet shook her head. “I don’t know.” She squeezed her plaid in tight, as if it would protect her in his absence. But then she heard a sound. A distant sharp, keening howl. “What is that? A wolf?”

  Like a wraith summoned by her voice, Ewen appeared in the doorway. “It’s not a wolf, it’s a hound. We need to move … now.”

  Fourteen

  Dogs, damn it! How in the hell had they caught their scent?

  Ewen didn’t have time to think about it. They needed to lose themselves in the forests and hills of Lowther before the English caught up with them. If he could hear the dogs, they had to be close.

  The Highland Guard used the countryside as a weapon. The more dense the forest, the steeper and more unfriendly the terrain, the more they could take away the English advantage—both in number and their superior weaponry. The English heavy armor and horses were a liability in the wild, and Bruce had learned to use that to his benefit.

  Ewen didn’t waste time trying to cover signs of their presence, breaking camp as soon as they could gather their belongings. The old motte and fort had provided shelter, but it would provide little defense. Worse, Janet would be right in the middle of it.

  She made him feel vulnerable in a way that he’d never felt before. Bàs roimh Gèill. Death before surrender, the motto of the Highland Guard. He’d never thought he would question it. But he would surrender a thousand times before he let anything happen to her.

  He didn’t know what that meant, but he knew it was significant. In the heat of danger, in the face of an attack, he wasn’t thinking about Bruce, Stewart, an unfinished castle or his responsibility to his clan, he was thinking about her—her safety was all that mattered, and it wasn’t just because of the mission.

  Steeling himself, he turned to face her. But nothing could have prepared him for the fist that wrapped around his heart and tugged when their eyes met. He could see the fear, but also the trust that no matter how desperate it might seem, he would protect her. It moved him. Humbled him. Nearly brought him to his knees with the force of an emotion he’d never felt before. God, he—

  He didn’t finish the thought.

  But nothing could stop him from reaching out to cup her face. She nuzzled her cheek into the leather of his gauntleted hand, burrowing right into his heart.

  “We have to run,” he said, his voice unrecognizably tender.

  She nodded. “I can do this.”

  He believed her. She was strong and determined. And for the first time, he realized that he wouldn’t want it any other way. He’d never thought of a woman as anything more than a bed partner or the keeper of the home and hearth. A delicate, fragile creature whom it was his job to protect. A necessity, but never someone to stand by his side, to talk to and argue with—not to mention drive him crazy. But Janet made him want all those things.

  He swept his thumb over her mouth tenderly. “Don’t stop, no matter what you hear. I will find you.”

  The small smile that curved her mouth stole his breath. “I know.”

  And so they ran. Ran as fast as he could push her into the snow-covered moors and mist-shrouded hilltops that loomed in the distance. Bruce’s army had taken refuge in them many times before, but it would be too much to expect to find anyone this near to the village. It was up to him and Sutherland to get them out of this. They wouldn’t be able to outrun their pursuers, not on foot, with dogs and horses chasing them.

  They didn’t have as much time as he’d hoped. The shadow of the fort behind him in the breaking dawn had yet to fade when he caught the first glimpse of horses.

  “The river!” he shouted over his shoulder to Janet. “A few hundred feet ahead through the trees. Follow it until you reach the edge of the tree line and then into the hills. Remember what I said. Don’t stop. No matter what you hear.”

  Her face was flushed from the exertion of running, but he thought she paled. “Ewen, I—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Go!”

  He couldn’t hear it. Not now. He waited until she’d disappeared into the forest before turning to Sutherland. But the newest member of the Highland Guard had already anticipated him. “The pass?”

  Ewen nodded. The deep, narrow valley of the glen would slow the horses down and give him and Sutherland time to get into position.

  But there wasn’t time. The enemy was already breathing down his neck. He turned and drew his sword right as the first mailed arm came swinging down toward him. He blocked the blow of the poleaxe with a quick twist of his sword that send the Englishman’s weapon flying from his hands. A moment later, Ewen’s sword struck down hard on the rider’s leg, nearly severing it.

  He heard the man’s startled cry before he toppled to the ground, his life’s blood pouring from him. A quick glance told Ewen what he needed to know: a dozen men-at-arms, one knight, de Beaumont’s arms, two dogs barking wildly.

  No sooner had he apprised himself of the situation than the next rider was on him. He felt a roar of energy surge through his blood as the rush of battle crashed over him. He held his sword in two hands over his head and brought it down against the other man’s blade with enough force to knock him from his saddle.

  One by one he and Sutherland struck down the enemy, working in tandem as they moved the attacking Englishmen into position in the narrow pass.

  Just like that, the battle shifted. The horses couldn’t maneuver. Instead of the aggressors, the English knight and his men became like herring trapped in a barrel. With Ewen on one side and Sutherland on the other, there was nowhere for them to go. They were forced to abandon their horses or die.

  They died anyway.

  The loud clash of battle began to dull as the English fell beneath their swords. The barking had stopped. One of the dogs appeared to have been trampled by the fleeing horses, and the other …

  Ewen swore, shaking off some of the sweat that had gathered b
eneath his helm to clear his vision. Where was the other dog?

  While fending off blows, he scanned the area around them, grazing over the bodies of the men and horses that had fallen alongside them. No second dog.

  A chill raced through his blood as he realized there was a man missing as well.

  There were still four soldiers left. Three of them had converged on Sutherland, hoping to overpower him, while the other tried to keep Ewen from helping him. Sutherland didn’t need help. And neither did Ewen. He exchanged blows with the man-at-arms, a thick-necked, barrel-chested brute, who managed to land a solid blow of his sword on Ewen’s shoulder before the edge of Ewen’s blade could meet his neck.

  Sutherland had realized what had happened. “Go!” he shouted between swings of his sword. “I’ll finish them off.”

  Ewen didn’t hesitate. Jumping on one of the remaining horses, he tore off in the direction he’d told Janet to run.

  He leaned down low over the courser’s neck to avoid the branches and limbs that splayed out in all directions of the forest that circled the base of the hills, and prayed. Prayed he’d counted wrong. Prayed that he reached her in time.

  But a moment later he heard a piercing sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life. A shrill, terror-filled scream tore through the misty dawn air, stopping his heart and catapulting him forward into the dark, unfamiliar abyss of fear.

  Janet had every intention of following his orders. But when the piercing clash of metal on metal shattered through the air, her head instinctively turned at the sound.

  She stopped to look for only a minute, but the sight that had met her eyes was not one she would soon forget. It was battle, in all of its gruesome, horrifying chaos. Twice before she’d seen the violence of warfare—the night at the bridge when she’d tried to rescue her sister and the day in the forest with Marguerite when she’d first met Ewen—but the fierceness, the brutality of it, startled her anew. The sight of swords swirling, dirt flying, blood spurting in a gnarling mass of men and beast struck terror in her heart. As did the sounds. The very loudness of it. The violent clamor of steel and death.

  Like a steel-clad plague of locusts, the English swarmed the two Highlanders. By all rights it should have been a slaughter. She couldn’t breathe, fearing Ewen would be cut down with the first stroke. But she’d forgotten, or told herself she must have exaggerated, his skill in her mind. The extraordinary strength and deadly intent. The brutally cold purpose by which he went about his task. Sir Kenneth fought the same way, not like a knight but like a barbarian. It wasn’t too hard to imagine them striking terror across the seas in a Viking longship.

  The two Highlanders might be overmatched in number, but they were far superior in skill. In the first shadowed blink of daylight, in the midst of that chaos and horror, with their blackened helms and dark-colored plaids flaring like ghostly robes, they looked like deadly, menacing beings from another world.

  They looked like … phantoms.

  The realization stunned her for a moment, but then, remembering Ewen’s admonition, she turned and ran. Ran until her legs ached and her lungs felt as if they would explode, through the trees and underbrush, along the rocky riverbank as it wound through the forest.

  She’d gone no more than a mile when she heard barking behind her. Fear tightened her already straining chest. She looked over her shoulder, saw the hound racing up behind her, and against every instinct in her body that screamed danger—run!—she forced herself to slow.

  The dog was trained to hunt. To pursue. It would not stop, and she could not outrun it.

  She would not be its prey. With her hand on the hilt of her blade, she turned to face it. Half-expecting it to leap on her, she was surprised when it stopped about ten feet away. They stared at one another in a silent face-off. Beast and man. Or in this case, woman.

  Animals had always liked her. She tried to remember that as she stood perfectly still, except for the heavy rise of her chest sucking in air.

  The deerhound was big, its gray head at about the level of her waist. Its mouth was pulled back, letting her see every one of its impressively long teeth, but its black eyes were more curious than angry. Could a dog be curious?

  Its shaggy fur was dirty and matted, and it looked to be in need of a good bath, but it was a nice-looking animal, with the long, lean lines of a hunter, if perhaps on the skinny side.

  With the hand that was not holding the hilt of her blade, she reached into the leather purse at her waist and dug out a piece of dried beef. Cautiously, she held it out, murmuring soothing sounds as the dog eyed her speculatively. Her heart hammered as the dog slowly made its way over to her. Not wanting to tempt fate, she put the beef down on the ground. The dog pounced on it. Devouring it in seconds, it looked up at her again, giving a little bark of encouragement.

  In spite of the circumstances, she laughed. It was a cute little devil, once you looked past the size and teeth.

  Tentatively, she held out her hand, letting the dog sniff her, murmuring her apologies. “I’m sorry, that’s all I have.”

  It barked again, and then panted expectantly, sitting at her feet. When she reached out to pet its head, it crooned.

  Janet laughed. “Why, you’re not so terrifying—”

  Suddenly, a horse and rider broke through the trees. A startled gasp stuck in her throat, the gleam of mail identifying him as the enemy. The man reached for her, obviously intending to pull her onto his horse, when suddenly the dog leapt, its teeth clamping onto the mail-clad arm, trying to drag him off. Somehow dog and beast became tangled under the back hooves of the horse, causing the horse to pitch forward.

  She heard a hideous snap and the pained howl of the dog. She turned away quickly, but instantly realized what had happened: the dog had been crushed under the horse, the horse had broken its leg, and the rider … the rider had been tossed off but was slowly coming to his feet. Swearing, he pulled out his sword and swung it down on the tangled mess of dog and horse.

  She screamed and turned away.

  “Damned stupid cur,” he growled. With one swipe, the pained crying of the dog stopped. He followed it with a second, and the anxious rustling of the horse as it tried to stand stopped.

  Knowing he would come after her next, she tried to run, screaming again, when his steely hand caught hold of her arm.

  He spun her around, his sword lifted above his head. “Where do you think you are going, you stupid rebel bitch—”

  Janet didn’t think, she reacted. She was fortunate he’d grabbed her by her left arm, because it was the right she needed to jerk the blade from its scabbard and thrust it up with all her might between his legs, hoping to find the gap in the mail.

  Just as her knife plunged, she heard a horrifying thump. His eyes widened. His hand tightened on her arm, and then released as he fell to her feet, a spear sticking through his neck.

  Ewen had never experienced that kind of rage. The sight of Janet clasped in the rough, steely hold of the knight did something to him. She looked like a flower about to be crushed in a steely vise, her delicate bones no match for the strength of the big, mail-clad warrior and the sword that could at any moment take her head.

  A black rage came over him. Bloodlust. The urge to kill. His vision narrowed as if he were peering through a dark tunnel with one objective in sight. He adjusted the spear in his hand. He didn’t let himself think that if he missed, she would die. He didn’t have time.

  Forty, thirty, twenty feet away … he threw with all his might.

  The spear ripped through the air with a whiz, piercing the mail of the knight’s coif as if it were butter.

  Ewen hit the ground the same moment the soldier did. Janet turned, saw him, and with a soft cry that tore through his heart, raced into his arms.

  He held her close as she buried her head against his chest, savoring every bloody sensation that came over him. She’s safe, he told himself over and over. Safe. But his damned heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

 
; The emotions clamoring inside him were like nothing he’d ever experienced, and it took him a while to get them under enough control for him to speak. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded against his chest, but he needed to see for himself. Carefully he tipped her chin back and looked into wide, tear-filled eyes. The baby-soft skin under his fingertips was so pale it seemed almost translucent. “I was so scared. The dog …” She looked up at him, stricken. “It was horrible.”

  A wave of tenderness rose inside him with chest-crushing intensity. “It’s over, sweetheart. It’s over.”

  She nodded obediently—he doubted she’d done that since she was a child, and probably not even then—but the horror of the attack was obviously still weighing on her. She trembled against him, her slender shoulders shaking, and a fierce wave of protectiveness surged over him. It took everything he had not to put his mouth on hers and kiss her until they both forgot.

  But he didn’t. The danger was over, and with its absence came the reminder of his duty.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he let her go.

  She blinked up at him, at first surprised, and then with a wounded look that tore at him mercilessly.

  He cursed the unfairness of it. The duties, the loyalties, the responsibilities that made it—them—impossible.

  Suddenly, she gasped, her gaze flying to his arm. “You’re hurt!”

  He glanced down, realizing the Englishman’s sword had sliced through his cotun and blood was seeping out. Truth be told, he didn’t feel it. Although he couldn’t say the same about his leg, which throbbed and burned like someone had thrown whisky on it and then lit it on fire. “I’m fine. It’s only a scratch.”

  She screwed up her mouth in the familiar purse. Who knew annoyed could look so sweet?

  “Your arm could be hanging by a string and you would say you were fine.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. She was probably right.

  “You warriors are all alike—” She stopped and looked around anxiously. “Where is Sir Kenneth?”