by Barbara Bard
The big man fell, his sword dropping from his hand, but Ranulf’s blade was now caught on his dead weight. He watched in horror, trying to yank it loose, as Saul reached Catrin. She slashed at him with the dagger in her hand, keeping him back for the moment. From the corner of his eye he saw two outlaws reel backward, falling to the tavern floor.
A glint of metal forced his eyes down. Saul’s dagger. Picking it up by the hilt, he reversed it and threw it in a single fluid motion. The blade sank deep into Saul’s shoulder. With a sharp cry, he stumbled backward. Catrin followed him up, slashing at his face, his throat, her face a mask of hate and rage.
Her fair lips thinned, she cut him across his cheek, aiming for his throat. Saul raised his right hand to defend himself and lost three fingers off it. Even as he ducked and dodged, trying to avoid her slashing knife, she still cut him twice more across his forearm. Pressing her advantage, Catrin feinted low with the blade, forcing his arms down to defend himself. In a move that made Ranulf proud, she raised the dagger in a fast slash and took out his left eye.
Finally yanking his sword from the dead man, Ranulf charged, whooping his battle cry. Falling back, bleeding badly, Saul yelled out in terror and bolted. Stumbling over chairs, knocking over tables, he fled for the rear of the tavern. One of his last surviving men also broke and ran just as Ian plunged his blade into the throat of the outlaw he fought.
“We gae noo!”
Grabbing Catrin’s arm, he ran for the door, his clansmen around him. Knowing Saul had plenty more men ready to come to his aid, he sheathed his bloody sword as he burst out into daylight. Sure enough, men from the street approached the tavern at a trot, swords bared. Yet, even as they ran toward him, Catrin and his four, seven horsemen burst into the street, whooping.
Shoving Catrin toward his stamping horse, he grabbed his reins from Donal as she swung up into the saddle. His men mounted up, reining around to protect him as he put his foot in the stirrup. His stallion, excited, tried to rear just as Ranulf leaped up behind Catrin.
His seven clansmen, their steel gleaming in the sunlight, charged down upon the hapless outlaws, striking heads from necks, arms from shoulders, trampling those that could not get out of the way in time. Seeing the Scots charge down the narrow lane in a powerful mass of horses and steel, outlaws leaped into alleys between buildings to avoid being killed as the clansmen bore down on them at a gallop.
“Anyone hurt?” Ranulf yelled over his shoulder as they left the village of Bearstow behind and galloped north into the hills. Shouts of ‘nay’ and a few ‘me got a scratch’ drifted forward to his ears.
“Lass?” he asked. “Di’ that scoundrel hurt ye?”
Catrin raised her hand to her bruised cheek. “He did this yesterday, but no, I am not hurt.”
Ranulf cursed under his breath. He had not seen inside the dark tavern that she had any mars on her face. “I should gae back and rip oot his throat,” he growled. “Nae hits me lady.”
Catrin, grinning maliciously over her shoulder, said, “I marked him for life while this will fade in a day or two.”
Ranulf guffawed. “So ye di’, lass.”
Riding hard and fast into the moors, Ranulf refused to ease up until Bearstow lay leagues behind them. “I dinnae if Saul aims tae follow,” he said, gazing back over his shoulder. “He may jist send his brigands after us.”
Forcing his weary stallion up the steep incline of a peak, Ranulf needed a high spot in which to gazed back southward. Even as he reached the pinnacle and slid off his horse’s rump, he heard a shout from Donal, whom he had set as a rearguard.
“Laird! Riders!”
Running to the highest spot, Ranulf gazed back along their trail. Sure enough, a large band raced in their wake, the dust from their hooves raising a huge cloud into the air. “We hae nae bows,” he gritted, running back to where Catrin still sat on his stallion. “We cannae make a stand here. They be starvin’ us oot.”
Swinging up behind her, Ranulf turned the stallion back down the incline, his clansmen whipping their mounts with their reins. Reaching level ground, Ranulf urged his gallant horse to greater speed, but knew the brigands’ horses were fresh while those of his clansmen were not.
“What are we going to do?” Catrin asked, one hand on the pommel while the other prevented her hair from flying into his face.
“I dinnae,” he gritted. “Our mounts cannae last much longer.”
‘There were at least twenty or thirty of them,” she said.
“Aye.”
“Damn it,” she swore. “We need bows.”
“Aye.”
“Wait,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Where are we?”
Ranulf pointed west. “That way lay Linfield.”
“We are still on my father’s lands?”
“Aye, till we reach the border.”
“My father keeps a cache of weapons – swords, bows, arrows,” she said, excited. “In case his men are fighting Scots and need fresh stores. It cannot be far from here.”
“But where?” Ranulf asked. “Ye ken where ‘tis?”
“It is in a dead, hollow tree near the Sweeping River, in a thicket of bramble. Where is the river?”
Ranulf pointed northwest. “That way.”
Guiding the lathered, gasping stallion toward it, his band thundering on his heels, Ranulf hoped and prayed the horses could keep going. Donal shouted reports of the horsemen gaining on them, and Ranulf knew that without added weapons and a defensive place to fight from, he, Catrin and his clansmen would die.
Reaching the river, he led his band across the shallow but wide ford, splashing through the water and sending it flying. Reaching the other side, he spotted a tall hill with a ring of stone, the remains of an ancient fort from days long past. If they had the weapons to defend it . . . .
“There it is.”
Catrin pointed toward an old tree on the banks of the river, hedged in by younger, living trees and brambles growing at its foot. “Ye sure?”
“It has to be.”
Galloping up to the thicket, Ranulf flung himself from the rump of his stallion and ran toward the dead tree. Sure enough, the bramble thicket hid unstrung bows, bundles of arrows, swords, pikes and war axes.
“Grab everything ye can carry!” he roared, throwing Catrin a bow and a collection of arrows.
His clansmen dismounted around him, seizing everything inside the hollow tree and hanging them on pommels by their straps. Within minutes, the sweating horses bristled with weapons, and the men remounted. Ranulf lunged for his stallion as the band of brigands crossed the river.
Chapter 27
Gripping the bow, its string tied to one end, Catrin held the cluster of arrows across her lap as Ranulf scrambled aboard the exhausted stallion. “He cannot make it,” she cried as Ranulf sank his spurs into the beast’s flanks.
The horse lunged forward, often stumbling, reaching a gallop with the others behind and to each side of him.
“He has tae.”
Even as his clansmen cursed, mercilessly flogging their horses, they galloped up the steep incline toward the ancient fort. Catrin heard the shouts and yells of the pursuing outlaws a half mile behind them. The ring of protecting stone seemed so close, and yet so high above them as the stallion bucked and heaved his way up the narrow trail.
Glancing behind, she saw the Scots’ horses trotting, galloping, making their way up the steep slope, sending small rocks and dirt back down the hill. Beyond them, the outlaws slowed their gallop, aiming bows up at them. Steel tipped arrows hissed through the air, striking boulders and shrubs. One plunged into Donal’s arm, sticking up from his flesh like an insult.
At last, they reached the top. Catrin slid down from the stallion even as Ranulf did, bending their bows to attach the strings. All around, his men dismounted their exhausted beasts, grabbing their new weapons and running for the wall to defend it. Bow in hand, Catrin seized her arrows and also ran to the crumbling rocks, nocking an arrow as she did so.
> Her first bolt took an outlaw in the forefront of the attack through the chest. With a cry, he fell from his horse. Her second and third also struck their marks, throwing men from their saddles. Below, chaos reigned as the outlaws realized they had chased their quarry into a trap they had not designed or intended.
Arrows hissed from strings as the brigands tried to turn their mounts and race back down the hill. Slamming into one another, horses fell, sliding down the slope, whinnying in fear. More outlaws, on foot or on horseback, fell under the heavy rain of bowshot from above. Firing arrow after arrow, her hands a blur, Catrin lost count of the number of men she shot.
At last, long minutes later, the surviving brigands turned their horses back down the hill and fled. Corpses littered the hill even as the wounded cried out for their companions to help them. Rider less horses trotted back and forth, uncertain of what to do or where to go.
Ranulf rose from Catrin’s side, his bow in his hand. In her intense focus of the battle, she had not even realized he was there. “Ye be a bonny hand in a fight,” he said, grinning wearily.
Catrin gazed down at the dead men and the wounded. “I have never killed a man before.”
Yet, she found she did not care. Her heart had hardened, grown a layer like steel when the man she loved was in danger of being killed. Had the brigands over taken them, they would have killed her. And Ranulf.
“Aye,” he said. “’Tis nae an easy thing tae take a man’s life.”
Catrin stared down at the dead, knowing she should feel something, anything, at all. “Unfortunately, it is very easy.”
Raising his voice, he said, “Grab the horses afore they wander. Strip the dead and slay the wounded. And bind up Donal afore he dae fall from his horse.”
“Show no quarter,” Catrin murmured.
“Lass, they would’nae show us none.”
“I know.”
Though she could never partake in the cold blooded killing of the wounded, despite her hard heart, Catrin closed her ears to the sounds of throats being cut as she helped catch the loose horses. With the reins of two in each hand, she climbed back up the hill to the ancient fort. As the outlaws mounts were not in as bad a shape as their own, she tied those she caught to thickets, and took others in hand to walk them, and cool them down.
As the chaos of the battle slowly grew into organization, fires were built, horses taken in groups to the river for water. Catrin performed her share of helping make a camp at the hill’s top, unsaddling sweating horses, taking them in groups to the river, gathering wood. Puzzled, she found Ranulf’s Scotsmen grinning and saluting her, and for a time she thought they mocked her.
“Nay, lass,” Ranulf said, slinging his arm over her shoulder as she tied sweat stained but cooled horses to thickets, complaining about the men. “They admire yer pluck. They never saw a Sassenach noble lady pitchin’ in as ye hae.”
“What? I am supposed to sit and be waited on while these horses need to be cooled down before they die?”
Ranulf laughed and kissed her brow. “Ye be quite the lady, Me Lady.”
Shaking her head, Catrin grabbed a handful of grass and twisted it, then began to rub Ranulf’s stallion down. “Those three over there,” she snapped, jerking her chin, “need water. Take them to the river, Ranulf.”
He bowed low. “Aye, Me Lady.”
By the time dark fell and the moon rose over the moors, the ancient fort had settled in with five fires cooking their dinner, and ten extra horses added to their own. Catrin listened as Ranulf set two of his men to the watch, poking their fire with a stick as a small pot of stew bubbled on a hook.
Tossing more wood on the small blaze, Catrin scooted over on her rock to permit Ranulf to sit beside her. “How did you happen to come to Saul’s tavern?” she asked.
“Ye first,” he said. “How di’ ye arrive there? As his hostage?”
With a savage poke, Catrin forced two burning logs apart in a shower of red sparks. “My father planned to marry me to William of Breedmont,” she said.
Ranulf sucked in his breath. “Ye ran away.”
“I did.” Catrin turned to him with an amused grin. “I climbed down the wall the same way I escaped your castle.”
Ranulf shook his head. “Ye be tae clever fer words.”
“Anyway, I took a horse in Linfield,” Catrin continued, reaching over the fire to stir the stew. “And rode north. If I could not find you, since I knew you were in England, I thought to ride to your castle and wait for you there.”
He stared at her puzzled. “How ye ken I were in England?”
“I saw what you did to Black Charlie.”
“Ah. Gae oan.”
“Gilbert asked for my hand as a reward for saving me from you,” Catrin went on. “My father said no, and Gilbert swore to wage war over the insult.”
“Yer da then called fer his allies.”
Catrin nodded, staring into the fire. In the far distance, a wolf howled, and she cocked her head to listen. “William asked for my hand. My father planned to tell him yes.”
“So how di’ ye end up in Bearstow?”
“I fell in with a friend of my brother’s,” Catrin replied, rubbing the sore spot on the back of her head. “He hit me on the head and took me to Saul. In his greed, he thought Saul would pay him for me.”
Ranulf growled low in his throat. “I wi’ kill that bastard.”
“Oh, Saul already did,” Catrin replied. “I was there for a night and a day, then you showed up. So how did you come there?”
“I be followin’ brigands who befriended Henry,” Ranulf said. “Chased them all over England afore I heard where Saul be. Yer brother di’ owe him, and I thought he may hae killed yer brother. So, I went to ask.”
“And found me.”
“Guid thing.”
“Saul had already sent a messenger to my father,” she said, staring into the fire. “My father will believe I am Saul’s hostage.”
“Then we send a man tae yer da tellin’ him otherwise.”
Catrin leaned against his shoulder, smiling. “Are you not going to ask why I was running from my father to you?”
Ranulf’s brow rose. “Should I?”
Laughing, Catrin lifted his strong hand to her lips to kiss it. “I suppose not.”
Pulling his hand from hers, Ranulf lay it across her shoulders and pulled her into him. “I hae grown fond of ye, lass,” he murmured, kissing her head. “I missed ye.”
“I missed you, too.”
Catrin tilted her head back and closed her eyes as his lips found hers. His tongue opened her mouth wider, tangling, teasing hers as the familiar aching need spread from her loins upward. Leaning into his kiss, her hand crept around his neck to pull him in closer, deepening their kiss. She breathed in his masculine odor, craving him, needing him.
Ranulf broke their kiss to hold her tightly to him, her head resting on his chest as he stroked his free hand down her hair. “Ah, lass, ye stoke a fire within me I cannae quench.”
Wrapping her arms around his waist, she gazed into the snapping, crackling blaze. “You do the same for me.”
Content to simply hold him, Catrin closed her eyes again, listening to the slow thudding of his heart in his chest. Though she had previously thought she was in love with him, she now knew it for a fact. She no longer had any doubts at all that she loved this man. And no one, not even her father, would keep her from him.
“Ach, lass,” he murmured after a time, “we should eat afore uir stew scorches.”
Straightening, Catrin nodded. “I am hungry.”
Taking the pot off the hook holding it over the fire, they shared the spoon and ate their meal right out of the container. Full and growing sleepy, Catrin held her knees close to her chest as Ranulf walked out into the darkness to check for himself that all was well, and no enemy approached.
He returned with thick wool blankets and spread them out on either side of the fire. His clansmen, save those on watch, rolled themselves up besi
de their own fires to sleep. “How is Donal?” she asked as she lay down and covered herself up against the night’s chill.
“He be hurtin’, but he be all right.”
Ranulf lay down, pillowing his head on his arm. “Rest easy this night,” he murmured.
***
“We cannae stay here tae let these horses rest and recover,” Ranulf said the next morning as he and Catrin walked amid the horse lines. “It be tae risky.”
“Then what?” she asked, stroking the thick neck of his stallion.
“We need tae get tae intae Scotland,” he said, gazing north. “The castle ‘o Clan MacCreedy lay a day’s ride from here, tae the northwest. The laird wi’ gie us shelter and provisions.”
