Warrior's Bride

by Gerri Russell

  He had a choice. By God, he would not be his father's vehicle any longer. "I was ready to go to war against Grange because I thought you were in danger. But now things have changed—I've changed. As much as I hate Grange, I shall not make war against him simply because you will it"

  "Aye." His father's mouth turned up in an angry grin, like a snake smiling. "You'll do that and more, because if you don't your bride will die."

  "Not even you could be that cruel."

  The king's smile broadened. "You've grown fond of the girl despite her lineage. Despite the darker secrets you have yet to learn."

  A chill pulsed through him. What did his father mean? What darker secrets? Wolf pushed the thought away. It was only more manipulation. He should know better than to buy in to that type of ploy where his father was concerned. "You've no right to toy with Isobel's life as you've always toyed with mine."

  "I'm the king. I can toy with her any way I like, but her health and welfare now depend on you." The king leaned in toward Wolf's face, relying heavily upon his cane for support. He snatched Brahan's Stone from Wolf’s hands. "Which is it to be, my son—a war or a murder? You choose."

  There was no choice. He would never allow his father to ruin Isobel's life. Not if he could stop the man. Fury welled up inside Wolf. Damn his father. "We will fight."

  His father smiled. "A wise choice." With a wave of his hand, the guards came forward and placed black iron clamps on Wolf’s wrists. "To ensure your further cooperation."

  Wolf stiffened as the weight of the manacles tugged at the flesh of his wrists. "I want Brahan returned to me."

  The king nodded at Artemis, who withdrew from the tent with a bow. "We will attack at first light. With any luck, the storm will pass during the night."

  Wolf turned his heated gaze on his father. The storm outside might dissipate over the next few hours, but the storm inside him would never recede. His father had pushed him too far this time for him to ever be quieted again.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Wolf sat astride his horse at the head of his army, where all his men could see him. Behind him were Brahan and his personal guard—men whose hearts and loyalties he knew as well as his own, men he trusted above all others.

  Behind them, in a line two abreast and stretching back thirty fold, was his army. His army, his men—men he had given a home to and trained. Men who were beaten down before they'd joined him. Men who were whole once more because of the second chance he'd offered.

  His men cheered for him as he rode down their ranks, waving their swords, their shields, and their lances high into the air. The first light of dawn glinted off the long, sleek blades and polished steel. They were, every one of them, proud to be his men.

  And he, in turn, was proud of them. They were good men, loyal men, men who did not deserve to die for the sake of his father's bitter revenge against Grange. But if he did not lead them to battle, Isobel would die.

  His father's troops filed in behind Wolf’s men, creating a wall of soldiers, some on horseback, others on foot, all armed and eager for the battle to begin. They positioned themselves atop a ridge. Below them, nestled in the valley, was Grange's camp. Smoke rising from the encampment gave evidence that the area was occupied, yet not a soul could be seen anywhere among the tents or near the watch fires.

  That fact set Wolf’s senses on edge. He'd tried to communicate his unease to Artemis, without success. Artemis wanted no interference. He'd made that point perfectly obvious when he'd released Wolf from his prison of iron this morn.

  The horse beneath Wolf pranced and capered, sensing the tension of its rider. He laid a hand on the beast's neck to quiet it. So it sensed something was not quite right as well. Why didn't his father?

  The man in question rode down the line of men, not evoking the same response from his troops that Wolf had garnered from his men. They treated the king with respect but nothing more. They awaited his orders to march on the encampment below with a weary patience and not with the thirst for triumph that was necessary in order to win the day.

  Unease prickled the back of Wolf’s neck. These men were not prepared to fight. To engage the enemy now would not result in a battle but a massacre.

  Wolf shifted his gaze to his own men. They sat at attention, their bodies alert, waiting to react to his most subtle signal. He searched their faces. As he did, he felt the hand of destiny tighten around him. These men would willingly give their lives for him. But would he ask that of them all for the sake of one woman? A Balliol?

  Isobel would die if they did not fight. Walter had orders to kill her. Or would he? Had their years apart changed them both so radically?

  His chest tightened at the thought. Why hadn't his brother trusted him enough to tell him of their father's latest machinations? What could he possibly be threatening Walter with to make him turn against his own brother?

  They'd both been manipulated. And now, with hindsight, Wolf recognized the signs. Walter's odd behavior and his immediate disapproval of Isobel now made sense. Their father had set up this whole elaborate plan prior to Walter's imprisonment. Isobel could only be saved if Walter disobeyed a king's command. Could his brother do it? Wolf clenched his hands into fists. He honestly did not know what Walter was capable of anymore—but he had to trust that Walter's loyalty to him would sway his actions over his father's command. Wolf grasped that hope like a lifeline in a stormy sea.

  Wolf turned his attention back to the situation before him. How to evade a battle that was doomed to fail? If they fought, his men would die. Wolf unfurled his fists and stroked his horse's neck once more, this time quieting his own restlessness.

  He would not endanger his men for no reason. And if he refused to fight? Would his father's troops turn on his own men? Would death await them either way? He slid his gaze to Brahan's and recognized at once the slight lift of his brow, the question in his gaze as he awaited a signal.

  Wolf shook his head ever so slightly. Brahan instantly understood. Silently, through a series of speaking glances and imperceptible movements, the communiqué rippled down the line of men. Each understood, and with a hand on his sword awaited whatever orders came next.

  The decision made, Wolf could feel the strength of his convictions flowing in his veins. His father's horse approached, and Wolf prepared himself for the worst.

  "What have your scouts reported back to you about the encampment below?" Wolf asked.

  The king brought his horse to a halt beside him. "I need no scouts to tell me it is Grange's men down there."

  "Does it not seem odd to you that no one is about?"

  "His men sleep late," the king's voice turned hard.

  "Or they lie in wait to trap you where there is no way to retreat."

  The king frowned. "This is my battle, and I have the advantage."

  "Perhaps he's turned that advantage on you the same way you turned it on me. Will you take that risk with your men? I, for one, will not."

  The king's face flushed red, and he maneuvered his horse closer. "You will fight because I say you will."

  Wolf held his ground. "My men and I decline."

  The king's face turned crimson. "Isobel will die."

  At the king's declaration, a question burned on Wolf’s tongue. "Why have me marry the girl only to kill her?"

  "The girl's a pawn," the king replied with a snap. "My pawn, and one that I used to get you to do what I wanted."

  "How dare you play with Isobel's life like that—like it has no worth, no value."

  "I dare what I must. Now do as I ask."

  Instead of the usual anger at his father, pity rushed forward, as did a sudden dawning realization. "I always assumed it was I who was the beast in our dealings together." He shook his head. "What a fool I was. How arrogant. You were the beast all along."

  The king's face faded to white. His mouth worked as though trying to form words, yet no sound issued forth. But a moment later he appeared to regain his composure, and a spark lit his eyes onc
e more. "Beast or not, it changes nothing. You will do what I say or Isobel will die."

  Wolf’s insides twisted into a painful knot. "Nay." He paused, taking a deep, fortifying breath. "I trust that Walter will follow his loyalties and not your command."

  The king's gaze drilled Wolf. "You would risk treason and death to defy me?"

  Wolf met his father's gaze with a firm resolve of his own. He would be manipulated no more. "Aye."

  The king continued to watch him. The intensity seemed to fade from his father's eyes, to be replaced by something that might well have been admiration. "So, I am to believe you would rather risk all than fight for me?"

  "I would risk my own death, Isobel's life, and the lives of my men to have freedom of choice."

  "What greater deed could there be than to fight for your king?"

  "To fight for the good of my country," Wolf said firmly.

  "Are you a Scot or a Stewart?"

  "I was both for a while."

  "And now?"

  "Don't make me choose between my country and my name."

  His father's scowl returned. "That is a Stewart tartan you wear." His gaze moved past Wolf and down the line of his men. "Your men wear the Stewart tartan as well."

  Wolf reached up and with a jerk of his hand unhooked the metal pin securing his tartan at his shoulder. With another jerk, he pulled the fabric free from his body and tossed the yards of tartan cloth in a heap on the ground. As it fell, he met his father's gaze squarely, a stare at long last fully unfettered.

  The flurry of dozens of tartans sliding to the ground filled the air, and Wolf looked up to see every one of his men had also unbound themselves from the king until each man sat atop his horse wearing nothing but a long saffron shirt to cover his chest and thighs.

  "Your tartans are returned to you, Your Grace." The chill morning air brushed against Wolf's flesh, but he did not feel the cold. Instead, a euphoric heat swirled in his veins at his newfound freedom. "My men and I shall now take our leave."

  "How do you expect to leave here unharmed? My men have you surrounded," his father asked in a low, silky voice.

  "We ride." Wolf shifted his gaze to his men. They watched him alertly. With a slight jerk of his head, he signaled them to fall out. Turning their horses in unison, they moved forward into the line of the king's men. Without orders to stop them, the men moved aside, creating a path for them to pass through.

  "If you leave me now, I shall take back all that I have given you." The king's voice rang out over the shuffle of the horse's hooves upon the damp ground.

  Wolf signaled his men to continue as he stopped and turned his horse about. "And what have you given me, Father? Apart from my own birth, you gave me a bride you threatened to kill." Wolf marveled at how easy it was to talk about the thing that had always brought great pain to him before. It didn't matter anymore—the bitterness of his childhood, the neglect, the manipulation he had endured all his adult life. Nothing mattered except freedom from further abuse.

  "I gave you my name," the king said with contempt. "For a bastard son you could have done worse."

  Wolf let the words that used to hurt him roll off his back. "It was a gift I never wanted and freely return." He turned his horse around to follow his men.

  "Wait," the king commanded.

  Despite his desire to keep going, Wolf stopped.

  The king brought his horse close, so close his leg brushed up against Wolf’s. For a moment, the king hunched over in his saddle as though he were suddenly too old and frail to continue.

  On instinct, Wolf reached out to steady him.

  The king nodded his thanks. "Retreat with your men, but be forewarned, when this battle is through, I shall come after you. Of that you can be certain."

  "I'll be waiting." Wolf urged his horse forward. And as he rode through the column created by the king's men, he felt something that hadn't been there before lodged inside his boot. He reached inside, and locating the irritation, drew it out.

  The Stewart half of the Seer's Stone lay against the palm of his hand. His father must have slipped it in his boot when he had slumped down in his saddle. He had placed it there for a reason. What did it mean?

  Was it some sort of treaty between them, or fuel for a future fire? Wolf slipped it back inside his boot with a mixture of irritation and resignation. No doubt his father would reveal the reason when it best suited him.

  Eager to leave all thoughts of his father behind, he spurred his horse to a gallop until he took the lead of his men and hastened toward the mountainous path that would take them home.

  "You are in a hurry to return," Brahan said as they reined their horses in at the base of the pass, allowing the tired animals a chance to regroup in front of the steep and narrow path.

  Wolf scowled at the path before him. "It looks like our haste ends here." Last night's storm had left the passage wet and slippery. Regardless of his desire for speed, travel over the pass would be a slow and treacherous climb. "Going around the mountain will take us twice as long." The path before them was the only way across for a day's journey in either direction. "Tell the men that when the horses are rested we will take the pathway slow and easy. We can't risk injuring the horses."

  "What if I told you there was yet another choice?"

  Wolf narrowed his gaze on his friend. "You know another way across the mountain?"

  Brahan nodded. "As a child, these woods and hills were my home. I heard stories from others about a passage through the mountain that only the goats were daft enough to use, and only when the path before us was as slick and deadly as the devil's own back."

  Wolf watched as his men exchanged worried glances. The hills around them were steeped in superstition. He'd heard the rumors about the passage they were attempting to cross, saying the Creator had fashioned this mountainous range, with its sheer drops and deathly slopes, on a day He'd been in a horrible rage.

  Wolf had heard rumors about the passage through the mountain as well—that only madmen traveled through the ‘Devil's Maw.’

  "Do you know where this passage is?" Wolf asked.

  "Aye." Brahan nodded.

  Wolf's gaze moved over his men once more, trying to gauge whether they were willing to take this additional risk. They all sat tall on their horses with no fear on their faces, communicating their agreement to follow wherever he led. "Then lead on."

  The passage Brahan brought them to was not much more than a crevice slashed between two gnarled stone columns of overlapping rock that rose at least forty feet above them. The entrance was covered with brambles and thorn bushes so that it appeared no more than a gap in the mountainside that disappeared into the sheer cliffs below. It took the men several minutes to hack their way through the undergrowth to the opening.

  The chasm was just wide enough to accommodate the breadth of a horse's flanks. The horses balked at entering the darkness, their nostrils dilating, their flanks quivering with undisguised fear.

  "We need torches," Wolf said as he smoothed the gleaming neck of his own horse, trying to quiet it. He understood the animal's terror. He, too, had to fight back a strong revulsion at entering the black maw. But the entrance was all that stood between him and Isobel, and this was a chance he was willing to take.

  He accepted a torch from one of his men and kicked his horse forward into the narrow passage. Torchlight illuminated the slime-covered rock ahead, and the air immediately thickened with smoke. Wolf could feel his eyes start to burn and tear until he passed the narrow entrance and the ceiling lifted, allowing a draft to suck the flames upward.

  The horse beneath him quaked. Wolf urged the animal on into the dark void, illuminating the passage ahead with the golden glow of his torch as the others followed behind. Several times he felt the sides of his legs scrape against the walls of stone, but he kept pushing forward. Far better for his legs to suffer this abuse than his horse's flanks. As long as the beast did not fear getting stuck, they would make it through. Every step took him that m
uch closer to Isobel. Balliol or not, she was his wife.

  A hundred yards ... The air grew heavy and the cloying scent of decay surrounded them as they moved deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Torchlight cast an eerie glow on the dark rock, making the fissures and outcroppings appear almost human one moment, gruesome and beastlike the next. A deathly silence fell over the men, and Wolf knew he must not have been alone in his imaginings. Only the shuffle of the petrified animals across the slick stone could be heard.

  Two hundred yards ... The tension in Wolf’s shoulders and neck screamed for release. Pressure built in his chest. Time seemed to stretch forever before him— the darkness muting all senses to anything other than the stinging pain of his exposed skin, which felt as though it was being sliced into bloody strips.

  Three hundred yards ... four hundred ... five. He stopped counting after a while, falling instead into the rhythm of his heart beating in his own ears. He strained to see in the darkness ahead of the torch's glow. When a spot of white appeared in the distance, he reasoned it must be his own fatigue playing tricks on his mind. Until the splash of white grew as they drew near, and the sky spilled color into the dark void of nothingness.

  He paused between the darkness and the light. How would they know there was no trap set for them on the other side? An enemy could easily strike them down as they emerged from the maw.

  "Wait here, and keep yourselves hidden," he ordered his men. "I want to make certain it is safe. If I do not return shortly, then do not expose yourselves."

  Brahan frowned. "I should go."

  Wolf set his jaw. "Protect the men. I shall return."

  Before Brahan could argue the point, Wolf spurred his horse forward. As he passed through the mountainside and into the light, Wolf gave in to his urge to draw a deep, heather-scented breath of fresh air. Yet the relief he expected to feel escaped him. Instead, the sensation that something else hovered just out of reach stretched his nerves taut.

  Methodically, he searched the outlying areas for danger. When he was certain the area was clear, he went back for his men. One by one they appeared through the passageway. Weariness and relief shadowed their faces and beads of perspiration hung upon their brows. Rivulets of blood ran down their legs as they did his own, proof that the mountain had not been kind to their exposed flesh. All eyes turned to Wolf, awaiting his orders.