Highlander Redeemed (Guardians of the Targe Book 3)

by Laurin Wittig

  The fear almost took over.

  “Does he not understand he is injured?” It took all her will to stay where she was, but her heart took up an even faster beat.

  “Scotia, you cannot worry over Duncan right now,” Rowan said. “None of us can worry about anything except creating the Highland Targe.”

  “I ken that,” Scotia snapped. “Sorry,” she said immediately, knowing that Rowan was right. ’Twas exactly what Duncan had taught her: in battle you had to do the task assigned you, no matter what. She was a warrior and a Guardian, and her task was clear.

  “Are you sure the protective barrier will hold if we are not concentrating on it?” she asked her sister.

  “Aye. This is one thing that Rowan and I have had plenty of time to prepare for.”

  “Then let us begin,” Rowan said, holding the stone heart high between them.

  Jeanette placed one hand on the stone and one on the lip of her cup so her fingertips met the surface of the water. Scotia placed one hand on the stone but did not know what to do with her other hand, so she rested it on the hilt of her sword.

  They each took a moment to call forth their gifts. Scotia closed her eyes, letting her knowing roam freely, finding each of those men she loved, Duncan first, her da, Uilliam, the Protectors, but there was nothing in the knowings that caused her to focus on any of them directly.

  She could hear the wind pick up outside the barrier and knew that Rowan was ready. She shifted her attention to her sister, and knew that she, too, was filled with her gift.

  Slowly, carefully, for this was still very new to Scotia, she focused her attention on the Targe stone, and through it pulled Jeanette’s gift of visions to meld with her own knowing. Next, and even more carefully, she reached for Rowan’s gift. Her gift was volatile, and the slightest change in Rowan’s emotions could increase or decrease the strength of it.

  When she had all three gifts joined through the focus of the Targe stone she sent a bit of knowing into each of the others, and they began the blessing, a prayer really, that Jeanette had remembered and Scotia had understood. The words twined the gifts together even tighter than Scotia was able to do and began to weave the power that Rowan drew from the earth into a tiny round shield that glowed against her closed eyelids, growing with each repetition of the prayer.

  She did not know how long they had been working when a knowing slammed into her. “Da!” she cried out, just as Jeanette and Rowan did. Without hesitation Scotia redirected the focus of their work, calling on Jeanette’s vision to show them what her knowing told them.

  Kenneth and Uilliam were fighting back to back, surrounded by too many soldiers. Kenneth had a gash on his forehead that showed white with bone, and the blood flowed into his eyes, and the Guardians knew he could not see because of it. Uilliam fought hard for both of them, but ’twas a losing battle. Before Scotia could act, Rowan’s gift surged, surrounding the two beloved men with a wind so fierce it knocked the soldiers backward. She fed it more and more of the Targe stone’s power, forcing the soldiers back further and further. Several turned and fled. Scotia searched with her knowing for someone she could find, and found Conall, but she did not know how to warn him that the deserters were heading directly for him.

  Frustration burned in her, but then she felt Jeanette use Scotia’s gift as a guide to push a vision of the soldiers fleeing to him. Together they used their joined gifts to force the knowing and vision upon him.

  The sound of shouting close to the Guardians pulled all of their attention back to the bailey, but they did not open their eyes, using instead their gifts to understand that Lord Sherwood had ridden his horse through the gate, confronting the eight warriors with a score of soldiers.

  “The Highland Targe,” she said out loud. “We need it now!” And with that she felt Rowan pull viciously on the power that came from beneath their feet, feeding it through the Targe stone and into their woven gifts so fast it almost burned in Scotia’s mind. As one, they took up the prayer where they had left off, repeating it faster and faster until it was more song than prayer, their voices filling the air around them as the Highland Targe took form, growing bigger and bigger.

  Scotia’s knowing told them all that their warriors were fighting a valiant fight, but they would not hold long.

  DUNCAN STAGGERED AS Lord Sherwood swung his sword down upon his upraised shield, sending pain deep into his shoulder. He could feel the trickle of blood from where Jeanette had stitched him up, and his head pounded, but he cared not. He had promised to keep Scotia and the other Guardians safe. He managed to duck Sherwood’s next blow, then slashed at the man’s leg, but somehow the English bastard got his own shield in the way, and swung for Duncan’s head.

  NICHOLAS SHOUTED AT Sherwood as he threw his dagger at the man where his raised arm exposed a gap in his chain mail, leaving him vulnerable.

  MALCOLM HACKED HIS way to Nicholas’s side just as Sherwood roared in surprised pain, and the war cries of MacAlpins and their allies ricocheted off the walls as Kenneth, Uilliam, and more warriors poured over the downed part of the curtain wall.

  For a moment it was almost as if the battle stopped as they all seemed to notice for the first time the glow that surrounded the Guardians in the middle of the bailey and the ethereal song that charged the air.

  Sherwood roared, a sound of pain and rage, as he pulled the dagger free, leaned low over his horse’s neck, and rode for the Guardians.

  SCOTIA FOUGHT HARD to keep her focus on the power that surged through the three of them and the stone. She fought to keep the words of the prayer racing from her lips, keeping pace with the other two, until she trembled with the effort. The knowing battered at her, telling her Duncan was down, her father was injured badly but was in the bailey now, Uilliam still at his side, and that Nicholas and Malcolm were alive, but she kept pushing all of that away lest she lose her focus and pull them all away from what they created again.

  Words poured from them all, rising higher and higher until it sounded more like a keening than the prayer they had started with. Power pulled at her, harder and harder until she gave up any attempt to protect herself from whatever used her in this endeavor, and just when she thought she had no more to give there was a loud bang, like a thunderclap breaking right overhead, and she fell to the ground.

  DUNCAN WAS PUSHING himself off the ground when a loud bang echoed through the bailey. All the air was sucked out of his lungs, and he was thrown down again with a force that was stronger than any he had ever felt before. But it was gone as quickly as it had hit. He lifted his head and was shocked to see everyone had been flattened as he had been. As he pushed up and made it to his feet this time, he looked around in shock. Everyone had been flattened, but only the Highlanders, and Sherwood’s horse, were getting up. All around the bailey lay the English soldiers, splayed out as if they had all been knocked away from the source of the explosion, laying however they had fallen, and not a one of them was left alive.

  Nicholas and Malcolm stood not far away from him, as stunned as he by what they saw. All three of them turned at the same time to where the Guardians had taken shelter by the well.

  Sherwood’s horse stood in their way, snorting and shaking his head as he nosed at his master, who lay on his back, his blank eyes open to the sky.

  “Scotia!” Duncan moved as fast as he could. Nicholas and Malcolm went around the other side of the horse, and they arrived to find the three Guardians just pushing themselves up from the ground. Duncan passed through their protective barrier and only then realized that what had hit him, and everyone else, had felt like passing through a barrier, but so much more.

  “You did it,” he said, kneeling next to Scotia and pulling her into as fierce an embrace as he could with only one arm doing as he wished. She was trembling.

  “Did we hurt you?” she asked, pulling back enough to look at him. Her brow furrowed when she saw the blood staining his shoulder again. “You were to stay with us,” she said. “You were supposed
to stay out of the fight.”

  “Love, you know I could not do that.”

  “But you promised me.”

  “Nay, I never promised that. I said I would stand by you in the battle, not that I would stay inside your barrier and watch the battle from there.”

  “You play with words.”

  He kissed her and only then noticed the other two couples were also whispering together, touching, kissing.

  “That boom that flattened all of us, that was the Highland Targe, aye?”

  She grinned. “Aye. Rowan has sent it to rest across the path of any who might wish to pass into the Highlands from this direction. Any who are of ill intent will—”

  “Will find the death they deserve,” Nicholas said as he pulled Rowan to her feet.

  Scotia sucked in a loud breath as she stood and looked at the destruction the Guardians had wrought upon the English. “All of them?” she asked.

  “Aye, it would appear that all of ill intent did not survive the passing of the Highland Targe over them.”

  She looked about, taking in the many bodies that lay where they had fallen, weapons still in their hands, eyes open to the sky. It was only then that Scotia noticed that the incomplete palisade wall of tree trunks had also been blown down by the blast of power from the Targe stone.

  “Rowan, look!” she said, pointing to where the north side of the curtain wall had once stood, the tree trunks scattered over the remaining rubble as if a great wind had toppled them, pushing them outward, toward the loch, just as the curtain wall had fallen.

  “The Targe?” Jeanette asked, but the timbre of her voice told Scotia she was busy sorting through all the Targe and Guardian lore she kept in her mind, looking for an answer. “The two of you were below the wall when it fell . . . arguing . . . strong emotion, the trigger for Scotia’s gift, which can join with our gifts . . . with your gift, Rowan . . .” Jeanette squinted her eyes as if she were trying to see something in dim light. She turned around, looking at what they had wrought. “If Scotia’s gift called to the power of the Targe, then took control of the gift Rowan did not even know she had yet . . . the north wall was between the two of you and this place where we have drawn the full power of the Targe stone this day . . .”

  “We did this,” Rowan said, her eyes on Scotia. “We did this, cousin.”

  “And you protected the two of you, Rowan, and Nicholas, just as you did as a wee lass when you protected yourself when your mum destroyed your cottage,” Jeanette said quietly, awe in her voice. “I suspect we will find ourselves far stronger in our gifts as we learn to use them, if this is what the two of you could do before you were even chosen to be Guardians.”

  Scotia looked at the remains of the wall, then let herself take in the full measure of what they had done, what the Guardians had done. “I will not feel any guilt over this,” she said, squaring her shoulders and looking up at Duncan. “I will not.”

  “And you should not,” Duncan said at the same time Nicholas and Malcolm did.

  “We are Guardians of the Highland Targe,” Rowan said quietly, but with a new strength in her voice. “We are charged with protecting the Highlands from the greed of invaders, from the avarice of King Edward, who is no king of ours.”

  The moment she said King Edward a knowing gripped Scotia.

  “Sister, I need your sight,” she said, reaching for Jeanette’s hand. Rowan stepped close enough to join hands with them. And just that easily their gifts were united. Scotia followed the knowing, the other gifts twined with it, and when she “arrived” they were at the bedside of a man far gone in illness. His grey hair was flecked with ginger, and his breath rattled loudly, once, twice, and then it ceased. His eyes stared blankly at nothing. Armor-clad soldiers, as well as a priest, stood round the massive bed, shifting uneasily as they held vigil.

  King Edward was dead. The knowing floated among the joined gifts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE DAWN BATTLE had been only the beginning of a long and arduous day. The Guardians had spent most of the morning making sure the Highland Targe was stable as they learned how to feed it with the energy Rowan pulled through the Targe stone, directed at such a great distance by Scotia’s knowing, and Jeanette’s visions.

  The warriors who were not badly injured collected the bodies of the dead. The Scots were buried in the meadow just east of the castle, a stone cairn marking each grave. The English were loaded into carts to be taken to the place Rowan had dropped a ledge on the soldiers who had accompanied Archie into their glen. Once they were all there the Guardians would pull down the rest of the outcropping and bury them all in the stone.

  Jeanette had wanted to tend the injured, but Malcolm convinced her that the warriors could tend their own until the Guardians were done with their work. As soon as they were, she had tirelessly stitched and bound wounds until she had run out of supplies.

  Once all the English had been moved, the Guardians returned to their place by the well, and as if they had been working together for years instead of less than a day, they quickly finished the job of burying their enemies.

  More than enough food and blankets had been found in the English camp, so the MacAlpins and their allies gathered round the fires for the night.

  Scotia had not left Duncan’s side since they had found their way out of the castle sometime in the late afternoon, following their noses and growling stomachs to where Rowan had managed to put two large pots of stew over a fire.

  Jeanette had restitched Duncan’s previous injury and marveled that his many others were nothing more than scratches and a couple of shallow cuts that had already stopped bleeding.

  Now Scotia lay near a fire wrapped in a plaid and cradled against Duncan’s chest. One of his arms stretched out beneath her head while the other one was tucked tightly around her waist, as if even in his exhausted sleep he would not let her wander away from him. Not that she had any intention of doing so.

  She had watched the sky all through the short summer night, unable to sleep though she had never been so tired in all her days. Was King Edward, the Hammer of the Scots, well and truly dead? And if so, would his son take up his father’s crusade against them? At least they would not be able to harry the MacAlpins again, and for that she could not give enough thanks. As dawn began to lighten the sky she could lie still no longer and slowly, carefully sat up, letting Duncan’s arm drape over her lap so he would know, even in his sleep, that she had not left him.

  Conall sat nearby. He had a long cut along the left side of his face, and his blond hair was tangled with dried blood on that side.

  “That will scar,” she said to him.

  “Aye. Perhaps now Uilliam will stop calling me a wee daft laddie?”

  Scotia smiled. “Perhaps, though he kens it bothers you, so probably not.”

  A silence fell between them, and Scotia thought there was more Conall wanted to say.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You love him,” he said, and she noted it was not a question. “You have always loved him, have you not?”

  She looked down at Duncan and ran her fingers through his soft curly hair, still amazed that she had the right to touch him this way, and knew the honesty she had embraced of late must continue with Conall.

  “Aye.” She looked back at Conall. “Though in truth I did not realize it until very recently. I did not mean to dally with your heart, Conall, and I ask your forgiveness and understanding if I have hurt you through my own denial of my true feelings.”

  He said nothing, but she could see him struggling with her words in the stiffness of his shoulders and the set of his jaw. She had hurt him, and for that she was truly sorry. It would seem her penance for past behavior was not finished with today’s victory. She took a deep breath and rubbed the night’s grit from her eyes.

  “I understand if you cannot forgive me,” she said, hoping her voice conveyed the sincerity of her words. “I am ashamed of my past behavior and any pain it may cause you, but I ca
nnot lie to myself, or anyone else anymore.”

  He stood as if to leave her, then stopped. “I kent it all along.” He hooked his thumbs into his belt, and looked away from her. “I was so proud when you chose me that I did not want to believe your heart was given elsewhere, though ’twas clear to everyone but you. If you are guilty of lying to yourself, so am I, and I cannot hold you solely responsible for what happened between us.”

  Scotia realized in that moment that Conall truly was no longer the lovesick lad she had dallied with, any more than she was the same lass. They had both grown up, and now they were both taking responsibility for their actions. “I thank you for that understanding. It is more than I dared hope for.”

  He gave her a curt nod, looking down at Duncan once more. “Do not hurt him, Scotia. He does not deserve that.”

  She tried to swallow, but the lump in her throat made that difficult as she looked down at the man who had stolen her heart before she even knew it. “I will never hurt him on purpose again,” she finally said. Conall seemed content with that answer and left them by the fire alone.

  “That was well done.” Duncan’s voice was raspy and quiet, as if he did not have the energy to push it fully into the air. “Do you really love me?” He opened his eyes enough to peer up at her.

  “I do. Can you forgive me for all the trouble I have caused you and the clan? I truly did not see how my actions hurt so many others.”

  “And now?” he asked, sitting up beside her and twining his fingers with hers.

  “Can you ever see me as anything but a spoiled wean?”

  “I already do, Scotia. Can you not tell? You have proved yourself changed over and over again in the past few days.”

  “I need you to know that I will do everything I can to be worthy of your love, your trust, and of my position as Guardian of the Targe. I need you by my side, Duncan. I am my best self when I am with you. I need you to be my friend, and my champion, as you have been my entire life.” She looked down at their joined hands for a moment and let the multitude of emotions this man set off in her settle into one, the love for him that nearly overwhelmed her. She raised her gaze to his. “But I want more.”