Oh, Gods, she’d done it. She’d made her way into my heart. I knew, with everything in me, she would break it before she was done.
Chapter 13
“‘TWAS WONDERFUL NICODIMUS. I . . . thank you.”
He sat up slightly, blinking at her in surprise. But then his face changed even as Arianna lay in his arms, feeling more alive than she ever had. He frowned, tilting his head to one side. “What . . . what is that sound?”
Arianna listened, but heard nothing. “I canna hear—”
“Shh-shh.” He held up a hand, sat a bit straighter. “Horses. Oh, Gods, battle!” He surged to his feet as Arianna’s heart leapt into her throat.
“But Nicodimus, I hear nothing!” Even as she said it, she rushed to retrieve her garments.
“It is yet another part of being immortal, Arianna. The sharpening of the senses . . .” He struggled into his own clothing and drew his dagger, then came to stand over her, his eyes alert and scanning the trees around them as she finished dressing. As if he’d protect her should any threat appear.
And that gave her to know he truly believed there was trouble afoot. “Nicodimus . . . what is happening?”
He closed his hands around hers and stared intently into her eyes. “I want you to stay here. Right here, Arianna, wrapped in the cloak and concealed amongst the shadows of these stones. The clouds have covered the moon. If you are still, no one will see you, even should they look, and you will be safe–”
“Nay! I’ll nay stay safe while you rush into danger!”
He shook his head firmly. “I must go, little cat, and there’s no time to argue with you. The village . . . I believe the village is under attack. Joseph and the boys . . . Nidaba—”
“Mam!” she cried. Suddenly it seemed her stomach turned in on itself. For now the sounds were reaching her ears as well, and in the distance, an eerie glow began to reach into the dark sky, despite the falling snow. She screamed aloud, hands pressed to either side of her head as panic took hold of her heart.
“I’ll see to your family, I vow it, Arianna. Please, please, remain here, safe.”
Trembling from head to toe, she nodded, knowing even as she did so that she lied to her husband. She lied blatantly. For no force on earth could have kept her from her family.
He studied her face for one lingering moment, then drew her dark cloak tight about her, and led her to a shadowy niche between two of the standing stones, where one had toppled slightly and leaned against another. “In here. You’ll be all but invisible, in here.”
She nodded, eyeing the cave-like space. Then Nicodimus gripped her shoulders and pulled her against him. He kissed her long and hard. “Stay safe,” he said, and his tone was one of command. “I’ll come back for you.”
“Aye, Nicodimus. Go, now. Go do what you must.”
With a quick nod, he turned to leave her. But she rushed after him, a sudden knot of cold fear hitting her fiercely in the chest. Flinging her arms around him, she fought to control her sobs. “Oh, my love, please take care. Stay alive, for though I’ve fought against it, I–”
“I know,” he said softly, stroking her hair. “I know. Go now, hide and await my return.”
She nodded hard, pressed her lips once to his warm neck, then fled to the spot where he had told her to hide. He watched until she had crawled into the darkness between the stones, and only then did he hurry away.
But the instant Nicodimus was out of her sight, Arianna crept out of her hiding place, and picked her way quickly and silently through the woods, taking the shortest route to the village. And as she went the sounds of battle grew louder. Shouts, screams, thundering hoof beats. The snap and hiss of fire. The snow fell and fell, and as she finally drew nearer the village, she realized the shouts and cries were coming less and less frequently with each step she ran. Until, only the hoof beats, and the crackling of flames remained.
What she found when she emerged from the trees made her heart turn to stone.
Cottages burning, flames licking at their thatched roofs, and hissing against the snow; fueled by something that burned despite the wetness from above, but burned more slowly because of it. And as she raced closer, she saw torches born by men on horseback who thundered through the village. Swords and clubs smote the few crofters who ran like frightened animals through the muddy pathways. And when the clouds skittered away from the face of the moon, she saw the bodies, battered and bloodied. Everywhere.
“Mam? Da?” she whispered. Her own family’s cottage stood in the distance. Arianna paused to bend down and scoop up a discarded blade as she moved urgently toward it. Her dagger was at her hip, aye, but she wanted something bigger. The sword hung heavy in her hand, too long for her, its tip dragging through the mud when she stumbled. She expected to be struck down before she reached her parents, and quickened her pace at the thought. But the darkness and her cloak must have been her aids, for none of the rampaging beasts seemed to notice her. Most were far too busy, looting the homes, murdering the few who remained alive, and putting the torch to every building in sight.
She heard a cry from within her parents’ house. Her mother’s cry . . . a cry that was cut off before it ended. With a growl of absolute fury, she lifted the sword high, raced forward, and burst through the door.
Her mother lay upon the floor, limp, her head bloodied, while a soldier bent over her, tearing at her dress. Without hesitation, Arianna brought the blade flashing down with all her might, aiming for the man’s neck.
He cried out only once as his blood shot from his veins, and then he crumbled at her feet, his head tipped at an impossible angle. Arianna stepped over him, giving him not a second look. She rushed to her mother, knelt over her, gripped her shoulders.
“Mam! Mam, ‘tis all right. I’m here now an’ . . . an’ . . . Mam?” She shook her mother, but saw now what she’d failed to see before. Or refused to. The once bright eyes were already filmed over by the glaze of death. Staring sightlessly, their light forever extinguished. “Nay!” Arianna cried. “Nay this canna be!”
Rising to her feet, she backed away, turning her gaze from the sight of her mother there on the floor, only to see her father lying still in a corner, a dagger in his belly, a pool of blood around him.
Arianna’s head began to spin. She did not want to believe any of this, for it could not be real. She had barely survived losing her sister, but to lose her parents, too, and just when they’d begun to mend the rift between them? Nay, ‘twas too much to bear.
She lifted her head to gaze into the dark, snow-damp night, and saw the herd of swine who had brought this destruction upon her people, her family, her clan. Looking down once again at the sword in her hand, she muttered, “I will kill them. Aye, I’ll kill them all!”
In a fury she raced into the wet snow, bare feet slapping through the mud, as she attacked one man after another. Her rage drove her, gave her strength. She killed more than she could count. Until at last, when she lifted the blade high above her head about to bring it down on another of them, she felt her body pierced from behind, and went still, her mouth agape, eyes bulging. Looking down, she saw the point of a blade protruding from her belly, blood flowing to soak the white tunic dress she’d worn to please Nicodimus.
Nicodimus. Gods, where was he? Where on earth was he?
She dropped to her knees, and knew death would come soon to claim her. So be it, then. ‘Twas preferable to going on, dealing with such a crippling loss. No one left to her but a husband who could never love her. A husband who would leave her in the end just as Raven, her sister had done. Just as her beloved teachers and her parents had each done in turn. She would lose him. She had lost them all.
Better than living, was dying just now. Better than living. . .
Arianna fell, facedown in the mud–never having glimpsed the face of the man who had killed her.
* * * *
I NEVER SHOULD have left her alone. It was a mistake that led to my destruction, and for it, I take full blame. Thi
ngs may well have ended differently had I kept my promise to protect her family. But those promises were words I never should have spoken, wrenched from me without forethought, and my judgment was poor. I wanted only to comfort her, to take away the pain I saw in her soft brown eyes. To take away the fear. To be her hero, I suppose. Foolish. Foolish to make promises I could not keep simply because I loved the girl.
Yes, it was true. I loved her. In spite of my best efforts not to. Arianna had conquered me. I hated the feeling, the vulnerability it created in me. And yet it was that feeling that drove me to protect her and all those she cared about. A feeling that made me willing to face battle—to face anything at all—for her.
So I spied the flames, heard the thundering beats of hooves, and knew the village and clan were under attack by a large number of soldiers, whose motives I could not imagine. But I knew that this was no ordinary raid. I raced to the keep for weapons, and to stir Joseph and his sons in case they remained asleep and unaware. Every man in the household would be needed to defend the village. Every last one.
I broke from the woods, and raced across the moor, up the hill to the front gates, my lungs burning, my body alive with immortal power.
It was only when I found the gates flung open that I slowed, and took more careful stock of things.
The huge wooden door leading into the great hall was not open, but lying flat—a battering ram made of half a tree trunk dropped upon it. And from the gaping, dark windows, thin spirals of smoke whispered forth.
“Nidaba,” I whispered. “Joseph . . . .”
Forcing myself to pause, to take care, I slipped inside, keeping to the shadows. The intruders were long gone, now. But everywhere I looked were signs of their carnage: broken bodies were strewn on the rushes, slaughtered like sheep. I found Joseph at the base of the stone stairs, still in his nightclothes. His neck broken. His sons had never even made it out of their chambers. Both of them lay dead within. And of Nidaba . . . of Nidaba there was no sign.
My heart clenched and my blood boiled. Damn these bastards, whoever they were! Attacking a peace-loving clan, murdering Joseph, a man who had shown nothing but kindness and understanding to all who’d known him. My friend. He had been my friend, and one of the few I still possessed.
But I had no time to mourn, nor even to bury him. Kicking open the bolted door of the weapons room, wondering why the invaders had not bothered to loot it to the bare walls, I snatched a sword and scabbard and belted them in place. Ignoring the rest, for I’d no need of maces nor shields nor crossbows, I strode quickly outside again, needing the air to cleanse the stench of spilled blood from my lungs.
Glancing toward the stables, I saw the tongues of flame beginning to lick up the sides. No doubt the straw and hay inside had been smoldering even before I had arrived. The doors stood closed up tight, as if the bastards had not even bothered to steal the horses, but simply wanted to destroy them. Destroy everything associated with this clan.
Gods, who could have cause to hate the clan so much?
I ran, yanking the stable doors open, and in only seconds, managed to send several horses galloping to safety with no more than a slap of my hand. The last few were panicked by the flames, and I had no time to lead them free one by one. Not when Mara and Edwyn were in their cottage at the mercy of the attackers. I gripped Black and leapt upon him without benefit of saddle or rein. He obeyed as easily as he always had, and leapt free of the burning building with barely a flick of his eye. He’d seen fire before, Black had. The stallion knew no fear.
Leaning low, I kicked him into motion, and we sailed through the night, pounding ever nearer the village, but my heart sank as I saw the yellow glow battling the snow-drenched darkness, and I whispered the names of my wife’s parents as I raced closer. I drew my sword, rounded a bend in the road, and then tugged Black to a halt as I saw the destruction. The death all ‘round me. The ruin. There was nothing left. Nothing.
And the soldiers were gone. They had rained terror and destruction down upon an unsuspecting, peaceful clan, and then left just as quickly as possible. Tears burned in my eyes as I moved closer to the saddle maker’s cottage. Because there was no hint of life from within. No one moved or breathed. I heard no tears, no cries for help, though the thatched roof was already alight with flame. I knew death, and this was it. I felt it in the very night, heightening my awareness with every wet snowy droplet that struck my skin. I was the only man alive here.
Black halted in front of Arianna’s former home, and I dismounted slowly. My boots sticking in the blood-soaked mud, I stepped inside. And then I felt the pain rip through me as I saw them. Mara, her head caved in. Edwyn with a mortal blade wound to the gut. And in the corner . .. who was that?
A soldier, one of the attackers, his head nearly severed. Someone had fought back then. Tried to help. But too late, too late.
My eyes burned with unshed tears as I thought of telling Arianna that her beloved parents had been brutally killed. I had been unable to tell her the truth about her own nature, to spare her the pain of knowing she would one day outlive all those she loved. But now that day had come all the same, and there was no way I could spare her this. No way.
And I’d promised her. I had promised her that I would protect them.
“I’m sorry, Arianna,” I whispered. “Damnation, if I had only come here sooner. If I had only. . .” But I shook my head, for my words and my regrets could not change what had befallen her family tonight.
Edwyn . . . he had been as kind to me as if I were his own son. And Mara . . . I recalled her smiling face, the reborn joy in her eyes as she and her firstborn had found each other again.
Gone, now, both of them. Their precious lives snuffed out without a care, without a cause.
My every instinct told me to go after the vermin who had wreaked such tragedy on Stonehaven. They had headed north, and their trail–the hoof marks of so many horses–would be easily followed. But I needed to return to the Stone Circle, to Arianna. Thank the Fates, I thought, that I had left her there. The soldiers had headed in the opposite direction. She was safe. They would pass nowhere near her.
Stepping outside, I reached for Black’s mane to pull myself up, but as I did, I glanced down, and a gleam caught my eye. Not a blade, but something silver, stomped into the mud. Instinct caused my stomach to quake, and I dreaded what I would find. I bent, and picked it up.
A silver pendant with a cradle moon adorning one curve. Exactly like the one Arianna had been wearing. And it had been lying here, right outside this house of death–her parents’ home.
“No,” I whispered. “No, it cannot be hers. She wouldn’t have come here, she couldn’t have.” Terrified, I scanned the bodies crumpled hither and yon, but I did not see the ethereal white tunic she had worn, nor the gleam of her spun gold hair. Not at all. Still, my gut was telling me what my mind already knew. It was hers. She had been here . . . and something terrible had befallen her.
I draped her pendant ‘round my neck to join my own there. Then, leaping upon Black, I whirled him around, kicked his flanks hard with my heels, and headed at breakneck speed back toward the Stone Circle. But the emptiness in the pit of my stomach told me even before I reached the sacred place, that I would not find my bride there, either.
* * * *
A JOLT BENT Arianna’s body backward so suddenly and so acutely she felt as if her spine would snap and her lungs burst from the force of her gasp.
Then slowly, her body eased again, and she opened her eyes. But even as she did, memory came flooding back, and she squeezed them tight against the onslaught. The attack. The bodies. Her parents lying dead. . . .
“Nay, it canna be,” she muttered, and turned instinctively into the shoulder upon which her head rested. The arms around her tightened, and a deep voice whispered, “There, lass, it will be all right now, I promise you that.”
And that voice, she realized, head coming up fast, eyes widening, was not Nicodimus’s.
He held her to
him, seated behind her on a horse; a large man, and strong from the feel of him. She found herself staring into pale blue eyes that reminded her of a wolf in winter, and ashen hair that gleamed nearly white in the moonlight. Not with age, but with the fairness of its hue. His face was soft, with a gently rounded chin and cheekbones, and a bulbous nose. No harsh angles, no cragginess like her Nicodimus. But softness. He seemed a gentle soul, this man who held her in his arms.
And yet she stiffened, pressing her hands to his shoulders to hold herself away.
“Aye, lass, ‘tis natural you’d be confused now. But you’ve naught to fear from me, I promise you.” He studied her face. “‘Twas your first death, was it not?”
Her brows bunched together, she whispered, “First . . . death?” And then she recalled the sensation of being run through, the horror of looking down to see a blade thrusting out of her own belly, and of falling dead into the mud.
Dead.
“Nay,” she whispered very softly. “Nay, ‘tis nay possible. I . . . I died. I. . .” Lowering her chin she saw the bloodstains all over the front of her tunic, and even the slit in the cloth where the blade had torn through. Hooking her fingers in that tear, she ripped it wider, and then searched her skin, her belly, for some mark or cut or flaw. But only found the stains of drying blood. She pressed her fingers to the spot where it seemed she could still feel the phantom pain of the wound . . . but there was nothing there. No injury. Not so much as a nick nor a scratch.
Eternal Love: The Immortal Witch Series Page 52
