by Jackie Ivie
“Payton Dunn-Fadden!”
The name carried a bit of sob at the end of it. That matched the blur she was looking at him through. God was cursing her worse than ever to make it so! She wasn’t crying and she definitely wasn’t heart-sore at anything attached to him. She cared little that he was facing a force four times the size of his and was making plans for defeat. She was Dallis Caruth. She cared only what it meant to her. She didn’t even care if he had his head cleaved clean off his shoulders. She didn’t care—
“Or so I’ve been told.” He stopped her thoughts with words, accompanied by a grin. That expression creased his forehead with one small line across it, while one black lock decided to caress the spot as well.
“What?” Dallis wasn’t feigning the bewilderment. She was infused with it. Which was better than thinking herself saddened at what could be his demise, and her freedom from him!
“His manhood. Dinna’ go for it. Go for a soft spot in his belly. Right here.” He pointed to a spot above his belt. “Na’ only will that prevent him from taking what’s mine but t’will make his death a surety, as well.”
“Payton?” The name was whispered.
“Aye?” he asked.
“I dinna conspire with Kilchurning.”
“I dinna’ ask if you had,” he replied.
“I have na’ even seen the man since…” Her voice trailed off.
“Since a-fore our wedding?” he supplied.
She nodded.
“Good. A loyal wife is a great asset to a man. One who cares and protects her husband’s property in his absence is an even greater one.”
Her eyes went wide and she knew he was watching for it. As well as the color in her skin as she blushed severely. Heat spiked through her, followed by a pallor severe enough to make her dizzy with it. And through it all, he didn’t even blink. That much of his intense stare was too much. Dallis moved her gaze slightly and focused on the open door behind him, with the bolt that was broken and lying at an odd position on the floor, rather than upright beside the door in preparation of being lowered into place.
“I still dinna’ betray you with Kilchurning,” she finally answered.
“And I repeat that I doona’ ask it. Here. Take the blade. Protect what’s mine.”
“Yours?” She was showing emotion and bit down on her tongue to still it. She’d been taught better!
“I’m speaking of my heir. Should God be gracious enough to grant that you carry one. Here. Take it.”
Dallis looked. He held the blade out toward her, handle first. And then Dallis had it in her hand and was testing the weight. A good silversmith had smelt it for him if the balance was any indication. She tested it briefly and looked up. And watched him leap backward with both arms out.
“Dinna’ fash yourself, Dunn-Fadden. I’ll na’ carve on you. Na’ yet, anyway. Mayhap…later.” Her attempt at humor would have worked better if she could curb the odd sensation that might be sorrow and loss.
His grin was back and it had a devastating impact on her tongue. And her heart. Dallis didn’t know what the sensation that made her heart lurch in a huge motion was. She didn’t want to find out, either. She was too afraid.
“You’ll protect my heir? Should we have created one?”
Dallis blinked the moisture away and nodded.
“Better than you protected and cared for my keep?” he continued.
“Damn you, Payton! Can you na’ just leave?” The feeling overtaking her was so close to crying it wasn’t to be borne! Dallis pushed her teeth together and shoved her chin up and blinked until the room went back to being just a room.
“You’ll keep it safe?”
“I kept my silence for a reason. Dinna’ it ever trouble you what it might be?”
He shrugged. “I doona’ know the workings of a woman’s mind. I dinna’ ken any man who does, either.”
“You looking to be carved on already?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Only speaking my words a-fore I meet my maker. As short or as long as that could be.”
“There is only one thing worse than you. And that is the laird of Kilchurning.” She whispered it.
“Truly? Why?”
“Have you na’ seen him?” She shuddered.
He grunted; straightened; lifted an eyebrow; speared her with a gaze that had her heart doing such antics she didn’t know how to stop it, and then he tossed his head back and laughed. It was such a full and hearty noise that it brought his man, Redmond, from wherever he’d been hiding. And two others as well.
Chapter 5
The protected land surrounding his castle that a lord could ride and return from on horseback was known as a demesne. The area that Payton Dunn-Fadden claimed stretched out in three directions since there was a loch covering the entire back side. The area was just as cold, sodden with newly fallen snow, and filled with misery as it had looked to be from the crenels they’d been patrolling and checking from before finally spotting movement. The Kilchurning was approaching and he wasn’t doing it with speed. That meant Payton had to use the same stealth; moving on foot—leaving the horses in the stables, where they were warm, well fed and groomed, and bedded down for the night.
All of which was useless to contemplate when he had more pressing matters to attend to.
Payton whistled softly, and accompanied it with a lift of his white wool and fur-covered arm. He wasn’t surprised to see the lump of white at the edge of his vision turn into a clansman, and beyond him was another and then another. Payton pointed and knew they’d look to where silent, dark-clothed masses of men were moving, circling about the edge of the meadow. That proved at least one thing. Kilchurning may be one of the king’s landed earls, but he wasn’t a powerfully cunning one.
Only a white covered bulk had a chance of hiding amidst the snow-covered heather of Payton Dunn-Fadden’s land on a wintry eve. The mass of Kilchurning clansmen turned into individual spots numbering more than forty. Payton gave off counting when he reached fifty. And then he was communicating the tally to his man Redmond and waiting while it was transferred all about the line of white-clad lumps fronting his castle.
Then he gave the sign to wait.
There was no telling what Kilchurning had devised once he got his men set. It was going to be interesting to find out. Payton’s keep within the bailey hadn’t been repaired from the damage of three years past, but there wasn’t one gap in the stone of the curtain wall that an enemy could use. None. The mass behind them was solid and secure and impregnable.
Which made it even more odd that Kilchurning would try and gird it with such a small force. It was a worse plan than the one hatched the night Payton had gained the castle. The irony made him grin and that just gave him an ache in his front teeth from the cold. It was better to stay grim and silent.
He gave the motion to move behind the Kilchurning clansmen and start taking them down. Every man had enough twine to capture ten men and tie them up, orders to get at least three, and the command to do it in silence. The silent part was the easiest, since the snow muffled the sounds of scuffling well enough.
It also made things slippery, the fog of air breath-enhanced, and the scene fantasy-driven. That was just and fair, and worked to their advantage more than the Kilchurning clansmen, since none of them were expecting the snow to turn into solid bulks of armed men. Payton had five of them down, choked to silence with a forearm to their windpipes and then gagged and trussed up before Kilchurning reached the gatehouse.
It took time, though.
His men appeared to have done as well and it was some satisfaction to note through snowflake-dusted eyelashes that each of his men claimed four to his credit. That meant perhaps a dozen Kilchurning marauders left. It wasn’t as satisfying to see they’d reached the castle gate and were some distance off, though.
Payton pulled his bow from behind him, looked to each of his men and then nodded. They had orders to wound. Disable. Not kill.
The man challenging
his castle had vengeance in his veins. Payton could understand. If such a treasure had been stolen away from him, he’d feel the same. Kilchurning deserved a set-back; a defeat; a ransom paid from his clan to crippling effect on his treasury. He didn’t deserve death.
Payton hand-picked his Honor Guard from the warriors of Clan Dunn-Fadden for such a thing. To kill a man was easy. To take him was a deed worthy of a champion. That’s why he’d ordered it so.
Aside from which, if they killed Kilchurning, there’d be an accounting to make to the Stewart king who leveled fines for such things as clan wars. Payton was already indebted to the spiteful diminutive monarch.
He would take Kilchurning by surprise, defeat him soundly, exactly as he’d done on the challenger list at Edinburgh more times than a man could count, and then see him settled in the dungeon. Then, he could go back to the pleasant pastime of enjoying his wife’s bounty.
The thought warmed him, and he had to shake his head at such foolishness.
Kilchurning was yelling something, probably Dunn-Fadden’s name and a slur on his family, and then a command to yield. All of which couldn’t be heard distinctly, but Payton put it into place in his mind, anyway. He had to guess at the events, since nothing made much sound against the muffle of falling snow.
A dull thud filtered through the night as what had to be a battering ram hit the solid wood doors of his gate. Then came another thud. Followed by another. Somewhere in the center of his castle complex he heard the sound of a bell being rung, and that was exactly as he’d planned, in the event Kilchurning got through to them. The clansmen within were already warned and armed and ready.
Kilchurning yelled out another slur on Payton’s mother and accompanied it by another hit with his battering ram. Then another. That was a waste of good wood. And needed to be stopped.
Payton jogged along the wall, skimming his fingers along stone which not only helped him with direction, but helped with the slide when his feet couldn’t hold the steps he forced on them. The rock surface also made hand-holds for pulling himself back up from the cold wet snow-mash that was blanketing everything.
He lost his bow at one such slippage, scraping his knuckles on the ice-covered rock and losing feeling in his hand long enough to temper the pain. That might be beneficial if he hadn’t gained both boots full of snow and started a cold ache through his ankles and into his calves. Payton huffed the breath, gained his feet, searched fractionally for the bow, and shrugged it off. In close enough proximity, an arrow worked well enough.
He could tell he was close. The thudding was transferring energy into the rock at his fingertips, and the noise was louder. It was accompanied by a worse sound, that of splintering wood.
He could also hear the slurs Kilchurning was leveling at him.
“Whoreson! Bastard cur! Whelp! Come out of there and meet me like a man, Dunn-Fadden!”
Another booming thud hit the gate. Payton slid onto his haunches then, earning himself what felt like slices of dirks along the back of a thigh and into the other knee. He knew once it warmed, it would probably prove exactly that, since ice proved knife-sharp and he’d used it as such before. He pulled himself up, glanced at the red-streaked snow, and felt the worry start.
The lie was missing. His gut told him of it.
Nowhere in his body was there a core of emotion or a depth of anger large enough to change everything into rage and hate and a lust for the win. He needed the drums. He needed the crowds. He needed the lie. He hadn’t known it until then.
“Come out, coward!”
Payton was within shot of them, and could have easily pegged Kilchurning’s throat if he had his bow and wished to. As it was, he stopped for a moment, pulled in a breath and looked about him for the others.
Nothing.
“If you will na’ come out, Dunn-Fadden, I’ll take your guts and twine them about your roof!”
Such a thing would at least untwist them, Payton decided, feeling a twinge in his belly that had nothing to do with championship fighting, and everything to do with fear. He dared not take this many Kilchurning clansmen by himself.
The felled tree hit the door again with punishing force, although the thudding sound of it was still muted with the damp. Payton saw the men advance into the stone portal itself as the men sensed the give in it, before they were all shoved backward as the bolt once more held.
Well-aimed arrows would have changed everything, stopping them in the confusion of a hit on legs or arms and making them drop their ram. If only he hadn’t fallen and lost his bow! Payton pulled his sword from the scabbard with his right hand, shoving aside the fur-lined wool cape to make the move, while he gripped an arrow in his left, twisted both in his hands as he gathered courage, and then time stopped as the sound of chain moving filled the night, pulling from the embrace of the bolt as it unlocked his gate.
Light started as a slice onto the mud-trampled snow, and then broadened until it lit on more than two dozen Kilchurning clansmen, all wearing the same look of astonishment. There was another shadow in the midst of the light, turning from a sliver into a long, form-pleasing woman-size. And then Payton heard his wife speaking.
“Laird Kilchurning. All you had to do was send word.”
And Payton went berserk.
It wasn’t the lie after all. It was him.
The deep guttural cry filled his chest, boomed out through his throat, and heralded his entrance into the light, and when he slid on the snow-mixed mud, he turned it into a purposeful motion, slicing through the legs of the men he slid beside, and ending up slammed against their battering tree. Where that would have felled him, he turned it instead into an arc of movement and leaped across the wood, slicing another man’s chest with his sword, while the arrow went into a different throat.
He didn’t need a drum, either.
Red filled his vision, turning the mud and snow mixture into a realm of hell. Payton slammed and chopped and fought his way through them to Kilchurning. He ignored the blows to his back, shoved aside the pain of a blade as it slid across his belly, missing his vitals by inches, and welcomed the agony of an arrow as it embedded in his shoulder. Kilchurning was backing, the fear on his face a goad to Payton’s rage, and when he’d finished with the Kilchurning laird, he was going to take his wife’s slender white throat and slit it, too.
“No, Payton! Nae!” He heard the screams behind him, ignored them as much as he was ignoring the new pain of another blow, this time in his left buttock, taking him to a knee, before he was up again and advancing, and feeling the Kilchurning’s fear as if a drug.
Then he had the man pulled to him, with a fist about the brooch he’d used to clasp his kilt band to his shoulder and Payton was pummeling as much of him as he could reach, ignoring the new pain of a blow to the side of his head, while shaking off the instant dancing of firelike dots. He saw a huge fist coming at his face…a fist with a very recognizable ring on the little finger. A ring he’d designed and had crafted and created so it could grace the finger of his lady wife. For all time. Proving she was his. Showing the world that Payton Dunn-Fadden had burst through the bonds of poverty and filth and degradation and gained himself not only a castle, but the heiress to go with it. But only as long as he held it.
And then he knew oblivion.
Don’t hurt him! Don’t kill him! Don’t hurt him….
The litany went through her like an unfinished sonnet, unspoken and filling her with an emotion close to fear. It was worse than the feeling that had already iced over her entire frame, making it difficult to don her presentation attire, and even harder to make the movement to the door, and give the order to open it before they caved it in. It was the same sensation that kept her standing, aloof and pale and trembling, frozen with a chill the winter couldn’t dent.
The scene outside the gate was a mix of groans and blood, bodies and clamoring from male throats too numerous to count. And amidst the sea of green and yellow plaid marking a Kilchurning…was the lump of Payton.
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One of the Kilchurning men kicked at him. Aside from a rocking movement his boot caused, and the return back to a sodden lump of red-colored white wool, nothing happened.
Dallis had her hands clasped to where pain was radiating through her breast and willed herself out of the scene. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She’d wanted him dead, hadn’t she? The emotion close to fear moved then, clogging her throat as Kilchurning…or perhaps it was one of his closest men, pulled a claymore and advanced on the non-moving lump that was Payton. Dallis was grateful then for the lump her throat harbored. The screams didn’t make any sound. She only knew she was making them, and suffering them, and gagging with them.
Pain. That was it.
She remembered it at the same time another man pulled another claymore from his side to follow the first man. Dallis shoved a hand behind her and beneath the jeweled girdle at her hips, pricking the soft tissue of her thumb pad with the dirk Payton had given her. Again. And then she pulled it forward and bit on it. And then she started begging God to make the pain greater than the one in her breast.
Before they reached Payton, the ground started turning into a shaft-filled quagmire, filling with arrows that rained through the falling snow, peppering the ground all about Payton, and then starting to move outward. One landed in a thigh…afoot. Dallis heard the cries and started backing, yelling at Leroy as she went to pull the door shut and let Kilchurning escape as best he could.
They were too few and Dallis couldn’t prevent the Kilchurning laird and most of his men, bloodied and bedraggled with the storm and their battle, from pressing into the castle ground of the lower bailey before the door shut. And worse. They’d brought their battering ram with them.
She exchanged a glance with Lady Evelyn, accepted the woman’s censure and felt her frame sag. But only slightly. She couldn’t win if she didn’t continue planning and altering to what was needed.
