The Pride of Lions

by Marsha Canham

  The first of the riders entered the cloistered avenue, the slow, plodding hoofbeats echoing off the hard ground. Alex raised both pistols and curled his fingers around the triggers. He waited until the flanks of the lead horses were directly in line with his barrels before he leaped to his feet and discharged both flintlocks point-blank into the startled faces of the Campbell clansmen.

  They were not the faces he wanted to see, but Alex did not stop to question the whereabouts of Malcolm or Gordon Ross Campbell. He flung the empty pistols aside and snatched up his musket, remembering to suck in his breath and brace himself for the tremendous recoil of the Highland firing piece as he pulled the trigger. The cloud of smoke from the exploding powder stung him blind for a few precious seconds, but by then he had also discarded the musket—it would take far too long to reload—and was leaping down from his perch on the rocks, his sword flashing in his hand.

  His throat vibrated with the roar of a battle cry as old and savage as his Highland ancestry. All along the curve of the avenue the cath-ghairm was echoed as his men flung themselves out of the cover of the bushes and met their enemies head-on. The first volley of gunshots had been effective—half of Campbell’s men lay either dead or dying beneath the panicked frenzy of horses’ hooves. From the rear of the avenue, high on the rocks, came Struan’s surprise: a steady stream of wickedly barbed arrows that proved to be deadly efficient in adding to the carnage of writhing bodies and thrashing horses.

  Alex slashed his sword across the saddle of the next man in line, cleanly severing an arm at the elbow. The man’s sword, with his hand still gripped around the hilt, flew off into the rocks, spattering them red with blood. A second slash went to MacSorley’s aid, relieving the man—who was about to shoot the Highlander—of both his pistol and his life.

  “I’m that glad tae see ye’ve no’ forgotten how tae fight!” MacSorley roared, baring his teeth with fearsome glee as his clai’mor split open the skull of an Argyleman. “But I’d no’ be worryin’ so much on ma back as on yer own!”

  Alex whirled and lunged out of the way only moments before a terrified horse bolted past him. He had barely regained his balance when a second animal thundered toward him, this one driven by a screaming, sword-wielding Campbell. He ducked as the blade hacked down in an arc across his shoulders, and was never certain if it was his own sword that brought his attacker crashing to the ground or the well-placed arrow that skewered cleanly through the man’s throat.

  Alex dashed a hand across his brow to keep the sweat from rolling into his eyes. He vaulted over two writhing bodies and ran down the avenue. No more than a minute had passed since the first shots had been fired, but already the ground was red underfoot, the air was choked with dust and acrid smoke. Horses were rearing and blocking the lane in their confusion, their screams adding to the general chaos that had erupted. He saw a flash of yellow hair up ahead and pumped his legs faster, but a sword came at him from nowhere and he spun into the rocks, his blood splashing the stone as he turned.

  * * *

  When the shooting began, Catherine was trapped in the middle of the column. She felt the arms of her captor go limp as a carefully placed shot tore away the back of his skull. As he slumped forward she pushed him to the side to free the saddle, but his foot caught in the stirrup and he hung grotesquely over her thigh. Too terrified to stop and think what she was doing, she leaned over and began to tug and pry at the stuck foot. It would not budge, and the dead weight was beginning to pull her off balance when a pair of strong, lean hands came to her rescue. Aluinn freed the foot and shoved the body off the pony, but before he could give Catherine more than a brief smile of reassurance, he was turning away, reacting to her screamed warning.

  Aluinn spun like a dancer, his sword flashing as he brought it up to block a thrust from Gordon Ross Campbell’s clai’mor. Campbell’s blow was deflected with a sharp ringing of steel, but since his weapon was much heavier than the elegantly thin saber, he lost valuable seconds recovering his momentum to strike again. Aluinn’s cut was faster, his blade slicing across the younger man’s throat before he could finish screaming the Campbell cath-ghairm.

  Catherine’s pony shied from the spray of warm blood, and she scrambled to hold on to the reins, to keep her seat as he reared and pawed the air. A hoof flayed wildly in Aluinn’s direction, catching his shoulder in the same place the bullet had torn through the flesh. He fell back, his lips frozen around a cry of agony, and staggered heavily to his knees, his hand clutching at the wounded shoulder.

  Catherine wheeled the horse around and managed to slip out of the saddle before the animal bolted into the clashing mêlée of swords. She ran to Aluinn’s side, but he was beyond movement, beyond feeling or knowing anything apart from the blinding pain in his shoulder. He did not feel the slender arms circle his chest and try to help him to his feet; he did not see her spin away or hear her strangled cry as a pair of trunklike arms reached down and dragged her up onto the back of yet another short, stout garron.

  Malcolm Campbell wrapped his arm tightly around her waist and thrust the snout of his pistol sharply up beneath the curve of her chin. His first thought was to kill her then and there, but he knew the moment he did so he would have no leverage against the stinging flights of arrows or the slashing swords. As he watched the last of his men fall to the ground beneath the Cameron onslaught, his anger rose in his throat. Images flashed in disjointed sequences across his mind—a stable turned from one moment to the next into a bloody battleground; his brothers Angus and Dughall split open and spilling their guts on the straw; his own hideous wounds; the first time he had dared look into a mirror …

  He roared again, and this time there was an answer.

  “It’s over, Campbell! Let her go!”

  Malcolm’s head swiveled in the direction of the hated voice. It was him. It was the black-eyed devil responsible for his pain, his disfigurement, his humiliation!

  “Cameron, ye bastard!” He screamed and cocked the hammer of the flintlock. “I’ll kill her! So help me Christ, I’ll kill her here where ye can watch her brains fly up tae feed the bluidy ravens!”

  Catherine squeezed her eyes shut as she felt the nose of the pistol dig deeper into her throat. She had a hand clawed around his forearm, but it was like trying to scratch stone. Her other hand groped instinctively to maintain her balance, and her fingers struck cold metal. It took a moment for her to absorb and identify the shape—it was the hilt of a knife Campbell wore tucked into the top of his hose.

  “Let her go,” Alex repeated calmly, evenly. “This is between you and me. It always has been.”

  “If that’s so, then yer men will listen when ye tell them tae put their weapons down an’ move away back.”

  One by one the Cameron clansmen looked to Alex for direction, and one by one they dropped their weapons and slowly shifted back against the rocks. Campbell watched them, alert for any sudden movement, and then his single rat eye flicked down to where the body of his son lay sprawled and still twitching on the blood-slicked mud.

  “Ye’ve just added tae the price ye’ll be payin’, Cameron,” he hissed. “Ye’ve added tae it twofold.”

  The midnight eyes did not waver from Campbell’s face. Ignoring the snarled threat, he directed his words, soft and low, toward the pale and trembling figure of his wife.

  “It’s all right, Catherine, I’m here. Don’t be afraid; it’s almost over.”

  She opened her eyes, but her head was tilted at an impossible angle that allowed only a view straight up into the sky.

  “Alex?” she gasped.

  “I’m here, love. I’m right here.”

  Campbell’s voice echoed with fifteen years of seething hatred. “I must gi’e ye credit f’ae yer taste in lassies, Cameron. This one was just as sweet an’ soft as the ither. Aye, sweet an’ wet an’ bonnie enough tae please most o’ ma men, though I foun’ I had tae take her twice afore she stopped squirmin’ long enough tae take all the seed I gave her. A pity we had tae
teach her manners, but the cuts an’ bruises were well-earned. She’s a rare hellcat, as ye must know.”

  Catherine tried to turn her head to see Alex’s face, but the muzzle of the gun prevented it. She tried to call out to him, but could not manage more than a dry gasp past the terrible, aching pressure across her throat. Above her the clouds were drifting away from the sun. In a few moments it would burst free. She curled her fingers tighter around the hilt of the dirk and prayed the sunlight would blind her to the final pain.

  Campbell grinned and nudged his heels into the garron’s flanks, easing the animal away from the avenue and back up toward the mouth of the pass. Alex followed, step by rigid step, his hand clenched around the hilt of his sword so tightly the veins rose along his forearms like blue snakes.

  Campbell waited until the last possible second, luring his enemy far enough away from his men so that his escape would be only a matter of a few galloped strides into the pass. When he judged Alex’s position and patience to be at their limit, he brought the pistol down from Catherine’s neck and aimed it toward the Highlander’s massive chest.

  At the same instant the sun broke from behind the foaming white clouds and Catherine jerked her hand up, bringing the sharp little stiletto with it. Alex saw her hand move, and the cold shock of seeing the dirk clutched in her fist, coupled with the colder shock of realizing what she was about to do, brought forth a violent roar of fury from his throat. He launched himself forward just as Campbell pulled the trigger.

  The horse reared as the gun discharged inches from his ear. Catherine slipped sideways and her aim missed … but so did Malcolm Campbell’s. Cursing, he flung the empty gun to the ground and kicked the horse in the direction of the pass, but Alex was by his side in three long strides, his fists catching the saddlecloth and hauling it back. Campbell’s arm was still around Catherine’s waist and she started to slash at it with the knife. She heard another loud curse explode in her ear, and the next thing she knew she was being shoved to one side and thrown to the ground, her fall breaking the grip Alex had on the saddlecloth.

  The pony responded at once to Campbell’s furious commands and galloped up the hill, but before they had covered more than ten paces an arrow struck the animal’s neck, just behind the hard bone of the skull. Horse and rider went down hard in a crush of flailing legs. Campbell was thrown clear and did not attempt to stop his fall, but rolled with it so that he was on his feet and running as the next arrow ricocheted harmlessly off the rocks beside him. He retrieved his broadsword and threw himself into the mouth of Hell’s Gate, mindful of the pounding steps that pursued him into the gloomy chasm.

  Crouched low and drawing on every fiber of speed and muscle in his powerful legs, Alex hurled himself through the air like a human catapult. He caught Campbell by the shoulders, and together they slammed into the jagged face of the stone wall. Alex’s arm was scraped bloody to the elbow as Campbell’s bulk trapped him momentarily against the rock, and seeing his enemy down, Campbell raised his sword and turned, roaring obscenities as he carved a glittering arc through the air.

  Alex rolled to one side with a hair’s breadth to spare as the blade missed his throat and clanged loudly on the cold stone. He avoided a second windmilling slash and was forced to retreat out into the sunlight, only then discovering he had lost hold of his saber in the mad charge. Campbell came after him, his broadsword raised and clenched in both hairy fists.

  A bright sliver of steel came stinging through the air and stuck in the hard ground inches from Alex’s foot. He heard a bellow from over his shoulder and recognized MacSorley’s enormous clai’mor, but he had no time to shout his thanks as Campbell screamed in for the kill. Grasping the five-foot length of bloodied steel, Alex pulled it free and raised it, barely in time to block the jarring impact of a direct strike. There was no finesse, no grace involved in dueling with the heavy weapons; power and brute strength were all that mattered, and a man drunk on the scent of blood was far more dangerous than a man defending his skill and reputation. Alex had forgotten more than he cared to admit about the tremendous weight and awkward balance of the Highland weapon, and he paid for his ignorance with two successive slices across his ribs and shoulder.

  Sensing the weakness in his adversary, Campbell grinned malevolently and pressed forward, advancing with a killer’s bloodlust to slash at an arm, a thigh, the exposed belly and neck …

  Alex staggered back from the force of the attack, his breath labored and dry, burning along his throat, scorching into his lungs. He felt the sword slip in the wetness of his palms, twisted loose on a wrenching blow that left his fingers and arm numb from the recoil. He grasped the hilt in both hands and swung with all his might, but Campbell was fast, despite his bulk. Steel scraped on steel as their blades crossed, and for a long moment the two men stood face to face, eye to eye, the muscles in their arms bulging, their sweat and blood splashing each other.

  In a sudden downward lunge, Alex canted his blade forward, breaking the tension in Campbell’s wrists and trapping the edge of Malcolm’s sword in the ornate scrollwork of MacSorley’s finely wrought basket hilt. He forced the blade down and turned it inward, feeling it bite through hard flesh as he dragged it up and along the straining muscle of Campbell’s inner thigh. He heard Campbell scream and felt the hot spurt of blood as an artery was severed; at the same time he released his hold on the clai’mor and brought his dirk up hard and fast, thrusting it deep into the stubbornly beating muscle of Campbell’s heart.

  Campbell slumped forward, his single eye gaping in outraged disbelief as he stared down at the handle of the knife protruding from his chest. His hands clawed upward and curled around Alex’s throat, but there was no strength left in the fingers to do more than score a few bloody scratches into the side of Cameron’s neck.

  Alex supported the sagging weight of his enemy long enough to hiss a curse in his ear, then shrugged it aside and stepped back, his chest heaving, his hands red and dripping. A soft cry from behind made him tear his eyes away from the bulbous corpse, and he turned in time to catch the slender body that came running up the slope behind him.

  Catherine threw herself into his outstretched arms, weeping his name over and over and sobbing a great wet patch onto the front of his shirt.

  He stroked the blonde silk of her hair and closed his eyes, gathering her close enough to feel her heart beating against his own. “It’s over,” he promised her. “It’s all over.”

  “I was so frightened.” She buried her head deeper into the curve of his shoulder. “I was so frightened you wouldn’t come.”

  “Wouldn’t come?” His hands cradled her face and tried unsuccessfully to tip it up to his.

  “I thought … I thought you would not want me back,” she sobbed, her words muffled against his throat.

  He let her hide there a moment longer, then angled her face upward in strong, sure hands, and pressed his lips over hers. “Well, now you know better.”

  Aluinn came up beside them. He was holding his shoulder and gently massaging the wounded flesh, but when he looked at Alex and Catherine a smile broke through the gray mask of pain. “It’s about bloody time you two acted like man and wife.”

  Alex ended the kiss on a sigh. “She’s stubborn, for a Sassenach.”

  “And he’s extraordinarily obstinate and proud, even for a Highland barbarian,” Catherine responded, her face turning into his throat again.

  “You will hear no arguments from me,” Aluinn said, “on either count.”

  Both men sobered and looked down at the sprawled form of Malcolm Campbell.

  “All these years,” Alex murmured. “He’s been like a cloud over my shoulder all these years.”

  “Yes, well … the sun’s out now.” Aluinn tipped his head up and narrowed his eyes against the dazzle of sunlight. The lofty, windswept vista that stretched out before them seemed too regal a setting for such carnage as lay at their feet, and then he noticed a scarred, gaunt tree as old as time itself standing alone some
distance down the slope. Collecting on its gnarled, spiny limbs were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of black-winged ravens, silently watchful, smugly awaiting their bloody repast. Aluinn looked up at the mountain again and a cold chill shuddered over the surface of his flesh as he realized that one of the peaks that formed Hell’s Gate was also known as Clach Mhor.

  The ravens will drink their fill of Campbell blood three times off the top of Clach Mohr.

  The prophecy had come true. First Angus, then Dughall … now Malcolm.

  “Why don’t we get out of here?” Aluinn suggested, bending to retrieve Struan’s sword. The big Highlander was standing a short distance away, shaking his hand to rid it of the gore flowing down his arm. The other Cameron men were retrieving their weapons, assessing their own wounds, of which there appeared to be many.

  Alex, by far the most seriously injured, lifted Catherine gently in his arms and carried her, despite her protests, down the slope to where the horses were tethered. He placed her on Shadow’s back and swung himself up behind her, rearranging the folds of his tartan so that they were both wrapped within the warm cocoon.

  He was so gentle with her, she felt her throat swelling with tears again. “Alex?”

  “Hush. Don’t talk. There is a tiny hamlet a few miles down the glen where we can—”

  “He did not touch me. None of them did.” The wide violet of her eyes turned to his. “He only said it to make you angry. I earned these bruises and cuts myself trying to run away last night. I didn’t get very far because I slipped and fell halfway down the mountain, but—Why are you laughing?”

  “You are a great deal of trouble, you know. One of these days a man will be clever enough to tie you hand and foot to the bed before trusting you on your own.”

  A flicker of a challenge sparkled in her eyes. “Will that someone be you, my lord?”

  He traced the tip of a finger across her lips and smiled. “I believe I have another method in mind for keeping you in bed.”