Legacy of the Mist Clans Box Set (92 page)

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In celebration of the Season

Legacy of the Mist Clans: Book IV

By

Kathryn Loch

Amazon Box Set Edition

“All she wanted was peace in her life. All I wanted was tae give it tae her.”

~
Connell MacGrigor

Edinburgh, Scotland

September 1307

T
he dawn was only a weak glow in the eastern sky as the strengthening light touched the rocky, flat lowlands not far from Edinburgh. It chased away the shadows of night and brightened the dark heavens. The brown scrub grass bent and stirred in the morning breeze. The wind carried the chill of autumn . . . and the dawn slowly revealed something more.

Six men, their forms slightly darker than the shadows they passed through, stalked the barren scrub, moving cautiously forward. Their bared blades mutely reflected the weak glow of morning. They approached a campsite with a lone tent, forming a loose semicircle as they closed.

The tent was small and simple, barely large enough to house two adults. On the ground before it, ringed with rocks, embers from the remnants of a small campfire smoldered, faintly glowing red under thick gray ash. A tiny wisp of smoke trailed upward and dispersed with only the slightest puff of wind.

Two horses grazed nearby; long ropes attached to their halters and staked to the ground kept them in place. They both lifted their heads at the same moment, focusing on the men, both chewing on mouthfuls of grass. One horse blew out its breath a bit more heavily than normal, not quite reaching the level of a snort. The shadows froze, waiting as the silence grew thicker, but no one stirred from the tent. The horses slowly returned to their grazing.

The shadows flitted closer, crouching low over the rocky terrain. Extra leather and padding kept the chain mail armor they wore from rustling too loudly. Their equipment was mismatched, rings in their mail stretched and broken, patches missing, leaving small holes. The metal they wore to protect their elbows and knees was also poorly crafted. Thin leather straps were spiderwebbed with cracks. Small patches of rust pitted the metal.

In the east, the dim glow in the sky strengthened, but dusky shadows still stretched across the uneven terrain.

The mercenaries continued inexorably forward. One man hesitated about twenty feet from the tent and glanced around, lifting his head as a dog might scent the air. His face puckered with a scar that stretched from his jaw across a milky-white eye and ascended to his forehead where it disappeared into his filthy, matted hair. He held up his hand, gaining the attention of the others.

The men moved to obey him immediately. They tightened their semicircle around the campsite and looked to him while he silently indicated their instructions with only his hand movements.

The scarred man tightened his grip on his sword and lengthened his stride only slightly. His breath plumed in the air, puffs of steam appearing more rapidly the closer he came to the tent. His knuckles on the hand holding his sword grew whiter with each step.

Like his armor, the man was tattered and broken, his tunic stained, and his face smeared with dirt. But the sword he gripped possessed a sharp, finely honed edge. The well-kept blade matched the gleam of murder in the man’s eyes, and his gaze was as sharp as the edge of the steel he carried. The other five men maintained their stealth with practiced ease, closing on their prey.

As quiet as the whispering air through the grass and as gradual as the strengthening dawn, the ill-kept mercenary group closed their circle around the tent as relentlessly as a hangman’s knot tightening around a condemned man’s neck.

The air seemed to grow colder as rays of light reached out and scattered over the scrub, and so did their noose slowly constrict. Before the opening of the tent, the scarred leader stopped. He did not bother to look inside, instead moving quickly to seize the advantage. He lifted his sword, and in the peaceful tranquility of the dawn, his sword descended.

Connell MacGrigor’s roar of fury rent the tranquility in twain.

His broadsword in hand, Connell exploded from behind two large boulders a few paces from the tent, less than an arm’s length away from the scarred mercenary. His weapon slashed downward more rapidly than the mercenary could turn his head. The man didn’t have the bare instant required to focus his vision before Connell’s sword cleaved his head open.

The mercenary leader dropped dead at his feet. Another bellow resounded as a second mercenary closed on Connell, charging from his left. Connell shifted and brought up his sword, catching the other blade. The sharp ring of steel matched the intensity of Connell’s snarled curse.

Smoothly diverting the attacker’s blade away from himself, Connell stepped forward and slammed his left fist into the man’s jaw, staggering him a step.

Before the mercenary could recover, Connell snapped his sword arm back. His blade sliced through the cold morning air, and the steel slid neatly across the man’s throat. A ray of light cleared the horizon and cast fully on Connell’s exquisitely crafted sword, the blade igniting golden in the dawn. Dark red blood spattered the gleaming steel as it severed the vein of life in the man’s neck.

Connell turned his head, feeling drops of the man’s blood strike his own face. Red hazed the edge of his vision. The bloodlust possessing him grew in strength. Mairi’s scream cut through the silence and through Connell’s killing rage, but he could not spare a glance.

He sensed rather than heard movement behind him and turned his sword hand sharply, shifting the angle of his weapon in the blink of an eye. He shoved the blade straight back and slanted the point upward as he dropped to one knee to avoid the blow he knew had to be coming and had to be aimed at his skull.

The third mercenary’s sword whistled harmlessly past. Connell’s blade thrust behind him and bucked as it encountered chain mail, then flesh and bone. His grip tightened as he drove the weapon back. He glanced over his shoulder as his sword caught the mercenary full in the gut. The tip of his sword exploded out the man’s back, blood streaming from the man’s mouth as his eyes widened in horror, as if he could not believe he was dead.

The man collapsed, and Connell yanked his blade back, but it was slow to come free of the body impaled on it. He lifted his foot, catching the body on the shoulder and shoving it off his weapon.

“Mairi, tae me!” His gaze swept the area trying to find her. Motion again caught his eye, but it wasn’t Mairi. A fourth mercenary charged him, and Connell set his feet to meet the blow. Again steel clashed against steel, but Connell heard a telling snap, a sound that only fractured steel could make. The mercenary’s blade broke in half when it encountered Connell’s weapon.

Connell grinned viciously as he stepped to the side, his sword never stopping, his movement fluid and controlled. His weapon didn’t even buck as it cleaved the man’s poorly made armor, only coming to a stop when it slammed into his spine.

Connell freed his weapon, violently jerking it from the body. He did not dare stand still; he did not dare stop moving. He cut his sword outward, a move designed to clear his blind spot in the midst of a turn, but the weapon encountered nothing. He desperately searched the area around him. “Mairi, tae me!”

He heard her scream again, and Connell’s heart thundered against his ribs. She was directly behind him. There were only two mercenaries left alive, but he did not see them immediately. He turned completely around, still carrying the momentum from his swing. Through his killing haze, he recognized these men were fellow Scotsmen, but he felt no pity. Baser than the meanest brigands and thieves, these cutthroats were not to be trifled with. Connell had only managed to surprise them because he had learned to sleep as lightly as a cat, and he knew the best time to plan an attack, if one was to come, was before he and Mairi reached Edinburgh.

Connell was no fool. He knew Robert the Bruce had sent the mercenaries after them. The Bruce must have been infuriated with the previous failures and hired the cruelest to get the job done. If Connell fell, they would make Mairi wish she was dead during the journey back to deliver her and wee Adam to Scotland’s king.

The Bruce was not usually so vindictive, but he would not care what happened to a wet nurse, only that he gained the leverage he wanted against the English throne in the midst of this vicious war. Leverage that the wee bairn Mairi held in her arms, the bastard son of the English king, Edward II, would provide.

Connell would battle every demon at the gates of hell if need be to prevent that from happening.

As he completed his turn, he spotted one of the remaining brigands yanking Mairi to him. Connell focused on the man’s filthy hands and their crushing grip on her arm. A black rage Connell had never experienced before rose within him. The man tried to bring a dagger to her throat, holding her against his body. Connell’s gut curled into a sickening knot as his rage grew that a man would dare put his hands on her.

Without conscious thought, Connell took over the grip of his sword with his off-hand, his right reaching for the
biodag
in his belt. In one fluid motion, he drew the long dagger and expertly flipped it in his hand, changing his grip.

Mairi, clutching Adam to her breast and trying to shelter the bairn from the rogue hauling on her arm, could not escape. But she battled the man, trying to free herself and giving Connell just enough room. With a quick flick of his wrist, his biodag shot through the air, just past Mairi’s head, and drove into the man’s skull. Mairi screamed again, but the man’s hand abruptly released her arm and she leapt away, staring at the death around her in horror.

Connell snarled, returning his sword to his proper hand. One left. Where was he?

The scrape of boot on rock was Connell’s only warning as the last leapt at his blind side. He caught the flash of a blade in the corner of his eye and dove, hearing the weapon cut through the air as it missed his head by a hairsbreadth.

He rolled and was on his feet in an instant. The mercenary followed him but more cautiously this time. He feinted once, then twice, but Connell didn’t rise to his baiting as he circled, looking for his opening.

Movement ahead over the lowland scrub caused Connell to spare only a glance at what was approaching behind the brigand. But his blood ran cold. Two heavily armored men on horses galloped toward them, five hundred paces and closing fast.

Sweet Jesu, who were these bastards? He caught a glimpse of English heraldry and knew they were not friends.

“Mairi, behind ye!”

Mairi spun and also spotted the riders. She looked to Connell terror. He recognized the war she waged within herself. Always her instinct had been to run, but the only way he could truly defend her this time was if she remained within arm’s reach of him. He drew a breath, but before he could utter the words that would hopefully draw her to his side, her courage fled and she sprinted away.

Damnation!

Clutching a wailing Adam to her chest, she ran hard across the rocky scrub. Connell’s heart threatened to shrivel into ash. He knew what the knights would do as they turned their horses away from him and followed her. While Connell was entangled with the mercenary, he wasn’t a threat to the knights.

The mercenary attacked again, forcing Connell into an awkward block, but he managed it and opened the man’s guard. Connell’s free hand latched on to the mercenary’s throat, and he attacked with a viciousness that surprised even him. He had no choice. If he could not reach Mairi before the knights, they would ride her down like a dog.

HHH 

Mairi couldn’t find her breath, but she forced herself to keep running. She clutched Adam tightly to her and sprinted as hard as she could across uneven ground. Rocks threatened to trip her. The short, dry thorn bushes were sparse, but she purposefully headed toward a knot of them, hoping the horses would try to avoid the nasty spikes. She ran through, but while the thorns snagged her skirts and gouged her legs, the horses acted as if they weren’t there and continued to close the distance. Mairi turned toward a small ditch formed by a dry streambed next to their camp. It was the same that Connell had hid in before the mercenaries attacked. She choked on a sob. Where was he? She could no longer see him, and tears blurred her eyes.

Oh God, had the last somehow managed to kill him? She gasped for air, but it felt as if she could no longer breathe. Another sob escaped her. She couldn’t bear to think of him dead. She didn’t want to run, but what else could she do? There was no place to hide, and the horses would be on her in moments.

The dry streambed was narrow, littered with rocks about the size of her head. Before her, it cut next to a windswept rise, but deadwood and some small barren trees lined the edges just ahead. A single dead tree wasn’t much cover, but at least it was something between her and the English knights behind her. Mairi scrambled for it, but she knew it would do little to slow the horses down. It was only a matter of time before they caught and killed her and took Adam—or worse. Another sob threatened to choke her. She should have never run. She should have stayed with Connell.

The thundering hooves grew louder, and she felt the ground tremble beneath her. She heard the snort of a horse that sounded as if it was right beside her ear. She screamed, sensing the hand that reached to grab her, and tried to duck away.

An inhuman roar sounded, and Mairi violently strained to reverse direction, her feet sliding on the dirt and rocks. Connell exploded over the edge of the culvert just as the knight seized her sleeve. Connell’s blade cut upward with impossible speed.

The knight fell from his horse and slammed into the ground at Mairi’s feet, his head rolling next to him.

The bile rose in her throat, and she choked on a cry of pure terror as she threw herself into Connell’s arms.

“Mairi, get behind me!” He caught her, but his voice was edged with steel.

She heard a horse whinny and realized she had again made a grievous error. With her standing in Connell’s arms, he could not fight. She scrambled, expecting to feel the bite of a blade in her back.

Connell shoved her behind him, brought his sword on guard, and stood his ground.