Page 45 of The Trials of Neilina MacKai
The voice did not sound like the abbess Seona remembered.She moved the blade a small bit away.“Turn your head and look at me.”
The profile revealed was that of a young woman with blue eyes.A strand of deep red hair escaped her wimple and suggested that her captive might be Rhuad’s sister.
“Who are you?”
“Not the woman you expected,” the abbess’ voice growled from behind.
In the moment she looked up, Seona was bowled over by the heavier woman’s leaping attack.They wrestled for possession of the dirk, rolling across the empty floor of the chapel.The blade was sharp and each received her share of nicks.
The abbess wrested the dagger from Seona’s grip.Then the woman sliced open a long wound from Seona’s left shoulder to just above her right breast.
The cut was shallow but still painful and oozed blood.
Seona shaped the pain into rage.She was able to ignore the injury long enough to knock the dirk from the abbess grip.It skittered across the floor to the far side of the room.Then Seona rolled, so she lay above the abbess, pinning her down.She straddled the woman and held one wrist in each hand.However, a movement seen from the corner of one eye distracted her.
The girl who had been lying on the floor was scrambling away toward the chapel doors.
“Get out of here,” Seona yelled.“Save yourself.”
The distraction was enough for the abbess to wrench free one of her hands and snatch the second dirk from Seona’s belt, pressing it to her neck.
Seona froze.She could see her death in the Abbess’s eyes.
As she waited for the woman’s next move, the light in the chapel dimmed.Only the candles on the altar made seeing possible.Someone must have closed the doors.
Beneath her the abbess grinned.“I see you understand that I could kill you now.”
“Aye,” Seona gritted out.She did not dare nod.
“As pleasant as slitting your throat will be, I’ll save that pleasure for later.I want to see you suffer first.Then I’ll have your head sent to that filthy Scottish husband of yours.Now get off me and lay face down on the floor.”
Seona complied.How can I get out of this situation?Raeb always told me to think about how to control the weapon even when my enemy holds it.
The abbess knelt beside her and used the blade to slice away the sword at Seona’s back and cut open the back of her dress from neck to hem.Seona felt the belt securing the sword at her hips go lax.When her back was completely exposed, she felt the tip of the blade pierce her skin just below one shoulder blade.The abbess drew the dirk in a long line all the way to Seona’s buttocks.She gritted her teeth against the urge to weep at the pain.
“Oh, stop being so brave, curse you,” the abbess snarled.“I want to see your tears, to hear you beg for mercy you know you shall never receive.”
Seona refused to give the woman satisfaction and yield control.Instead, she waited for another dig of the dirk’s tip into her back.That was the moment she knew she could take charge.
The moment came.Excruciating pain radiated from her opposite side where the abbess twisted the dirk’ as she dug the point beneath Seona’s other shoulder blade.
Seona didn’t think she could take more and used that thought to do what she must.She heaved her body upward and rolled to her side.As she’d hoped, the dirk stuck, deeply embedded in the space beneath the bone of her shoulder.
The abbess lost her grip and momentum forced her back on her heels.
Seona struggled to stand and at the same time draw the sword that once sat at her hip.She succeeded despite the dizzying pain in her shoulder.However, when she moved to threaten the abbess with the weapon, she found the woman lay without moving where she’d knelt.
“Did I kill her?”
Seona raised her head to see the blue-eyed, red-haired woman who’d been on the chapel floor earlier.“You came back?I thought you’d left and closed the doors.”
The young woman huffed great gulps of air and wobbled where she stood.She held one of the very tall, very heavy, solid gold candle holders from the altar.
“I thought about running for my life, but you looked like you could use a little help.I’m glad I stayed.Still, I don’t want to go to hell for killing a holy woman,”
“I don’t think she’s dead,” Seona said.“However, I’ll need more assistance to bind her arms and legs before she regains her senses.”
“Oh, I can do that.”
