Page 4 of So Close To Heaven
The stink of burning flesh hit fast. Ruaidhrí screamed once, high and raw, then went limp.
Tàmhas nodded once. “Guid. He’s out. That’ll save us both some misery.”
A moment later, Alaric stepped back, scrubbing a forearm across his mouth. The heat from the iron still hung in the air, mingled with the sourness of fear and blood. He handed Tàmhas the fresh bandages without a word, then turned to scan the edge of the trees again.
Movement caught his eye—just a flicker, something low and tight to the ground. His first thought was a wounded man, dragging himself for cover. But it wasn’t.
Half-shadowed behind a spruce at the edge of the clearing, a pair of wide, stricken eyes met his. Not the red-rimmed eyes of pain or fury. Not the hard, narrowed gaze of an enemy.
These were strange. Clear, but panicked. Eyes that didn’t belong here at all.
They blinked. Froze. Then vanished behind the tree.
With deceptive nonchalance, Alaric let his gaze wander away from the spot. He reached for the rag tucked through his belt and began wiping his hands, his posture unchanged, his eyes flicking across the camp as if nothing had caught his attention at all. He waited until he’d made an internal count of ten before he moved, passing behind a half-toppled wagon, where one of the older men sat being stitched with blood-darkened thread. The man’s knuckles were white on the water skin beside him, his eyes were pinched closed tightly, and he maintained a rigid wince, but made no sound.
Taking a long route across the edge of the wreckage, Alaric circled slowly toward the trees, allowing the battle scene to fallbehind him. His bloodied boots found a quiet path between roots and brush as he stepped into the tree line. He moved carefully, not slow, but quiet—hunting not like a predator, but like a man who had hunted long enough to know when silence mattered more than speed.
The trees closed around him, dimming the light.
He curled his fingers around the hilt of his sheathed blade but did not draw as he moved silently through the thickening forest, circling toward the place where she’d first been seen and then vanished. She hadn’t gone far, he realized a moment later, creeping up on her figure still crouched behind the trunk of an old spruce.
He knew exactly when she realized his presence behind her, just a few yards away, naught between them but low scrub and brush. She didn’t twist around anxiously, didn’t bound to her feet. One hand, visible beyond her shoulder, fingers splayed against the rough bark, shifted almost imperceptibly, those slim digits tightening into the skin of the tree. She moved only her head, turning with a measured deliberateness that suggested she was terribly afraid of what she might find behind her, mayhap afraid to trigger an action or reaction, like a hare holding perfectly still hoping the wolf would pass by.
Her eyes, wide and unblinking, locked on him. Carefully, she twisted one foot on the ground, pivoting, and rose from her haunches. Her hands were clenched in anxious fists.
She was young, though not so young as to be mistaken for a lass. Her face was flushed from effort or fear, framed by a fall of burnished hair—gold, copper, something in between—that caught the light through the trees. There was a delicateness to her features, the kind found in noble courts or carved into chapel stone, not in the wilds of a ruined supply trail. Her eyes—green shot through with brown—watched him closely, frightened butholding steady, like a hand trying not to flinch as the arrow was drawn.
She was beautiful. Beyond beautiful, actually, which creased his brow anew. He didn’t trust beautiful. Especially not when it showed up silent, wide-eyed, and inexplicable on the edge of a battlefield.
He let his gaze pass over her strange clothes—tight breeches that clung like a second skin, a pale pink tunic that surely offered little warmth, and a soft green coat stitched through with odd seams and buttons like bits of horn. Her boots were near spotless, short at the ankle, strange in shape. The entire lot looked costly, made by hands not meant for work.
And she was, quite obviously, heavy with child.
“Late to catch the convoy,” he said flatly after a long moment, his voice cutting through the space between them. “Though I expect they’d nae have left ye behind if ye’d been worth the bother.”
She flinched at the sound of his voice. At the same time, her eyes widened.
“Ye a camp girl?” he asked, brow lowering. “Someone’s kept thing?”
She moved her hand to her belly, the gesture protective, her breathing shallow.
She said something—soft, uncertain, the words strange and fast, bending in ways no tongue he recognized ever had. Not Gaelic. Not French. Closer to the butchered English of the border.
He stared at her a moment longer. Her gaze didn’t break, though he could see the effort it cost her.
“They’ll have to stop, to tend their own wounded. Ye should be able to catch up with them.” He glanced at her swollen belly again. He had no idea about the appearance of such things, having left to fight before his wife’s pregnancy had begun toshow, but decided she was neither newly with child nor about to give birth at any moment. She was clean and appeared healthy, though, so must have been well taken care of, which suggested she was a well-favored whore and robust enough to hike away to find the lover who might not have given her a second thought.
Judging her no threat, and deciding she was not his problem, Alaric turned his back on her.
Chapter Two
“Wait!” Ivy called out plaintively after a full ten seconds had passed.
She lurched forward a bit but jerked to a stop when he turned and faced her again. He was possibly the scariest person she had ever encountered. But then, this—whatever was happening—was even more frightening. But this man...who was he?Whatwas he? A chaotic trio of descriptors flashed across her brain—brute,Viking,medieval warlord. Viking wasn’t fitting, though, not really; this was Scotland, after all, and he didn’t have blond hair.
The man before her looked like something summoned from another century, some brutal, half-mythic past. Massive and still, he loomed like the embodiment of a warrior king—or a warlord—from the darker chapters of a history book. Easily six and a half feet tall, he was broad in the shoulders and heavy through the chest and arms, the kind of muscle that didn’t come from gyms or workouts, but from survival.
A length of worn plaid was slung over one shoulder, and beneath it was a thick linen tunic that was stained with sweat and splattered with blood. Across his chest and belt hung leather straps and weaponry—swords and daggers, looking dull but not unused.
