Page 79 of The Falcon Laird
Behind them, the soldiers crossed the burn, pursuing relentlessly. She flashed an anxious glance at Fergus, his face grim and determined as he focused on the path ahead.
All they had to do now, she saw, was reach Kilglassie before Hastings caught them. A mile, no more, through an oakwood and up a hill, down again, and they would see Kilglassie’s open gates. Gavin would be there waiting. They would be safe. Her hands gripped the reins as she stretched into the wind.
Shouts came again behind her, raw and threatening. She dared not glance back. Pressing her horse onward, she heard a guttural cry—and knew Fergus had been pulled fiercely from his mount.
She turned for a wild, quick glance. Fergus was gone and several horsemen bore down on her. Ten, a dozen men, so many she could not count them. The armored riders loomed huge and terrifying in the wind and the rising darkness.
She only had to make it through the wood; only had to reach the hill leading to Kilglassie. The garron was a good climber and would gain ground. She could get away.
Then a hand, huge and iron-like, yanked her from the garron’s back. She twisted savagely in the air and fell hard to the ground. She wanted to get up, run, but she needed a moment to catch her breath. The rain began in hard, icy needles that pelted her and soaked into the earth. As she rose from her knees, the long-legged English chargers circled and closed in, trapping her.
Fear clawed at her gut, threatened to overtake her. She nearly buckled to the ground, but forced herself to stand on unsteady legs. She glared at their grim, anonymous faces. Her gaze slid around the circle, but there was no gap, nowhere to run. They would snatch her, uproot her like a flower stem.
O Dhia, she thought; she could not let them take her.
“What do you want?” she asked, her voice hoarse, heavy with fear.
“Lady Christian,” a cold voice said, “King Edward charges you with outlawry. You are a prisoner of England.” The man who spoke dismounted and came toward her.
She tensed where she stood, fisting her hands. Freezing rain slid down her brow, down her cheeks. She brushed furiously at it to clear her vision. The soldier clamped a mailed fist around her arm and dragged her with him. But she screamed, anguished and angry, and tore loose to back away. She spit out sharp Gaelic oaths as three more men dismounted to come toward her.
“Hold, lady,” one of them said. “We are to take you to Oliver Hastings at Loch Doon. Just come.”
“I will not!” she screamed in English, backing away. Weaponless, she had only anger and fear and wildness to hold them off. The soldiers looked dumbfounded and uncertain. She shouted ferocious Gaelic curses, her eyes darting quickly as she looked for a way out.
Far back, she saw Fergus come to his feet, behind the soldiers whose attention centered on her. They must have thought him unconscious. He came forward, but she knew he had no weapon either.
She glanced behind her. In a gap between the horses, she saw a short stretch of grass and rocks that led to one of the pools. She would leap into icy water and drown before she would let the English take her again.
Whirling, she ran through the gap to the burnside bank. Her heels sank in boggy ground, spongy with rain. She stepped into the cold sucking mud at the pool’s edge.
“Get her, you idiots! It is just a woman!”
She was a few feet away from the narrow rocky bar that separated the twin pools. She angled that way and stepped onto a slippery ledge of rock and mud. The soldiers were near now, and one stepped toward her, but his armor pulled him ankle-deep into muck. He pulled his foot out, cursing as he backed away to solid ground. “A bog! Come here, you damned Scottish whore!” he shouted.
She edged back. Fergus was behind the soldiers, who were unaware he was there. The horses, loaded with men in chain mail with weapons, sank their hooves into the oozy, icy stuff and began to struggle, backing away. Those on foot fared little better.
She stayed on the bar, having a slight advantage. Then she saw a gap where water flowed to join the pools. She could not cross there without turning, and another soldier was coming near. He tried to grab her but missed.
Then, as if the heavens suddenly struck out on her behalf, he fell forward, his outstretched arms grazing her cloak as he went down. An arrow shaft protruded from his neck. He rolled into the water and sank into the pool’s depth.
Stunned, she saw sudden chaos among the soldiers as two more fell from their horses, dead as they hit the ground, arrows sticking from vulnerable places at the neck and under the arm.
Standing on the narrow earthen bar, legs trembling, Christian looked for the archers, but saw only the forbidding tangle of the oakwood. She wondered if her royal cousin and his men had arrived and were attacking these English knights on her behalf.
Fergus pulled another soldier from his horse, throwing the man off balance so that the priest could grab his sword and knock the man in the head. Roaring and raising the sword, Fergus spun to fight another soldier. Though surrounded, he circled, ferocious in combat, keeping them away. But she knew he could not do that for long.
Another knight jumped from his horse and ran toward Christian, shouting curses at her, and she knew that if that man caught her, she would not make it very far at all. But hearing more shouts, she whirled again.
“Out of the way!” Gavin shouted. “Get out of the way!” He and John raced toward her across the bar from the opposite side, their booted feet sloshing through water and mud. He gripped a longbow in his hand, a quiver on his back, a sword angled from his belt. With a long, sure leap, he cleared the rushing stream between the pools and grabbed at her arm, spinning her as he ran past to leave her standing, astonished.
John came behind him, landing heavily, barely clearing the stream. She reached out to help him, nearly stumbling, but he too raced past. She stood, stunned, then tore after them. At the shore, she held back as John stood at the fringes of the confusion of horses and muck to fire off sure and deadly arrows. Two more soldiers dropped as they were hit. Drawing his sword, Gavin moved like lightning among the men and the horses towardFergus while John continued his succession of arrows to shield his advance.
Gavin cast his bow aside and picked up another sword from a fallen knight, using two as deftly as one to slice an opponent and wound another who came up behind him. Fergus stood in the gray rain at the center of it all, looking like an enraged Celt. He had a steel mace now and raised it high over his head. Roaring like anything but a priest, he slammed it into any English heads and shoulders near him.
Unable to look away, stunned and awed, Christian stood still as blades clashed, horses sidestepped and cantered away, and men shouted and struggled with the three who defended her and each other. Rain streamed down in a filmy, silky veil, but the blood and the steel shone bright.
Gavin turned as two soldiers converged on him. Christian cried out,“Gavin!”
