Page 92 of My Scot, My Surrender
“No!” He recognized his mother’s anguished scream as he reached for his calf and felt the long shaft of an arrow.
Someone had shot him from behind. One of Rodric’s men, no doubt, though Brandt didn’t have time to see who. He’d expected Rodric to fight dishonorably, though he had not expected to be shot from the back. He raised his sword to fend off a downward blow from Rodric and tried to stand up, when a second glaring pain tore into the back of his shoulder. This time, the shooter was knocked down in a barrage of pots, pans, and garden tools as the women in the hall fought back, but it was too late. The damage had been done—Brandt crumpled to his knees. His weapon clattered to the stone floor and, though he managed to duck and swerve out of the path of Rodric’s sword, in that moment, he knew the turning point in their battle had come.
And he was not on the winning side.
“I dunnae ken what I’ll like more,” Rodric said, as Brandt pushed up onto one knee, gripping his calf and unable to reach the shaft of the arrow lodged in his shoulder. “To hear ye beg for yer worthless hide, or to watch ye bleed out when my sword sinks into yer gut.”
“I’d sooner die than beg you for anything.” Brandt spat at his uncle’s boots before breaking off the feathered end of the arrow lodged in his leg. He fought through the agony as he pulled the arrow from his flesh. “But if I’m going to die, I’d rather take you with me like my father should have done.”
With a burst of inhuman strength, he rose and lunged toward his uncle with the bloody arrow in hand. Rodric didn’t have time to leap back as Brandt raised one arm to deflect his sword and stabbed his right fist forward. He’d meant to bury the arrow into Rodric’s side, but his injured leg buckled, limiting the force of his strike. Slippery with blood, the arrow slipped and lodged into his uncle’s thigh instead.
Rodric howled and lifted his sword, his face contorted with rage, and Brandt braced himself for the oncoming stroke. His body was on fire with agony, but he wasn’t dead yet. If he could time it just right, he could roll his body into Rodric’s legs and throw him off-balance. It was a long shot, but he would fight to his last gasping breath.
Time slowed as he counted down the seconds. He’d been close to death before, many times. But no other time had he seen his life and those who had filled it with such stunning clarity—Sorcha, Monty, Archer, Catriona, Aisla, Patrick, Callan—his family. His world. And hiswife, his beautiful fearless wife. God, it had taken him so long to find her, but it had been worth it. She had saved him in so many ways. If there were anything he wished for, it would be to see her face…to know she was safe.
And then he felt it. Nothing more than a whisper of sensation across the back of his neck, but every bone in his body knew her presence.Sorcha. Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed motion, heard something hiss through the air, and then a shaft caught Rodric squarely in the chest. Brandt didn’t care if his uncle’s falling sword sheared his arm from his body. Greedily, he turned to see a mud-covered apparition at the entrance of a corridor holding a bow.
He blinked. Perhaps he’d lost far too much blood. Itfeltlike her. His wife. But perhaps he’d only imagined it.
“Brandt,” a voice said. It sounded like her, too.
He blinked again as the voice’s owner knelt over him. “Diah, he’s bleeding heavily.” Gentle hands cradled his head. “Mo gràidh,”she whispered.
Itwashis wife, Brandt realized dully. She was covered in muck and sludge, but he could never not know those deep blue eyes that filled him with so much hope and love and joy. “You’re alive,” he murmured, touching her dirt-caked cheek.
Sorcha smiled through her tears as she bent her lips close to his ear. “Of course I am. I believe you mentioned something about thoroughly seducing your Gaelic teacher. Wild horses could not have dragged me to Hades.”
“You’re insatiable,” he whispered.
“For you, always.”
A loud groan broke the moment between them, and Brandt looked up to see Rodric lying on his side. His glance also took in the forms of his sister and his mother standing close by before it fell back to his uncle. The wound Sorcha had inflicted had not been fatal. It would be, if left untended. His wife was an exceptional shot, which meant she had done it on purpose. Her eyes held his and she nodded. “His life is yours to take.”
But before Brandt could move, his mother sank to her knees beside her blubbering husband. She grasped the arrow, and for a moment, Brandt thought she was going to break it and pull it out as he’d done with his leg. Rodric deserved to die, but if she wanted him to live, he would leave it to her. She was the one who had suffered at his hands for so many years. Rodric’s life wasn’t his; it was hers.
Hazel eyes—twin to his own—met his. And then Brandt knew.
Rodric would not live.
With an anguished cry, ripped from the depths of her soul, his mother twisted the arrow and shoved it toward her husband’s heart. “’Tis for Robert,” she said. Blood gurgled from Rodric’s mouth as he fought the press of her hands, but she held steadfast, leaning over him with all her strength. “And for yer children. And forme.”
A commotion arose from the end of the hall as Rodric’s head dropped back onto the stone floor and his gurgles ceased. Catriona released the arrow, her hands bloodied, and Brandt reached for her. The rising clamor seemed to envelope them as his mother took his hand and let him pull her into an embrace. She was breathing heavily, but her sobs had stopped.
“It’s over,” Brandt said to her. He felt a hand on his shoulder—the one with the arrow in it—and sucked back a groan of pain as the arrow was ripped from his flesh.
“Didnae think yer expecting the pain would make it any better,” Callan said. Brandt opened his eyes, practically seeing stars, and twisted to see his brother crouched behind him, the arrow in his hand. More men wearing Montgomery plaid, including Patrick, had filled the great hall, as well. Most were bloodied and dirty, and as they gathered around Rodric’s body, Brandt saw somber looks on every last weary face.
“Malvern’s men are scattering,” Callan said, rising to his feet and tossing the arrow down as he looked upon his father’s corpse. Aisla inched her way forward, gripping the back of Callan’s arm. Brandt wanted to flop back onto the stone floor in relief. They’d done it. They had won.
“Patrick, Callan,” their mother said, dabbing at her eyes as she rose to her feet. “Aisla.” She took them each into an embrace, as she had with Brandt. And, though they didn’t speak any words, Brandt knew what was being said. This was their new beginning—a life finally out of the shadow of Rodric’s tyranny.
Brandt winced as Sorcha prodded at the rapidly swelling tissue of his lower leg. She tore a strip from the end of her plaid and bound it about his calf before tending to the inflamed gouge in his shoulder.
“It wasn’t too deep,” she told him, pressing the heel of her palm to it over another strip of plaid that she deftly wrapped over his shoulder and under his arm. “But both will need my mother’s salve. You’ll live, my brave laird.”
Sorcha helped Brandt stand, his calf and shoulder hot points of throbbing misery, but his wife’s fingers as she clung to him helped to dull it. He took her chin in his hand and angled her face, wiping it clean with a corner of his own plaid. New bruises and welts marred her forehead, including several others around her throat that had the unmistakable look of fingerprints. His incisors bit the inside of his cheek. “Where is Malvern?”
The man had strangled his wife. If he wasn’t already a corpse, Brandt would see it done in short order. But Sorcha only shook her head.
