Page 65 of Highlander Redeemed
Kenneth and Uilliam were fighting back to back, surrounded by too many soldiers. Kenneth had a gash on his forehead that showed white with bone, and the blood flowed into his eyes, and the Guardians knew he could not see because of it. Uilliam fought hard for both of them, but ’twas a losing battle. Before Scotia could act, Rowan’s gift surged, surrounding the two beloved men with a wind so fierce it knocked the soldiers backward. She fed it more and more of the Targe stone’s power, forcing the soldiers back further and further. Several turned and fled. Scotia searched with herknowingfor someone she could find, and found Conall, but she did not know how to warn him that the deserters were heading directly for him.
Frustration burned in her, but then she felt Jeanette use Scotia’s gift as a guide to push a vision of the soldiers fleeing to him. Together they used their joined gifts to force theknowingand vision upon him.
The sound of shouting close to the Guardians pulled all of their attention back to the bailey, but they did not open their eyes, using instead their gifts to understand that Lord Sherwood had ridden his horse through the gate, confronting the eight warriors with a score of soldiers.
“The Highland Targe,” she said out loud. “We need it now!” And with that she felt Rowan pull viciously on the power that came from beneath their feet, feeding it through the Targe stone and into their woven gifts so fast it almost burned in Scotia’smind. As one, they took up the prayer where they had left off, repeating it faster and faster until it was more song than prayer, their voices filling the air around them as the Highland Targe took form, growing bigger and bigger.
Scotia’sknowingtold them all that their warriors were fighting a valiant fight, but they would not hold long.
DUNCAN STAGGERED ASLord Sherwood swung his sword down upon his upraised shield, sending pain deep into his shoulder. He could feel the trickle of blood from where Jeanette had stitched him up, and his head pounded, but he cared not. He had promised to keep Scotia and the other Guardians safe. He managed to duck Sherwood’s next blow, then slashed at the man’s leg, but somehow the English bastard got his own shield in the way, and swung for Duncan’s head.
NICHOLAS SHOUTED ATSherwood as he threw his dagger at the man where his raised arm exposed a gap in his chain mail, leaving him vulnerable.
MALCOLM HACKED HISway to Nicholas’s side just as Sherwood roared in surprised pain, and the war cries of MacAlpins and their allies ricocheted off the walls as Kenneth, Uilliam, and more warriors poured over the downed part of the curtain wall.
For a moment it was almost as if the battle stopped as they all seemed to notice for the first time the glow that surrounded the Guardians in the middle of the bailey and the ethereal song that charged the air.
Sherwood roared, a sound of pain and rage, as he pulled the dagger free, leaned low over his horse’s neck, and rode for the Guardians.
SCOTIA FOUGHT HARDto keep her focus on the power that surged through the three of them and the stone. She fought to keep the words of the prayer racing from her lips, keeping pace with the other two, until she trembled with the effort. Theknowingbattered at her, telling her Duncan was down, her father was injured badly but was in the bailey now, Uilliam still at his side, and that Nicholas and Malcolm were alive, but she kept pushing all of that away lest she lose her focus and pull them all away from what they created again.
Words poured from them all, rising higher and higher until it sounded more like a keening than the prayer they had started with. Power pulled at her, harder and harder until she gave up any attempt to protect herself from whatever used her in this endeavor, and just when she thought she had no more to give there was a loud bang, like a thunderclap breaking right overhead, and she fell to the ground.
DUNCAN WAS PUSHINGhimself off the ground when a loud bang echoed through the bailey. All the air was sucked out of his lungs, and he was thrown down again with a force thatwas stronger than any he had ever felt before. But it was gone as quickly as it had hit. He lifted his head and was shocked to see everyone had been flattened as he had been. As he pushed up and made it to his feet this time, he looked around in shock. Everyone had been flattened, but only the Highlanders, and Sherwood’s horse, were getting up. All around the bailey lay the English soldiers, splayed out as if they had all been knocked away from the source of the explosion, laying however they had fallen, and not a one of them was left alive.
Nicholas and Malcolm stood not far away from him, as stunned as he by what they saw. All three of them turned at the same time to where the Guardians had taken shelter by the well.
Sherwood’s horse stood in their way, snorting and shaking his head as he nosed at his master, who lay on his back, his blank eyes open to the sky.
“Scotia!” Duncan moved as fast as he could. Nicholas and Malcolm went around the other side of the horse, and they arrived to find the three Guardians just pushing themselves up from the ground. Duncan passed through their protective barrier and only then realized that what had hit him, and everyone else, had felt like passing through a barrier, but so much more.
“You did it,” he said, kneeling next to Scotia and pulling her into as fierce an embrace as he could with only one arm doing as he wished. She was trembling.
“Did we hurt you?” she asked, pulling back enough to look at him. Her brow furrowed when she saw the blood staining his shoulder again. “You were to stay with us,” she said. “You were supposed to stay out of the fight.”
“Love, you know I could not do that.”
“But you promised me.”
“Nay, I never promised that. I said I would stand by you in the battle, not that I would stay inside your barrier and watch the battle from there.”
“You play with words.”
He kissed her and only then noticed the other two couples were also whispering together, touching, kissing.
“That boom that flattened all of us, that was the Highland Targe, aye?”
She grinned. “Aye. Rowan has sent it to rest across the path of any who might wish to pass into the Highlands from this direction. Any who are of ill intent will—”
“Will find the death they deserve,” Nicholas said as he pulled Rowan to her feet.
Scotia sucked in a loud breath as she stood and looked at the destruction the Guardians had wrought upon the English. “All of them?” she asked.
“Aye, it would appear that all of ill intent did not survive the passing of the Highland Targe over them.”
She looked about, taking in the many bodies that lay where they had fallen, weapons still in their hands, eyes open to the sky. It was only then that Scotia noticed that the incomplete palisade wall of tree trunks had also been blown down by the blast of power from the Targe stone.
“Rowan, look!” she said, pointing to where the north side of the curtain wall had once stood, the tree trunks scattered over the remaining rubble as if a great wind had toppled them, pushing them outward, toward the loch, just as the curtain wall had fallen.
