Page 70 of The Beast's Bride
Malcolm MacLeod shrugged. “There’s little point in talking then, is there?”
“No.” The Fraser chieftain stepped back. “Get ready to taste steel.”
The battle began with a swiftness that shocked Rhona.
A hunting horn shattered the stillness, its lonely wail echoing off the surrounding peaks. One moment the two bands had been standing, waiting for their chieftains to return to their ranks, the next they drew their weapons and ran screaming at each other.
Despite his girth and advancing years, her father was out front. He swung his Claidheamh-mor above his head bellowing. “Hold fast, MacLeods. Hold fast!”
Rhona’s heart started pounding, and her skin prickled. This was it. She drew her sword and leaped forward. Half the band were already racing ahead, Taran among them. She risked being left behind.
The crunch of armored bodies, shields, and weapons colliding shook the earth as the first ranks met. Shouts, grunts, and cries rent the air.
Rhona tried her best to keep Taran in her line of sight, yet it was hard, for he plowed on ahead. She watched him raise his sword and engage the first Fraser warrior who came at him.
An instant later Rhona tore her gaze from her husband. A huge warrior bore down on her, Claidheamh-mor swinging.
Get in close.
Taran’s advice rang in her ears. Gripping her longsword tightly with both hands, Rhona dove for him. During their years of swordplay practice, Taran had constantly told her that her biggest advantage was her speed and agility. There was no point trying to best a man of this size and strength. Instead, she went in low.
Her blade bit into the warrior’s unprotected legs.
He roared and staggered. Rhona ducked away, narrowly missing the swipe of his sword. Before he had time to recover, she came at him again. She thrust her blade into his armpit, and he went down howling. Bile rose in her throat. Her belly roiled. Rhona swallowed, forcing down the nausea.
There was no time to react. She had to keep moving.
Rhona had heard many tales about battle, some terrifying. One thing she remembered, from the stories her father’s men had swapped as they feasted in the Great Hall, was that a strange madness often took hold in the heat of battle. In such times a warrior lost all fear of death. Instead, the need to kill ignited like fire in a warrior’s blood.
Rhona wished such a fury would take hold of her.
There was no such euphoria. Just a terrible bone-jarring effort. She was tall and strong, and yet the men who came at her were much bigger and stronger. It took every technique that Taran had taught her to fight them off—and it was even harder to kill them.
Her stomach twisted into a tight ball, while her hands—clutching the hilt of her sword—ached, as did her shoulders and arms. Sweat coursed down her back and between her breasts.
Her own viciousness sickened her. It was survival. The only way she bested the men who lunged at her, swords slashing, was to get in first, to stab them in places where armor and chainmail did not cover.
Throat. Belly. Groin.
Their screams, the stench of blood and worse, wormed their way under her skin, deep into her bones.
At some point, as the battle progressed, she became aware that it was shifting in the MacLeod’s favor. There seemed fewer of the enemy to fend off now. She had long lost sight of her father and brother as they’d rushed to the front. The dead and dying lay scattered around her.
Half a dozen yards ahead she saw Taran, battling a huge man. She moved toward Taran, skirting around a Fraser warrior who lay groaning in a pool of spreading blood.
However, before she neared him, Dughall MacLean appeared. Blood splattered the warrior from head to foot and savagery twisted his face. Rhona had once thought him handsome, but she didn’t now.
Rhona’s step slowed. She expected Dughall to plow past her and into the fray once more. Only he didn’t.
Instead, he ran at Taran and clubbed him across the back of the head with his fist.
“No!” Rhona’s scream echoed across the vale, swallowed in the thunder of battle.
Taran, who’d just delivered a mortal wound to his opponent, dropped to his knees, his sword falling from nerveless fingers.
Dughall pulled a blade from his belt and raised it to deliver a strike to Taran’s unprotected neck.
But he never brought the dirk down.
