Page 84 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
Edward knew only two things. The first was that he must get to where he had seen Charlotte disappear. The second was that, being the only man on a horse, he had made himself the best target that any English bowman could ask for.
Bugger.
He rolled deftly out of Cogar’s saddle, as the first arrow twittered past his head, and into the heaving mass of grunting, fighting men.
“Away, lass!” he yelled, swatting a hand at Cogar’s rump.
The mare whinnied in acknowledgment of the command, biting the shoulder of a red-coat who got too close to her and snapping the leg of yet another English fighter with another fierce kick. Then she was gone, surging like an unstoppable force out of the fray.
Edward was glad to see his old friend safely out of the battle. He drew his broadsword and bellowed a Gaelic war-cry.
“Buaidh no Bàs!” he screamed, shaking his sword to goad on his fellow kilted warriors. “Victory or death!”
“Buaidh no Bàs!” the Highlanders within earshot roared back.
Getting to the spot where he had seen Charlotte enveloped by the tides of men proved to be no easy feat. Edward had to fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground. All around him, men fought and died. The smell of blood and fear was thick and rank in the air—not to mention the stench of voided bowels.
Edward, propelled by a desperate desire to find Charlotte in the mess of scrapping men and make sure that she was safe, moved like a hurricane through the tangled press.
“Charlotte?” he called. “Charlotte? Talk to me, Sassenach!”
He dodged a flailing ax, stepped in and cut the man wielding it down. He struck a man hard in the mouth with the fist that was not clutching his sword, sending him reeling backwards, then parried a thrust from another red-coat. He exchanged a couple of blows with this man, whirled past a lethal-looking cut and ran his adversary through.
“Charlotte!”
A spear stabbed towards him out of the roiling, boiling madness. Edward grabbed it by the haft, yanked it towards him and stabbed the surprised man that had been holding it. Then, he reversed the spear and stuck it into another red-coat’s side, just as the man was about to cut down an injured Highlander.
After much hacking and swearing, and a couple of very close shaves—one involving a sword blade that whistled past his face and left a red line of blood just under his eye—Edward got to where he thought he had last seen Charlotte.
“Sassenach?” he hollered. “Sassenach?”
His frantic brown eyes skimmed through the mess of churned mud and corpses that now made up the floor. The dead, and those soon to be dead, broken weapons, discarded shields, arrows stuck like the parody of flowers into the brown turf.
Then, almost as if a curtain had been drawn aside to reveal some sort of macabre stage, two grappling men fell out of Edward’s field of vision and he saw her.
“Charlotte!” he roared, his voice cracking with relief and fear.
She was kneeling in the mud, her dress stained with blood and filth. Around her were the sprawled bodies of both Highlanders and red-coats. Many of the red-coats had arrows protruding from them—fletched with white duck feathers—which Edward immediately recognised as belonging to Nina, his father’s most valued huntress. Her eyes were saucer-sized, her face streaked with grime and tears. In her hand she held a dagger.
Me dagger. The one that I gave her.
The curly, unruly hair, that Edward so loved, flew this way and that, as Charlotte’s head flicked backwards and forwards. She was trying to keep her eyes on everything, and every man, at once.
Edward started towards her, intent solely on rescuing her and getting her the hell out of the fight. He was impeded, almost immediately however, by none other than Hirst, the English tracker that he had last seen by the lakeside.
“Well,” Edward growled, taking in the Englishman’s grotesquely-stitched face, “ye were a lot bonnier the last time we met, I must say.”
The side of the Hirst’s face—that one side that was still up to the task—gave a twitch of annoyance.
“A bit of wit!” He exclaimed, over the din of the battle that raged around them. “Who would have thought it from such a seemingly dense and unprepossessing specimen such as you.”
Edward shrugged. “I’m goin’ to need ye to get out of me way, Englishman.”
“I dare say,” Hirst replied, “but, unfortunately, I’m required to hold you up—at least until the good Captain takes care of your father and then retakes his daughter into his custody.”
Hirst’s eyes shifted to the left and Edward’s followed them. He saw, not far from where Charlotte knelt, Captain Bolton squaring off with the Laird. Even in the fraction of a moment in which Edward allowed himself to watch, he saw the two leaders come together like a couple of rabid wolves.
Time is very much o’ the essence here.
