Page 86 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
“Unfortunately, you stupid, misguided peasant, good intention is not enough in this world. If you want something—if you truly want to achieve anything worth the remembering of—then you have to be prepared to get your hands dirty, you have to—”
Edward leaped forward, swung twice at the nimble-footed Englishman. Two savage backhand cuts that would have carved him to the backbone.
But Captain Bolton twirled away from the first one and blocked the slash with his own sword.
“Yes, that’s the sort of thing!” he said. “Try and kill a man as he’s in the middle of a sentence! Just the thing!”
Their swords rang together once more—once, twice, thrice—the blows flashing through the air, whilst the sounds of the surrounding battle seemed to reach each man’s ears through layers of cotton. The rest of conflict—the however many other hundreds of men fighting for their lives—was so much as background noise. Indistinct colors and shapes beyond the immediate circle that surrounded them.
The two men broke apart at the end of the flurry of cuts and jabs. Edward had another thin line of blood running down his chest from a nick on his neck, and another on his calf. He was breathing hard. There was sweat running down the side of his face.
“Do you know what I find the most contemptible and disgusting thing about this whole episode?” Captain Bolton asked. His tone wasn’t aggressive or patronizing now, but strangely earnest.
“What?” Edward asked. In his peripheral vision, he could just make out Charlotte crawling backwards towards them, away from a little knot of men that had broken away and were fighting together.
“The fact that my own flesh and blood would rather spend her time with a barbarian like you, than with her own people.” Bolton shook his head, as if he simply could not understand it.
“There’s an easy enough explanation, Bolton,” Edward said, being careful to keep the man’s attention as the Englishman passed by Edward’s father, who was still slumped on his back and clutching a hand to his head.
“And what is that, pray?” Bolton asked.
“We love each other,” Edward replied, simply.
“Don’t be absurd,” Captain Bolton said. “She could just as easily love a log or a donkey as she could love a Scotsman.”
“Is that right? Well, that’s nae what she said to me, after we lay together by the side of that pretty lake. After she had given me what cannae be returned...”
It was a low blow, and one that Edward would not have ordinarily have made. However, the Highlander knew himself well enough to realize that his own skills might not be enough to get him through this fight. He needed to put his opponent off somehow, and he thought that this might just be the way to do it.
He thought wrong.
A deathly coldness came over Captain Bolton’s countenance. In the blink of an eye, it turned from the face of a man into something else—a mask, maybe. There was nothing on that face that spoke of humanity. It was a face that might just have well been carved from marble, such was the warmth in it.
Without retorting in any way, the leader of the English army attacked. He seemed to flow this way and that, his sword moving with the speed and deftness of a metallic serpent. Edward backpedaled, his strong muscles burning as he tried to hold off the sudden onslaught.
“Ah!” he cried out, as Bolton’s sword sliced more deeply across his thigh. He didn’t even have time to cry out when his opponent’s next thrust caught him in the hipbone and sent him spinning backwards.
He’s goin’ to kill me.
The thought flowered inside Edward’s consciousness with an awful certainty.
He is too good a swordsman. It is only a matter o’ time before he finishes me.
Even as he parried and dodged as best as he was able, he felt Captain Bolton inflict more injuries on him, cut him in a few fresh places. Every second that passed was one closer to Edward’s demise.
Where is she?
Edward’s eyes darted about to try and find Charlotte, but he could not pick her out in the crush. She was not where she had last been. He wanted, more than anything, to see her just one last time.
The thought of her acted as one final spark inside of him—a last incentive to pull him back from the edge of death. With a desperate cry, he blocked Captain Bolton’s cut and threw himself at the other man. Back and forth went Edward’s sword. Left and right, he hacked at the more slender man, some twenty years his senior. He bellowed like a wounded bull as he chopped with little technique at his adversary.
And then, suddenly, he found that his sword was no longer in his hand. Captain Bolton had flicked his last ungainly chop away, spinning his blade clean out of his tired hand. Edward gritted his teeth, prepared to fling himself at the Englishman and kill him with his bare hands if he had to.
Captain Bolton’s booted foot lashed out and drove into the back of Edward’s knee joint and sent the big Highlander to one knee.
“Ach, bastard,” was all that Edward could say, as he felt the point of Bolton’s sword touch him gently under the chin and raise his head.
“I told you, boy,” the Captain said, quite as dispassionately as if he were explaining basic arithmetic to a wayward child, “you’re just going to be another cooling corpse. Next to your father.” He raised his sword above his head. His mouth formed a grim line. “Next to my daughter...”
