And he, he fought for her. As his breath grew short and his muscles began to scream in pain, as he took and inflicted wound after wound, his heart continued to cry her name.
Bertram MacNab’s face became a snarling mask before Dougal’s eyes, and all he saw. Move, duck, slash, parry, round, and struggle for breath, let a bit more blood, and do it all again. Almost imperceptibly, Bertram began to tire, and Dougal bared his teeth in a grim smile. He, himself, now had half a score of wounds, but none of them was potentially fatal. They stung and burned, no more. And he knew he had touched Bertram gravely at least twice—a slash to the left thigh and one on the right arm that felt as if his blade had penetrated to the bone. That being Bertram’s sword arm, it had now begun to hamper him visibly.
They turned again in a dreadful parody of grace, boots shuffling in time, and Dougal caught a glimpse of Isobel’s face: milk white, eyes stretched wide. The breath seared his lungs. He must be more tired than he thought.
He shook the hair out of his eyes and adjusted his grip on his sword; the hilt felt sticky with blood. In that instant of distraction, Bertram made his move, launched himself in a rush of clumsy energy, screaming.
Bertram’s sword struck Dougal a glancing blow in the center of his chest and they both went flying, Dougal over backward and Bertram, losing his footing, atop him, a tremendous weight.
Dougal felt what little breath he possessed leave him as he hit the stones. He struggled to determine the location of Bertram’s weapon—if he did not, he might well lose his head. His own sword remained, miraculously, in his hand.
Bertram’s face, covered in gore, hovered just a breath above his. Bertram grinned, his eyes wild, and growled, “Bastard! Are you ready to die? Get you to hell where you belong!”
Not quite yet, Dougal thought, and struggled, using every muscle, to buck the man off. His sword arm felt numb, yet his fingers still gripped the hilt.
“Will you die for her?” Bertram spat. “Even as you would for the other, weak bitch that she was? I enjoyed her, MacRae—liked breaking her, but she broke too easily. This one, I think, will last longer.”
Hatred sent a spear of pure energy through Dougal’s veins and limbs. He brought his feet up, used them to kick at the bastard’s legs, and must have got in a lucky blow to the injured thigh. Bertram howled and, in one motion, Dougal brought up his sword, struck the side of the man’s head, and heaved him off.
Somehow, he got to his feet.
Bertram lay on his back, on the stones, a new ribbon of gore leaking from one ear.
The ring of warriors had now closed in so tight they virtually breathed down Dougal’s neck.
“Back!” He swung his sword in a wide arc, chasing them, then nudged Bertram with one foot.
“Is he dead?” The words came from Isobel in a rough croak.
Bertram’s eyes stared upward like those of a dead man, but his chest still rose and fell. Dougal leveled the point of his sword at the fallen man’s throat.
And Bertram erupted. With another of those bovine bellows he rose, disregarding Dougal’s blade as it sliced into the skin from neck to shoulder.
Bertram had lost his sword yet, maddened, he came at Dougal with his bare hands. A woman screamed and all the warriors yelled. Dougal felt Bertram’s hands close on his throat. He kicked out—once, twice, landing solid thumps. But the eyes now staring into his were utterly mad. Dougal, no longer sure Bertram could even feel pain and rapidly running out of air, drew back his sword and used it to thrust upward, a short, brutal blow. Bertram sank, slowly.
“That is for Aisla,” he said, his voice roughened and yet so full of rage it rang against the stones. He bent over his opponent and once more brought the point of his sword to Bertram’s throat. “And this, for Isobel—”
Isobel! He fought for another breath and shook his hair back, thinking for once beyond the anger and the desire to mete out what was deserved. He wanted so badly to press the blade home, to end this cur’s life, yet he trusted in Randal MacNab’s honor not at all and they had yet to get free of this place.
“Get up!” he rasped at Bertram. “Up!”
“Finish it,” Bertram told him.
“Och, I will. Just not yet.” Using strength he did not know he possessed, he hauled Bertram up by the remnants of his kilt and held the sword to his throat. He looked round, saw Randal MacNab staring like a man struck, and found the scribe.
“Campbell! You saw it all? You wrote it down?”
“I did, Laird.” Campbell glanced at Randal MacNab uncertainly. “I will so testify. But I pray you take me with you.”
“No fear. MacNab, your son comes with us also. If you want him to live, you will give the four of us safe passage away from here.”
“’Twas not in the agreement,” Randal began to bluster, “that you should take Bertram with you.”
“A temporary hostage only, to assure our safety. Whether he lives or not, once we are away from here, depends on how quickly you move.”
“Bring their horses,” Randal commanded, his expression sour. “And, aye, open the gates.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“This is not over,” Dougal said as the five of them rode away through the windy darkness. Bertram MacNab—well-bound and still streaming blood—rode double with Dougal, so Dougal could keep his blade at Bertram’s throat. “I have still to decide the fate of our captive.”
Isobel, riding alongside the two men, blinked at her husband—this stranger with the wild, black hair, bloodied face, and seeping wounds. In the light cast by the stars and a half moon, with the blade glittering silver in his grasp, he might have been a savage conjured from the past.
She knew Dougal MacRae as harsh, unbending, and ruthless. He had earned the name of Devil Black full well. Yet always, in her experience, had he held his emotions in check. Even when they lay together and their passions ran high, she sensed a part of him kept back as if he guarded himself.
But the battle she had just witnessed defied all that, made a mockery of restraint and any civilized veneer he had ever worn. Life and death had balanced on his blade, and did yet.
“No one pursues us,” said the scribe, looking over his shoulder, and not for the first time. He seemed nervous about the choices he had recently made and how he had cast his lot.
“They will not come,” Dougal growled from between clenched teeth. “Not unless they want this bastard to die.”
He jerked Bertram by the rope that encircled his throat, and Bertram made a sound like a trapped animal. Isobel could feel the rage emitting from Dougal. She also felt such a tangle of other emotions—terror, relief, horror, love, and, surprisingly, pride—she could barely contemplate them.
“Do you mean to kill him?” Catherine asked. Isobel glanced at her sister and felt concern; Catherine rode her mount hunched over, as if in pain or as if protecting the babe she carried, but her voice sounded strong.
“I am no’ certain,” Dougal replied.
“He deserves to die,” Isobel shocked herself by saying, and her husband looked at her sharply.
“I know.”
Bertram, fool that he was, spat, “You ha’ not got the balls to kill me, MacRae! ’Twould mean all-out war and an excuse for the King to end your practices in the district.” Beneath his defiance, Isobel heard the pain in his voice, and it gave her satisfaction.
“And what of your practices in the district,” she challenged quickly, “terrorizing the women who fall into your hands and, no doubt, the wives and daughters of your clansfolk and tenants. Should that not be ended? Would the world not be a better place without you?”
With difficulty, Bertram turned his head to stare at her. “By God, what kind of woman are you?”
Dougal laughed joyously. “She is the daughter of Celts and Vikings—a fearful combination! Trust me, MacNab, the only thing keeping you alive is my need to get these women safe off your lands. When we reach my border, we shall think again.” Cruelly, he drew Bertram’s head back. “You recall the boundary where you left me some eight years ago?”
“Still no one coming,” said Campbell.
Ahead, a shallow burn marked the boundary of MacNab’s holding. On the far side of it waited Dougal’s small troop of warriors, all mounted. They gave a shout when they identified the approaching riders, and lowered their swords.
“Go,” said Dougal to Isobel. “Take your sister across.”
“What will you—?” Isobel began, trying to look into his eyes.
He lowered his lashes. “Go.” He told the scribe, “You stay. I need a witness.”
Campbell, looking unhappy and a bit ill, obeyed. Isobel splashed her mount through the water to the opposite bank, with Catherine behind her.
One of the warriors called to Dougal, “Your man Hewett is awa’ with your letter to the King.”
“It is well. You hear that, MacNab? What do you think the King will make o’ this night’s work?”
Bertram sneered, “He will have your head, MacRae. James is in my father’s pocket.”
“You think so? For, I am thinking ’tis you who may hang, instead of me. Get down.”
Swiftly, Dougal dismounted and hauled Bertram after him. Isobel, watching from the far bank, thought it a scene out of some dark dream, lit only by the cold stars and the half moon.
Bertram wobbled when his feet hit the ground; the wound in his thigh, grave and deep, had cost him a lot of blood. Dougal leveled the sword, already stained, at his throat.
“On your knees,” Dougal ordered. “I want to hear you beg for your life.”
“I will be damned!”
“Aye, no doubt, but that will come later. This is my time of justice. On your knees, or you die where you stand.”
Slowly and with a glance at the scribe, Bertram sank down onto his knees.
“Now,” Dougal told him, “we will have a confession. You will recite all your sins—well, I doubt we ha’ time for that, but give us the major ones. Start with what you did to Aisla.”
“That craven bitch,” MacNab said.
Dougal struck him, a sweeping, openhanded wallop that knocked him over, and then hauled him up again by the rope that encircled his neck.
“You will tell what you did to her, and fairly. How she suffered and died. These folk,” he swung his sword at the listeners on both sides of the burn, “are your council who will help decide your fate.”
Bertram said nothing.
“Come, man! Is that not justice?” Dougal shouted at him. “I want to kill you now, my blade thirsts for it, but I give you, here before witnesses, the chance you did not give her.”
“She was weak,” Bertram said. “From the moment I took her, she wept and moaned. She did not deserve to live—only the strong deserve to live.”
“She was a child,” Dougal cried, “a lass of sixteen when you took her. What need had you to torture her?”
“I shall tell you, MacRae, why I treated that bitch the way I did, if that is what you want to hear,” Bertram spat up at Dougal. “’Twas because she loved you. And once, when I rutted with her, she was foolish enough to call your name!”
Dougal sagged where he stood. Isobel, watching, saw the strength go out of him, precisely as if he had been stabbed to the heart. But his blade remained steady at Bertram’s throat.
“And then you came to save her,” MacNab went on, “fancying yourself the great hero. I could no’ let you have her, could I? Nay, I wanted your shame! And do you know, MacRae, she died soon after—still with your name on her lips?”
“Kill him,” said Catherine in a harsh voice, making Isobel jump.
“Aye, kill him,” agreed one of Dougal’s warriors, beginning a chorus. “He deserves it!”
Dougal’s blade trembled visibly at MacNab’s throat—with eagerness, Isobel fancied.
“Kill him,” said the scribe, Campbell.
Dougal raised his head and looked at Isobel. By some trick of the moonlight, she could see all of what filled his eyes—blinding pain, the lust for revenge, and a question.
“Leave him live,” she voted after a moment’s deliberation. “But make certain he never finds pleasure in raping another woman—anywhere or at any time.”
Slowly, Dougal grinned. At that moment he looked so like a devil Isobel shivered. But at the same time something within her responded to that look and gloried in it.
“My wife has spoken, MacNab,” he cried. “And despite all you ha’ done to her, she chooses mercy.”
“No!” MacNab howled.
“I think you should kiss the ground in gratitude to her. Kiss the ground, MacNab!”
He struck Bertram again, a thunderous blow that sent him tumbling sideways in an awkward sprawl. Bertram’s bound hands moved to protect his genitals, but Dougal’s blade moved more quickly still and laid the grievous wound. Bertram howled, like a pig at the slaughter, into the night sky.
“You should have killed him,” said the scribe mildly. “Now he will hate you twice as much.”
“There is still time for him to bleed to death,” Dougal said levelly. “Just you be sure, Campbell, you write down the fact that I granted him mercy, and left him alive.”
Campbell looked round at the assembled company and gave a tight smile. “Aye, so—left him here beside the burn, bound and in the same condition he left his stronghold. I do no’ know how he came by that last crippling injury.”
“His word against ours, and yours—I like that, fine!” Dougal grinned again, turned, and sprang back onto his horse. Bertram had ceased writhing and lay motionless on the ground.
Isobel looked again at her husband—wild-haired, calm-eyed, and with an ease about him that argued he had shrugged the weight of the world from his shoulders.
He splashed his horse across the burn and held out his hand to her. “Let us, Wife, go home.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Bertram MacNab has been taken into custody by the King’s guard,” said Dougal, paused in the doorway of his wife’s bedchamber. “They say he languishes even now in a dank cell.”