Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (35 page)

From their hiding place in a dense thicket of young trees, Rowan did a quick count—a score of soldiers, plus Archie. Their horses were tethered to a line on the west side of their camp.

The fire was positioned near the base of a rock wall that rose a good fifteen feet or more, leaning out toward the loch. It likely had given the soldiers some shelter from the rain, though judging from the mud that made up most of the area, not much.

“No one is coming,” one of the soldiers grumbled loudly.

“Quiet, damn you!” Archie hissed. He was seated on a large boulder, his mud-covered feet drawn up out of the muck. He watched the perimeter of the camp like a hawk watched a field for mice, his head swiveling slowly as he scanned the area.

Uilliam swiftly gave silent orders for the Highlanders to spread out around the camp, sending Duncan and half of their warriors around the stone outcropping to take a position on the west side. Even though the English camp was set back from the lochside, there was insufficient cover to hide the Highlanders’ movements.

A quarter hour later Rowan heard the
her-uh
sound of a tawny owl—the signal that Duncan and his men were in position. Uilliam gave the countersignal and suddenly the Highlanders were rushing the camp, claymores at the ready, and shouting wildly. Rowan had been instructed to stay hidden, Nicholas by her side. They had both argued for a different tactic but Uilliam had refused to let
the Guardian act as bait when there were plenty of Highlanders ready for a fight. He had forbidden them to move from their hiding place.

They watched as the Highlanders dispatched soldier after soldier, pressing the fight back against the rock face to keep their quarry from escaping. But Archie managed to stay on the edge of the fight, getting pushed closer and closer to the edge of the forest, until finally he sank his sword into one of the MacAlpin warriors, pulled it free, and sprinted into the forest.

“He’s getting away!” Rowan said, racing after him.

Nicholas passed her quickly, gaining on the man hurtling through the woods and leaving her trailing behind. She heard a sound like two elk crashing together, followed by a very human curse. She sped up and came upon Nicholas and Archie rolling on the ground, fists flying until they bashed into the wide trunk of an ancient Scots pine. Nicholas grabbed Archie by the hair and pounded his head against a gnarled root until the man lay there, stunned. Nicholas pulled back his fist to finish the man off.

“Nicholas! Stop! We need him alive.”

Archie’s sword had gone flying, or he’d thrown it at Nicholas, she couldn’t really tell, but it lay near her, the point stuck at a shallow angle in the root of a tree. She grabbed it, holding the heavy sword in two hands as she’d seen the warriors do, and moved to Nicholas’s side, holding the point toward Archie’s throat. He blinked up at her.

“Witch.”

Nicholas punched him.

“Why do we need him alive?” Nicholas asked Rowan as he flipped the now unconscious Archie onto his stomach and pulled his arms roughly behind him. He pulled off the strip of cloth Archie wore around his neck and bound his hands with it, leaving him facedown in the mud and last fall’s leaves.

“He has the stone.”

Nicholas wiped mud from his face. “So he does.” He swiftly checked Archie’s body for the sack or the stone but found neither. “Son of a whore.” He kicked Archie in the hip, hard enough to rouse him.

Archie groaned and Nicholas pulled him to his feet, leaning him against the ancient tree’s bole. He grabbed his dagger and held it to the man’s throat. “Where’s the stone, Archie?”

The ginger-haired man managed to smile and sneer at the same time. “Why should I tell you?”

“Because I shall do to you what you did to Lady Elspet.”

Archie shook his head, the smile gone, the sneer left behind twisting the man’s face. “You will not do that or your witch will never get her stone back, nor the sack with the pagan symbols painted inside it.”

“I am no witch.” Rowan stepped toward him, tired of the smirking man. “But you are a murderer and a thief.”

“So is Nicholas here. He is the same as me, driven and as free of conscience, are you not, my old friend?”

Nicholas said nothing and Archie grinned, though there was no mirth in his eyes.

“Ah, you think just because this woman lets you between her legs, you belong here? You know better, Nick. You have been between many a woman’s legs and none have tethered you before. This one is no different. I have the stone. You have the woman. I saw her in the bailey with it, as if there were some ritual she performed, though I could not tell what she did. You must know how to use them both by now. If we take them to the king, together, as always…”

Rowan held her breath, wanting to believe Nicholas was no longer the man Archie said he was, the man he admitted he had been. Nicholas stared at Archie, then started shaking his head.

“Nay, that will never happen. I will never turn Rowan or the stone or any of her kin over to Edward. He would torture her to force her to do his will.”

“Or he would kill her to keep her from falling into anyone else’s hands,” Archie said.

“Then someone else would become the Guardian,” Rowan said. “I am but the current vessel for the power of the Targe. If you, or Longshanks, were to kill me, someone else would take my place.”

“But Edward would still have the stone.”

“Aye, but without the Guardian it is only a stone, useless for anything other than holding down a parchment or propping open a door.” Rowan tried not to chew on her lip.

“Enough,” Nicholas said. “Let us return to your camp, Archie, and you can return the stone to Rowan.”

“And what do I get if I do that, Nick? Will you not kill me instantly?”

“Nay,” Rowan said. “That is for my uncle to decide.”

“So there is naught for me in this deal.”

“A few more hours of life.”

“Then I refuse.”

Nicholas grabbed the man’s arm and hauled him off the tree, dragging him back toward the encampment. Rowan followed as she tried to determine where they had leverage with this horrible man, but found none.

As they neared the camp the sound of fighting was loud. As they made their way into it, they could see many of the English on the ground, dead or dying, and a few of their warriors as well.

“Cease!” Nicholas bellowed, hauling Archie in front of him. “Tell them to cease fighting,” Nicholas said to his prisoner.

“Nay, I think not.”

Archie’s entire person reeked of confidence, cockiness, arrogance, and Rowan hated him for it. He had killed her aunt, set fire to her home, and now threatened her ability to protect what was left of it. She let the anger, the grief, the frustration… the hate, fill her as she called upon the energy from the earth knowing that without the focus of the Targe, what happened next would be unpredictable. She pulled hard at the energy, forcing it again, hoping she would have the stone before she lost control. The ground rumbled under their feet and she felt a swirling rise through her, searching for a way out.

“Where is my Targe stone?” she demanded, her voice harsh now, the hatred sharpening the edges of each word.

“It is yours no longer, witch.”

The rumbling grew stronger, wind whipped around the clearing, loosening pebbles and small rocks from the stone face.

“Rowan, nay!” Nicholas yelled, but she looked away, losing herself in the sensation of power that surged through her, the battering wind howling about her, drawn by hatred and grief. “Rowan, you must not. It is too dangerous. You would not bury your own.”

His words flitted around her, but the hatred pushed them away. She raised her hands, as she had done with the stone, though they were empty of it now. The power burned, but she did not care, she wanted to let it loose, to release the terrible hurt that King Edward’s spy had created within her heart.

And suddenly Nicholas was there, his hands on her face, his fingers sliding into her hair. “Rowan, no! You must not let it loose. Not here, not now. Uilliam, Duncan, and the others are too close to the wall. If it comes down you will kill your own, not just the English. You will not be able to live with yourself if you do that.”

The pressure of his hands upon her skin, the fervent tone of his voice, forced her to look at him, to remember that she had tasked him with calling her back, that she trusted him, trusted his judgment, loved him.

“It hurts,” she whispered.

“I know, but you must pull it back, push it down. Do not let it free.” He bent as if to kiss her lips but whispered against them, “Not yet.” He kissed her quickly. “Can you do that, Rowan, Guardian of the Targe?”

It was like trapping a million tiny needles within her, each heated red hot, searing her from the inside out, but she nodded. “I can. I am, but I do not know how long I can hold it, Nicholas.”

“Not long—” He collapsed at her feet and she was suddenly looking into Archie’s wild eyes.

“It would appear the pagan stone is good for killing someone, too.” His grin was pure evil as he raised the stone as if to bring it down on her head next.

She flung her arms out to protect herself, and managed to grab the stone, though Archie did not let go. She held on when he would have raised it again and she let all the power that was burning to get out of her race into the stone in one sudden, focused burst. Archie was thrown backward by the blast, halfway across the clearing,
landing in the mud near the boulder he had been perched on earlier, but Rowan’s hands were empty.

He’d managed to hang on to the stone, damn the man.

She crouched next to Nicholas long enough to determine that he still breathed. Then she stalked toward the stunned Archie, who still lay on his back, blinking up at the sky, his arms outstretched to either side, the stone gripped in his right hand. She stepped on his wrist and bent to wrest the stone from him, when suddenly he snaked his free arm around her, grabbing her, rolling with her in the mud until he ended up on top. He straddled Rowan and pinned her arms over her head with one hand the stone gripped in his other.

“Now you are both mine, witch, and King Edward will be most appreciative of my efforts, killing the spy who betrayed him for a Highland whore, and bringing the ‘Guardian’ and this hunk of stone to him. It will be the end of the Scots as a difficult, useless people. He will invade. He will be your sovereign, and I will be paid handsomely for making that possible.”

Rowan said nothing and kept her eyes on his, but a movement behind him had her ready to act.

Nicholas’s arm came around Archie’s neck, jerking him off Rowan even as the man tried to beat the Targe stone against his attacker’s head behind him. Rowan leaped to her feet and grabbed Archie’s flailing arm with both hands, hanging from it with all her weight, but still he was too strong for her to wrest the stone from him. She bit his forearm as hard as she could, almost gagging at the blood she tasted. He howled and began to flail the arm to get her off him until, as suddenly as Nicholas had dropped, Archie went limp. She caught the stone as it fell from his hand.

“MacAlpins, to me!” she yelled, hesitating only long enough for her Highlanders to run toward her before she let another blast of energy escape her through the Targe stone, shattering the ledge at the top of the stone face, and raining it down upon the remaining English soldiers.

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
HE BATTLE WAS
over. Nicholas threw the limp Archie into Duncan’s keeping, reaching for Rowan as her knees gave way.

“I have you, love. I have you. You did well.” He murmured to her as he leaned against the boulder and pulled her into the shelter of his arms. She was as thoroughly mud-covered as he was, but she seemed to be unhurt—just shaken.

Uilliam was busy sending a few warriors off to chase down any of the English who might have escaped. Duncan was trussing up Archie hand and foot. A few of the other MacAlpins were gathering their injured and two dead to take back to the castle.

“Do we bury them?” one of the men asked Uilliam, nodding toward the dead English soldiers, “or leave them for the animals like the carrion they are?”

Uilliam did not hesitate. “We’ll bury them right here. Rowan has already started a cairn for us. Pile them up. We shall gather the stone to cover them.”

Nicholas held on to Rowan, who was now starting to shiver in her cold mud-soaked clothes, trying to share what little body heat he could generate with her. “I need to get Rowan back to Dunlairig. She needs a fire, dry clothes, and food,” he said to Uilliam.

Uilliam looked about him at the industry of his men. “Let me see if any of the horses are lingering nearby. ’Twill be easier to load that one”—he glared at Archie who was beginning to awaken from Nicholas’s stranglehold—“onto a horse than to carry him back, and I will not chance an escape by loosing his feet.”

“If you find two, Rowan should ride as well.”

“Nay.” Her voice was stronger than he’d expected. “I am nearly recovered and walking will help keep me warm—warmer.” She
smiled up at Nicholas. “Thank you, Protector. Thank you, love.” She kissed him lightly, mud flaking on both their lips.

When Nicholas looked up he found Uilliam standing there, a scowl so deep that his eyes disappeared under his bushy black brows and his mouth so pinched it was hardly visible either.

“Protector.” It was not a question.

“Aye.” Rowan stepped out of the shelter of Nicholas’s arms but reached for his hand. “But I wish to give my uncle time to bury Elspet first. We must all mourn her before any changes are made.”

“There may not be time for that, lass,” Uilliam said, the scowl loosening as he pulled on his beard. “I do not believe that this is the end of Longshanks’s plans for us and we must be prepared.”

Nicholas pushed off the boulder and looked about at the mayhem they had wrought. “I agree, but first we must finish this business and return to the castle before we lose all light. Kenneth will cast judgment. We must bury Lady Elspet. And then I would ask the entire clan’s permission and blessing to wed their Guardian, my Rowan.”

Duncan returned that moment, leading a brown garron, one of the small sturdy ponies preferred in the Highlands. “What is this about a wedding?” He tried to sound stern, but the smile on his face worked against him.