She caught his shirt; whether to draw him closer or push him away became moot. They both lost themselves in a hungry blending of breath and tonguesâa heaven he didn't deserve.
Reluctantly, he set her aside before he committed a lewd act in public. If he was ever to be allowed to embrace her in the way he wished, he wanted it in private, where only the two of them could enjoy the moment. He caressed her jaw with his rough hand and brushed her swollen lip with the pad of his thumb to bring them both back to reality.
“Do you intend to enter the tavern and slay men with your eyes?” he asked, not entirely in jest. He had yet to determine how much she could or would do besides Heal. Growing up together, he and Ian had learned weaponry, studied the stars and the ocean currents, while Lis's path had led her to learn herbs and medicinal skills. She'd played with dolls. If she'd ever learned to fight, he didn't know of it. Perhaps she could teach him the path to peace. He took his seat beside her and usurped the reins while they both adjusted their breathing.
She eyed the weapons strapped to his hips. “I do not have your experience, but I should be able to tell you where the villains are and how many men surround the inn and some of what they're thinking. Would any of that be useful?”
“I sense two men besides the priest in the private room behind the tavern, plus a void that must be your Aelynner. They keep the farmers from the woods imprisoned upstairs. I don't need to read minds to know the committee and the soldiers around the inn are thinking about blood. Whose blood is the important question.”
“Any blood will do, I'm sure,” she said. “The committee has been humiliated and someone must pay. That is a very primitive form of thought.”
He tied the horse to a post some distance from the inn. By now, the whole town knew of their arrivalâand were waiting to see what their resident paragon would do to save their men. But he'd rather the soldiers not see them until it was necessary.
“And your intent is to incapacitate these forces and escape without a trace?” he asked.
“Or not get captured, at least,” she agreed. “I dislike that the newcomer is an Aelynner.”
An Aelynner holding a priest hostage did not make sense. If any of their countrymen had come to find Lis or kill him, they would do so directly, without involving Others. But in this matter, he trusted Lis's Sight more than his own.
He didn't like fighting one of his countrymen. He'd seen more blood lost than he cared to see again, and he had no desire to resort to his unpredictable energies if it could be avoided. The element of surprise could save lives. “Stay with the mare. I can do this alone.”
“I have no doubt you can free the men, but can you do so without killing anyone?” She followed him from the cart against his express ordersâwhile echoing his own fears.
Her presence hindered his actions. Although he didn't wish to kill anyone, such a promise would tie his hands behind his back. He started down a dark alley behind the greengrocer's. “If they're torturing a good man, why shouldn't I kill them?”
“Because killing is wrong,” she insisted. “It is not our place to be judge and jury. Usurping the rights of the gods is arrogant.”
“If they were fair and just gods, they would not allow good men to be harmed.” He halted at the end of the alley, irritated with himself because he was actually heeding her foolishness.
Incredibly, he trusted Lis to know what he no longer understood. No matter how much he objected to her foolish female whims, he sensed that turning his back on her would be akin to turning his back on salvation.
“Are you prepared to bring a man to his knees without my aid?” he asked, not knowing whether he could save himself at the risk of Lis. He halted at the corner and peered over the wall into the tavern's kitchen yard. Little light flickered from behind the shutters of the private room in back.
“I am,” she said, with such assurance that he actually believed her. He'd watched her bring a man down with a twist of the nose. She wasn't helpless.
“Then wait here while I survey the grounds. Do you need any weapons?”
“I can find what I need. How will you draw the soldiers away from the priest?”
“They stink of fear as well as greed. It's easy enough to act on both.” He kept to the shadows, gliding away from Lis. He'd lived by his sword for years. Lis's belief that he had no right to be judge and jury resounded hol lowly in the face of all he knew. Yet he wanted to believe her. To shed no more blood had been his hope when he'd retired his weapons.
He simply didn't see any way of saving the priest and freeing the prisoners without bloodshed. Bribery was the only nonviolent option his cynical mind could summon. He had little experience in peaceful solutions.
Locating the guard closest to the inn window where the priest was kept, Murdoch slipped silently up behind him, wrenched the man's sword arm behind him so he dropped the weapon, and placed his own blade against the guard's neck. “Not a sound or you'll never speak again,” he murmured. He twisted his hand so the moon's light caught the polished onyx and pearl of his ring. “This is yours if you can hold your tongue until I return.”
He had no intention of parting with the ring, since it would mean parting with his finger as well, but the eerie blue light cast by the pearl stifled the terrified guard's natural urge to argue. He nodded sharply, and satisfied, Murdoch slipped from the shrubbery to the shadow of a lilac bush outside the window. He couldn't sense the Aelynn presence as Lis did, but he did sense the movement of three men when he could hear the thoughts of only two, plus the priest's prayers.
Three against one wasn't bad odds, if he could avoid the attention of the guards posted around the inn. He slid the point of his blade between the shutters, unlatching them and letting them bang inward. Before the guards on the outside could react, he swung his leg over the low sill and entered the room.
A shadow departed through a partially opened interior door, leaving only the bound priest and the two committee louts staring at him in disbelief. The older one grabbed the priest's hair and jerked his head back to hold a knife to his throat at the sight of Murdoch's weapons.
The priest immediately began muttering prayers for Murdoch's soul, which didn't much aid his temper. Stifling his irritation and desire to blast the lot of them through the wall, Murdoch maintained a menacing purr. “Leave quietly, and I will not kill you.” He pointed the rapier at the fat soldier and glared at the older one threatening the priest.
The fat one staggered backward, away from the deadly steel. “You cannot get away with this! You are surrounded.”
“Do you really think so?” Murdoch asked, stalking farther into the room. “Then how is it I am here?” In a movement faster than the human eye could follow, he switched the rapier from his right to left hand and slashed it across the arm of the older soldier holding the priest, forcing him to drop his knife from the priest's throat and wail in pain. Murdoch's right hand now held the saber on the stout guard.
“Jacques! Ãmile! To me,” the older soldier shouted, holding his wrist and backing away from Murdoch's merciless weapons.
“That was very badly done,” Murdoch admonished, slicing with a single cut the ropes binding the priest.“Now people will have to die, and my lady disapproves.”
He could blast these fools to kingdom come with the point of a finger, but he could not prevent the blast from destroying the inn and everyone in it. He had to repress his angry energy.
As two more soldiers rushed through the door, Murdoch shoved his growing rage into the lockbox of his soul. He wanted no more whirlwinds or lightning bolts. He kicked the priest's chair until Père Antoine stood and limped toward the door. Then, lips set in determination, Murdoch began coolly swinging his weapons in defensive arcs, giving the priest space to escape.
Blood spurted from the wrist of the first guard who entered. He cried out in agony, grabbing his spurting artery before sliding toward the floor. Before his opponent's posterior so much as hit a floorboard, Murdoch had swung around to disarm the soldier he'd flung into a tree, leapt to the seat the priest had vacated, and stabbed his rapier at the two remaining men who were stupidly dashing to the rescue, causing them to fall back in their haste to escape the point.
A pistol shot rang out, and Murdoch felt the ball slam into his shoulder. Anger instantly burst through the chains in which he'd imprisoned it. Someone was going to regret that. And even though his already weakened left arm would be incapacitated in moments, he wouldn't be the one who repented.
White-lipped with the effort of tamping down the erratic gifts that could slaughter every man in sight, Murdoch relied on his superior strength to fight back. There was still the matter of the terrified men imprisoned upstairs to settle, but that would be better accomplished from outside. Once assured the priest had stumbled to safety, Murdoch leapt through the open shutters and into the night.
Where a half dozen more men raced toward him.
Where was Lis?
Instinct forged of a thousand battles and years of practice shattered his last remaining constraints at the need to see Lis safe. Without a single thought, he aimed the sword in his right hand at the closest guard and called down a wind. A gust of icy air propelled Murdoch forward while blasting the guard backward into the lilac. Flying tree branches and a bolt of lightning provided cover so Murdoch could hit the ground and roll into the shrubbery.
Where is Lis, bloodydamnhell!
“Is that the demon?” someone cried in a fearful voice.
“We still have the rest of the prisoners. Let him come to us,” a voice he didn't recognize said with assurance and command. Lis had been right. This new person was different. Murdoch could not sort out an emotion to identify him, but he was preventing the soldiers from fleeing as Murdoch had counted on. The inn should be swarming with angry citizens overcoming the guards to free the prisoners by nowâhad the soldiers retreated.
Crawling through the hedge, he checked to see if Lis was anywhere close to where he'd left her. She wasn't. He cursed and scanned the yard while the guards re-formed on the inn side of the hedge. He wished he could read her presence as easily as he read others', but her Empathic barrier prevented it. His shoulder burned with all the fires of hell as he scrambled to his feet, but his fear for Lis burned worse.
Suddenly she was there, touching his elbow from behind. Her Healing energy found his wound and began to seep through the blood vessels and torn muscle. “I'm here. I didn't want you worrying that I was in the path of whatever you're doing.”
He rolled his eyes. As if he'd ever
not
worry about her. But his relief was immediate, allowing him to concentrate again. “Stay behind me!” he ordered, assessing the situation on the other side of the hedge.
Soldiers were spilling to the right and left of the shrubbery under orders of the Aelynner. They had to leave
now
. Even he couldn't fight his way free with only one arm. But he didn't want those poor farmers being marched to prison. If ever there was a time to use his corrupted powers . . .
Torn between the damage he could do and the lives of innocent farmers he could save, Murdoch braced his legs and focused on the slender steel of his rapier as he had not done in years. Grasping the hilt with both hands, he aimed the weapon at the inn and prayed with all his might.
The wind gusted behind him, flattening the branches of the hedge and rattling the inn's windows. He fought to hold back his energy, groping for some semblance of control so he didn't blast the village into the sky. The hilt shook with the force of his restraint, and the brisk breeze began to rattle the inn's walls and the rotting tree above it. He stifled an urge to grin in satisfaction at this small victory.
Conscious that Lis was clasping his injured arm, Murdoch gritted his teeth and maintained a breeze instead of creating a tornado. Dead branches flew through the yard, assaulting anyone foolish enough to approach him. Overlong limbs brushed at the inn's shingles. Stone walls did not shake so well, but the roof . . . Ah, there was an easy target, if he could keep it from flying away completely. The prisoners were being kept in those upper rooms.
He heard more shouts as the wind steadily increased, and he debated how to free the farmers. He couldn't use fire. Not again. He could try cracking the earth, but falling walls might injure the innocent.
Murdoch felt his temper rising as the guards pushed against the wind and kept coming, but he continued to aim his rapier at the tavern. Summoned by his instincts, a wind howled through the trees, gathering a swirling force across the town.
Lis gripped his elbow. “Think of good things, not death,” she demanded.
Had it been anyone but Lis, his temper would have escalated. Instead, rather than lash out at her, he focused his ire along the rapier's edge, and directed the wind to spiral across the rafters.
Ancient shingles and boards were ripped from their nails, causing screams from all beneath the inn's roof. The wind shattered windows and blew open shutters. He almost gawked in astonishment at his own accuracy as interior doors blew off their hinges, allowing men to spill from every nook and cranny. Even the soldiers halted their advance to stare in disbelief.
Lis's fingers bit into his upper arm, whether in fear or awe he didn't bother to ascertain. She kept his sword arm steady. Clinging to his phenomenal restraint, he held his rapier as if he were shooting targets and blew down one soldier after another, even though he could only feel their panic and not see them through the tall hedge.