Highlander Avenged (21 page)

Denis stepped forward from the gathered warriors. “ ’Tis Myles?” he asked, pointing to the wrapped body. “I heard his name. I will be of no use in battle so I will stay and bury the lad.” He looked at Nicholas and Malcolm, the echo of the warrior he must have once been etched on his face, brought to life again by his clenched jaw and snapping eyes. “Bring our lassies back,” he said, “all three of them.”

Nicholas and Malcolm nodded.

“Uilliam, fetch the men still watching the castle and bring them with you to the Story Stone,” Nicholas said. “Find us when you get there.”

Jeanette gave Uilliam’s arm a squeeze as he passed her on his way into the trees, then she grabbed the dagger that had been left in the dirt, the dagger that had killed her mother and Myles. “I do not have a scabbard for this,” she said to Malcolm. “Will you carry it? I suspect Scotia will want it back when we free her.”

“You would put yourself in danger by going into battle, too?” he asked, not really surprised that she would go with the rest of them, but wishing there was somewhere safe she could stay.

“I will. I am a Guardian now. It is my duty to protect the clan, though I have not a gift that will be of much use in battle.”

He saw several men stop and look at Jeanette with surprise painted on their faces, but Malcolm scowled at them, daring them to interrupt, and they wisely kept their questions to themselves.

“And Scotia is my sister. I’ll not sit by while yet another of my family is threatened by the damned English.” She lifted her chin. “Would you?”

“Of course not. We will get Scotia safely back amongst her kin,” he said, “and do everything we can to dispatch those who took her.” And then he would leave his heart behind with his angel.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

J
EANETTE WAS ALREADY
weary from their day of traveling,
first from the caves to the MacAlpins’ camp, and now an hour’s fast walk east across the ben, well past the path where she and Malcolm had first fought the gap-toothed English scout together. Now she, Rowan, and all the warriors they could gather, including Malcolm and Nicholas, headed uphill until they came to the edge of the forest where it opened onto a high mountain meadow. It was nearing sunset when they stopped, just in the cover of the trees, but there was enough light to easily see the ancient Story Stone where it stood near the center of the broad open area atop a hillock. The stone was twice the height of the tallest warrior, and in the dim light they could see a figure bound to it and surrounded by twelve English soldiers.

“I did not see the soldiers in my visions,” Jeanette whispered to Malcolm and Nicholas. How could she trust what she saw in the visions if something so important was kept from her?

A quick search turned up Duncan, keeping watch over Scotia from the thick branches of an ancient Scots pine tree.

“Have you had any contact with them?” Nicholas asked Duncan as he joined them on the ground.

“Nay. Scotia was already bound to the stone when I finally tracked them here. I think they must have knocked her out to bring her here, for she was silent and still, her head hanging for the longest time. She is awake now and goads them every now and then.” He shook his head slowly. “Daft lassie,” he said quietly. With a sigh, he continued, “They have been standing in that circle around her since I arrived here.”

“So the dagger
was
a message,” Rowan said.

“Aye,” Duncan replied.

“My kinsmen will never give you Nicholas and Rowan for me!” Scotia’s shrill voice, loud even from a distance, startled them all.

Duncan raced for the forest’s edge with Nicholas, Rowan, Jeanette, and Malcolm on his heels.

“She is taunting them again,” Duncan whispered.

“Aye, and giving us information.” Nicholas smiled, though his eyes did not. “Do you think she kens we are here?” he asked Duncan.

“I cannot say. ’Tis not the first time she has shouted at them since I have arrived.”

“What else has she said?” Malcolm asked.

“She said, ‘There are only five warriors left of my kin but they are strong and will rip out your hearts.’ ”

“Bloodthirsty wench.” Nicholas shook his head. “I doubt they believe her, about our numbers or their hearts, but perhaps she plants doubts in their minds about how many we really are.”

They carefully slipped back to where their warriors were gathered in the thicker trees away from the edge of the meadow, arriving just as Uilliam and three more warriors joined the gathering, bringing their total to thirteen, plus Jeanette and Rowan.

Nicholas and Uilliam quickly sent men out to keep watch over the meadow and Scotia, then turned their attention to a plan of attack.

“How many English have you seen?” Nicholas asked Duncan.

“Just the twelve that are surrounding the stone. If we attack after dark, we will be able to surprise them.”

“The moon will not rise until late tonight,” Malcolm said. “We will have no light once the sun sets. We either go soon, or wait for the moonrise.”

Jeanette looked at Rowan. “What can we do, Cousin?”

“We?” Uilliam was looking at her like she had sprouted wings.

“Jeanette is also a Guardian now,” Malcolm said, taking her hand in his. There was pride in his voice that warmed her.

“Is this true, Rowan?” Uilliam asked.

“Of course ’tis true,” Jeanette said, relishing the spurt of irritation that Uilliam’s doubt sparked in her, letting it damp down the fear and worry that filled her, if only for a moment.

Uilliam looked from her to Rowan, to Nicholas, and back to Jeanette. “My apologies, Jeanette. ’Tis only that I have never heard such a thing was possible. When? How?” He shook his head. “Nay, that will keep for later. What is your gift?” he asked. “That is the important question.”

“Visions . . . and I can build a barrier, like Mum did, with Rowan’s help”—though it brought pain to Rowan, but she did not say that—“but I cannot hold it yet.”

Uilliam was pulling at his beard, a sure sign that he was deep in thought, pondering this news.

“Can you see the outcome of the coming battle?” Duncan said.

Gooseflesh danced over Jeanette’s skin. Did she want to see the outcome? What if it went against them? Did she want to see her loved ones die before they actually did? If she saw the outcome, could she do something to change it? So far, what she had seen in her visions had come to pass exactly as she had seen them, but did it have to be that way?

“Angel?” Malcolm squeezed her hand and she realized she held his right hand. His injured arm was pressed against hers and the squeeze of his hand was only a little weaker than if she held his strong one. It was then she understood that there really had been healing power at the wellspring, for an injury such as his should have taken much longer to heal. “Jeanette? Can you?”

She looked up at him, confused for a moment about his question, until she retraced her thoughts. “I can try to see the outcome, but I cannot promise anything.”

Malcolm slipped a waterskin from his shoulder and filled the cup she set on the ground, until it nearly overflowed. Jeanette knelt before it. Rowan knelt next to her, holding the Targe, wrapped in its sack, in her hand. She took Jeanette’s hand in her other one.

“Let’s see if this makes it easier for you to find the vision you seek,” she said.

“I do not want to hurt you again,” Jeanette whispered.

“We do not know that you will. You did not hurt me by the burn this morning and the visions came easier to you, did they not? Let me sit with you and we’ll see what happens.”

Jeanette looked up to find Nicholas and Malcolm standing close by. She nodded, more to herself than to the others, and leaned forward to peer into the water, letting her gaze sink past the surface of the cup once more. An odd sensation trickled into her hand from Rowan’s, up her arm, and suddenly she was in the flood of images. She searched for some vision, anything, that included Scotia, the Story Stone, the English soldiers, her own kin. She reached out, trying to see each vision, but nothing caught her attention. Finally she relaxed and let the visions swirl around her, hoping something useful would find her.

The stag. She almost missed it but was able to reach out and hold the vision still long enough to watch the stag with the bent antler leading her through the wood, cutting an arc around . . . the meadow with the Story Stone. She thought she gasped but could not tell if it was part of the vision or in truth. She followed the stag, as she’d done before in a dream, until he came to stand in a fast-flowing burn. She waited for him to continue but he just stood in the water, staring at her, until she understood: She was to stand in the burn. “Why?” she tried to ask him, but the vision had gone and she was once more kneeling by the cup, Rowan’s hand still gripped in hers.

“It is done,” she said quietly.

“Did you see the battle?” Duncan asked before she had gotten her bearings again. “Did you see us freeing Scotia?”

“Nay.” She looked up at the men gathered around her and Rowan. “I am sorry but I saw nothing of the coming battle, nor of Scotia,” Jeanette said, feeling as if she had failed in her first attempt to help her clan.

“It was like a dream,” Rowan said quietly beside her. She cocked her head and squinted her eyes as if she was trying to see the vision again. “We followed a stag with a bent antler. What did that mean?” Rowan asked her.

“You saw it, too?” Jeanette’s heart began to hammer.

“You saw the stag again?” Malcolm asked.

“Again?” Rowan, Nicholas, and Duncan all asked at the same time.

“Aye,” Jeanette said, closing her eyes in an effort to remember every detail of the vision.

“What else did you see, angel?” Malcolm crouched in front of her.

“He stopped at the edge of a burn, pawed at a stone, then looked at me,” Rowan said when Jeanette did not immediately speak. “It was as if he wanted me to stay out of the burn.” She looked over at Jeanette. “And then he walked in and looked at you, Cousin. And then the vision stopped. What did it mean, Jeanette?”

Jeanette ran through the vision again in her head. She had not noticed that Rowan was with her, or that the stag had hesitated at the edge of the burn. But clearly that part was meant for Rowan.

“I have seen that stag before, in dreams and in the forest. He leads me, warns me. I think you and I have work to do at that burn, but I do not ken what. Do you?”

Now Rowan turned thoughtful.

“I cannot topple trees upon them,” she said. “They have clearly chosen a spot that limits that. I cannot even topple the Story Stone
upon them, for that would harm Scotia. There are not stones large enough to do any damage to them in the field.”

“It would seem they are well versed in your abilities, love,” Nicholas said, helping Rowan to rise to her feet. Jeanette poured the water out and stood, putting her cup away.

Rowan walked over to where a warrior’s targe leaned against a nearby tree. The round shield, with a spike protruding from the center of it, was both protection and weapon.

“If only we could create a shield, as the ancient Guardians could,” she said. “But I do not ken where we could place it that would help.”

Jeanette looked at the targe that held Rowan’s attention. She cocked her head.

“ ’Tis not unlike the barrier I created today,” Jeanette said quietly, deep in thought. “If I could create another one and hold it—without hurting you—could you move it?”

Rowan’s eyebrows went up and Jeanette could see her cousin considering what Jeanette proposed. “I think it would work, though the wind that comes with my gift will likely throw up anything it can, so the barrier would be visible, in a way, to the English.”

Nicholas was nodding. “What about Scotia? If it is harmful enough to drive the English before it, will it not harm her, too?”

“Not if they drive the barrier toward us,” Malcolm said. He looked at Jeanette. “You could drive the English away from Scotia and toward us. The stone would give her some shelter if the barrier came from the far side of the meadow.”

Jeanette chewed on her lip. “In the vision, the stag took us to a burn that way”—she pointed to her left—“but around the meadow. Does anyone remember if that burn runs anywhere close to the meadow across from where we are now?”

“Aye, it hugs the far side but you would likely be in view of the English from there,” Uilliam said.

“If we position ourselves as much as we can directly across from here, Scotia should be sheltered by the stone. We may not be able to move the barrier over the stone anyway. For that matter, I may not be able to hold it long enough to do us any good at all, or Rowan may not be able to move it.”

“If this works, if you two can do what you plan, we shall need to have most of our warriors here, with three”—Malcolm looked at the few men around them—“two ready to free Scotia once the English are driven or drawn away. I will go with Rowan and Jeanette to keep them safe while they do their work.”

“I will go, too,” Nicholas said. “As the Guardian’s Protector, Rowan’s safety”—he looked surprised—“and I suppose Jeanette’s now, too, are my first duty.” He gave Malcolm a sidewise look.

Jeanette caught Nicholas’s eye and barely shook her head, willing him not to say what she knew he was thinking, what she wished for but could not have: that Malcolm would be her Protector.

“Uilliam,” Nicholas continued, “you should engage the English, hold their attention while we circle around. They do not ken that I am chief, so use that to our favor. Make them think you are the one, the new chief, that you are willing to entertain turning me over, but not Rowan. They would not believe you would turn over Rowan. Our warriors will hold here until the English are clear of Scotia and the stone, then attack. Duncan, take someone with you and position yourself to the north. Be ready to free her. If we can, Malcolm and I will join you there, but do not count on it, aye? Does anyone have a better plan?”

Duncan, Malcolm, and Uilliam looked at each other and back to Nicholas, but none had anything better to offer.

Jeanette’s palms were sweaty and her heart sped. Her sister’s life, and the lives of those who sought to free her, rested on the skill of two Guardians new to their gifts.

T
HE LIGHT WAS
failing fast as Malcolm, Jeanette, Rowan, and Nicholas rushed as quietly as they could around the meadow to position themselves across from where the MacAlpin warriors waited. They had not gone far before Malcolm heard Uilliam shouting for the English to hand over Scotia or pay the price. They moved rapidly, but not so fast that he and Nicholas couldn’t keep an eye out lest there were any English lurking in the wood. Duncan had done some searching before they arrived and had seen no one.

They continued to hear shouting but Malcolm did not spare his attention to listen to exactly what was being said. Before long they found the burn. Jeanette splashed into it and looked around.