Shana Abe (3 page)

Because everyone knew of the unabashed love Conner had for Helaine. Everyone knew that.

Which was why, perhaps, everyone could be so easily
persuaded that he had killed her in a fit of jealous passion. It could hardly have been anything else, considering the circumstances.

Kyla shook her head, trying to rid herself of the same circle of thoughts that had been haunting her for the past half year.

No matter what the evidence, no matter what anyone said, she knew her father would never have killed her mother. Never. He had been so broken without her.

But King Henry was quite convinced Conner had killed her; that much was plain. He would send an army after the Warwicks to appease his pride, to make sure everyone understood that a man who murdered his wife and one of the king’s noble courtiers could not simply run, could not save himself and his family from just punishment.

And now Kyla’s only chance to set things right was about to vanish unless she did something to prevent it. She had to find Alister. If the English were coming, she had to get to him. She had to.…

For now she knew that Malcolm was not going to listen to her. What a shock he had turned out to be, such a baleful old man, a man who had hated the English side of them that was their father’s even as he had embraced them for his sister Helaine’s sake. And she and Alister had thought to find safety with their Scottish kin.

Yet it was an uneasy situation from the start. Malcolm had the red hair of the MacAlisters—just like Helaine—and the tall figure, but burning eyes Kyla had not recognized in any of her family.

When she and Alister had arrived, weary, uncertain, he had allowed them to stay, having heard their story, and Kyla had swallowed her misgivings when she saw the relief of her little brother, his slender shoulders slumping with exhaustion. It had been hard on him, brave Alister; he had come along without complaint the entire journey, had wept enough for both of them over the loss of their parents, had helped in every way he could from the beginning.

She thought he would never be a boy again and regretted
that, for he had been such a cheerful, happy child, and she didn’t like to see the tired wariness that marked him now. She had wondered if it would ever leave him, and when Malcolm himself had shown them to their rooms two weeks ago she had felt her soul lighten at last, just a little, at Alister’s obvious joy.

It had been a horrible winter. But it was not over yet.

Malcolm had been scarred by the defection of his young sister to the side of an Englishman. Kyla hadn’t realized it at first. Yes, she had known there was some tension between her mother’s brother and father. After all, not once had Malcolm ever come to Rosemead, though he was invited every year.

One late evening not even a week ago, after most of the manor people had gone off to seek their slumber, Kyla had encountered her uncle in the sitting room, drinking whiskey, shards of broken glass all around him.

When she had exclaimed over the glass and gone to him, he had seen Helaine. It was Helaine he grabbed painfully by the arms, Helaine he had ranted against for leaving him, for going to the side of the enemy. It was Helaine who betrayed him for the English, a generations-old hatred, and it was Helaine he had never forgiven.

The broken glass had been an empty decanter. It reflected thousands of glints of firelight all around them as Malcolm held her, alternately shaking her then embracing her, reeking of whiskey, spilling what was left in his cup on them both.

He was tearful and mostly incoherent. Kyla had broken from his grasp and fled the room.

To the best of her knowledge, Malcolm did not remember that night. He certainly never mentioned it. And she almost had cause to forget about it entirely until Roland’s messenger arrived this morning, an army behind him, offering his bargain for peace.

She was ready to take it—eager to take it. It was such a perfect solution, a thing to clear Conner’s name of her mother’s murder and restore her family honor. Nothing could be more important than that.

But Malcolm did not want peace, no, he wanted a battle. How awful to be held up as a new cause for hatred. He had seen his chance to rage against the injustice fate had dealt him when he lost his sister. This was a golden opportunity for revenge.

And now the soldiers were coming.

Where was Alister?

She found him standing over the pallet that he slept on each night in the chamber next to hers, his back to her, looking down at something on the covers she could not see.

She slipped into the room quietly but he heard her anyway, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to confirm her presence.

“They want us to surrender.” His voice was subdued.

“What?”

“The English.” He said the word as if it were foreign to him, as if he himself were not English at all but rather a reflection of something else.

Malcolm
, she thought, and felt a chill.

She walked over to him and saw that he was looking at a broadsword, a ridiculously large one, she thought, lying flat amid the furs. The blade gleamed dully, spots of rust speckling its length.

Her mind refused to make the connection between the weapon and her brother. What was he doing with it? He shouldn’t be allowed to handle such a thing, he might hurt himself. Without thought she reached out to pick it up.

Alister stopped her by taking it first. He used both hands to lift it. His face twisted with the effort.

“What are you doing?” Kyla tried to keep her voice mild, fighting the urge to snatch the sword from him.

“Didn’t you hear?” he asked, concentrating on balancing the blade, turning it this way and that.

“Hear what?”

Outside the room she did hear something now—how could she have missed it before?—an ominous rush of sound, booted footsteps in the hallways, masculine voices, deep and filled with an emotion that brought goosebumps to her arms.
Without thought she crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing her sleeves to warm herself.

“Lord Strathmore has ordered Uncle to surrender us. ‘Surrender the Warwicks.’ He said if Uncle didn’t, then Glencarson would suffer the consequences.”

Alister rested the sword point on the pallet, his head bowed. Kyla noticed that he was dressed in a hauberk, chain mail, all of it much too large on him, a grown man’s battle gear. The blood went rushing from her head.

“No,” she said, but it was just a whisper.

“It’s true.” Alister looked up at her for the first time, eyes grave. “I saw the demand myself. It came this afternoon, after the first letter. Uncle showed it to me.”

“No,” she said again.

Outside the strange noise was rising, a sinister thing she had never heard before, yet she knew what it portended.

A cloud passed over the sun, plunging the room into shades of gray.

“He’s relentless, Kyla. That’s why they call him the Hound of Hell. He’ll never stop, unless we stop him here. Otherwise it will never be over. He’ll take you if he can.” Alister’s small hands clenched the hilt of the broadsword. “I won’t let it happen. He won’t kill you, too.”

She stared at him speechlessly, the brother she knew hidden behind these words of a stranger. But they were the wrong words, they would get him killed.

“Listen to me,” she began urgently.

“Alister,” interrupted a voice by the doorway, and her chills came back. Malcolm was here.

“It will be all right, Kyla,” said her brother. “I will protect you.”

“I won’t let you do this.” Her voice was strange even to her, high and brittle.

Malcolm spoke again, a silhouette with the light of the hall behind him. “You are mistaken if you think you have a choice, Kyla. You will stay here with the rest of the women. This doesn’t concern you.”

“I won’t let you!” she cried, running to him, trying to get past him, trying to get through the door.

Malcolm blocked her easily, much larger than she was, holding her at bay with both arms. “Alister,” he said again, a low-pitched command that pierced her to the bone. Behind her moved her brother, edging around them both, leaving the room.

“No!” Kyla called, reaching for him. “Come back!”

Alister looked over his shoulder at her again, a still look that spoke volumes, then moved off down the hall. She turned on Malcolm furiously.

“It’s only me they want,” she said. “Let me go, I will bargain with Strathmore. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Never,” Malcolm replied, and meant it.

“He is only twelve!” she cried. “God have mercy, he is but a child! Do not misuse him so!”

He brushed her protests aside with disgust. “He is a man, or he would be if you would not coddle him so. It is his God-given right to fight those who killed his father.”

“He will die!”

“If he does, it will be as a man. That is the end of it.”

“We will all die! Don’t you understand? They outnumber us! You would set these villagers to fight with hoes and sticks against arrows and maces?”

“If God wills it, so be it.”

The bloodlust in his eyes said much more than his words. With cool efficiency Malcolm pushed her away from him. She fell sharply to the floor, scraping her palms and tangling her skirts. Before she could arise he had closed the heavy wooden door and bolted it shut behind him.

“We will see you later tonight, Niece.” His voice was muffled by the thickness of the wood.

“No!” she screamed now, scrambling to her feet, stumbling to the door.

Of course, it was too late. She was trapped.

A few hours later, when she smelled the smoke of the burning manor, she knew it was over.

T
he battle at Glencarson was as grim as any that had been seen so far in these bitter Highlands. To someone who, perhaps, had climbed up one of the many rocky hills surrounding the valley, there would at first appear to be nothing notably amiss. The sky was a boiling gray soup overhead, true, but that was typical weather in Scotland in this early spring. There was mud everywhere, also true, but what could one expect when the rains came almost every day? But walking farther up the hill it would not take long to notice the peculiar smell mingled with that of the wet earth; a sharp, metallic odor that raised the hair on the back of the necks of man and beast alike.

The good brown mud of Glencarson was pooled with red this evening. Red was everywhere, forming puddles, trickling with dirty scarlet streams around the bodies of the fallen. And there were so many bodies.

Kyla picked up each foot with measured determination, fighting the mud, which sucked at her boots and caked her skirts. She stepped around severed limbs and dead horses without much thought about it, keeping her mind on reaching the men lying near the center of the field. That was where she would find him, she was certain. He would be there.

A misstep on a slippery sword blade caused her to fall onto her hip in the muck. She caught herself with her hands, and they sank wrist-deep into wreckage of the field. For a broken moment the sounds came back to her as she had heard them even locked inside the manor house, the screams of men, the screams of the horses, and now the screams of women left behind, women like her who were searching the valley for their kin.

The cries of the women bothered her the most.

She stood up again and wiped her hands absently on her skirts, smearing the bloody mud around her thighs. She didn’t
want to hear the women sobbing any longer. She didn’t want to hear each fresh wail as the next body was turned over, the next face identified as a husband, a father, a sweetheart.

Kyla moved on resolutely. There was only one sound in her head now, one name, over and over.

Alister, Alister …

Of Malcolm she cared nothing. It was his fault this battle had taken place and she wished him to hell for it. But of Alister, sweet Alister, still so young the broadsword given to him had dipped and shivered in his hands, oh, God, Alister.…

And he was there, limp, quiet, in the mud, his hands and face pale beneath the streaks of sweat and blood and dirt. So very pale. So peaceful.

She didn’t know how long she knelt beside him, cradling his head in her hands. She didn’t see the clouds grow thicker, hear the rumbling in the skies. She didn’t feel the rain drenching the valley.

The water washed away the filth on him and smoothed his hair back to dark red, like her own. He was all she had had left in this world, all that had mattered to her.

Kyla Warwick did not cry. Her hands did not tremble as she wiped the water from his brow. And her knees buckled only a little when she bent over and picked up the body of her little brother and carried him out of the valley of Glencarson.

Chapter Two