The Lady's Protector (Highland Bodyguards #1) (8 page)

She took a wobbling step back and smoothed her surcoat with trembling hands. “We shouldn’t have—”

“Did ye hear that?” he cut in abruptly, his dark brows descending.

“W-what?” She’d assumed he’d halted their kiss because it was wrong, not because some noise had distracted him.

She straightened, trying to salvage what little dignity she could. Just as she opened her mouth to reassert that the kiss had been out of line, a whinny drifted up from the yard below.

“Eachann,” Ansel breathed. He strode to the shutters and pulled one back. Isolda followed, peering around his broad shoulder at the moonlit yard.

“Your horse?” she asked softly.

“Aye.”

“There.” She pointed to the far southeast corner of the keep, where the wall stood highest. A swish of the horse’s tail flashed out of the shadows, followed by another soft whinny.

“Something is wrong.”

Ansel’s hard, flat voice sent unease rippling through her.

“What is—”

Before the question was out, the quiet night was shattered by the battle cries of a dozen men.

The shadows were suddenly alive.

Below Lady Isolda’s window, the yard filled with swarming warriors, their drawn blades flashing in the moonlight.

Christ
. Dread flashed for one blinding moment in Ansel’s brain. They were under attack, but this was no game or test.

“Nay!”

Isolda stumbled back from the window, barely catching herself before she tumbled to the ground by gripping one of the thick posters on her bed.

Instinct suddenly fused with the long years of training, sending a strange clarity through Ansel’s mind even as his body surged with energy.

“Stay here,” he said, striding toward the door.

“What about Bertram?” Isolda’s voice hitched close to hysteria.

“Dinnae fear. And bar this door behind me.”

Even before he’d crossed through her chamber’s doorway, his hand wrapped around his sword. The sound of metal hissing against leather as he unsheathed the blade was a familiar comfort.

As he bolted down the stairs, he heard the heavy thump of the beam being placed across Lady Isolda’s door. She would be safe. He would make sure of it.

But as he reached the bottom of the spiraling stairs, he heard a bellow that sent a stab of foreboding into his belly.

Bertram
.

Ansel dashed to the door, which he’d closed behind him when he’d entered earlier. He ripped open the door just in time to see Bertram slumping to the ground before it. A darkly clad man yanked his blade free of the old soldier, then turned toward Ansel in the open doorway.

Though his ears were filled with the roar of battle and the pounding of his own blood, Ansel’s mind went quiet. Now was not the time for thinking. There was only the man directly in front of him.

He rooted himself where he stood, raising his blade in invitation to his opponent. The darkly clothed man charged with a wordless battle cry, driving his blade forward to impale Ansel.

But Ansel used the doorframe to his advantage. He twisted out of the way at the last moment, then pinned his attacker’s blade between his own and the wooden doorframe. With a swift thrust along the length of the other man’s sword, Ansel’s blade found its home in the man’s chest.

He barely had time to boot his dying opponent away before an identical attacker set upon him. His body turned liquid, each move so familiar that he might have been floating in a dream. But with every parry, with every lethal blow, with every strike that drove one opponent back, another would surge forward.

How many were there? Ansel was a fraction of a second too slow blocking the arcing blade of one of his attackers. His sword took the brunt of the force, but the blade sliced across his shoulder. The sting barely registered, but he knew distantly that when the battle lust cleared, the wound would need stitches.

Sweat and blood—his or his enemies’, he couldn’t say—mingled, stinging his eyes. His muscles burned dully, yet he sensed an ebb in the wave of attackers. He at last stepped from the protection of the doorway to meet the last man standing in the yard.

Moonlight glinted off the man’s pale hair. He clutched his sword with two hands, but instead of his hands being positioned next to each other on the hilt, one was balled on top of the other. Something whispered in the back of Ansel’s mind. This man was inexperienced with a weapon.

Ansel waited for the man to come to him. If his intuition was right, the man would attack first, as most beginners did, thus opening himself to a counterattack.

Just as he’d anticipated, the blond man let out a cry and charged forward, blade leveled at Ansel’s chest. With an easy sidestep, Ansel spun and slashed his blade along the man’s exposed back. The attacker fell to his knees, the sword tumbling from his hands before he slumped to the blood-darkened grass.

Ansel stood in a sea of bodies, their still forms gilded in moonlight.

The horrible memories stacked on top of each other, turning years of battles into one single nightmare. Ansel’s ears rang with the echoes of battle cries, clanging metal, and dying screams of agony and fear.

This wasn’t Bannockburn, he reminded himself with a little shake, nor was it any of the other battles for Scotland’s independence he’d fought in. Nay, this skirmish was to protect Lady Isolda. Bannockburn was over.

A new scream tore through his thoughts, but this one didn’t arise from his dark memories. It was a woman’s cry of panic, real and present.

Isolda
.

His gaze lurched from the attackers at his feet in the yard to her window above in the tower.

Fear, pure and white-hot, tore through him.

A grappling hook had been tossed through her window and was secured to the window ledge. A long rope dangled from the hook down the side of the stone tower and into the yard.

He bolted back into the tower, terror replacing the eerily calm battle haze from a moment before.

“Isolda!”

Isolda had struggled to lift the thick oak beam and replace it across her chamber door. The fear coursing through her veins gave her a surge of extra strength. With a thud, the beam had fallen back into place.

A cacophony of battle cries rose from the yard and assaulted her ears as she paced back to the window. Just as she was going to peer out into the darkness past the open shutters, though, the clang of metal on metal rang out.

Ansel and Bertram were down there. Terror swelled until her throat closed and her head spun. She clapped her hands over her ears, but the sounds of fighting and death were only slightly muffled. Slowly, she sank to the floor, holding her head and praying for Ansel and Bertram’s lives.

Time stretched nightmarishly. Screams of pain thrummed against her hands where they blocked her ears. Who was attacking them? Were those Bertram’s screams? Ansel’s? How much longer could this horror go on?

A much louder clang vibrated the stones beneath her, cutting through her panic. Her head snapped up, her vision filling with a new terror. A large metal hook clung to her window ledge.

Renewed fear flooded her. The thick wooden beam across her door wouldn’t save her now.

She scrambled to her feet, her hands flying to the hook. She clawed desperately at it, but it was wedged securely against the stone window opening. Her eyes traveled out the window to the rope fastened to the hook. Halfway up the tower, a shadowy man was scaling upward, his feet planted on the stones and his hands pulling him quickly up the rope.

Isolda frantically tore at the hook and the rope, drawing blood from her fingers, but it was no use. In a flash of clarity, she remembered the dagger Ansel had tossed onto her bed.

She dove toward the bed, her hands fumbling for the dagger’s jeweled hilt. Just as her fingers closed around the cool metal, a shadow loomed in her window, blocking out the moonlight.

A scream rose in her throat as the shadow leapt in and landed in a crouch. He stood slowly, seemingly unperturbed by her terrified cry.

“We can do this the easy way,” he said, his voice a soft whisper. “Or the other way.”

He advanced on her, backlit by the weak moonlight coming in from the window. Her fingers tightened on the dagger within the folds of her bedding, but some distant voice of reason told her to wait, to bide her time.

“W-what do you want?” she breathed through trembling lips.

“The boy.”

Icy fear stabbed her belly.

“He…he isn’t here.”

The man froze for a second as if considering her words. But then, as if from a nightmare, he advanced once more until he loomed over her where she sprawled on the bed.

“Where is he?”

Even through the terror twisting in her stomach, renewed courage surged within her. She would protect John with her life if she had to.

“I’ll never tell.”

The man’s dark head tilted, and a beam of silver light caught the side of his face. To her horror, a soft smile curved his mouth.

“We’ll see about that.”

Like lighting, he fell on her, his weight pressing her into the bed. She screamed again, but his hands clamped around her neck, cutting off her air.

“Isolda!”

Ansel’s voice ripped through the night from the yard outside.

She tried to call back to him, to beg for his help, but all that came out was a croak beneath the man’s iron grip.

Suddenly the door vibrated with the force of a powerful impact.

“Isolda!” Ansel’s voice came again, right outside her door. The oak beam bounced across the door as he slammed into it once more.

The man’s hands tightened until not even a wisp of air could slip into her lungs. Realization washed over her as she dragged futilely for breath. Ansel’s trick to dislodge the oak beam with his sword would take too long. She’d lose consciousness before then—or she’d be dead.

Another blow assailed the door, but this time the wood creaked and groaned. Again, both the door and beam shivered under Ansel’s attack, and now the sound of splintering rent the air.

The man looming over her darted his head toward the door nervously. Spots swam before her eyes as her lungs burned with the need for air.

Now
, a distant voice whispered in the back of her mind.

Isolda yanked her hand free of the bedcovers, the dagger flashing through the air. She drove the blade into her attacker’s side.

With a surprised grunt and a whoosh of air, his hands loosened around her neck. Even as she sucked in a greedy breath, she drove her knee up toward his groin. He blocked her intended target with his leg, yet he had to roll partially off her to do so.

She lashed out at him with every last thread of strength she possessed, clawing and kicking like a wildcat.

The chamber door suddenly exploded in a shower of splinters and chunks of wood. And then Ansel was launching forward, sword drawn and dark with blood.

Her attacker leapt to his feet and scrambled toward the window. Time seemed to slow as Isolda watched. Something bright flashed in the man’s hands. Her brain, air-starved and overwrought with fear, was slow to understand what was happening.

But then the flashing object flew from the man’s hand and sailed toward Ansel.

“Nay!” she screamed, but it was too late, for another flash darted from her attacker’s grip and cut a line directly for Ansel.

Ansel somehow managed to twist away as the first dagger sped toward him. The small blade caught him in the arm rather than the chest, where her attacker had aimed it. But as the first dagger’s impact jerked him back, he didn’t have time to evade the second. The blade sank into his chest, the hilt quivering where it protruded.

And yet Ansel still staggered on toward the man at the window. Her assailant recoiled under Ansel’s lurching advance. The man threw a leg out the window, then grabbed the rope with one hand, clutching his side with the other where Isolda’s dagger still jutted. In a blink, he slid down the rope into the yard below.

Ansel stumbled to the windowsill and leaned his head out.

“Shite,” he muttered, his gaze shifting restlessly. “He’s getting away.”

He tried to leverage himself out the window, but when he lifted his sword arm, he winced and cursed in pain. His sword clattered to the stone floor next to the bed where Isolda sprawled.

She struggled to sit upright, but pain and fear left her weak. Her gaze locked on the two daggers bristling from his right arm and chest. Blood soaked his tunic and splattered his face. He looked like a monster—a monster who’d just saved her.

A sob tore from her raw throat. The sound must have broken through his embattled mind, for suddenly he moved toward her.

“Isolda,” he ground out, his jaw clenched in obvious pain. “It is all right now. Ye are safe.”