Thief (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

“Sorcha!” Though winded from the impact of Elfwyn’s charge, Caden scrambled to his feet and half ran, half stumbled to where Sorcha lay still as death. Sure, their entire journey had not been as long as that distance, but as Caden gathered Sorcha in his arms, she groaned, and her eyelids fluttered as though she wasn’t certain she wanted to come back to the present just yet.

“You crazy, fire-headed—” A blade stopped the emotion breaking in his throat. That, and a group of men breaking from the trees.

“Easy, laddie. They’re ours,” Caden’s old friend assured him. “So that’s the lady of Trebold we’ve been hearing about.” Egan O’Toole knelt on Sorcha’s other side and began to check her limbs for broken bones.

Caden tried to unscramble his feelings from his thoughts. Was he hallucinating? What took men from Glenarden to Trebold?

“Not much of a horsewoman, is she, laddie?” Egan observed dryly.

When Sorcha went flying over the mare’s neck, Caden had been certain she’d break her own. And that knocked more out of him than ten charging steeds.

“Nay,” he replied, “but she sings like a lark and can lift a man’s purse and make him thankful for it.”

“Does she now?” The warrior snorted in amusement. “I’m thinkin’ she’s more stunned than hurt. Scoop ’er up, laddie, and let’s take her to her mathair. Them Saxons ain’t comin’ this side o’ the water tonight.”

Still dazed himself, Caden looked to where the men of Glenarden formed a solid shieldwall at the ford. In the river mist a few shadowy soldiers summoned by the fracas milled about as if to see what had transpired but made no more attempts to cross.

The last Caden had heard, Glenarden was guarding the Pictish border of Manau for Arthur.

“When?” Caden asked in disbelief. “How?”

“Best ask your brother that.” Egan nodded to where a tall, lean warrior and a woman, the Lady Myrna, emerged from the tavern door and hurried toward them along with a servant carrying a lighted torch.

His
brother?
Caden recoiled as if Elfwyn had had at him again. He eased Sorcha back to the ground, casting a glance in the direction of the sword the horse had knocked out of his hand. A tide of bitter memories crashed on his shoulders as he slowly, warily struggled upright against it.

It was his eldest brother. His sworn enemy. There was no mistaking that long, purposeful stride or the grim, humorless features of his face. No warmth. The only warmth Ronan had ever shown was for his strange healer wife.

“Sorcha!” Myrna cried out upon seeing her daughter lying on the ground. The woman rushed to Sorcha’s side and, kneeling, gathered her up in her arms.

“She’s a bit stunned, milady, nothin’ broke, I think,” Egan assured her. “Why don’t you stand back and let me take her inside for you. I’m thinkin’ these lads need to talk.”

Finally Caden found his voice. “Ronan. You’re the last person I expected to see here.”

Ronan nailed Caden with his dark gaze. “You always liked a grand entrance, Brother. I see that hasn’t changed.” He glanced to where Sorcha began to stir as Egan picked her up. A smile cracked the hard veneer of his expression. “It appears you’ve met your match.”

Caden stared at the hand Ronan extended him, still not trusting his senses. “Why?” he asked. “You swore you’d never forgive me. God might, but you would not.”

“I haven’t yet,” Ronan replied candidly, “but I am willing to try.”

“Try?” Caden repeated. Even
that
was something, considering he’d led Saxon renegades against his brother in a shameful night attack with the full intent of killing anyone who stood in the way of Caden’s seizing Glenarden for himself. Father Martin said he was possessed due to Rhianon’s witchery, but Caden had yet to forgive himself for being such a willing pawn in her manipulative hands.

He couldn’t bring himself to that any more than he could move from the spot as Egan scooped Sorcha into his arms as if she were a small child.

“Let’s get this plucky lassie inside,” Egan told Myrna. “Lead the way, milady.”

Ronan sidestepped the big Irishman. “Brenna told me I had to come here,” he explained to Caden. “I had to leave her and our new daughter because she dreamed that you were in trouble, and it was what God would want one brother to do for another.”

“And you came, simple as that?” Caden still wondered if Brenna was some sort of witch, although she did naught but good for even the most insignificant.

Love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.
Truth was, she lived that old proverb of Father Martin’s. Brenna was the first to say she’d forgiven Caden. But he’d not trusted her or her God at the time.

Ronan glanced across the river, where the Saxon fires burned. “It’s the first such dream like this she’s had since you betrayed us.”

Caden winced inwardly. The remark cut deep into wounds that had never healed. Yet, in spite of his guilt, hope sprang from Ronan’s presence and dashed about in Caden’s mind as if to stomp out the sparks of his doubt and distrust.

Abba.

“And you came,” Caden marveled again. Was it possible to truly leave the past behind?

“You and I will go our separate ways, Brother, but I will have to live with Brenna.” His brother’s grin suggested it was a fate he would enjoy.

Brenna had changed him … and for the better. And if Ronan could change—

Ronan reached down and picked up Caden’s discarded sword, handing it to him. “What say you we go inside where it’s warm, and you can tell me what you’ve done that has set so sore with this Saxon Tunwulf.”

Once the Saxons retreated to their side of the river, the captain of the O’Byrne warriors had his men deliver the staggering, brain-dazed dog and the bodies of the men Caden and Elfwyn had slain with a warning that any other Saxon who crossed the Lader would be sent to the Other World with their compliments. With Glenarden’s guards doubled and patrolling the riverfront in case Tunwulf decided on an ill-advised attack during the night, the rest of the men returned to the hospitality of Trebold’s tavern.

Once he was certain Sorcha had regained her wits, if she had any left after that mad ride on Elfwyn, Caden left mother and daughter to their reunion in the very room where Myrna had nursed him back to his feet and joined the men downstairs.

His belly full and warmed by mead within and the fire without, he listened in awe as he heard how Alyn, on his way back to the university, had told them about Caden’s recovery and new mission so Ronan knew straightaway where to find him, even if Brenna hadn’t seen that part in her dream. She’d only known in her soul that Caden’s life and lives of others were at risk and that Ronan needed to offer Glenarden’s aid as a brother and a Christian chief.

It had been a four-day march from Glenarden to Din Edyn and down the Roman road to the south end of the Lader. When the O’Byrnes arrived, nothing seemed amiss. Myrna was pleasantly surprised to meet Caden’s brother and had nothing but praises for the warrior who not only saved Arthur in battle but had gone to fetch her long-lost daughter. Ronan had begun to think Brenna’s imagination had run wild with her, what with her just having delivered a beautiful baby daughter with her mother’s raven hair and lochan blue eyes.

But that afternoon, a party of a dozen Saxons arrived at the crossing on the other side of the Lader, bearing a wolf banner similar to Glenarden’s. Except Glenarden’s banner had been designed by Brenna in reverse colors, black with a white wolf in memory of her beloved pet. Tunwulf of Elford and two of his men crossed to speak to Ronan and Egan, their shields turned upside down as a sign of peace, and demanded that Caden of Lothian and Sorcha of Din Guardi be turned over to them for the murder of his father and the bretwalda’s friend, Thane Cynric of Elford.

When it was clear that Caden and Sorcha were not there, the Saxons agreed to wait on the other side of the river, encouraged by the presence of Glenarden’s seasoned warband. There the Saxon numbers increased by the day as more of Tunwulf’s band joined him until it matched the size of Glenarden’s.

Caden counted backward the five days of their journey since the escape—three at Owain’s and two from Hahlton to Trebold. If Tunwulf’s vengeful press had cut his journey to even two sun cycles and he’d arrived on the same day as Ronan, then Brenna had known they were in trouble at least two days before even they’d known. More, for it would have taken Ronan time to gather his levy of men and prepare for the journey.

Abba’s name echoed again as it had throughout the exchange between him and Ronan; if anything was a miracle, this was. And when Caden recounted his and Sorcha’s imprisonment and how Tunwulf and Rhianon had made them out to be the murderers, he found himself giving Abba more and more praise and thanksgiving.

“’Twas all Abba’s doing,” he declared, wonderstruck. “All of it.”

Ronan’s dark brow hiked. “So you’ve found God.”

Caden laughed at his brother’s shock. “Aye, He was on the beach the morning I thought I’d seen a ghost.”

“Rhianon,” Ronan said.

“Aye, Rhianon.” Color climbed warm to his face. But Caden had admitted too much to stop speaking now. “I feared she still had some power over me,” he began. Emotion welled in his throat, but he cleared it with a cough and proceeded to tell Ronan about that morning, when Caden had found the only Father he needed.

Ronan listened, expressionless. Caden didn’t blame his reluctance to accept what even he still wrestled with. He wasn’t like Sorcha, who embraced the Christian God in an almost childlike fashion because she thought she’d seen a miracle. She liked what she’d heard about Him and was most intrigued with angels. But when she faced her first disappointment, Caden feared her faith would shatter, as his had years ago.

Yet he wanted to believe unconditionally. He truly did. And in spite of the problems they’d encountered, here they were, safe and sound for the moment. But how much was due to their spirit and resourcefulness and how much to God?

“Who created you with that spirit and resourcefulness?”

“What I want to know is how the witch survived that fall.” Egan O’Toole spoke up. “Half of us here saw her go over the falls.” The men about them nodded, equally intrigued.

Caden explained how Tunwulf had found her wandering out of her mind in the woods when he saw Ronan’s gaze sharpen. “Do you mean to say that this Tunwulf is one of the Saxons who attacked us?”

Shame blindsided Caden. “Aye.” His past would never be forgotten or forgiven by Ronan or anyone else who knew. He could see it darken the expressions of some of the men who’d survived that night attack.

“Are you sure the witch is dead this time?” Egan asked. He made the sign of the cross.

“Fell on her own knife,” Caden assured him. “Sorcha knocked her down with a harp.”

“A harp!” Egan guffawed. “Now that’s a fight I wish I’d seen.”

“She tried to kill me.”

Everyone turned to the staircase, where Sorcha descended in the dark russet gown with black chevron trim that she’d worn during the royal wedding. Her hair had been brushed into a shining cloak over her shoulders, catching the light from the becketed torchlights on the support beams and spinning it into silken fire. Caden’s mouth slackened. Not even the bruise on her cheek could detract from the beauty that captivated the eyes and tongues of every man in the room.

“I did what I had to do,” she added simply, upon reaching the bottom of the steps.

“Gentlemen …” Lady Myrna put her arm around her daughter. Myrna had always been a handsome woman, but the pure joy on her face lent her a radiance and youth that almost rivaled Sorcha’s. “I would present my daughter, Lady Sorcha of Trebold, home at last, thanks to Caden of Lothian.” Her voice broke as she looked at Caden. “You, sir, have given me a new life worth living.”

Love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dungeon of self.
The words haunted Caden’s mind as his smile did his face.

Ronan stood as the women approached, reminding Caden of his manners. It was just that Sorcha was so breathtaking, she’d robbed him of his wits.

And his heart.

Caden stiffened in rebellion against that thought. There was no way, no possibility—

“Ronan of Glenarden, at your service, milady,” his sibling replied, taking Sorcha’s hand to his lips with the gallantry their mother had instilled in her sons as princes of Glenarden. “Welcome home.”