Page 129 of Come the Morning

Four of them. One wielded a mace, two carried axes …

Daro wielded a blade.

And he was naked as a newborn. His sword was ten feet away, his wife …

Clutching the surcoat to her breasts, she stood staring, frozen and transfixed.

Stunned?

He could not help the suspicion that crawled into his mind.Was she so surprised? She had just told him that she had written to Daro, telling him they would meet with him, warning that his name was being cast about …

But why tell him?

Why not?

Just as Peter of Tyne took extreme care with the way he surrendered to the Scottish king, maybe she watched her every step with him. Maybe she pretended not to be involved in any moves against him, because if he won the battle, she would be lost …

“At last, Waryk!” one of the men spat out. “The king’s great champion, the boy murderer! Well, here we meet at last. And look, sir, there you are, milord, naked as a fish, without so much as a sword. How cowardly! We should give you a weapon, a fighting chance. But I think not! You may die like a dog, sir, cowering down in the dirt!”

The first man strode toward him, ax swinging. As he came Waryk dived in a roll forward, leaping to his feet across the copse again.

“Waryk!”

She was beside him suddenly, thrusting his sword into his hand. His father’s claymore. Double-handed, he started forward, swinging at his enemies.

“Get behind me, Mellyora.”

“Waryk, I can—”

“You can’t fight without a weapon!”

One of the men with the axes took a swing. Waryk sidestepped and brought his claymore crashing down. The sound of crunching flesh and bone was terrible, but the second man let out a sound like a berserker, rushing forward.

He took longer to kill. Waryk lunged and retreated, lunged and retreated—spun around when he felt the man with the mace behind him. He was a fool. Threatening with his swing and harsh taunts, he forgot to watch for his own vulnerability. Waryk stepped swiftly forward, swinging. He sliced the man across his midsection, deeply enough to kill with the single motion. Yet he barely turned back to his other opponent quickly enough. He missed the man’s ax blow by a hair; in fact, he felt shaven down the arm, the blow came so close. Yet he reacted quickly, bringing his sword up to catch the man from groin to throat, knowing full well that if he didn’t kill then, and kill quick, the man’s next move would crush in his skull.

But the man lay dead. Waryk spun quickly, expecting the fourth man to rush him. But he did not.

He spun again.

No one rushed him. The fourth man was gone. Along with Waryk’s wife.

Daro. Daro was gone …

And he had taken his niece with him.

She had gone for the ax. That had been her mistake.

Bending to retrieve the weapon, she had found herself scooped up from around the middle. She had screamed in pure surprise as well as panic, but Waryk hadn’t heard her, because two men had been trying to kill him at that moment.

Her fingers had reached out ….

And missed the ax. And she had been grappled, and dragged, and thrown over a man’s shoulders, and taken swiftly atop a horse. She was tangled in her husband’s surcoat, and she couldn’t fight her assailant because he was clad in plates and mail. She wouldn’t release her husband’s surcoat; it was the only cover she had. Her only relief was in seeing that one man fell, and Waryk was swinging at the other as they disappeared from view.

They rode hard. Very hard, and very long. The night seemed unending. The wind grew colder. They came at last to a copse, near to the sea, and she realized they had come closer to Blue Isle. She was, in fact, now far closer to her home than to Waryk’s camp.

The horse came to a halt, and she was dragged back over the man’s shoulder. Because of his mail and plate, her flesh was scratched and bruised. He slid her to the ground, nearly dropping her, before dismounting from his horse. She clutched Waryk’s surcoat with its flying-falcon emblem to her and backed warily away from her captor.

He wore Daro’s helmet, Daro’s emblem.