Page 67 of Come the Morning

“Soon. You’ve not actually answered my question. If you’d known it was I, would the greeting have been different?”

She didn’t know how to tell him that yes, there would have been a tremendous difference. She wanted to live her own life, but she knew that he was a powerful, compelling man, the king’s man, and he wouldn’t hurt her unless forced to do so, while with the other man …

She had felt something that was mean, frightening. Evil.

“Aye, it would have been different,” she said wearily. “I never tried to kill you.”

“No? Not even when you struck me with the oar?”

“I’ve been fighting for my own life. I don’t wish death on anyone.”

“Really. What an enlightening thing to learn about you. But when you left Stirling with Daro, didn’t you imagine the two of us engaged in mortal combat, swords clashing, cries of vengeance on our lips?”

“Nay, I did not!” she swore.

His sniff in the darkness was insulting, but she had no chance to tell him so because she heard movement from behind him.

“Waryk …” she warned in a whisper.

He was instantly up. He didn’t seek to help her to rise because he had moved forward to use his body as a shield for hers. Sheleapt to her own feet, not knowing who came now, but aware that there had been enough of the enemy for her to want to take care for her own life. Inching backwards toward the wall, she found her sword. Just as her fingers closed around it, the first man burst into the cave, a deadly battle-ax swinging. She was amazed to see Waryk’s deftness as he ducked the swinging death, swinging his sword around to catch the man in his midsection while his own impetus with the ax brought him inexorably upon the deadly sword, where he was impaled.

Two men followed the first, and as Waryk withdrew his heavy weapon from the dead man, she surged forward, meeting a sword thrust meant for Waryk’s throat.

“Get out of here!” Waryk bellowed to her.

“‘Thank you, m’lady,’ might have been appropriate!” she cried in return, but the man she fought was lifting his broadsword and striding toward her, forcing her backwards. She would soon be pinned to the wall …

A blow to the fellow’s back turned him, and Waryk was fighting both men, his sword clanging again and again as he met every thrust of steel. The enemy were not fools; they braced to strike together, and despite his strength, Waryk’s sword was tossed into the air by the strength of the blows. Mellyora stepped quickly forward crying out to him, “Here, Waryk, my blade …”

He caught her sword midair and turned, taking the unwary attacker on his left midsection and ripping him to his throat. He spun again, and his second attacker was split through the center. Both men had fallen.

“By God, damn you!” he swore, unreasoningly, Mellyora thought, to the dead men. She was shaking; the carnage was horrible. But she hadn’t wanted to die herself. She had done nothing to them, and they had meant to torture and kill her.

“Why—” she began, but she suddenly heard her uncle’s voice from beyond the cavern’s entrance.

“Waryk?”

He was silent for a moment. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt him staring at her, as if he could see her.

“Here, Daro, I’ve found her!”

“Alone?”

“Aye, she’s alone now!” He reached out to Mellyora. She was shaking so badly that she couldn’t have taken his hand if she’d been able to see it. He caught her hand, and drew her to him, and she was still trembling so wildly that she had to lean against him.

Impatient, he swept her up into his arms, striding the distance to the cavern entrance.

“You’re shaking now—when you stepped by me to attack those men?”

“Aye, well, at the time, it seemed expedient to do so!”

Moonlight touched the entrance, and she saw that her uncle and Waryk were both covered in blood.

“Daro!” she gasped, afraid that he might have suffered some mortal wound. Waryk let her down, and she rushed to her uncle. He set his arms around her.

“You’re injured!” she said.

“A few scratches,” Daro assured her.