Page 68 of Come the Morning

“A few scratches, nothing more. Yet there are many dead men down by the loch,” Waryk said.

She felt dizzy, uncertain, afraid. She didn’t know who the men were. She was truly relieved that Daro and Waryk weren’t killing one another, and she didn’t want her answers to cause an argument to break out.

“Dead men,” she whispered.

“Aye, who are they? Who brought you here?” Waryk demanded. “How did they get you here? Willingly?”

Her lips were trembling. “The man—the man I thought to be coming after me again—said that he came for me at my uncle’s command. He and his men were to slip me away while the twoof you engaged in negotiations. But when I didn’t see a guard, I knew something was wrong. He said—”

“He—one man spoke to you all the time?” Waryk demanded sharply.

She nodded her head, looking at her uncle. “Aye, one man. I’d not seen him before, and I—I wouldn’t know him now. He wore a helmet. I’d know his voice—or his eyes.”

“Traitors amongst my men!” Daro swore. “Living among my people.”

Waryk was watching him, and Mellyora wondered if the king’s man believed her uncle, or if he thought that this had been a trick played on him by the Vikings.

She inhaled on a sudden gasp, staring at Waryk. “He—wanted vengeance againstyou,”she said. She felt a strange, hot tremor snake down her spine as she looked at him in the moonlight. Towering in height, spattered with the blood of his opponent, his eyes hard and bright upon hers, he seemed as indomitable as the rock around them. She tore her eyes from his and looked at her uncle. “I fought with him. And I cut him, and he said that Laird Lion wouldn’t have his prize, that he would … that he would torment me until nothing was left of me. He wanted the two of you to go to battle and cut one another down.”

“After you fought …?” Waryk asked.

She looked at the blood covering them both. “I eluded him. I thought that he’d found me again … You fought men by the loch—”

“Aye, but we’ve more horses left than men dead,” Daro said.

“Some have escaped, on foot. Someone knows the truth of what has happened here,” Waryk said.

“In these rocks, we could search forever,” Daro said.

“Let’s get down the cliffs, back to Daro’s camp,” Waryk suggested.

She felt cold, and still afraid in a way that she hadn’t before. “What of the other men?” she whispered.

“They are gone by now, Mellyora. We’d have found them, between the two of us and Angus if they were not,” Waryk said.

She was still unnerved. “So they are free somewhere. But who were they? They had to have known your camp well—”

“Aye,” Daro interrupted angrily, “bands of warriors sometimes come and go from loose alliances such as the Vikings who fight with me, but I’ve never known of such a treachery. I don’t know any of the men we killed, though they certainly may have been at the camp. I’ll send men to retrieve the bodies. Perhaps someone will know more about them.”

Mellyora was still shaking. She was afraid to look at Waryk, though she felt his eyes, watching her, studying her, probing her soul. Determining that she and Daro were both liars?

She realized then that she’d been rescued by the man she’d been trying to escape. She’d also tried to stab him, and must surely have come close to his jugular. She had tried to beat him away with an oar, and she’d drawn his own claymore against him. Not that much else she’d done since they’d met could be construed as nonviolent.

He’d formed a friendship with her uncle, and she was glad that they hadn’t gone to battle, that they hadn’t killed one another, or that her uncle hadn’t died for her honor.

But she was very afraid that Daro had agreed to trade her for some boon from the king. He wouldn’t do so! she told herself passionately.

But her uncle and Waryk had ridden together after her.

“Fine, let’s go down,” she said nervously. She turned away from the men and started to descend, hurrying with greater speed as the downward trail brought her closer and closer to the level ground below.

She was fast, but Waryk moved with equal speed. He didn’t speak, and she didn’t intend to, but finally, as they neared the ground and the loch, she could bear it no longer. “Have you traded Anne for me?” she queried bitterly.

“Hardly an even trade,” he murmured.

“She hasn’t vast lands.”

“She hasn’t a knife for a tongue,” he returned sharply.