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“Aye.” His eyes were ablaze, a deep green, the color of the ocean. “I love ye.”
Amber’s vision blurred, her eyes burning. “You idiot. Couldn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Ye didna ken?”
“Of course not. I was afraid you were just using me for sex. That I was a conquest. That you were pretending to care about me.”
“Can ye please kiss me? I’m having a little trouble moving.”
“I can’t move, or you’ll start bleeding again.”
She stared in his eyes, so handsome and so dear. The dearest set of eyes in the whole world.
“I love ye more than life itself,” Owen rasped. “I need ye, lass, more than my next breath. Staying away from ye all this time was like pulling teeth. I hated it. But I needed to keep my head cool for this to work.” He gestured to the battle with a nod of his head.
Amber shook her head, tears of happiness springing free. “And it worked. Look. The MacDougalls are running in all directions.”
Owen looked around and frowned when his eyes fixed on something. “Is that Ian and John MacDougall?”
Owen held his breath, watching as his giant red-haired cousin grappled with the treacherous MacDougall fifty feet or so away from them. Ian was huge, the tallest of all Cambels, but MacDougall was no small man, either.
The MacDougall was in iron armor, while Ian, like many Highlanders, wore only a leine croich, and a chain mail coif around his head, neck, and shoulders.
The two exchanged blows, the MacDougall coming at Ian with heavy downward strikes like a blacksmith. Backing up, Ian took shelter from the storm of iron under his sword. His bone marrow must have been reverberating from the impact of those strikes.
“Come on, brother,” Owen muttered.
He wasn’t his brother, of course not, but it felt like Ian was. And this was the chance for Ian to get his revenge for what the MacDougalls had done to him. Owen had sworn he’d avenge Amber, and it felt right having just done so. He wished that for Ian, too.
One of MacDougall’s arms was obviously weaker than the other, and Owen remembered how he’d looked wounded in Stirling. MacDougall lowered his sword for a moment, and Ian used that pause to thrust his claymore into the man’s shoulder, but MacDougall deflected it. Ian struck again from the side, but MacDougall deflected that, too.
Ian was getting angry now. Owen had seen his cousin fight in the battle at MacFilib farm, and he could be an animal. A lethal predator. He turned like that now. He roared like a bear that had been poked too many times. He grabbed MacDougall by his breastplate and yanked him forward.
MacDougall’s helm fell from the motion, and Ian slammed his fist into the man’s jaw, and John fell. Ian grabbed an ax that lay nearby, and with a giant swing of his arm, he brought the ax down on the MacDougall’s arm at the elbow, between two mail plates.
MacDougall’s resounding scream made many men turn their heads in horror, and the remaining MacDougalls quickly scattered. Only a few ran towards Ian, ready to fight for their laird who clutched the stump of his arm.
Ian raised the ax for the final blow when one of the MacDougalls threw a hand in the air in surrender.
“Please! Please. Mercy.”
Ian stilled and watched the man in confusion. Then his expression flattened, and he let the ax fall. He looked at the MacDougall again. “Take him. Flee like the shite flies ye are.”
The men grabbed John MacDougall under his arms just as Robert the Bruce came to stand next to Ian. The men tried to hurry, but it was impossible carrying an almost limp MacDougall.
“Wait,” the king said.
They turned, and MacDougall opened his eyes.
“’Tis over for ye, John, ye ken?” the Bruce said. “I am the king of Scots.”
MacDougall managed an expression of disgust. “Ye reign will never be just, the blood of thousands of yer countrymen is on yer hands.” He spat bloody saliva at the Bruce’s feet. “Ye murdered my kin.”
“Yer whole family are treacherous bastarts. John Comyn was, and ye are, too. Now leave. Either ye die from blood loss, or ye live the rest of yer life a powerless cripple, always licking English arse and begging for protection. Both outcomes will be punishment enough for ye. Either way, I will give yer lands to yer worst enemies, the Cambels. Ye and yer clan are done.”
John’s lips pressed in a thin line, and his beard trembled in silent rage. The Bruce gestured with his head for them to leave and the men who supported the MacDougall hurried off with him.
Owen was sure they’d head towards the birlinns he’d seen earlier on the river.
