Haunting Warrior (40 page)

Her tears were not like Mauri’s, not full of sound and anger, not meant for the display of her pain or fear. These were the hot, cloistered tears from a well of hurt that went long and deep. He held her in his arms and buffeted the storm of her release.

His shoulder was wet, his thighs aching from the grip he maintained to keep them both balanced and astride, but he would have held her forever if she’d needed it.

After a while she lifted her face and tried to pull away.

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t,” he whispered. And then he kissed her trembling lips, tasting the salt of her tears, the bitter hurt, the warmth of her trust. He wanted more—wanted to be off the horse and somewhere alone with her, where he could kiss away every pain she’d ever had, every injustice ever done to her. But there was no way to stop the world and do it.

He pulled back, looked into her eyes, and tried to say it all without a word. She gazed back with something like wonder.

“Y’ are not what I expected y’ would be,” she said softly.

A slow smile spread across his face and he pressed his forehead to hers.

“Why is that funny?” she asked.

“Because you, beautiful Saraid of the Favored Lands,
you
are even more than I expected.”

S
ARAID found herself falling into the blue of those eyes, drowning in the tenderness of his acceptance. She was more than he’d expected? in Did that mean she pleased him? And why did that make her feel like smiling? Like throwing her head back and laughing with joy. They were still in danger. Still being hunted. Still had to face the destiny Leary and his followers were sure awaited them.

Yet the future felt less daunting now. It might even be promise she saw shimmering on the horizon.

“In fact,” Ruairi said, his voice deep and soft. The heated rumble danced over her skin. “You’re better than the dreams.”

The words, the tone, it made her want to arch her back like a cat, stroked in just the right way. How had he taken her from tears to awareness with just a blink of those incredible eyes?

Slowly he withdrew, settling more evenly into his saddle. He must have been on the edge of falling the entire time she’d cried on his shoulder. Yet he hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word. He’d only consoled her, captured her falling anguish and tossed it behind them both. Now, in this dark hour when their lives hung in the balance, when everything she knew and loved could at any minute be taken away, she felt suddenly lighter, more hopeful than she’d ever thought possible.

He handed her the reins to her horse, which she’d let fall against the animal’s neck, confident that Ruairi would, in that mystifying way of his, guide them both.

“We’ll get through this, princess,” he said.

“I believe y’,” she murmured, trying not to think of the one question that still loomed in her mind.

“But?” he asked, hearing it anyway.

She said none of it though and with a deep sigh, he accepted her silence, too.

Who was this Ruairi she’d wed? The man she rode beside was as much an unknown as the Book of Fennore itself. At times it seemed a little boy lurked behind his startling blue eyes, a vulnerable child lost and alone. She’d married him, expecting him to be nothing more than the monster he was reputed to be. Something feral. Perhaps tamable, perhaps not. But certainly she’d never anticipated a man with depth, with shifting emotions—with any emotion, for that matter. A man of compassion and selflessness.

That he was a man who could accept her failings and still look at her the way he did . . . like she was a woman worth fighting for . . . like she was a woman he desired more than air and water and life itself . . . it was inconceivable.

She’d trusted him with her secrets. Trusted him with her deepest shame, her deepest anguish. And she did not regret it.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He gently patted the puppy who’d snuggled down next to his heat, feeling safe, as Saraid did, in his protection. As she watched, the animal moved and then suddenly it squirmed its way up and popped its head from the neckline of Ruairi’s tunic. It looked so adorable, that she almost laughed, but something in Ruairi’s expression stopped her. The pup gave a low warning growl.

Ruairi glanced up, flicked his gaze past her to Tiarnan and Liam riding in front. He swung on his saddle and looked back where Michael rode with the three strange men who’d come to their camp last night, trailed by the other men who’d followed.

“What is wrong?” Saraid asked.

Nervously, Ruairi shifted and looked out into the still woods that bordered them on both sides. “Where is your brother?” he said. “Eamonn?”

“He and Mauri are behind us.” She turned, searching for her brother but unable to spot him. “They may have dropped back to check that we’re not being followed.”

“Yeah, well, we are.”

Ruairi absently smoothed the fur on the still growling puppy that had now wiggled out of his tunic and was held in one of Ruairi’s big hands. She knew the touch was gentle, but the pup still growled menacingly.

“What do y’ mean? They’ve found us? Who—”

He shook his head, his lip caught between his teeth as he scanned the shadowed forest. “I don’t know who, Saraid. I only know they’re close enough to scent. My money’s on Cathán though, and I wager he’s coming fast.”

Understanding went through her.
The puppy.
Ruairi knew because the dog had sensed danger.

“Go up, tell Tiarnan. They’ve picked up our trail.”

The sound of pounding hooves halted whatever else Ruairi might have said. Startled, Saraid looked over her shoulder to see Michael pushing his horse into a gallop.

“They’ve found us,” he said. “Hurry.”

They urged their horses forward and followed as Michael spoke to Tiarnan in a low voice, using his hands to illustrate. Saraid watched, noting the anger she saw on Tiarnan’s face, the fear in Liam’s eyes. Tiarnan glared at Ruairi as they stopped beside her brothers.

Michael said, “Some of Leary’s men scouted out to make sure we were safe. They spotted Cathán’s men less than an hour behind us.”

“How did they find us?” Tiarnan asked tightly. “The Bloodletter hasn’t been out of our sight. He couldn’t have told them.”

“Where’s Eamonn?” Ruairi asked.

Tiarnan narrowed his eyes at him. “He was bringing up the end of the line.”

“So he knows we’re being followed?”

Michael shook his head. “No. Leary’s men didn’t see him when they came to report.”

Tiarnan cursed under his breath.

“When was the last time you saw either Eamonn or Mauri?” Ruairi pushed.

Saraid’s brothers looked from one to another. The last time she’d seen Eamonn, he’d been leading Mauri to the back of the ranks. That had been hours ago.

“Y’ think they’ve been captured?” Saraid breathed.

Ruairi didn’t meet her eyes. Still watching Tiarnan, he said, “No. That’s not what I think.”

The silence that fell between them was ominous and filled with something ugly, something Saraid didn’t want to see.

Tiarnan said, “I don’t know what yer implying, Bloodletter, but if Eamonn is missing, it’s because of Cathán Half-Beard.” He turned and jabbed an angry finger at Liam. “Y’ fell asleep on watch last night, didn’t y’? And the Bloodletter got a message to Cathán while y’ slept.”

Liam looked like he’d swallowed a knife. He shook his head quickly. “No.”

“Quit bullying the kid,” Ruairi said. “I didn’t go anywhere last night. It wasn’t me.”

“No?” Tiarnan snapped. “Then who the fook was it? The fooking dog?”

Ruairi didn’t answer, but they all knew what he was thinking. It was there on his face, in the tight set of his shoulders, in what he
didn’t
say. He was thinking of Eamonn, the only one who wasn’t there to defend himself. She shook her head with disbelief. Eamonn would never betray his own. He wouldn’t have put his family in danger. Yet . . . she remembered how angry he’d been at Tiarnan . . . how he’d questioned every order . . . the way he’d looked at his older brother . . . she hadn’t wanted to admit it, but now how could she pretend there hadn’t been hatred in his eyes. . . .

Tiarnan launched himself from his saddle at Ruairi, and both men went flying to the ground. They hit with a thud that Saraid felt to her soul. Ruairi groaned as all the breath was crushed from him, but he rolled and came up swinging just as viciously as Tiarnan.

“No!” Saraid cried. “Stop it, both of y’, stop it!”

In seconds Michael was there beside them, trying to pull the two apart as Liam did the same. Praying that Ruairi was wrong about Eamonn, that the two men locked in battle would not kill each other, Saraid jumped from her saddle. She couldn’t get near either one of them, though, without risking a blow that one man meant for the other. Finally Michael managed to haul Tiarnan off Ruairi, while Liam did his best to keep Ruairi from following.

“Ruairi,” she said, grabbing his arm and shaking it. At last he looked at her.

His face was bleeding and his shoulder wound had opened again. It would infect if it couldn’t heal, and from his deathly pallor, Saraid feared it was already festering.

“My brother would not betray us,” Tiarnan said, his voice hard. “And I will not hear otherwise.”

Tiarnan’s face was battered, too. Even injured, Ruairi had given as much as he’d taken. Tiarnan spat blood into the dirt and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Fine,” Ruairi said. “Don’t hear it. But it’s true.”

“How do y’ know, Ruairi?” Saraid whispered.

He looked at her with regretful eyes before answering and she knew that he didn’t want to tell her. At last, he said, “You remember how we found Liam in the Druid circle?”

She nodded, picturing how he’d soared through the forest, surveyed it all from the eyes of a bird.

“I see them,” he said now.

“See them?” Tiarnan shouted. “Well fookin’ point them out because I see nothing,”

“And that’s been your problem all along, hasn’t it?” Ruairi said, shrugging Saraid off and stepping up to Tiarnan. “You can’t see beyond what you want to see, can you? Well if that’s the way you want to live, go for it. But I don’t follow the blind.”

He turned his back on Tiarnan and took Saraid’s shoulders between his hands. “I saw him, Saraid. I swear it. He and Mauri are with my dad, right now. And they’re coming for us.”

“How many?” Michael wanted to know.

“More than a hundred. Maybe two.”

Tiarnan just stared at them with blank, shocked eyes. Saraid felt the pain he could not, would not show. He had loved Mauri since he was a young man, had thought her out of his reach, and yet some part of him had always believed that someday she might be his. And when Cathán had proposed this match, she knew he’d hoped that the union of the two families might lead, somehow, to making Mauri his wife. To have that slip through his fingers, to think that his own brother might have brought the destruction of his dreams down upon him . . . it was more than any man could handle.

“If Ruairi says Eamonn is with Cathán, then it is so,” she said softly. “But perhaps he’s a prisoner, Tiarnan. Perhaps he went to make peace, to deliver Mauri to her father and deflect his wrath. However it is, we must act. We must trust that Ruairi has seen what he says.”

The words hurt, but they were the truth. She knew how Ruairi could travel, and as much as it wounded her to consider it, she feared he was right about Eamonn. Now little things she’d dismissed before rose in her mind. Eamonn alone had stood beside Tiarnan when he’d announced the match between Saraid and Ruairi. He’d encouraged it vehemently when everyone else had been against it. Had he known what Cathán had planned? If Stephen had succeeded in killing Ruairi on her wedding night, then her brothers would have been slain as well. But if Eamonn had been in league with Cathán, then he alone would have been left alive. . . . she stopped herself, unable to even consider that Eamonn could have planned so far, so deviously.

“They’ve got over a hundred men,” Michael was saying, interrupting the twisted road of her thoughts. “We’ve got forty, maybe fifty.”

Ruairi cupped Saraid’s cheek with his big hand. “I’m sorry, princess.”

She nodded, but she couldn’t speak. The pain went too deep to comprehend. If Ruairi was right, then her brother, her beloved brother, had led them to destruction.

Ruairi looked back at Tiarnan. “They’re coming in two groups from either side.”

“Are they coming for y’, Bloodletter?” Tiarnan asked.

“No,” Saraid answered. “They come for me.”

The truth of that seemed to settle on each of their shoulders. If the tale Leary and his two companions had told was true, there could be no doubt that Cathán thought Saraid would take him to the Book her mother had stolen from him.

Ruairi stepped closer to her, shielding her with his body. Telling her without words that Cathán would have to go through him first. She saw the message reach each of her brothers at the same time.

“I don’t trust y’, Bloodletter,” Tiarnan said, moving up so that he stood chest to chest with Ruairi. “And I certainly don’t trust y’ to protect my sister. I’d sooner sleep with a blade at my throat.”

“Y’ forget, Tiarnan,” Saraid said, wedging herself between the two men. “I am his wife now. Wedded and bedded. It is not up to y’ to trust him. It is up to me, and I do.”

Behind her she heard the soft gasp of shock that slipped from Ruairi’s lips. Then his hands were on her shoulders, his body burning down the length of her back. A dark red stain traveled up Tiarnan’s face at her words, but whether it was shame or rage, Saraid didn’t know.

“Y’ expect me to take his word because of that and believe my own flesh and blood would betray me? I’d rather cut his throat now and be done with any questions.”