“Mam? Mam!”
She hollered the name as she ran. In truth, her hut was not far, but sudden danger lay everywhere. Men with swords, with torches.
They would burn the settlement to the ground.
Weaving between huts, nearly colliding with fleeing neighbors, she strove for home. She must reach there before the enemy did.
Someone careened into her, knocking her to her knees. It was a woman.
Ardahl’s mother.
“Here.” Like something out of a dream, Maeve loomed over her, holding a sword. She helped Liadan to her feet and thrust the weapon into her hands. “Take it!”
Instinctively, Liadan did. For years she had handled Conall’s weapons, though she’d certainly never trained with them.
Any weapon was better than none.
A man rushed at them, screaming. One of the strangers.
“Get behind me!”
She did not wait to see if Maeve obeyed. She swung clumsily at the stranger, who, taken aback by the sight of a woman with a great sword, failed to react in time. The blade took him in the side of the neck. A vulnerable place, as Liadan had heard Conall say many a time.
The man stumbled to his knees. There was blood. So much blood.
“Run!” she told Ardahl’s mother. She did not see the woman stoop and take up the fallen man’s sword.
Lightning flashed as they went, and thunder shook the ground. People ran everywhere, pursued by the attackers. Liadan saw two women cut down, one with a babe in her arms.
Maeve ran and snatched up the child in the face of the attacker. Waved a sword at his chin.
He veered away.
Liadan’s hut sat only steps off. She had to fight her way to it. When an attacker bore down on her—an ugly brute of a man with a sneer on his face—Maeve attacked him from behind.
Screaming now filled the settlement. Invaders were everywhere. Those who encountered Liadan and Maeve ran on. Two women with swords did not interest them when there was much weaker prey.
Flames soared up, defiant of the rain.
“They are burning the settlement!” Maeve cried.
Finishing the job they’d started last time. Liadan had to reach Mam.
Her hut had not been set alight, but the door stood open—not the way she’d left it. The opening seemed to gape at her like a dark, ugly mouth.
She hesitated one terrible moment before stepping inside. Maeve, with the second sword in her hand and the baby on her shoulder, followed.
The small main room of the round house had been wrecked, belongings overturned. Mam lay beside the fire—just where she’d been when Liadan left her.
For an instant, Liadan could not comprehend what she saw. The body—her mother’s body—sprawled. So still. Too still.
“Mam?”
Behind her, Maeve gasped. The babe in her arms set up a wail. The rain crashed so hard on the roof, it nearly drowned out the other, more terrible sounds outside.
“Come away,” Maeve said in a harsh breath. “Away out o’ this!”
“But my mam—”
