“If she was puling, t’was most like for the lack of a man.” Aimil saw Rory flush and knew she had found his weak spot. “That is why she was going to leave ye, wasnae it? She had discovered that your skill as a lover didnae match your beauty. Fine to look at but boring to bed.”
She was startled by the swiftness and ferocity of his response. For a moment she feared Parlan had also been caught off-guard, but he met Rory’s attack without hesitation. Parlan’s only other move besides joining in the battle with apparent eagerness was to push her away. He then turned over even that fragment of his attention to the fight.
Aimil knew that Parlan assumed she would now obey his order to flee. She had more or less agreed to. It was something she realized she could not do, not even when she thought of their child. She did run, however, but only to the edge of the clearing to hide there, out of sight yet able to watch. Parlan would be soothed by the thought that she was safe or soon would be, and she would be able to stay close in case he should need her.
To flee and not to know how he fared until it was all over was not something she could do. If Parlan should lose, a thought she dreaded, and she had fled, she knew she would then spend her whole life tormented by the thought that she could have helped him, might have been able to do something that would have saved him. Although it was an agony to watch him fighting for his life, she stayed, her fists pressed to her mouth to stop herself from screaming.
Parlan fought coolly, with a strained detachment he was finding harder to maintain. Rory was good, very good. Parlan wondered if the madness the man suffered honed his skills. There certainly seemed to be more strength in Rory than any man should possess. For the first time since his youth, Parlan was not sure that he would win.
“Why do ye struggle so against the inevitable? Ye will die, Parlan MacGuin, and then I shall go after Aimil.”
“She has fled you, Rory. Ye willnae get your filthy hands upon the lass.” Parlan hissed a curse when Rory’s sword nicked his side.
“The lass will be easy enough to catch. She is on foot, and I ken where there is a horse.”
Fear for Aimil gnawed at him but Parlan fought it. It could steal his skill and he needed all he had. Although he had inflicted as many small wounds upon Rory as Rory had upon him, Rory seemed far less troubled by them. Parlan could feel himself losing strength as he bled. Rory’s smile told Parlan that the man had guessed at his growing weakness.
A new fear suddenly seized him as he felt the ground crumble beneath his heels. So intent had he been on the battle, he had let himself be driven to the very edge of the Banshee’s Well. Even as he struggled to elude that new danger, Rory laughed and then lunged. Knowing he would not be able to parry the sword headed straight for his vitals, Parlan sidestepped. The ground gave way beneath his feet, and he fell into the hole, barely managing to latch onto the less than firm earth around the edge. Cursing viciously, he tried to pull himself up before Rory could act but knew it was fruitless even before Rory laughed again. He cried out as Rory’s foot caught him full in the face, sending Parlan plummeting down the hole. As he fell, Parlan thought he heard Aimil cry out then knew only blackness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Parlan! Nay!”
Aimil thought of nothing save that Parlan had plunged to his death. She bolted from her hiding place and raced to the Banshee’s Well even though a part of her mind kept screaming that there was nothing she could do. The sensible side of her urged her to flee to Dubhglenn but she was not feeling very sensible after watching Parlan swallowed up by the earth.
Her headlong flight toward the hole was abruptly stopped by Rory. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to a halt. The pain of nearly having her arm wrenched from its socket as well as being flung to the ground dimmed the hysteria by which she had been seized. Now she could see her error very clearly. She had put herself into Rory’s hands, and Parlan had died trying to save her from this very fate.
Thinking of Parlan’s death, her fear turned to fury. The loathing she felt for the man laughing at her seemed a living thing inside her. A small part of her feared that she could easily turn as mad as Rory but she was too furious to care about that.
“Whoreson,” she hissed as she got to her feet. “Ye will rot in hell for this.”
“Oh? And do ye mean to send me there, my fair slut?” He struck her across the face.
Stumbling backward, Aimil fought against screaming. The warm salty taste in her mouth told her she had cut it, but she simply spit the blood out. This time she had plenty of room to move in, and there was no Geordie to stop her from grasping some weapon. Rory would find it not so easy to brutalize her this time, and if she was lucky, she might even strike a blow or two for Parlan.
Parlan stared up at the small circle of light. It took him a few moments to recall where he was and how he had gotten there. Then he recalled the scream he had heard as Rory had kicked him into the hole, a sound that told him that Aimil had not run away as he had told her to. That could easily mean that Rory now held her. If that madman got his hands on Aimil, she was as good as dead. That thought was enough to make Parlan try to struggle to his feet, something his body was loath to do.
As he had fought dizziness and pain, he had heard Aimil’s cry as he had fallen. There had been such a heartrending agony in that cry that he had almost responded to it. He then knew that he could not shake it from his mind because it told him something that was very important to him. Aimil did care for him, quite possibly loved him. No woman could produce such a sound unless she did.
Deciding that it was a poor time to ponder such things, he grit his teeth and started to make his way out of the hole. Although the rocky sides of the hole were not smooth, they were not rough enough either to make for an easy climb. A place to grip onto was hard to find. Parlan cursed his slow progress and his pain as he inched his way back to the surface.If Aimil and I live through this, he thought furiously,I will most assuredly beat her for her gross disobedience.
His hands were quickly skinned and oozing blood which made his climb even more difficult. As he got nearer to the top, he heard Aimil fighting Rory and that gave him the strength to force himself onward. He only prayed that he reached the top in time to save her from any and all of the cruelty Rory wished to inflict upon her.
Aimil bit down hard on Rory’s hand which tried to shackle her wrists. With a bellowed oath, he released her to clutch at his hand. She quickly scrambled to her feet and backed away from where he had tried to pin her to the ground.
She sensed that the Banshee’s Well was but a step or two behind her. In one quick move she could enter that pit and join Parlan in death but she could not do it. In that first frantic moment after watching him die, she could easily have hurled herself after him but her will to survive had reasserted itself. Despite the grief that ate away at her, yet had not been given any release, she could not repress the need to try to stay alive.
“Ye will pay dearly for that, my pretty whore.”
“Ye are forever trying to make others pay for what ye bring upon yourself.”
“Bring upon myself?” He touched his mutilated cheek. “Do ye think I would bring such as this upon myself? Ye did this to me. Ye and that hellborn stallion of yours!” His voice rose with every word until he screamed at her.
“Nay, ye attacked us and got all ye deserved. Now the outside of ye is as loathsome as the inside. Now all can see your ugliness.”
She was not surprised by his attack when he bellowed with rage and lunged at her. What she had hoped for did not happen, however. When she neatly eluded him, he was able to halt himself before he plummeted down the hole. He turned on her far more quickly than she had planned for as well. Her attempt to escape his second lunge failed, and she was badly winded when he tackled her to the ground. Before she could regain it and the strength to fight him, he had her pinned beneath him.
“Did ye really think ye could escape me again, Kirstie?”
