The entire Scots army shifted like some great beast taking a breath, and moved forward.
Katrin, who still clutched Finlay’s fingers, turned to him.
“I love ye. I want ye to know that full well, before—” And she kissed him right there amongst her father’s men.
The years blurred and convulsed around him. He was an Irish warrior standing outside in the sun, gazing into eyes of blue. He was an exile, learning the price demanded and paid for such a love. A second son, fighting against all odds to keep hold of the heart with which a wild Caledonian princess had gifted him. He was a Scotsman willing to risk all he was to say to the Norsewoman who should be his enemy but could never, never be—
“And I love ye.”
Did the wheel of life jerk and turn? Or was that but the ground Finlay felt shifting beneath his feet? For here he was, as ever, risking—risking it all again.
He wished with sudden, sharp desperation that he could tell all of it to her, who they were and who they had been. But there was no time, and if things went badly, that time might never, never come.
Her father’s men, standing so close around them, did not seem to notice the exchange, their very beings focused on what happened up ahead. But everything within Finlay narrowed to awareness of the woman whose mouth hovered just below his. His life, she was. His heart. His very being.
How strange and terrible, the ways in which a man’s life unfolded. He had spent most this lifetime aware of her, though not knowing who or where she was. He’d spent years searching for her and had found her at last.
Only to quite possibly see it all end here in the pouring rain, on this forsaken patch of foreign ground.
“List to me,” he told her. “When the battle begins ye must heed all I tell to ye, aye?”
She did not say what she might, that he was a harper, not a warrior, and she had better training than him. Her gaze clung to his and she nodded.
Then she turned to her father, on her other side, and spoke to him.
“Stay near to me, Da, when it begins.”
And Anders MacMurtray replied, “Daughter, it already has. May God protect us.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Katrin’s heart poundedso hard she could feel it in her ears and in her fingertips. Her eyes stretched wide in an effort to see everything at once as a warrior should, each flicker of movement, great or small. The surge of a flank, the charge of a horse, the flash of a blade.
She needed to survive this. For her da’s sake, she did. Was it not why she was here?
If only Finlay were not. If only he were safe back at Murtray or on the road far, far to the north of here with Brada on his back.
She feared having him here.She feared.
She did—for Reagan, up ahead of her, who, once their division began to move, would take the brunt of the fight. For her da and all their clansmen whom she’d known from birth. For the man who stood so quiet beside her.
She felt connected to all of them. As if their group were one great being.
Ahead of them, a loud cry arose. The forward division went charging down the rough slope and the battle—the terrible battle—began.
Men twitched all around her. They shifted on their feet and cursed. For all they could do at the moment was stand as ordered, and watch.
Watch as Katrin did, with growing horror.
The English army was, nay, not so vast as their own. But as the Scots charged them, their mounted forces parted along with their footmen. A forest of bowmen appeared. Shifted positions.
Began to fire.
The breath caught in Katrin’s throat as she saw what the forward ranks of the English had been concealing. The bowmen.
The bowmen.
A hail of arrows crashed into the advancing Scots forces, far more lethal than the rain. Men went down so quickly and so thickly, it did not look real. Despite their shields they folded, row upon row, and the whole of the Scots army rippled with the effect, even though their commanders continued to urge them on.
