“Hush, Da!” she shouted. “Ye canna. Trust in Reagan. Reagan is there.”
Was he, though? Or had he too fallen?Like Finlay.
Not like Finlay. She would not permit that thought; she wouldnot. She shot another desperate look behind. No one there. Not following.
Gasping and cursing—for Da was not a small man—they carried their chief back up the slope. Out from the range of the arrows, Katrin aching all the while to turn and look behind her. To see Finlay loping after them. Aching, aching to go back.
She could not. She had her da, and the army still surged down the hill toward what now seemed like certain defeat.
“There,” she told the two bearers, gesturing to a clump of bracken turned yellow with the autumn. They were not the only ones to make their way back out of the battle. Others were wounded. Some walking, some crawling, some collapsed and more than likely dead.
The two young clansmen laid their burden down gratefully and looked at her.
“Mistress Katrin, should we go back?”
Back into that hell of pain and terror.
She looked at Da, now barely conscious. Would he order them back? Should she?
She could not.
“Nay,” she said. “I need ye to help him. Sta wi’ me.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Finlay could notsay when Katrin disappeared from his side. He’d been determined that above all else he would keep hold of her, stick to her the way a thistle sticks to a man’s plaid. That he would get her and her da out of the battle. But they now thundered downhill in a huge, screaming, caterwauling, unstoppable mass. One moment she was there, the next not.
Horror washed over him in a drench colder than the rain. This battle had drawn upon the roots of his soul. He’d been a warrior once, more than once, and being here in the midst of it all did not seem so very strange. Even though his harp banged upon his back in its wrappings, his sword did not feel unfamiliar in his hand.
But Katrin! He’d spent his whole life searching for her. How could she be gone from him?
An arrow skimmed past his cheek, so close the point laid open the flesh. Had he not been turning his head to look for Katrin, it would have taken him in the eye. Around him, other men fell.
The Gallowglass company, just ahead, were fully engaged. Another few steps and so would he be, and those around him. Gregor. Where was Gregor? He too had gone.
Ahead and to the left lay the broken stone wall, a portion of it fallen or never completed. Who could tell, obscured as it was by the dead and dying? Indeed, a great groan seemed to arise from the very ground, a terrible susurration of sound.
The Scots’ charge was further hampered by a depression in theground, a kind of pit filled with yellowing bracken around which they had to divert. A number of the attacking Scots had fallen into this hollow, where the English archers, pressing forward now from the other side, fired upon them. Volley after volley after volley—
They would lose this fight. The ancient warrior within Finlay knew it.
He and those of Murtray blood had caught up with the band of Gallowglass who stood strong. They faced off against the English knights who charged at them, their steeds terribly wounded yet coming on. Reagan O’Hanlon fought with a snarl on his face that made him near unrecognizable.
The rain had slackened and Finlay caught a flash of steel—a pike coming at him—and turned. His sword came up instinctively and then he was engaged. Fighting to stay alive.
The seething mass of the Scots army pushed. Pushed and gained a few paces of ground. A moment or two of respite.
O’Hanlon looked around and saw Finlay. His eyes registered astonishment.
“Where is the chief, Harper?”
“I do no’ ken.”
“And Katrin?”
Pain stabbed Finlay to the heart. He shook his head.
“Go. Find them.”
