“Aye.” It must have been akin to what he felt seeing her there kneeling on the ground.
“I do no’ ken if I will get another miracle. If I deserve one.”
Finlay hesitated to tell her. “I saw O’Hanlon go down. Before he did, he saved my life.”
Her eyes filled with a rush of tears. “Dead?”
“I could no’ tell.” Finlay glanced over his shoulder toward the great, seething battle. How could it be otherwise?
“Och, God, och, God,” she wept. “A great man. I cared much for him.”
Finlay could not find it in him to mind. If she loved the Gallowglass, well, O’Hanlon was a man worthy of her admiration. Of her respect. And his own heart hurt with seeing him fall.
For an instant, there on the edge of the soaking battleground, the world wavered around him, life and life and life overlapping in loss and pain.
In love.
Softly he touched Katrin’s hand. “Let us see to your da.” All that they could do, for the time being.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Panic clawed atKatrin’s belly and up through her throat, threatening to choke her. She needed to keep calm, to think clearly, but she had never been so frightened or so sick to the heart.
She gazed around from the place where she knelt on the broken moorland. Behind her, the battle still raged like a seething, flailing creature somehow intent on destroying itself. The ground between lay strewn with dead and injured in every unspeakable condition.
The things she had seen.
She gulped down her sickness and blinked her eyes. Men were streaming away from the battle, leaving it just as they had, in twos or threes. Some helping or carrying others of the wounded away. Some clearly in flight.
Despair most terrible touched her heart. She did not know how they were to get her da safe away.
What of the rest of their men? Men she had known all her life and liked full well. Many no doubt dead. Some still back in the horror that was the battle. Was she to desert them?
She represented her brother, here. With Da down, she supposed she now represented her chief. Should she return to the battle?
How strong was she?
All her life she had rebelled at not being given leave to train as a warrior, that she might stand and defend herself and those she loved. Now she had that chance, and duty rose before her—her duty to get Da away—while men continued to die for her. For them.
Reagan.
Her heart bled for him. With his great strength and his quiet amusement, his calm patience and forbearing. The consummate warrior he was, and she grieved, grieved for him.
If such a man had fallen, they were lost.
That realization got her to her feet. She looked around again.
Their little band of five made a pitiful sight, wet to the skin and bloodied. The two young clansmen who had carried Da out from the thick of battle looked exhausted and white with fear. Finlay…
It would live in her mind forever, that moment when she’d seen him emerge from the fighting like a dream come from the past. Aye, she’d had her miracle and could not expect another. All she could do was reach for one.
She turned to the two young men hunkered beside their chief.
“I am sorry to waylay ye, but ye will no’ be able to return to the battle. I need ye to carry him awa’ out o’ here. I believe that is our duty now.” Da had no heir. He must, so, return to Murtray.
Rabbie climbed to his feet. “Mistress”—his blue eyes, wide with shock, looked earnest—“I do no’ doubt that pullin’ us fro’ yon battle has spared our lives. Any service I may perform for the chief or ye—I stand ready.”
“Aye, so. Davey, your shield”—for that young man had it yet upon his shoulder—“can we use it as a litter for him?”
