"Down!" he roared, his voice shattering the silence of the woods.
They hit the moss with a bone-jarring thud.
Harald rolled instantly, his massive frame acting as a human shield between Enya and the dark shadows of the rowan trees. He could hear her sharp, panicked intake of breath, felt the frantic brush of her hands against his back, but his focus was already elsewhere—honed into a lethal, singular point.
Five men emerged from the brush like ghosts. They were dressed in drab, mud-stained rags, their faces smeared with charcoal.
They moved with a terrifying, coordinated silence that told Harald everything he needed to know.Finley’s hounds.
"Stay behind me," Harald commanded. His voice a flat, vibrating growl.
He rose to a crouch, his sword singing as it cleared the scabbard. Every time he heard the rustle of Enya’s skirts behind him, his heart gave a traitorous, frantic thud.
"Well, Hawk," the lead man sneered, stepping into a patch of dying light. He held a heavy claymore with the ease of a man who killed for sport. "Let’s see if ye fly as well when yer wings are clipped."
Harald lunged.
The first clash of steel was a deafening crack that echoed through the trees. He parried a blow that would have split a lesser man in two, then stepped inside the man’s guard, the pommel of his sword smashing into the brigand’s jaw with a sickening crunch.
But as the first man went down, two more lunged from the periphery. Harald spun, his cloak snapping like a whip. He felt a sharp, burning sting along his ribs—a blade catching him through his side—but he ignored it. He couldn't afford the luxury of pain.
He caught a glimpse of Enya out of the corner of his eye. She had scrambled to her feet, her face a mask of pale terror, her hands clutching a heavy branch she’d snatched from the forest floor.
"Run, Enya!" he bellowed, parrying a thrust from a spear.
"Nay!" she screamed back, her voice raw and defiant.
More men were pouring from the trees now.Six, seven, eight.The odds were shifting from dangerous to impossible.
Harald felt the familiar, cold loneliness of the battlefield settling over him, but it was sharpened now by a searing, protective rage. He struck out with a backhand blow, his blade catching a man across the chest, but another slammed into his back, the sheer weight of the impact forcing him to one knee.
He felt the world tilt. A heavy boot connected with his side, cracking a rib. He gasped, his vision blurring as he struggled to stand. A thick coil of rope was already being looped around his shoulders. He fought like a madman, snapping his head back to break a nose, kicking out to shatter a shin, but there were too many hands. Too much weight.
"Harald!"
The sound of her voice—high, splintered with raw, jagged agony—did what a decade of war never could. It shattered his composure.
In the flickering, chaotic shadows, he saw two men, their faces masks of soot and cruelty, seizing Enya. Their filthy hands bit into her pale arms, the force of their grip already blooming into dark bruises against her skin.
Nay.
A cold, paralyzing terror seized his chest, tighter than any iron band.
"Let her go!" Harald roared. It was the primal, gut-wrenching scream of a man watching his world catch fire.
His voice broke, thick with a desperate, guttural power that clawed its way up from his marrow.
In that heartbeat, the pain of his own wounds vanished. With a surge of strength fueled by a love so fierce it felt like a physical weight, he threw off the three men pinning him, his muscles screaming as he tossed them aside like straw.
He didn't care if they broke his bones. He only saw the fear in Enya’s eyes.
Harald lunged.
He reached her in two explosive strides, his sword hand driving deep into the chest of the man on her left. Before the body could even hit the ground, his free hand snatched her waist, pulling her flush against him.
He could feel the frantic, rabbit-thrum of her heart through her clothes. The sensation nearly leveled him. His body shieldedhers from the circling steel, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.
I have ye.
