“Where are ye goin’?” His wife asked him.
“To find out what might be happenin’ outside,” he told her. He thought she would have argued with him about trying to appear valiant, but she did not.
“Why do ye need Ceana?” She asked him.
“I shall go out alone,” he replied sternly before looking to Ceana. “Take knives from the kitchen. Give one to yer mother and to yer sister.” He spoke no more words to his daughters and wife, nor did he look back at them. He feared that his will might become weaker if he beheld the fright on their faces.
Ceana found the strength to move and obey her father’s instructions when she heard the door slam shut. She hurried to the kitchen and brought back three knives to the room. She had only stayed a few seconds before she left the room and headed for the door also. The fright that something bad might have happened to him forced her to move. She pulled open the door and came out to the harsh blast of the early morning breeze.
“Faither!” She called out to him, but there was no answer. Frightened, she gripped the handle of the knife tighter before taking her first bold step away from the house.
“Faither!” She called again as she moved further away from the house's safety and down the road path that led away from her house. The further she walked in, the barely visible day, the tighter her grip on the knife was, and the louder her heart pounded in her chest.
“Faither!” She yelled out again, but as she feared, the only response was silence.Where are ye, faither?She felt a tear sting her eyes which she quickly cleaned off with her free hand and continued walking.
“Ceana!” Her face lit up with relief when she heard her father’s voice. “What are ye doin’ out here? I told ye to stay back with yer mother and Alina.”
“I was worried about ye,” she replied to him. Ceana looked back at the house that seemed a greater distance to her than her father was, so she still made her way towards him. She came around the blind bend of the road path and then came to her father with his sword pointed at a man she could not see beyond him.
“Stay where ye are, Ceana. Do nae come here,” her father ordered her, but Ceana was too curious. Just beyond stood a tall man standing about what seemed to be an unmoving body.
She came to her father’s side and came to see the body of a dead woman lying in the middle of the road path. She was bloodied, and her eyes were dull without light and life. Ceana dropped the knife in her hand without a thought and put her hands over her mouth to stop her from screaming. Her heart turned sour at the horrific sight.
It took her back to the last dead body she had seen. The same raucous bile that had erupted from her guts and traveled up to her head came again, washing over her with the feel of death itself as it had done once before. She felt her head spill and dizziness tug at her, but she looked still because she could not take her eyes away from the horror.
She remembered the screams she had heard of the woman fighting for her life. It was hard not to wonder what would have become of the woman if she had rushed out at the sound of the first scream, but she knew she would have ended up dead also. Guilt and sadness riddled Ceana as she stared at the body. It could have been her, and the proximity to the murder made her feel somehow responsible for the death of the woman she had not known prior to that night.
Why—why would anyone do this?Tear-faced, she dared to raise her head and look at the man with bloodied hands who stood above the dead woman. It was Torcall.
Chapter Seventeen
Bearing his sword in his good hand at the ready, he followed the scream of the damsel in distress. He was a noble man, one of honor and one who had a sense of right and wrong, but that night, he hoped to slay the killer. His anger towards the man he was yet to encounter stemmed from a place of revenge as well.
Charging, sword bared towards the woman in distress, he was determined to not let the killer escape him that night. He had not been able to save his parents, and neither had he been able to save Bridget or Celestine. For nights, he had stayed awake for the fear and guilt that visited him in his sleep.
Nae anymore,he promised himself before coming to the road path. There, ahead of him lay a woman frail and without any fight in her. He feared she was already dead. His arm fell for a moment in sadness before he raised it again.
The killer slowly rose from the bloodied woman and stared at him. The moon did not reveal the killer's face, but Torcall did not need to see what he looked like before he built up the urge to strike him down.
“Surrender yerself, or I will strike ye where ye stand,” Torcall roared as he charged at the killer. He could smell the aura of bloodlust about the man, and he did not move as Torcall charged at him.
The man did not seem armed with anything other than the knife in his right hand that still glimmered with the red hint of his victim's blood. Though he saw a man with a sword charge at him, the killer still did not move until Torcall was upon him.
The day was still dark, and Torcall did not notice the man move until it was already late. The killer moved away from his path and hit him squarely in the gut. Torcall fell like a loaf onto the ground. His left hand grabbed onto his throat instinctively. Simultaneously, his disoriented mind willed his right to also soothe his aching apple, but he fought it. He knew the only thing that was keeping him alive at that moment was the sword in his hand.
“...die...” He heard the killer’s croaky voice but could only make out the worddiefrom it.
I will nae die. I will nae let ye get away, nae again.Torcall willed his body to forget. He willed his paranoid mind to ignore the feeling of losing breath and ignored the pain in his gut. The killer came up to him, flashing the knife readily in his hand but just as Torcall had not seen him move, he could not see Torcall’s hand tighten around his sword.
He rolled off the ground and struck the knife out of the killer’s hand. Startling him only for a moment, Torcall got back onto his feet and put his sword to the man’s throat.
“Ye have killed so many; made faithers and maithers weep for their children. What did they do to ye?” he asked the man, but the man gave no answer. There was a cloth mask over his face, and even as close as he was to Torcall, who could feel the man’s hot, rapid breath--he could not tell who he was.
“Answer me!” he yelled, but the killer said nothing back to him.
“Nay bother. I shall strike ye here, and justice would be served for Bridget, Celestine and--” He did not know the name or the identity of the woman who lay on the ground, just a few meters from them. “And for her.”
He put his sword to the unarmed man’s neck and was about to behead him when he heard the woman cough. Torcall’s eyes darted to the bloodied woman on the road at that moment, and all his anger left him. She was still alive, and that meant that he could still save her. She was still alive, which meant that much more he could do for her than to avenge her. He needed to save her life.
