“Give us back what ye stole, thief!” The drunken one from last night stammered, sober but no more intelligent because of his sobriety.
“Nobody stole anything from ye, ‘twas a fair game,” Nathan insisted, his gaze narrowing dangerously. “Now, be on yer way, before I have nay choice but tae run ye through.”
The man scoffed. “Ye’re outnumbered. Ye will turn over our silver quickly.”
“Or what?” Nathan pressed.
“Or we will kill ye, and take the price of inconvenience out of yer wife,” the slimy one said, leering at Freya in a way that made her instantly wish she was wearing more clothes, and that there was some better barrier between them. There was no way she would ever allow them to have her maidenhead. She would rather die. She would run herself through with Nathan’s dirk before she ever allowed such a thing.
But their threat had what seemed to be the desired effect.
Something in Nathan snapped, turning him into something wholly and utterly feral. The battle cry that left his lips intimidated her, even though she knew he would never do anything to hurt her. It was those other poor fools who should be afraid. They should have known better.
“Freya, go!” Nathan shouted, gesturing toward the forest with a tilt of his head. She wanted to stay. She wanted to find a way to help him and she was at a total loss. She didn’t want to go but she couldn’t stay there and be a distraction to him either. With tears in her eyes, she turned her horse and took off.
She had never been so terrified in all her life. Even with the clan soldiers coming for him, she had felt more in control of the situation. This was wild and reckless, and Nathan was horribly outnumbered.
She didn’t make it very far at all before she heard another horse coming up behind her quickly. Her heart leapt into her throat as she leaned down over her own horse, hoping to go faster, hoping that she might be able to hit the tree line and disappear. But this was wholly unfamiliar territory. She didn’t know where she was, and she certainly didn’t know where she could go for help. They were all alone and if she lost Nathan, she had no idea what she was going to do.
“Here, lassie.” The man behind her called, his voice cruel and taunting.
She couldn’t allow him to get near her but he was gaining. He was simply a faster rider. Tears blurred her vision as the sounds of Nathan fighting the other two men started to fade in the distance between them. The tree line was just ahead; she might make it and then at least she could hope for the very best but then there were hands on her arms. The world turned topsy turvy and she fell sideways, right into the smarmy waiting arms of her captor.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The sound of Freya’s frightened scream might have been the most terrifying thing Nathan had ever heard in his entire life. It wasn’t that either of the men who were presently fighting with him were talented, or even spectacularly difficult but they were persistent. It was clearly the fuel of their own indignant irritation that was making them seem more tenacious than they actually were.
There were too many limbs in too many places, in what should have been a much faster fight than it was turning out to be. Nathan grit his teeth, his muscles taking over. Flashes of training as a child started to surface, causing a pounding in his head, a throbbing right behind his eye that was making seeing things clearly rather difficult. Every time he dodged one of their swords, the pain surfaced again like a hammer to the back of his skull.
Still, he moved.
Whoever he had been before, had clearly trained extensively in hand-to-hand combat. It suited him very well right then, and while he managed to catch more than one fist to the gut, they weren’t strong enough to hurt too badly. He dodged a knife, and managed to catch one of them in the jaw, hard enough that Nathan felt the crack before the man fell down to the ground and didn’t come back up again.
All he knew was that he had to get to Freya. He just had to make his way over to her to get that man away from her. He couldn’t allow anything to happen to her.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear screaming. It had nothing to do with what was happening right in front of them. It had nothing to do with the fight but rather with the memory of him in a field, surrounded by other soldiers. He could feel the memory more than he could see it. It almost felt like he was looking at somebody else. Like he was seeing a ghost, or witnessing a play. The memory hammered against his head, hard and fast, and then it was gone just as quickly.
Something cut his hand, making him groan in pain, and making a fist was more difficult now. He could still hold his dirk, and that was all that mattered. With his teeth grit together, he turned and swung, hitting the taller man against the temple with the pommel of his dirk, and down he went.
He wasn’t going to be able to reach his horse in time and so he took off on foot, running after Freya who was actively fighting off her captor as best as she could. He admired her tenacity andstrength. He appreciated that she wasn’t just going to roll over and take it. She was doing whatever she had to do.
The man shouted, so she most likely had injured him in some way.
Good. It was the least he deserved.
Nathan was on him quickly, grabbing him by the back of his greasy hair and yanking him away from Freya who quickly scrambled back and away from him, clearly terrified. Nathan’s eyes honed in on the man, and the hammering was back. Recognition and bitterness that didn’t even feel like his own bubbled over, borrowed emotions swelling up inside of him that he couldn’t seem to force down properly. He had to handle the present issue before anything got worse. The man swung wide, but couldn’t get enough force to loosen Nathan’s grip. Nathan hurled the man toward the nearest tree, not caring about the way the man’s head crunched upon collision, or the red that now stained the tree bark before the man’s body slid down the rough surface and collapsed in a heap on the ground.
“Are ye all right?” Nathan asked, sinking to his knees, and reaching for Freya.
Her eyes caught on the way his hand was covered in blood, seeming to run in rivets down his wrist and forearm. He couldn’t feel the pain of his wound. Perhaps that was good, because at present that was not his problem.
“Are ye hurt? Did he…” Nathan trailed off, unable to say the words. He couldn’t make them leave his lips and Freya shook her head frantically.
“Nae fer lack of trying,” she heaved, her breath still erratic. She was sucking in deeper and deeper breaths, to the point he was worried she was going to hyperventilate.
He scooted forward on his knees, moving closer to her—and then there was the hammering in his head.
Somehow the feeling of his knees against the still damp morning grass triggered something inside of him, and his eyes instantly glazed over, unfocused. They drifted in the direction of the man presently on the floor and he was certain from the awkward way he was heaped that he wasn’t breathing any longer.
