“Heavens,” Janson mumbled, shaking his head. “What a bloodymess.”
Finnegan said something in agreement, but Una was not listening. She was watching the young soldier being dragged out, his face bloody. He was barely conscious, mumbling something.
More to the point, his hands hung loose and empty at his sides.
Her heart constricted. Turning to face inside the croft, she saw Struan still standing there. He clutched the knife in his hand. As she watched, he lifted the blade to his own neck.
There was either time to cry out a warning or time to act. There wasn’t time for both.
Una chose to act.
She ran into the croft, flinging herself bodily at him. They both crashed to the ground, the knife skittering away into the corner. She was vaguely aware of shouts in the background.
Struan growled, trying to push himself up from the ground. The chain was longer and looser than Una had imagined, and for an instant she pictured him looping it around her throat and tightening it. Even if Janson and Finnegan saved her within seconds, it might already be too late.
She shifted her weight, using her knees to pin him to the ground through his shoulder blades. She caught one scrabbling hand and twisted it up his back, until Struan gave a strangled yelp of pain.
“Oh, no, ye don’t,” she breathed. “Ye don’t get to take the cowardly way out.”
“Why can ye not let me die?” he hissed. “Ye are going to kill me eventually. Ye always said ye despised us, so why not let me die?”
She gave a grim smile. “So yedoremember me.”
He struggled again, trying to buck her off his back. If Struan had not been clearly exhausted and probably wounded, he might have succeeded. As it was, at the end of the battle, it was plain that the man simply did not have the strength.
“Ye don’t need to convince me,” she responded, her voice tight. “I think the world would be better off without ye in it, to be sure. But ye are going to pay for what ye have done. That’s not the reason I won’t let ye die yet, though.”
“Oh, aye?” he spat. “What is the reason, then?”
Una glanced over at the doorway. Janson and the Grahame Captain stood there, pale with worry. She dropped her voice so that only Struan could hear.
“I promised yer sister I wouldn’t let ye die.”
Just like that, all of that fight went out of Struan. He gave up struggling, slumping onto the ground. The Grahame chief tossed a length of thick rope at Una.
“Tie him up,” he instructed. “Ye seem to be doing well enough.”
Una caught it and nimbly began to bind Struan’s wrists together. They’d probably want more rope for his ankles.
“My sister?” Struan breathed. “Kyla?”
Una clenched her jaw and pulled the knot tight. “Aye. Kyla. She’ll want to see ye, I imagine.”
He swallowed thickly and took a moment before responding. “Aye, well, I won’t want to see her.”
Una didn’t bother arguing. It wasn’t her business.
Chapter 2
Emptiness
The Great Hall still bore signs of the wedding not too long ago. Kyla and Thomas had hosted a grand event, and everybody from the village was invited. If Una closed her eyes, she could still see it all—a great, long table, laden with food, crammed with hungry people. She could smell the roast meat and feel the crumbs from bread trenchers crunching under her feet. Laughter rang in her ears.
It had been one whole month since the battle outside the convent—people were calling it St. Deborah’s War, as though that single battle was the beginning and end of the conflict—and already she could tell that people were settling down.
At first, in the week or two after the battle, people were tense, braced for another fight. When the expected battalion of Dickson warriors didn’t come for vengeance, they began to get complacent. Already, Una had noticed that the guards slackened their duty, and fewer soldiers turned up to the daily drills.
She was always there, of course. Finnegan and Janson were there, grim-faced, practicing their drills as though there was going to be another battle tomorrow.
