Page 71 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

“Lynton!” he growled, feeling his pulse in his neck, his vein jumping under his skin with every breath that he took. “If ye wish to fight someone, then let it be me!”

Lynton turned around slowly, and Eiric knew that he had recognised his voice. When he finally faced him, he saw that he had a smile on his lips, and his eyes were like the eyes of a madman.

“You!” he said, and he sounded almost glad, as though Eiric’s presence brought him joy. “I was wondering where you had gone, but here you are now! And I’ll get to finish what I started.”

“We’ll see about that, Captain,” Eiric said. “I have me men with me noo, and I dinna think that any of yer own is a match for them.”

“But you don’t want to fight my men,” the captain pointed out. “You want to fight me. That is why you came here, is it not? To kill me?”

“Aye.”

“Aye,” Lynton said, mimicking Eiric’s accent. “You want to kill me, and I want to kill you. This will all be decided between us. Whether your men are better or not has nothing to do with the two of us.”

Eiric nodded in agreement, and the two men fell into a strange silence. It was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable for Eiric. The only way that he could describe it was as inevitable.

The captain was the first one to attack, as Eiric had predicted. The man had no patience for anything. Meanwhile, Eiric could have stayed there for hours, waiting for him to take the first step.

The first swing of Captain Lynton’s sword was predictable, and Eiric answered it with one of his own. Unlike the last battle he had had, now every clang of the swords around him, every groan and scream, were deafening in his ears, because he knew it wasn’t just the enemy dying. Some of his own men were dying too, and others were getting injured, in a fight that was much more even than the last.

The captain had trained his men well, or perhaps he had been given better ones to work with.

How could he block out all the sounds when he knew that they belonged to people he cared for? He wanted to give them what he could, at least, a witness to their sacrifice.

But Captain Lynton was relentless, much more so than the commander had been. He dealt blow after blow, never stopping to catch his breath or steady his footing. Eiric could only defend himself, parrying the captain’s attacks, but he couldn’t get an attack of his own through.

He knew that brute force would not serve him well. He had to be sly, to outsmart the captain instead of trying to overpower him.

He had to fight like Marion.

With a twist and a jump to the left, Eiric got behind the captain before the man could figure out what he was doing, and then kicked him hard with his heel on the back of his knee, forcing him to fall onto the ground, his sword clattering onto the mud, away from his hand.

Eiric stepped closer to Lynton, placing the tip of his sword against his shoulder to let him know that a single move could kill him, as he kicked the other man’s sword even further away.

“Surrender,” he told him.

The captain neither spoke nor moved, but no one else seemed to have noticed that their superior was on his knees, a sword pointed at him. The battle was as vicious as ever, the men lost in their own fights.

“Surrender!” Eiric shouted, and only then did he seem to catch the attention of those closest to him, who were too stunned to fight anymore.

The silence spread like a wave through the camp, and the captain’s men didn’t dare raise their swords again when they saw that he was at Eiric’s mercy.

Lynton raised his hands, though he still stayed silent. Shuffling on his knees, he turned around slowly, until Eiric’s sword was pointed at his heart instead.

“Never,” he said, and pushed his chest against the sword, gasping and groaning as it pierced his flesh.

Eiric was too stunned to move or to speak. He stood there, sword in hand, watching in horror as Lynton impaled himself on his blade, inch by inch, until he wasn’t moving anymore.

The rest was a blur. Eiric was soon surrounded by cheering men once again, while the remaining English soldiers were being gathered up, herded towards the rest of their fellow soldiers that Eiric and his men had brought from Commander Forbes’ camp. Someone pulled his sword out of Lynton for him, and Eiric turned to see that it was none other than Edan.

Of course, he thought. Who else would it be if not Edan, who was always there when Eiric needed him?

“Are ye alright?” Edan asked, and Eiric found himself nodding.

He didn’t want to worry him for no reason. He was shaken up, he had to admit that to himself, but not to anyone else, since he was certain that he would be fine in no time.

“Dinna worry about me,” Eiric said.

“It’s over. It’s all over, Eiric.”