Page 72

Behind him he heard Iona cry out. He did not look. If he looked he was a dead man, and she was Leith’s.

He gave ground. Leith drove after him, cutting high and low, and the steel rang off the piled stones of the pen and the turf wall of the hut.

“Ye’re slow, MacVey,” Leith panted. “Is it the hole in ye, or were ye always this slow? No wonder she was so easy to take.”

“Ye took her with a lie, ye fat bastard,” Alasdair said. “Ye couldnae take her off a straight road.”

They went across the camp like that, past the lantern, through the trampled heather where the bowmen had kept their watch. Alasdair’s heel came down on a loose stone and turned under him.

Leith saw it. “There ye are, ye whoreson,” he grunted, and drew his blade back for the long stroke at the neck.

Alasdair did not wait for it to come. He beat Leith’s sword aside with all the weight he had left, stepped in under the man’s arm, and cut him across the ribs. The fine cloak fell open. Leith screamed and staggered back with his bleeding hand clamped to his side, blood running out between the rings.

“Come on, then,” Alasdair said. “Ye wanted her, ye said. Come and take her.”

A yell came from the lip of the hollow. Alasdair knew the voice. Gavin came over the rocks with what was left of the MacVeys at his back, bloody and roaring, and the bowmen at the stone pen swung about to meet him. Behind them Iona’s escort came over the wall of the pen, Dougal and the three old men from the keep. They snatched their swords up out of the heather where they had thrown them down, and the younger of the two lads with them went at the nearest bowman like a terrier at a bull.

The bowmen threw down their bows and ran for the rocks.

They always ran. Torquil Dunmore had never changed his habits in his life.

Leith looked at his men running. He looked at Alasdair, and at his own blood on his rings. Then he turned and ran too, for the horses tethered at the back of the hut, with his cloak flapping about his knees. He dragged himself into a saddle one-handed and kicked the beast up the track, bent double over its neck, and was gone over the lip of the hollow without a backward look for the man who had sold him a bride.

Alasdair let him go. He could not have caught a lame cow.

He stood with his sword point on the turf and his arm clamped over his side, dragging in air. The hollow had begun to tilt under him.

“Alasdair!” Iona screamed. “Behind ye!”

He turned on her voice. Torquil Dunmore was there, closer than any man so heavy should have been able to come without a sound, and the long knife was already coming down at the back of his neck.

Alasdair got his blade up. The knife struck it so near his throat that he felt the wind of it, and slid screeching down to the hilt, and Torquil leaned his whole great weight on it.

They were too close for a sword. Torquil knew it. He came in chest to chest, his grey beard at Alasdair’s chin, smelling of wine and woodsmoke.

“Ye’re bleeding out, lad,” Torquil said softly. “I can wait.”

“Ye’ve waited yer whole life,” Alasdair said through his teeth. “Ye waited for my father under a peace.”

Torquil drove his knee at the wound. Alasdair twisted and took it on the hip, and the pain went up through him so white and hot that he heard himself grunt. He drove his elbow into the old man’s face and felt the nose break. Torquil reeled back a step, and the knife came again at once, low and fast, for the bleeding side.

Alasdair caught the knife arm on his own forearm and forced it wide. They went staggering together across the turf, the old man’s free hand clawing at his sword arm, the knife straining in the space between them. Under all that softness Torquil Dunmore was as strong as a bull, and he had no hole in his side.

Alasdair’s heel struck the wall of the pen. There was nowhere left to go.

Iona screamed his name. She came off the wall of the hut running, the little knife up in her fist, with no thought in her head but to put it in her father’s back before he could finish it.

Torquil tore his arm free and came in for the last stroke. Alasdair turned his body into it, and the knife went past his ribs and ripped through his shirt, and in the same instant he drove his sword in under the old man’s raised arm, deep into his chest.

Torquil made a small sound, more surprised than hurt. His hand opened, and the knife dropped into the heather. Then he went down on his knees, and over onto his side.

Iona stopped dead three strides away. The little knife fell out of her fingers into the heather. She stared down at her father, and her face went empty and very young, and a sound came out of her that was not a word.

Across the hollow the fighting stopped. Gavin lowered his sword. By the pen Dougal pulled his lad back by the collar, and every man there stood and looked at the old laird in the heather.

Alasdair stood above him with the red blade in his hand. He had wanted this every day since his father died. Now it was done, and his father was still under the hill, and his legs would hardly hold him, and the only thing in the whole hollow he could hear was his wife breathing hard behind him.

• • •