Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (46 page)

Robert had already managed to slide the
hidden dirk from its sheath. Thanks again to the bumbling of which
e’er man had tied him, his work had been made simple, for the
manner in which he’d been bound had left him access to his weapon.
He began surreptitiously sawing at his bonds, but they were proving
harder to cut through than he’d expected. Swallowing a growl of
frustration, he doubled his effort, hoping against hope that the
priest would not see the added movement. He must get free, and
before the priest could do his will on Morgana.

In the next moment, when he heard the
distinct sound of cloth ripping, Robert knew he’d not been fast
enough. Swinging his gaze to his wife, he was met with the smooth,
white flesh of her breast on display and her dainty white hands
fighting the angular, yellow-nailed, blue-veined ones to keep from
being bound with rope. With a vociferous roar and the crazed furor
of a demon, Robert raged openly against his bonds. “Lay so much as
a finger on her again, and you’ll beg for the bliss of death before
I’m done with you!” he told the priest.

“Ah, good. You are awake,” the priest
answered without looking at him, clearly set on his purpose, and
confident in his belief Robert was securely bound and of no real
threat to him any longer. “ ‘Twill be much more enjoyable with you
as unwilling witness.” Finally managing to capture Morgana’s
wrists, he said to her, “I like a good tussle, sweeting...so, pray,
continue,” and yanked her forward until her exposed breast was only
a mere quarter-inch from his chest.

Recognizing the gruffness in the priest’s
voice for what it was: Lust for flesh, Robert bellowed, “Touch her
and die!” just as the last stubborn fragment of rope broke loose
and his wife began to sing.

Morgana’s pure, sweet voice, raised in song,
sent spikes of dread through his heart. He caught her gaze. ‘Twas
bright. Too bright. If he didn’t get them both out of here now, her
mind, already fragile, would surely break.

But first…he
must…he…must…shake…must…shake…this-s-s…leth…argy. Against his will,
his lids dropped o’er his eyes and he was transported to a glen,
greener than any he’d e’er seen, surrounded by mountains and a
wood, and with beams of sunlight and a faery queen’s enchanting
song swirling and swirling all about him.

* * *

The answer to how she could save herself and
her husband had come with a flash of memory, like an answered
prayer, and now Morgana fervently hoped the effect of her song
inside this underground chamber would work its magic as swiftly
upon her captor as it had done the members of the pretend faery
court she’d held here as a bairn.

When her eyes had shifted for at least the
hundredth time to her wounded husband a moment past and her gaze
had, at last, been snared in the hot liquid silver of his, hope had
filled her heart and trilled e’er higher from her throat in joyous
sound.

“Shut...
huh
….” The priest’s eyelids drooped. He swayed on his feet.
“...your gob, w-
huh
-wench!”

Ah. ‘Twas working.
Praise be to heaven.
Zealous now in her pursuit, Morgana lifted her voice louder
in song, and, in the next instant, when the priest reached out for
her, she found victory, for his eyes closed, his head drooped, and
his frame teetered, before collapsing to the floor. Again, she sent
a silent prayer of praise to God.

Galvanized into action, she captured the
rope that had fallen in a slithery coil next to the false priest
and tied his wrists and his ankles together behind him, as she’d
seen done by the sheriff when she was a lass of twelve summers. The
official and his men had captured a criminal in the wood and had
brought him to hang in the town square near the nunnery.

Next, she went to kneel at her husband’s
side. He’d fallen under the mystical spell woven by her song
reverberating within the walls of the carn as well. Leaning down,
she brushed her lips o’er his, then whispered his name in his ear.
When that didn’t rouse him, she nibbled his earlobe. At last, she
heard a low rumble come from his chest, and his arms enfolded her,
taking her with him as he rolled onto his back.

He swept her up in a savage kiss, squeezing
her so tight within his strong embrace, that she thought her ribs
would crack. She cared not. For that lost, glorious moment, the
world around them receded, and there were only the two of them. She
answered his passion with the heat and need of her own. Aye, for
that spare, wonderful moment, all her worry, all the reasons she’d
given herself for fleeing him, were diminished, and all that
existed between them was their mutual desire.

Robert broke the kiss first. “Where—” He
blinked and craned his neck to look in the direction of the false
priest. “Ah, I see. You’ll tell me later how you managed it, for
now, I must take care of the other one.” He rolled her off him, and
sat up, but swayed, dropping his head in his hands. “Blood of
Christ!”

“Robert!” Morgana exclaimed, folding her arm
around his shoulder. “Are—”

“—I didn’t think the blow to my head that
red devil gave me so fierce that ‘twould render me weak as a lass,
but my pate must not be as hard as I thought, for I fell into
another swoon a moment ago, and into a strange dream as well, and
now all about me spins.”

If she could lure the red-beard in here, she
could weave the spell of the song and the carn on him as well. She
started to rise. “Rob—”

Her husband startled her
mid-rise by grasping her hand and pulling her back down. “Nay,” he
told her, “stay here, but well away from the priest. For, tho’ he
is well-bound, I will not risk your safety another time.” He
maneuvered himself to his feet, taking up his sword where it had
been flung by the man earlier as he did so, and continued, “When
you hear the clash of steel, then flee. I will somehow loose a
horse for you. Take it and get back on the road to
Sruighlea
. Go directly
to the King’s castle, and I will meet you there—or, if fortune
holds, on the road. You will give me then, in
Sruighlea
, the truth of why you left
me.” He dropped his gaze to hers, seeming to take the briefest of
moments to memorize the contours of her visage as he stroked his
fingers o’er her cheek. When his silver gaze settled once more on
her own, she saw the steel behind the look, heard the steel in the
tone, when he said, “Stay.” Then, as she watched, pulse pounding,
and nerves rioting, he squirmed his way out of the small opening to
the carn, sword-first, and balanced in an iron-fisted
hand.

When he was gone, her eyes tripped briefly
to the still-dozing false priest. He’d not remain so for long, and
she would not have him divine her ploy and use it against her, so
she defied the first of her husband’s edicts and scooted over to
her slumbering captor. Using her purloined dirk, which he’d tucked
in his belt earlier, to cut away a strip from her linen chemise,
she then muzzled him with the cloth. In the midst of doing so, his
eyes shot wide, and Morgana was met with a look of venomous hatred
just before the unmistakable sound of clashing swords and raised
voices bounded in to them from outside.

Next, and once more defying her husband’s
orders, she crawled far enough out of the opening of the
underground chamber to get a view of what transpired outside it.
She did this with the thought, again, that, if need be, she’d lure
the red-beard into the carn and thrall him with her song, as she’d
done so easily to the priest. She’d not leave Robert here, no
matter his order to do so, not when she had such a weapon—and
certainly not without knowing whether he would vanquish the other
man. In most instances, she’d ne’er question, but with the strike
to the head Robert had received—and the ensuing slumber it had
caused—her surety was shaken.

Crouching low in the shadowed recesses next
to the carn’s opening, Morgana swept the surroundings with her
gaze, instantly noting that, as Robert had promised, one of the
men’s horses looked to have bolted into the grasses some distance
away, and now grazed there, fully tacked up and packed with his
master’s burdens.

If not for the torch, the only light she’d
have would be from the full moon and its neighboring stars. But
thanks to the flame, she could see the battle that ensued between
her husband and the red-beard very well. From behind her, she heard
the muffled grunts and gyrations of the false priest as he fought
to free himself, but couldn’t, and a small smile of satisfaction
bloomed on her lips.

Taking in a deep breath to bolster her
courage beforehand, she then began the slow, creeping,
low-crouching movement down the side of the carn. Not toward the
horse, as her husband had decreed, but toward the two fighting men,
as her heart demanded.

“I
SHOULD GUT you now,” Robert growled as steel sparked against
steel.

“Try it and die.”

Robert chuckled. “Nay, you are worth more to
me”—with a swift twist of his wrist, he nicked the apprentice’s
neck with the edge of his blade—“alive.”

“
Ahhh.
And—And—you are worth more to
me...
huh
...dead.”

Robert grinned. As he circled his opponent,
he caught a flash of moonspun hair behind the man’s shoulder, and
taunted him no further. With a bloodthirsty cry, he hefted his
sword o’er his head and came down hard with the broad side of his
blade to the red devil’s skull, just as the man executed a strike
of his own. ‘Twould have sliced Robert through from shoulder to
hip, if not for the wild, star-kissed virago, who leapt on the
man’s back with a voracious yell, sending the killing blow
careening off mark. His opponent staggered back, a look of stunned
disbelief on his face. He swayed, glass-eyed and gape-mouthed,
dropped slowly to one knee with Morgana still clinging, clenching
him in a stranglehold about his neck, then succumbed to Morpheus’
irresistible lure, crashing face-first to the ground like a great
fallen oak.

In the short stretch of stunned silence that
followed, his wife lay motionless, sprawled atop her would-be
murderer, and Robert’s temper flared. Pulling her up by her waist,
he said only, “Go and stand with your mount.”

‘Twas not until after he’d gotten the man
bound that Robert felt his pulse begin to slow, and the
eviscerating fear his wife’s antics had caused him begin to lessen.
The ire at her rash daring, however, had grown.

* * *

From the corner of
Morgana’s eye, she saw her husband approaching. She knew he was
angry with her for not obeying him, but she’d not cringe from his
anger. Morgana bit her lip.
Much
. She did not look his way,
instead continuing her affectionate strokes to the horse’s
mane.

When he was not more than a yard from where
she stood, he rumbled, “You should be a mile up the road by
now.”

She nodded, was about to explain, when he
startled her by unceremoniously hoisting her up onto the back of
the mount.

“You could have been
killed—by
my blow
—you could have been killed.”

She leaned down and touched her hand to his
shoulder and he flinched.

“Ro—”

“Nay. Later. After.” He led the animal back
over to where the other was still tethered, then left her there
with the bound red-beard and disappeared back inside the carn.

Many long minutes later, and with
Morgana—and now the awakened red-beard—as audible witness to the
sound of raised voices and battling bodies, Robert at last emerged
from the underground chamber, grim-faced, blood-spattered, and
gripping the false priest’s bonds in his hand. Tellingly, he was
alone.

“Wh-what did you do?” she said, frantic.
“Did you kill him?”

He did not answer, did not even meet her eye
when he passed by her, heaved the red-beard to his feet, then
adjusted the ropes around the man’s ankles. Afterward he untied the
reins of the other horse, led it toward her, took hold of her reins
as well, then shoved the red-beard in the direction of the path
that led back to the road saying, “Walk.”

As Robert marched them
away from the carn, Morgana’s alarm grew. Despite all inner voices
screaming for her not to do so, she looked behind her, struggling
to gain one more glimpse of the carn where she’d played as a bairn,
where she’d nearly lost her life, and where she’d left the false
priest shackled...and still alive. But, the torch had been doused,
and she was met with only deep purple shadows.
Robert killed him.
The false priest
was a threat to her no longer. Twin waves of nausea and relief
swept her being. After a moment, she sent a small prayer heavenward
for the man’s soul, then resolutely turned to face forward once
more.

* * *

Some time later, once they were well on the
road to the King's court, and after Robert had hobbled the
apprentice’s horse, tethered himself to the man by the waist,
mounted his own courser, then granted the man a seat upon the
fettered horse, he at last allowed his thoughts to shift back to
his wife.

She’d attacked the apprentice with the
fervor of a rabid beast, as a mother protects her young. Despite
Robert’s ire at her reckless attack, now that ‘twas past, and she’d
survived it,—and his pulse had at last slowed to its normal
meter—he could permit the warm glow of gratitude and pride for her
demonstration of loyalty to seep into his bones and bind his heart
in gossamer ribands once more. He’d worried her fond regard for him
had lessened, that ‘twas the true reason she’d so easily left him,
no matter the words she’d writ. And her show of bravery, no matter
how perilous to her own safety, made his chest expand with pride.
His hands gripped the reins. Aye, the same chest that would have
borne a fatal blow, if not for that rash action she’d taken. She'd
saved his life.