Pride Of Lions

Owen had grudgingly agreed, but he’d refused to let Allisun go down with them. “Bad enough I let you come this far. You’ll not be lifting any cattle.” He’d overruled her objections and ordered her to wait on the hill with Wee Harry as guardsman.

“Ach, there they are,” Harry whispered.

Allisun looked where he pointed, down to the black slash of stone and brush that marked the ravine’s entrance. A low-slung shape crept from the mouth of the gorge. In a quick blur of motion, it slipped into the long grass, leaving her wondering if she’d imagined it. Nay, there was another and another. The grass barely twitched as they crawled closer to their objective.

Her heart racing, her fingers clenched tight around her hobbler’s reins, she watched as her men rose suddenly from the grass and fell upon the slumbering guards. The scuffle was brief and nearly soundless, a single muffled thud the only outward sign the herd was now at the Murrays’ mercy.

Allisun breathed a sigh of relief when Owen stood and waved his arm, signaling the Murrays forward. They rode out from cover, leading the rest of the horses. As soon as they’d mounted, the men fanned out and moved slowly toward the herd. “They are going to do it,” she whispered.

“Dinna count them ours, yet.” Wee Harry frowned, dour as ever. “This is a chancy business. Cattle are queer things, like to take a fright over naught and run off or trample a man.”

“You are right, of course.” Sending up a silent prayer, Allisun rose in her stirrups, counting every step the men took. So absorbed was she in the drama unfolding below that she ignored the flicker of movement at the mouth of the ravine, thinking it must be a Murray left on guard.

The moon chose that moment to shake free of the encumbering clouds. Long, white fingers raced across the landscape, banishing the dark, lengthening the shadows, glinting briefly on something bright amongst the brush and bracken.

Allisun swung her head toward the gorge, saw moonlight sparkling off polished metal. Armor?

Lordy! It was armored knights ... the same ones she’d seen enter Luncarty a few hours ago. And with them came smaller, darker shapes. McKies!

“Harry! Harry, it’s a trap! Look there!” she cried.

Harry turned and cursed.

“We have to warn them.” Allisun set her heels into her mare’s ribs.

“Wait! Come back! Ye cannot go down there!”

Allisun knew there was no time to wait. Already the knights and the McKies were moving onto the plain. With the thick grass to muffle their hoofbeats, they’d take her kinsmen unaware.

“Owen!” Allisun shouted as she sent her stout hobbler clattering down the rocky slope. “Behind you! A trap!”

Her words, high and shrill with fear, shattered the still night, freezing men and turning heads across the narrow valley.

The Murrays paused in the act of rousting a score of prime beef, looked around and spied the knights. Over the hail of stones her horse kicked up, Allisun heard Owen roar the orders that set the Murrays to flight.

The knights looked up the hill toward her, cursed loudly and spurred their mounts to intercept her kinsmen.

The cattle, roused so rudely from sleep, snorted, heaved to their feet and stood, shivering with apprehension.

To Allisun, the outcome was as predictable as thunder following a bolt of lightning. The Murrays were badly outnumbered, the weary mounts that had brought them so far tonight no match for the sleek McKie horses. They’d be caught ere they reached the end of the valley. Unless...

Looking over her shoulder, she spied Wee Harry, his face white with dread, his teeth bared as he raced after her. “Stampede them,” she shouted to him, motioning toward the herd.

Harry looked, weighed the moment with the canniness of a man who’d lived long on the Borders. “Aye. I’ll see to it. Get yerself clear, lass. Head back up yon ravine and make for home.”

Allisun nodded, but she had no intention of leaving, not when two figures streaking out of the dark would the sooner set the wary cattle to flight. Just as she reached the herd, she stood in the stirrups and whooped, “Hey! Hey!”

The call was taken up by Wee Harry as he plunged into the thick of things. The cattle started, eyes rolling, whites showing. With snorts of bovine fright, they turned and ran, crashing into the uncertain mob behind them, starting a ripple that pulsed through the whole throng. Backs humped, tails lashing, the beasts fled, filling the air with panicked bellows and clods of soft turf.

Allisun was swept along on the fringe of the tide yet felt no fear, only elation. Her horse bumped along in harmony with the cattle. Over their homed heads, she spotted Wee Harry, urging the beasts on. To her right and a bit ahead, the McKies and their knights bobbed about, struggling to extricate themselves from the jostling mass so they might pursue the Murrays who, having been in front of the herd when it bolted, were getting clean away with a small knot of beeves.

In that moment of triumph, with her heart singing and her kinsmen’s escape all but a certainty, Allisun glimpsed something shiny out of the corner of her eye. Whipping her head around, she saw one of the knights had worked his way up alongside her.

The polished metal helm covered his face, but his eyes glowed like hellfire in the sockets. His breath steamed from the mouthpiece, misting like dragon’s smoke in the cool air.

“I’ve got you, at least.” He grabbed her arm.

Allisun screamed and tried to wrench away from the gloved fingers. The shift caused her horse to stumble. Clutching at the pommel, she fought gamely to keep her seat. But it was too late. She was going down into the churning mass of deadly hooves.

Hunter felt his captive slip, tightened his grip and yanked hard. A quick, expert twist and he had the Murray free of the saddle and anchored securely against his thigh, his arm around a surprisingly narrow waist.

Why, it was only a lad, Hunter thought. Then he noted the soft, unmistakable swell pressing into his arm and realized it was a woman he’d saved.

A woman reiver?

Dieu, what sort of people took a woman along on a raid? His opinion of the Murrays fell another notch. The woman was obviously too frightened to struggle. For which Hunter was thankful. He had his hands full trying to control his mount. Aggressive by nature, the warhorse had been taught to aid his master in battle by striking out at anything that came near. To Zeus, the roiling, grunting mass of cattle represented a terrible threat, one he tried to combat with teeth and hooves.

“Nay. Easy, easy,” Hunter repeated, fighting to keep his voice calm. He had his legs clamped tight around Zeus’s girth, but with only one hand on the reins, it was nearly impossible to direct the horse. “Damn, we’ll never get free of this.”

“Let go of me,” said a slightly breathy voice.

Hunter looked down at the top of the woman’s head, a mass of curls burnished red in the moonlight. “I cannot drop you.”

“Nor was I suggesting it,” she replied dryly, legs milling above the cattle. “Swing me astride before you.”

He eyed the jostling bovine backs. “Can you do it?”

“Oh, I’ve every incentive to try, I assure you.”

Despite their dire circumstances, Hunter chuckled. “At the count, then. One... two... three.”

In a move so smooth they might have practiced it, Hunter lifted her up. She swung her right leg over Zeus’s neck and settled before Hunter, secure between the pommel and his body.

“There.” Hunter grabbed the reins in both hands and drew sharply as Zeus gathered himself to strike. “None of that. Get us out of here, lad.” Pulling hard on the right leather, he tried to make for the edge of the herd.

“Head at the diagonal instead of trying to turn this giant, and cut straight across the herd,” commanded the woman.

Hunter raised his brows, surprised by her tone of authority, but he did as she suggested. It worked. Every step they took brought them closer and closer to the edge of the herd, till finally they burst free.

Zeus tossed his head and trumpeted a final challenge before obeying Hunter’s command to slow. Sides heaving with exertion, the horse expelled great puffs of mist into the air.

“He’s ill suited to herding,” commented the woman.

“Aye. They’re bred for strength, not racing.” He looked ahead, seeing his Carmichaels and the McKies, gamely trying to turn the cattle. The Murrays were doubtless miles in front with their purloined beef.

All except this one.

A minute shift in her weight was all the warning Hunter had before his captive swung a leg over Zeus’s neck and attempted to slide free.

“Nay!” Hunter caught her around the waist, plopped her back before him and anchored her there with his arm. “I’ve lost the others, but I’m keeping you. Who are you? What is your name?”

She stiffened and shook her head.

“You are a Murray.”

She remained stubbornly silent.

Not that it mattered. He had a fair idea it was Allisun Murray he held before him. But he judged it would do more harm than good to confront her here and risk a struggle. “Whoever you are,” he said, and looked toward the last of the cattle, just disappearing between the slim bottleneck created by two opposing hills, “you and yon men are thieves.”

“We are no such thing,” she said hotly. “We’re but taking back the eighteen head the McKie have stolen from us.”

“If that’s true, and mind, I’m not saying it is,” Hunter replied, rather enjoying the byplay, “you got rather more cattle than your due.”

She sniffed. “My men will have taken only eighteen. If the McKies lose more than that, it’ll be because they weren’t skilled enough to find them in the bracken.”

My men. “Is your husband a Murray?”

“I’m not wed.”

“But those men are your kin. You’d not have taken such a fool chance to warn them if they weren’t.”

“Is a blood bond the only kind a Lowlander recognizes?”

“Nay.” He was beginning to grow irritated by her evasions. “’Tis said that Borderers have no loyalty...even to their own.”

She tensed but said evenly, “You just accused me of risking my neck for my kinsmen.”

“So, they are your kin.”

She shrugged. “I thought we’d agreed they must be, or I’d not have lifted a finger to save them from you.”

“You’re a Murray, then.”

“Ah, but we’ve not established that they are Murrays.”

Hunter ground his teeth in exasperation. Many’s the time he’d fenced with words. He did not like finding them so expertly wielded by another. And by a woman, at that. A small woman, he thought as he urged Zeus toward the end of the valley. Her head came only to the center of his breastbone. How fragile she’d felt when he’d lifted her clear of her faltering horse. The memory merged with that of watching her race down the steep slope, calling a warning to her kinsmen.

A small, brave woman.

Hunter shook away the notion. He had no business admiring a woman who must surely be Allisun Murray.

The main body of the herd was gone by the time they entered the pass into the valley. A few head of cattle, the very young and the very old, had fallen by the wayside. Some stood about, horns lowered, puffing hard. Others had collapsed on the turf, mayhap never to rise again.

“We’ll be all night rounding up the stock,” Hunter muttered. “And I fear my uncle has lost a goodly num—”

“Uncle!” She jerked her head around, giving him a shadowed glimpse of a white face dominated by large, dark eyes. Her eyes were filled with horror. “Jock McKie is your uncle?”

“Aye. I’m—” His explanation ended in a curse as his prisoner erupted into a storm of flailing limbs. He wore full body armor, but only woolen hose on his legs and arms. It afforded little protection as her booted heel cracked down on his shin. “Ouch! Damn you!” His grip on her waist loosened fractionally. He felt rather than saw her go for the knife at her belt. “Nay!” Seizing her wrist in his rein hand, he wrapped the other around her throat.

“Damn you!” she wheezed, struggles ceasing.

“Drop the knife.”

“Nay.”

Her bones were so fragile he could break them with a flick of either hand. She knew it, too. The pulse in her throat beat a wild tattoo against his palm. The cadence of it jangled every nerve in his body. An unsettling awareness washed through him, a primitive urge to capture, to conquer. Dieu, he thought, shoving the notion away in disgust. Not even in the aftermath of battle, when blood lust drove some men to rape, had he felt this unholy stirring. It must be the violent Border air. “I do not want to hurt you,” he growled as much to reaffirm his civility as to reassure her.

“Aye, you do.” She swallowed, shivering slightly.

That small shudder awoke something else in him, something equally primitive. The urge to protect. “Nay. I came here to put a stop to this senseless bloodletting. To prove it, I will let you keep the knife.” Doubtless a grave mistake, but he needed to atone for his rapacious thoughts. “Providing you sheathe it.”

“This is some trick.”

“It is not, I assure you I—”

Hoofbeats sounded on the trail behind them. Over his shoulder, Hunter saw riders, coming fast. Leading them was a great bear of a man with a distinctive white streak in his dark, shaggy mane. Not McKies. Likely more Murrays.

“We’ll settle this later.” Hunter let go of her and kicked Zeus into a ground-eating gallop.

“Faster,” urged his prisoner, peering back behind them.

“Not your kin, then, I take it.”

“Dod! Far from it. That’s Ill Will Bell, next of kin to Old Cootie himself. He’ll rape me, pry you out of your fancy steel suit and roast you over a slow fire till you give up your gold.”

“Aye, I’ve heard of the man.” Hunter concentrated on the rough way ahead. They raced flat out over bleak moorland, following the trampled wake of the cattle. They couldn’t sustain this pace for long. In the distance, he saw more of the straggling herd and hoped to come upon his men and the McKies.

“Go to the left,” ordered the woman. “There, between those two boulders.”

“The herd...”

“Too far. Your horse won’t last.” She grabbed the left rein and tugged hard.

Conditioned to instant response, Zeus wheeled, slipped between two black rocks and plunged down a steep trail.

The woman turned to look back. “They have gone by.”

“Either they missed the turn in the dark...”

“Or they have decided to go after the cattle.”

Hunter grunted and focused on controlling their descent. The moon had disappeared again, and he had no idea what lay ahead. The path—more of an animal trail, he guessed—was rock strewn, the hillside covered with trees. Dewy branches slapped at .his helmet and tugged at his tabard. “Where does this trail go?” he asked, sawing back on the reins to slow their progress.

“I—I have no idea.” Her words were punctuated by groans as she absorbed the jolts. “I do not know the land hereabouts.”

“You knew where to turn off,” he said, wary of a trap.

“I saw a break in the hillside and thought it might provide us with a way out.”

“And into what?”

“I—I do not know.”

The trail veered sharply to the right. Hunter eased Zeus around the turn, then stopped.

“What is it?” She looked up over her shoulder at him. Her features were indistinct in the gloom—-a pale face, and wide dark eyes surrounded by tangled hair. Was she beautiful, this fey creature with the stout heart and canny mind?

A sound scattered his musing. “Listen.”

“I do not hear anything,” she said, voice hushed.

The stallion did. His ears pricked forward, his great head swung to look back up the trail.

Far above them, Hunter heard the faint crunch of stone. He leaned down and murmured, “They are coming.”

She nodded, her hair tickling his cheek, teasing his nostrils with the faint scent of woman and heather. “They are not many, I think. One...two, mayhap.”

“Aye.”

“Do we go or stay?”

Hunter looked around at the thick pines, the black rocks that lined the edge of the trail. “’Tis not a place I’d choose to make a stand.” He edged the stallion into a walk. A few paces they went, each one filled with tension. It radiated from the slender body bolt upright before him. He saw the glint of steel in her hand and realized she’d drawn the dirk again. Oddly he didn’t fear she meant to use it on him this time.

“They follow,” she whispered.

Hunter nodded.

The trail dipped. The stallion’s hooves flirted with the edge, sending a hail of stones into unseen darkness. Hunter counted the beats till they hit bottom. It seemed a far ways off. “Easy, lad.” He nudged a toe into the stallion’s ribs, moving him over.

In that instant, something broke from cover. A rabbit.

The stallion screamed and sidestepped.

Into nothingness...

As they went over the edge, Hunter cursed, grabbed hold of the woman and kicked his feet free of the stirrups.

He hit hard on his back, grunted as rock dented steel. He tried to brake with his heels, groaning as his foot caught on a rock. Pain radiated up his leg. They bounced off the rock and slid down, like rainwater off a slate roof. Gravel clawed at his unarmored rump and rattled against his helmet. He spared a moment’s thought for the woman, protected only by her woolen trews and tunic, and clutched her tighter against his chest.

“Hang on,” he growled.

“Where?” Her fingers groped at his chest, his waist. “You’re slick as a great metal pitcher.”

Hunter chuckled. But the bit of mirth was short-lived. His back slammed into something solid. The impact drove the air from his body. The night exploded in a shower of bright stars.

Allisun’s head hit his metal chest with a resounding clunk, jarring her teeth, addling her wits. A moment, maybe two, she lay there collecting herself. Then the unnatural stillness penetrated her stupor.

They’d stopped sliding, yet the massive arms that had held her during the fall were still clamped around her.

“You can let me go now,” she whispered, raising her head.

A bit of light filtered in through the canopy of leaves, gleaming softly on his armor. The visor of his helmet had come up. In the shadows it cast, she glimpsed a square jaw, aquiline nose and closed eyes.

“Sir knight?”

He neither moved nor opened his eyes.

“McKie?” She pushed his arms aside, alarmed they moved so easily, crawled off his chest and shook him. “McKie?”

Nothing.

Above them on the trail, however, she heard a sound that made her panicked heart skip a beat.

“They came down this way,” said a coarse voice.

“Aye, I heard ’em crashing about, but all’s quiet now.”

“Bloody hell. They got away, then. Curse the luck. I gave up my share of the cattle in hopes of getting his armor.”

Armor!

Allisun looked down at the expanse of metal shimmering traitorously in the pale light.

Gasping softly, she whipped off her cloak and flung it over the knight’s head and torso. His left side was still exposed. She threw herself down on it, praying her dark woolens would hide the rest.

Then she lay still, listening and praying.

Chapter Three

He could not be dead, Hunter thought, for he hurt everywhere. Still, he couldn’t move. When he forced his eyes open, it was to suffocating darkness.

“Dieu,” he groaned.

“Shh.”

Something covered his mouth. The woman’s voice came out of the black, “Be still. They are above us.”

“Am...am I blind?” he mumbled.

“Nay. Only covered so they won’t see us.”

Coarse voices grumbled above them, arguing, he thought.

The woman whimpered softly, her breathing shallow and raspy. Her slender body, pressed more closely against his left side, shuddering convulsively.

Instinctively he put an arm around her, grateful that it moved to his command. Mayhap he was not paralyzed after all. As he lay there in the dark, his mind leaped back over the night’s events: the cattle raid, the woman he’d rescued, the precipitous flight from a band of brigands and the fall that had ended here.

A voice intruded, loud and coarse. “That armor he was wearing would be worth a fortune.” Gravel crunched. “Looks like they went over the edge here.”

“Curse the luck,” said another harsh voice.

The Bells, Hunter thought. He should do something...get up, draw his sword and prepare to defend. But he could not marshal the strength to move. To a man of action, lying here totally defenseless, waiting for the enemy to strike, was pure torture. His body jerked as he tried to force it to move.

“Stay still.” The woman stroked his cheek. “I know it is hard to stay hidden here,” she whispered. “But we could not hope to prevail. against so many armed, ruthless animals.”

Hunter wanted to scream. At the moment, he could not have fought a week-old kitten.

“They could be hurt,” said one.

“Do ye think so?” the other Bell asked eagerly.

“Aye. They was fools to try this in the dark. If they aren’t dead, they’ll be sore hurt.”

“Easy pickings. What say, should we go down and see?”

“Idiot, I’m not chancing this trail at night. Besides, if they’re hurt, they won’t be going anyplace. We can go and get our share of the cattle, then sneak back later when it’s daylight and take what we want.”

Their footsteps faded away.

“They have gone.” She sat up, flinging off the cloak with which she’d covered them.

“Well, at least I am not blind,” Hunter grumbled, blinking against the moonlight filtering through the leaves.

“I am sorry, but I feared they’d spot that shiny armor of yours.” She slung the cloak around her shoulders and shifted to her knees beside him. “They will be back. We must leave as—”

“I cannot move.”

“What?” She leaned over him, frowning as she poked and prodded. “Small wonder, I’d say. You’re wedged in between a rock and the tree that broke your fall.”

“My back?”

“I do not think it’s broken.” She smiled faintly. “Your armor’s caught fast in the rocks. Here, let’s get this out of the way for a start.” She tugged off his helmet.

He swore as his head thumped on the stony ground. “Have a care what you are—”

“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.” She attacked the leather buckles holding the breastplate and back of his armor together. When they were loose, she cocked her head, grinning down at him. “You look a bit like a turtle I once trapped.”

“This is not amusing.”

“The turtle didna think so, either. He ended up in a soup.”

“Just get on with it, will you?”

“Aye, since you asked so nicely.” She approached the task with far more zeal than skill. It was no easy task for a small, inexperienced woman to extricate a prone man from a set of full battle plate. After much sweating and swearing on both their parts, she wrested the armor from his torso.

Freed of the encumbering weight, which had indeed been jammed between two rocks by the force of his fall, Hunter managed to sit up. “Damn.” He gingerly flexed first his shoulders, then his back. “Argh.” His hand went straight to the spot just above his waist where he’d met the tree.

“Hurt?” She circled around and lifted the hem of the padded gambeson he wore to protect against the chafing metal. “The skin’s not cut, but you’ll have a dandy bruise.”

“You say that so cheerily because it’s mine, not yours.”

She chuckled and came around to sit beside him. “It could have been much worse. Worthless as I find your armor, it did save you from greater injury.”

“Worthless?” Hunter bristled. “It will stop an arrow and even a slashing blow from a sword or lance.”

“Aye, but it weighs down a man and his mount and makes him far less agile in battle.”

Hunter grunted. He’d heard that argument from more than one Scot who preferred the traditional armaments to the armor popular in England and Europe. “This time, I’d say my plate was both blessing and potential curse. My thanks, for hiding me earlier and for getting me free.” Bracing his hand on a huge boulder, he stood. Pain stabbed through his left ankle, sending him back down.