The Wolf and the Highlander (Highland Wishes) (20 page)

Ah, the cloak. She shrugged into it and pulled the hood around her head. Thus hidden, she opened the shutters. Their room overlooked the road they’d walked in on. The large black horse still stood across
from the pub. While she threw the contents of the pan down to the gutters, the front door opened.

Angry men’s voices rose to her ears, preceding a jumble of bodies pouring out of the pub and down the steps. At the center of the brawling knot of men was a tall head of curly black hair. The messenger? She couldn’t see his face.

The man threw a punch, knocking another of the men to the ground. He whipped his head around and searched the side of the building until he spotted her in the window. Brown eyes flecked with molten gold blazed up at her.

Riggs!

Her heart turned into a pounding drum as four of the men from the pub made a circle around him and drew their axes.
Och,
had Riggs taken his axe with him when he’d left? She couldn’t remember. She turned to scan the room, relieved when she didn’t see the weapon.

She started to turn back to the brawl, but heard the faint clicking of a key fitting into the lock. The lock tumbled. The door opened.

A pair of men shouldered into the room. One was jowly and gray with age, and he gaped at her as if he’d seen a ghost. The other had to be the messenger, Bilkes. He had sharp features, like an eagle, and darting green eyes. “Poor little lamb,” he said in his tenor lilt. “I’ve got some medicine to take your mind off your legs.” He cupped his cock and bollocks through his trews with one hand and pitched Riggs’s crumpled missive onto the bed with the other.

The gray-haired man slapped the back of Bilkes’s head. “Show the lady some respect.” She recognized the voice of the barkeep. He squinted at her and licked his lips. She got the distinctive impression he saw currency when he looked at her.

Beneath her cloak, she inched her hand toward her hunting knife.

“Thought you were mad,
when you said you smelled a female downstairs.” The barkeep nudged Bilkes with his elbow. “Guess your nose is better than mine.” He thumbed the bulbous appendage in question.

“Told you,” Bilkes said with a smirk. “Hard to mistake the scent of a woman. Even harder to mistake the scent of a human, no matter that a dumb trapper tried to cover it with his own.”

She gasped. Bilkes had been around humans. That had to mean somat, but what? She couldn’t think. Her mind was numb with terror.

“Quickly,” the barkeep said. “Get her away before the others finish with the trapper. I’ll meet you at Ferndell in the morning and we can discuss what to do with her.”

She found the knife and curled her hand around the hilt. Her heart hammered at the thought of men outside trying to “finish” Riggs.

The messenger advanced on her.

She took a breath and let loose the biggest, loudest scream she could muster.

Just as Anya had hoped, both men clapped their hands over their sensitive wolf-man ears.

“By Danu! Make her stop!” Bilkes shouted.

The barkeep lumbered around the bed toward her, sneering to show bulky, yellow teeth. He fluttered his hands around his head as though he could swat away her screams. She kept it up, even though she felt like a crazed banshee.

She drew her knife and dodged the barkeep as he reached for her. Her legs gave out and she fell onto the bed. Bilkes scooped her up. Curse it!

She screamed some more, aiming her voice right at the side of his head.

He bellowed and bent his neck to press his ear to his shoulder. “Shut it! Shut it!”

She didn’t “shut it.” She kept screaming while she
wriggled free from his hold. On her way to landing in a heap on the floor, she stuck him in the stomach with the knife. He groaned and bent forward around the wound.

Saints above. She’d stabbed a man.

She didn’t give herself time to think on it. On hands and knees, she scurried out the door, cursing her legs for being so bloody worthless she couldn’t even flee from these bastards on foot.

At the end of the hall, she came to the stairs. How would she get down them? What was happening to Riggs? Could he hold his own against those men? She had to get to him.

Grabbing onto the banister, she hauled herself up and started down the steps on her feet, clutching the rail.

A cruel arm banded around her chest and yanked her back against a hard body.

She screamed again.

“Shut it, I say! You’ll raise the low realm with all that racket!” Bilkes. The stabbing hadn’t taken.
Looked like she’d have to do it again.

She k
ept screaming, hoping to distract him from the blade still in her hand until she could position herself for a better attack, but luck was not on her side. A gnarled hand seized her wrist and squeezed until pain made her drop the knife. The barkeep.

Together, they
manhandled her down the stairs.

“Shut her up,” the barkeep said.
“She’ll alert the whole damn village.”

“For Danu’s sake, lady, I’m not going to hurt you!” Bilkes said when they reached the empty barroom. On the heels of that promise, he soundly slapped her. And it bloody damn well hurt.

He hauled her up so her face was an inch from his. His green eyes sparked with heated warning. She’d seen men look at each other like that—it was a look a man gave to someone he wouldn’t mind hurting very badly. His face was red, and veins popped in his neck. “You listen and you listen good. There are twenty men in the trade center down the lane. If they hear a female bleating like a ewe, they’ll all come this way with their pricks out. Now, we can leave nice and tidy without a pack of randy men on our trail or you can keep up that fucking screaming and draw them all straight to you.”

She shut it. Escaping two men was definitely preferable to escaping twenty.

He dragged her out into the road.

She made a dead weight of her body, forcing him to do all the work.

Unfortunately, he seemed more than up to the task. Bloody durable, these wolf-men. When they were on her side, that was a boon. When she needed to hurt one, it was unfortunate.

She craned her neck toward the knot of fighting men. One form lay motionless on the ground.

Don’t be Riggs.

The men shuffled around. There he was! Still standing
, tall and broad shouldered, feet spread, muscles straining against his shirt. But he still faced three men. He had his axe clashed with one, and the other two gripped their axes like they’d step in if their friend needed help.

Saints above, it was just a matter of time
before he fell. He couldn’t keep this up.

She had to do
somat to help him. But what? What could a cripple whore do without creating a fuss?

Och,
there was one skill she’d once employed to accomplish whatever she desired. She hadn’t tried it since her fall, but if there was ever a time to attempt it again, ’twas now.

Bilkes lugged her to his big black horse.

“You all right to ride tonight?” the barkeep asked. He stood with the reins in his hand.

“I’ll be
fine.” Bilkes shoved her into the barkeep’s stale-smelling arms and mounted. “Barely a scratch. Hand her up and make sure no one follows us.”

“I’ll hold ’em off. Best hurry, though. They’ll be done with the trapper soon.” The barkeep grabbed her under her arms and thrust her up in the air. “Make sure she doesn’t come to harm. She’ll be worth more if she’s untouched. Hurry, now.”

They meant to sell her to the highest bidder. Mangy curs. Not if she could bloody help it. She wound her arm around Bilkes’s neck and snuggled up to him, sitting sideways on his lap.

His posture went stiff. She didn’t blame him for being suspicious after she’d stabbed him.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said as he yanked the horse’s head around and kicked it into a trot. “I was frightened. I can see now I’m better off, though. The trapper can’t even hold his own against four drunkards. Thank heaven I’ve found a strong protector.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue, but it would be worth it if she could find a knife on this man and stab him proper.

While she cooed in his ear, she watched the fight over his shoulder. A man advanced at Riggs’s back, making her cringe. Riggs ducked forward to dodge the axe of the man in front while kicking backward to send the man behind him flying. Pride sealed her determination.
Hang on, love.

Bilkes’s shoulders relaxed. “If he had any wits, he wouldn’t have let you say a word up in your room. Downstairs, I’d suspected from your scent, but it was your voice that gave you away.”

Och,
how stupid of her. She should have kept to whispers. This was her fault.
I’ll make it right.
“How fortunate for me you heard.” She inched her hand around his side, looking for a sheath or a hilt.

“What are
you doing?”

“I’m checking your wound. Where is it? Thank heaven it’s just a scratch. I hope you’ll let me tend it when we get where we’re going.” Her pinkie brushed the rough edge of a sheath. He had a knife on him.

He moved her fingers to the oozing wound a few inches away. “It’s the least you can do. Maybe I’ll let you serve me in other ways too, to make amends.”

Not bloody likely. He hissed as she gently prodded the wound.

“Mmm. Sore, aye? Fear no’. I shall make amends, indeed.” She prepared to jab her fingers into the torn flesh and slip his hunting knife free with her other hand.

A sudden change in the horse’s direction threw her off balance as Bilkes steered the horse around a corner. She had to grab his shirt to hang on. Damn. She’d have to get into position again.

He heeled their mount into a canter. They were about to pass a building that would block her view of the fight. She strained for one last glimpse of Riggs and found him standing in the road with fallen villagers all around him. His eyes flashed in the darkness, watching her go. He didn’t see the man staggering to his feet behind him or the axe the man raised and brought swinging down.

The sight was wiped away by the dark wood of an abandoned building. Her heart lunged into her throat. She cried out to warn Riggs, but the sound of a horse screaming drowned out all else.

Bilkes cursed and jerked the reins. Several dark shapes crowded the road. Horses with riders.

Bilkes’s horse reared. He tumbled backward, taking her with him.

Her gut thrummed in that moment of weightlessness before the fall grabbed her and threw her to the ground.
Och,
she hated falling!

She hit hard. Her bones rattled. Her breath whooshed out.

Hooves pounded all around her. Too close! She’d be trampled! She covered her head and curled into a ball.

Equine grunts and whinnies exploded into the night. Men shouted.

“There she is! Get her!”

“Mind your horse! Don’t trample her!”

She cowered like a bloody tortoise. If she was to be trampled, she’d bloody well see it coming like the Keith she was. She rolled and looked up. A pair of great hooves flashed above her. Bilkes’s black horse, riderless and rearing.

A body covered hers.

“Look out!”

Bilkes. Protecting her. He rolled them.

She could see nothing past his broad shoulders, but she felt it when the hooves came down. They struck Bilkes, who had moved her out of the way. He jerked and grunted. His arms convulsed around her.

He’d taken the blow in her place.

She screamed.

A pair of boots slammed to the ground. A hand with black, pointed fingernails reached for her and grabbed her by the back of her cloak. She was hauled up against the chest of a bearded man with eyes pale as ice. Aodhan had eyes like that, but there had often been warmth in the Keith war chieftain’s eyes when he’d looked at her. There had never been an ounce of warmth in these eyes. Never.

“Been looking for you.” His voice was so deep it was part growl.

The trackers.

Fear froze her veins.

Riggs was surely dead, and she was in the hands of the trackers he’d worked so hard to keep her from.

* * * *

Dawn broke cold and misty. Anya sat astride the tallest and broadest horse she’d ever been on in front of the tracker she surmised to be the leader, the one who had yanked her up from the road. The other three deferred to him, and he carried himself like an important man, with absolute confidence and disdain. Even though she had yet to get a clear look at him, his air of command came through in the relaxed way his hips swiveled with the horse’s gait and the unconcerned way he rested his wrists on her thighs with the reins loose in his fists. An expert
horseman without a care in the world as he stole a woman away from an enemy village. His manner alone told her he did not expect anyone to challenge them for her.

She should have been repulsed by her proximity to such men, especially when they were the very ones Riggs had worked so hard to keep her from. She should have wanted to shove his hands off her lap and leap from their mount. She should have wanted to get away at any cost. But she was too empty to feel anything. Too soul-weary to do anything.