Page 54 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

M ican fought like a man possessed, with a snarl on his face. Whether he still battled for revenge or for conquest, or just because he refused to lose this fight, Adair could not tell.

It did not matter. For the man stood at the very door of Rohracht’s hall. He could not be permitted inside.

A mere two defenders kept him out, and one of them sore wounded. Instinct, unfathomable within Adair, weighed the situation. Bone-deep knowledge took him forward.

He had to fight his way in. The attackers gathered close around Mican battled well, and Adair soon found himself in a fight for his life. Snarling faces turned toward him, as did reddened swords. Well enough, for it took the pressure off the defenders.

Adair did not feel the wounds he took, too busy keeping a far grimmer count in his head. One opponent down. Two. Three. Shedding his own blood now, he leaped forward and placed his back against the scorched door of the hall.

Facing Mican.

The door felt hot, but what was left of it had been shut tight—barred, he hoped—and made of solid oak. Strong.

As strong as he must be.

Mican, blood showing on his face, recognized him at once for the very man who had killed his son—here suddenly within reach of his blade. For one vulnerable moment, his eyes widened and Adair struck. Mican’s blade met his, and his face hardened.

Men bellowed and hollered all around them, and the clash of metal on metal and wood was deafening. Adair, possessing no shield, wrapped both hands on the hilt of his sword. Mican still possessed a shield, but it was split. He came at Adair with it, using the edge as a weapon.

The door behind Adair held. His body absorbed the attack.

They were nose to nose now, only the battered ash of Mican’s shield between. Hate flared in the man’s eyes.

Adair pushed back against that hate, a mighty shove that crashed the shield asunder. Mican threw it aside.

“Ye bastard!” he spat into Adair’s face, with no sign of fear. “Ye killed my son. Ye will die for it.”

If Adair died, the settlement would be lost. He did not know how he knew it, or from whence the belief came. But he set his back more firmly against the door and raised his sword.

Only one of them would survive.

*

Bradana crawled on her belly through the rough grass and drank in the scene beyond. She could see it all. The scattered fighting on the shore. The clots of men fighting here and there up the slope, and the dense throng of attackers at the door of her grandsire’s dun. Where Adair had gone.

She could see him there. Even from this distance, aye, and despite the heavy smoke. She knew him by the way he moved. By the way he used his sword. By some greater, deeper form of recognition she did not question.

She watched from the top of a rough knoll while he gained the front of the hall and took up a stance there, his brown hair swinging behind him.

Her heart convulsed within her, with fear and pride and love. Her entire being wanted to run to him. But for the sake of their child, she must keep away.

If he lost this fight, if his sword could not make a difference in what looked like an unequal battle, Mican would be as happy to kill her as he would Adair.

But och, if she had to crouch here and watch him die, did she want to live on?

She moaned low in her throat, and Wen, flat on the ground beside her, echoed her with a whine.

Was that Mican himself facing Adair, there at the entrance to her grandsire’s hall? She narrowed her eyes against the smoke and mist, desperate to see.

He had black hair like Mican. And he moved the way she remembered, with brutish strength—just like his son. The figure came at Adair with the remnant of a shield, which promptly broke. A furious gesture took him forward to where Adair stood with his back planted against the door.

Bradana closed her eyes. She did not pray often, though aye, she believed in the gods and goddesses in a distant sort of way.

She believed still more fiercely in this land against whose skin she now huddled.

Alba, protect him. Defend him for me.

She reached out with her mind, with her very being. A supplication and a vow. Protect him and I will live for thee—and for him.

Her desire, even more than her words, went like an arrow to Alba’s dark heart. The stones of the shore heard, as did the high peaks of granite. The trees and the strength of oak at Adair’s back. Eyes wide and heart aching, Bradana raised her head and watched.

*

Adair bled heavily, and he began to weaken. Though the battle clamor surrounded him, he saw only the snarl on Mican’s face and the hate in his eyes. This fight between them was pivotal, and personal.

Did the question of which of them would win come down to that hate? He was younger than Mican by a generation, and presumably stronger. Mican was experienced in battle, and skilled. Both of them wounded. Bleeding their lives away. It could come down to that—the hate that fueled Mican.

Adair must be fueled, then, by love.

His mind, quite apart from the rest of him now, called upon it. The love he felt for Bradana and that she felt for him. The love he harbored for this land.

It came flooding to him up from the very ground, through the oak planks at his back and into his heart.

One last burst of power.

His blade met Mican’s and held. The power filled his legs, his body. He pushed off from the door, pushed, pushed . The two swords gave voice as they screeched together.

But one of them held.

*

Bradana screamed as she saw one of the men go down. Even across the distance she could see the bright shower of blood as he fell.

Both of them fell.

She was up and running before she knew it, her feet acting on their own. Breaking her promise. It did not matter, for with the conclusion of that one small battle there at the door, the rest of it crumbled, the individual fights ending and the attackers pulling away, away like a black mist from the land.

Bradana ran, past sprawled bodies of the dead and dying. Past living men who recognized and called out to her. Past reddened turf and stone, climbing, climbing with the breath searing her lungs and her heart disbelieving what she had seen.

His brown head going down.

Nay, nay. She could not live so. She could not endure without him. She could not wait for another lifetime to find him again.

She had no breath when she reached the door of her grandsire’s dun. So clogged was it by the fallen, by the dead, that she could not reach the two men who lay up against it.

“Mistress Bradana!” Men, her grandfather’s men, called to her. She ignored them, her gaze fixed on but one form.

He lay facedown, his brown hair a tangle, and the sword fallen at last from his hand. Surrendered in death?

Mican lay almost touching him, face up and eyes wide, a terrible, gaping slash across his chest.

No need to ask if he were dead.

“Mistress. Mistress!” someone else cried.

Mican was dragged aside. Careful hands turned Adair over in the space allowed. Bradana dropped to her knees beside him.

Breathing? Was he breathing?

His eyes were closed and his face, liberally splashed with blood, looked unusually calm. Serene. As if he saw beyond this world.

“Nay,” she moaned in her throat. “Nay, nay.”

Surely he must breathe. Despite the terrible wound she could see, seeping blood across his belly. Surely she would know if he were gone. Her world would collapse around her and grow dark.

The man kneeling beside her, the one who had turned Adair over, looked into her face. She knew him, a member of her grandfather’s guard called Dabhor.

He had tears running down his face.

“He turned the battle. He did. We all fell in behind him and—”

“Aye. Is he dead?” She touched Adair’s face, his cheek, and his brow, just where he always kissed her.

“He breathes.”

Bradana’s blood surged so hard, she went dizzy. The door behind Adair opened.

“Bring him awa’ in,” said a voice she knew.

Willing hands lifted Adair and carried him into the darkened dun. Away behind, Bradana could still hear someone—her grandfather’s men—pursuing the last of Mican’s who had broken away.

Blood. There was so much blood. It trailed from Adair’s body as they carried him. More blood than one man should be able to shed.

He breathed and he lived, aye, but for how long?