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T hirty-seven

F OUR OF THEM follow us.”

Chase nodded in acknowledgment as Halldor pulled up beside him. They’d almost reached the gates of Tordenet.

“Five. Sorry,” the big man corrected with an embarrassed grin. “Two of them canter in unison. It’s an easy enough mistake.”

The guy must have the most sensitive ears of anyone ever born.

“How much time before they get here?”

Chase wasn’t concerned about dealing with five men; he and Hall could make a quick enough business of them.

But once Ulfr’s men arrived, Chase had little doubt they’d put up a call of alarm—and fighting his way through an entire garrison while he hunted for Christiana would slow his efforts considerably.

“Not long. I say we head for the keep once we’re through the gates. I’ll take the laird’s tower. I’ve an interest there of my own.”

“Fine,” Chase agreed. “I’ll take his solar—and his bedchamber. And I swear to God, if that’s where I find her, there won’t be enough left of that son of a bitch to fill a piss pot.”

“Best you hold off on confronting Torquil until after I’ve been to his tower, aye?”

They’d reached the gates, leaving Chase no opportunity to pursue Hall’s odd piece of advice.

“Open!” Hall’s command boomed up to the guard on the wall walk and the chains rattled in response.

As soon as the metal grate rose high enough, Chase urged his horse forward quickly, Hall at his side matching his pace.

They rode straight to the keep, and at the base of the stairs, he leapt from the horse’s back, hitting the steps at a run.

Hall’s feet hammered behind him as he reached the top landing and fastened his hand upon the door.

“Go on,” the big man urged. “I’ll slow them down for you.”

Chase turned and saw five riders galloping toward them, their horses covered in lather.

“Go!” Hall yelled over his shoulder.

With one last scan of the courtyard, Chase pushed on the heavy door and slipped inside.

Once the door swung shut, no sound but his racing steps echoed off the stone walls.

In the quiet seconds, a tiny spark of discord stirred in the back of his brain, as if he’d seen a picture with something out of place.

But no time to worry about that now. Whatever he’d seen out there would have to be Hall’s problem to deal with.

He pushed all thought away to concentrate on his anger as he hit the door to the laird’s solar at a full run, drawing his sword as he entered.

He skidded to a stop just inside the room, where the grisliest of blood-spattered horrors greeted him.

Chase had experienced gruesome on multiple levels in his life. He doubted anyone could pull two tours in a war zone and avoid it. But to stumble into a scene this grotesque when he’d expected something so totally different shook his resolve and rattled his momentum.

Or perhaps it was just the fear that if this could happen to whomever that head had belonged to, it could as easily happen to Christiana.

His stomach roiled at the thought and he backed out of the room, tamping down all emotions. What was left in there was somebody else’s problem, not his. Christiana’s safety was his only consideration now.

She filled every corner of his thoughts as he ran to the stairs and started up them.

Scenes of her flitted through his memory like a movie trailer on fast-forward.

Her eyes as she lay beneath him in the room upstairs.

Her laughter as she sat on the bench in Orabilis’s animal shed.

Her smile as she stood at the door of her tower.

As if a computer inside his head finally loaded the site it had searched for, the discord eating at the back of his mind blossomed fully, and he stumbled to a stop midway up the great staircase.

The last glimpse of her tower, when he’d quickly scanned the courtyard, replayed in his mind. He’d spotted smoke wisping out through the ground-level window.

She was in her tower—and in danger. He knew it as if he could hear her calls for help.

He raced down the stairs, leaping from the third step to hit the floor running, and flung open the massive entry door. Hall held his ground on the top stair with his sword, fending off the two men on the steps below him, holding them back as he’d promised.

Chase could either join in the fray, hacking his way through the four men blocking the stairs, slowing his progress to Christiana, or he could find an alternative route.

“Her tower!” Chase called to Hall, sheathing his weapon as he chose to follow the alternative.

Bracing his hands on the wall surrounding the landing, he hefted himself up to balance upon the top ledge, and then, after a quick scan below, he jumped, aiming for a hay-filled wagon off to one side.

The impact of the landing jolted up his legs, but he had to keep moving. Across the courtyard, the dark tendril of smoke curling from Christiana’s window had grown.

He rolled from the wagon and ran, drawing his sword once again and losing it just as quickly when Ulfr tackled him from the side, driving him to the ground.

There had been four on the stairs with Hall. He should have remembered to check for the fifth.

“The tower burns,” he managed as Ulfr’s knee crashed down on his chest.

Above him, Ulfr lifted his arm, drawing back the knife he held with a scream. Grabbing Ulfr’s shirt at the shoulders, he jerked the man forward, smashing his head into his opponent’s face. Blood spurted from Ulfr’s nose and he fell back, but only for a moment.

A moment, as it happened, was all Chase needed to scoop up his sword and have it at the ready as Ulfr attacked, with the single-minded ferocity of a maddened animal.

Chase’s blade slid into the other man’s chest, slicing a path through muscle and organ, and Ulfr dropped to his knees, surprise blanketing his expression.

Chase withdrew his weapon, already running toward the tower before Ulfr’s body hit the ground.

At the tower he stopped, drawing in a deep breath before kicking the door open to the sound of splintering wood. Smoke billowed out around him as he burst into the room. Flames licked up around a pile of blankets, their unburned ends trailing out onto the hearth.

Torquil held Christiana facedown on the table, where the bastard bent over her with obviously only one thing on his mind.

H ALL CUT HIS eyes toward the tower, but only for a second. The blades flashing in his direction required his full attention.

The sight of smoke curling from the tower explained his little brother’s leap from the railing.

“Godspeed,” he huffed in Chase’s direction, though he knew the other was too far on his way to hear it.

He hoped the lad hadn’t broken his legs upon landing, just as he hoped Chase would make it to his lady in time.

But if Torquil waited in Christiana’s tower, no amount of good intentions would enable his fine Faerie friend to destroy that monster unless Hall was successful in his part of their siege.

With a roar that had weakened the knees of far better men than these, he lifted his leg and kicked, his foot landing solidly in the center of the lead man’s chest. Like a row of shoddily stacked peat staves, they all toppled backward, each tumbling onto the man behind him as they scrambled to break their fall.

Freed of them, Hall slipped through the door and headed for the back stairs. The object of his search would be found in the laird’s tower, behind a stone above the fireplace, if Bridget MacCulloch was to be believed.

A glance into the open door of the solar revealed evidence of his worst fears.

Hugo the minstrel had met a fearsome end indeed, his head torn from his body.

No man could have done such as that, lending credence to his suspicion that Fenrir himself had joined with Torquil.

Which made finding what he now sought that much more imperative.

He hurried on, nearing the narrow staircase before he was set upon. Artur pounced on him, wrapping one arm around Hall’s neck to cling there like a fetid tick upon a dog’s ear as he plunged his knife into Hall’s right shoulder.

Pain radiated out from the wound, slowing Hall’s movements as he took stock of his injury. Nothing vital. No important organs involved, just a clean slicing of meat and sinew.

Then the little bastard withdrew the weapon and, with a madman’s scream, plunged it down again.

Like a horse under attack by a bloodsucking fly, Hall flung himself backward, smashing his attacker into the wall behind him, taking them both down in a heap.

The hilt of the knife protruded from Hall’s shoulder, twisted at an ugly angle. It was higher than the first wound, making it difficult to reach his sword when Artur came at him a third time with his sword drawn.

“I guess we’ll see whose arse ends up on the pointy end of a sword now, won’t we?” Artur sneered, slowly moving in for the kill.

Hall pushed himself up the side of the wall to stand, waiting, watching the other man’s eyes.

When Artur circled his wrist, taunting with the motion of his blade, Hall threw himself forward, knocking aside the smaller man’s blade as he jerked the protective token from around his neck with his left hand.

He brought it slamming down, feetfirst, into Artur’s throat as they fell back.

It took a moment for the man to stop his twitching. A moment that Hall used to catch his breath and gather his strength before pushing up to stand again.

Leaning heavily against the wall, he followed the narrow, curving stairs up to the little guardroom and into the laird’s private chamber.

There he found the hiding place under the mantel already open and the box he sought sitting out on the table.

At least he presumed it was the same box, though the jewels Bridget had claimed adorned the lid were gone. Deep scratches marred the wood, as if someone had dug the jewels out of their resting place.

But the loss of the jewels wasn’t the worst of it.

The box was empty.