Suzanne Barclay - Kara's Gift

The land began to heave and buckle. He had trouble staying upright in the saddle. And it was hot; So hot he fancied he was camped at the gates of Jerusalem. Mayhap this was all a dream, and he was not back in Scotland.

Alarmed, he roused and glanced about. The terrain was rugged as the Highlands of his mother’s birth, mountain peaks leaping from the rolling hills like giant beasts braying at the sky. Damn, but they were green. This must be Scotland, for no other place had such rich color. He saw the river then, rushing by but a few yards from the road. If he stopped for a moment to bathe his face, he’d feel better.

Duncan swung down from the saddle. His feet touched the ground, his legs buckled. This time there was no strong right arm to catch him. He snagged hold of his horse’s stirrup, groaning as pain ripped through barely healed muscles. When the world stopped spinning, he crawled to the riverbank and splashed water over his burning face.

Cool. Cool as the chaste kiss he’d given Janet when he’d ridden off on Crusade. Over the frenzied rush of the river, he heard a low, feral growl.

Dogs, he thought idly.

Looking about, he spied a dozen dark shapes emerging from the woods a hundred yards away. Cousin Niall’s hounds come to greet him. He stretched a hand out and waited while the animals slowly worked their way toward him.

Not dogs, he saw as they drew closer.

Wolves!

Duncan tried to stand, but his feet slipped and he went down, striking his head. Darkness closed over him.

Wolves!

Kara Gleanedin stopped and turned in a circle.

The sun was just disappearing behind the ring of mountains that surrounded Edin Valley on all four sides. Steep and forbidding on the outside, the mountains gave way to lush, rolling slopes inside the long glen that had been her clan’s home for generations. From her vantage point atop the pass that guarded it, she glanced down the valley.

Long shadows crept out from beneath the trees that covered the mountains. But the only thing moving on the grassy hillsides were the folk of Clan Gleanedin, laughing and playing as they stacked wood for the Samhuinn fires that would be lit three nights hence.

“What is it?” Eoin drew his long knife.

“Wolves.”

“Inside Edin?” It wasn’t unheard-of. Though the outside cliffs were too steep for men to climb, an occasional wolf was known to venture within to raid the tasty flocks of sheep that grazed on the slopes.

“I’m not sure.” Kara looked into the small fire beside the hut where the guards sheltered in inclement weather. Her gift—the portents that sometimes came to her—could not be summoned at will. But the feeling was so strong.

There, in the leaping flames, she saw them again. A pack of dark-furred beasts slinking across the field toward the river. Their quarry...

Kara’s eyes widened as the figure in the flames came clearer. A man lay on the bank of the river that flowed past the mouth of the valley. The sun glinted on his silver mail so he seemed to glow from within. His head was bare, black hair plastered to his skull. As she watched, he tried to rise, slipped and fell back, his fingers clutching the mud.

The wolves howled in glee, their faces...

Faces?

“Not wolves!” Kara exclaimed. “MacGorys in their wolf-skin capes.” She ran from the fire and the images she’d seen there. Her coarse woolen skirts swirled about her bare legs as she raced to the spot where they’d tied their horses.

Eoin kept pace beside her. “You’ve had a vision?”

“Aye. There’s a man on the flatlands beside the river. He’s hurt or wounded.” As she spoke, she swung onto her shaggy mount. “There’s a pack of MacGorys circling him.”

Eoin caught her reins. “It could be a trap.”

“Mayhap.” The MacGorys had tried most everything to conquer them, but the valley was protected from without by stout natural defenses. “Nay. He’s not one of them.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” There was no logical explanation for her gift, except that all the women of her family had been special in some way. “Quick, gather the men.”

“Wait!” Eoin called.

“There’s no time.” Kara wheeled her horse toward the pass. Behind her, the others scrambled to catch up.

Heart in her mouth, Kara charged through the natural tunnel that bored through the mountain, the only way into the valley. A hundred frantic paces later, she emerged into the twilight on. a high cliff above the river. Looking below and to the left, she scanned the far bank.

Her eyes caught on a flash of silver and held.

“There! There he is!” Setting her bare heels into the mare’s ribs, she sent them careening down to the river in a hail of small stones. The ford lay just ahead. She splashed across it just as the MacGorys began to run. Hide capes flapping about them like great black wings, they hurtled toward the figure prone on the riverbank.

Too late. She was going to be too late.

An arrow whirred over Kara’s head, struck the lead MacGory in the throat and took him down. His fellow fiends turned, stared at Kara and her clansmen, then changed direction, coming toward them. Their obscene battle cry sent the birds screeching from the trees.

Eoin howled back a challenge of his own. “See to your stray, Kara,” he called. “We’ll carve up these—” The slur was lost in the pounding of hooves and the shouts of two score Gleanedins bent on revenge for the MacGorys’ first raid six months ago and the maiming of their laird.

Kara muttered a hasty prayer for their safety, then raced the short distance to the fallen man. He was stretched out facedown in the mud, a dirk clutched in one fist.

Was this some trap? Or did he cower in fear of the wolves?

“You can get up now, the wolves are but a pack of stinking MacGorys, and Eoin’s seeing to them.” When he didn’t respond, she gingerly nudged his hip with her bare foot. He didn’t twitch a muscle. Unconscious, she decided.

“Damn, you’re a big one.” He must be well over six feet tall, and weigh sixteen stone, at least.

Mayhap he’d hit his head and conked himself out.

Kara hunkered down beside him, staring at the blue-black waves of hair clinging to his neck. Warily she felt beneath his jaw to see if he lived. The jolt of his pulse against her flesh made her own heart stumble. She jerked her hand back, fingers tingling. “What the devil?”

The man remained silent, motionless. Had she imagined the odd sensation? Kara shook her head. Never mind. She had to get him away from here, and she’d not do it alone.

“Hello. Are you awake in there?” She tapped his back. The metal links of his shirt felt cold and slippery to the touch. What an odd garment. She prodded him again, harder.

“Argh! Are you trying to kill me?” He rolled over, coming to rest on his back, an arm flung over his face.

“Nay, I but wanted to make certain you were unhurt.”

“By poking me with hot pincers and leaving me in the desert to be eaten by wolves?”

“Wolves.” Kara whipped her head around, spotted the MacGorys fleeing across the grassy field with Eoin and her clansmen in swift, loud pursuit. “You need not worry about the wolves, they’ve been routed. What is your name?”

“Duncan. Hot...damn me, but it’s hot.”

Hot? A brisk October wind whistled down the mountain slopes, icing Kara’s skin beneath her simple skirt and tunic. “Are you sick?” she asked warily.

“Course not. Never sick.”

“Wounded, then?”

“Antioch.”

That must be a place, though not one around here. “Where on your body, Duncan.”

“Shoulder.”

She ran practiced hands over him and felt the thick bandage on the left one and pressed gently.