Jack Whyte - Uther

She knew there were others close by. She had learned that much the previous day, listening to the two of them. They had not talked much, and when they had it was in a dialect she had never heard before, but she had been able to decipher enough to gather that they belonged to a party of twelve who had landed their boat here on the coast and then split up and travelled inland in twos and threes in search of whatever plunder they might find. They were to meet again and disembark for home this morning, and anyone who failed to reach the meeting place by then would be abandoned, presumed dead. These two could have joined their friends the previous night—the short foray made by the tall one on their arrival here had verified that—but they had been unwilling to share her with the others and so had stayed here to keep her for themselves.

Mairidh had no illusions. She knew these two would leave her dead behind them. Her body, she thought. That they could take and destroy, but not her mind, not her spirit—not the animus that was herself.

The man beside her stirred again and grunted, and she froze. For several heartbeats nothing happened, and then she felt his hand move to her hip and push her away, rolling her over onto her side. The hand moved then to her belly, grasping her and pulling her backward, hard, against his loins. But as she tensed against the thrust of him she heard a scuffling noise, and then the sound of a meaty, concussive, crunching blow directly behind her head. The man convulsed, flinging her away from him and filling her ears with a gasping, gurgling, outraged noise that sent her scrabbling, legs scissoring in panic, all thoughts of her philosophy forgotten as she rolled wildly in search of survival, her eyes wide-stretched in terror, her tethered arms preventing her from making any attempt to gather or protect herself.

It was still dark, just before dawn, and she saw the blackness of a hunched figure stooping over the body of the Pig, then straightening, wrenching something free. Whatever he was pulling broke away suddenly, with a grating, sucking sound, springing high and stopping at the level of the crouching figure's head. Mairidh recognized it as a small axe and rolled away again, face down this time, waiting for death. But the noises moved away, leaving her, and she rolled back, fighting for leverage to sit up, knowing it to be impossible. She twisted sideways instead, struggling to see, and in the murky half-light she saw one leaping figure with an upraised arm confront another surging up from the ground. The axe swung down, and again she heard an awful bone-splintering impact, altered by distance this time and followed immediately by a scuffle of falling bodies. She felt vomit surge in her throat, and then she remembered what these animals had done the day before, and the nausea was gone. She looked to where the Pig lay, stiff-legged, his head a featureless black mass.

Her rescuer—could he be that?—was back now, looming over her, and she closed her eyes again, afraid to look. She felt his hand touch her right breast, and some part of her mind was acute enough to register the contact immediately as being a touch—an accidental touch, not a caress or a squeeze—and she began to hope. The hand—both hands now—moved swiftly upward, following the line of her stretched arms to the wrists. She heard an intake of breath and then a fumbling, followed by a grunt of effort and the sound of the axehead biting into the tree behind her, twice, and then a third time. The pressure on her arms lessened, and she knew he had chopped through the rope. He was already pulling and tugging at her, forcing her to rise.

Her arms were on fire, as though they had been torn from their sockets, and she floundered uselessly, unable to use them either to push or to support herself. She felt the smoothness of bare skin as both of his arms slipped about her waist, encircling her and attempting to lift her. He hissed in her ear.

"Move!"

She was too weak. She knew this man would save her, and the knowledge robbed her of any strength she had left. Yet somehow, supported by his arms around her middle, she managed to pull her legs beneath her and then hobble forward like an ancient crone, exhausted and incapable of straightening her back. He took her through a screen of leaves between two trees, and the ground fell away in front of them into a shallow depression. She lost what remained of her balance on the slope and fell forward heavily, so that only the restraint of his arms stopped her from crashing face down. She heard him grunt with the effort of holding her, and then he was turning her, lowering her to the ground, shifting his grip to pull and haul at her until her back was against the sloping bank. Mairidh's mind was spinning, incapable of fully understanding what was happening. She became aware of a sharp, intrusive pain in her left leg, and then she felt a hand behind her knee, lifting and pulling, and another on the inside of her right thigh, doing the same. Stuporous, knowing what he wanted, she spread her legs wide, but he grunted and pulled her knees together again, so that she sat straight-legged. Her head sagged and then snapped up again as he slapped her lightly on the cheek, but her eyes refused to open.

"Mairidh! Mairidh, it's me! Come on now! We have to be away from here."

The voice was coming from very far away, but it sounded like the boy, and that could not be. The boy was dead. Mairidh knew he was dead, because she had watched him go spinning off the cliff. She knew she must be dreaming again. Then she felt someone hauling at her hands, pulling them forward, and the pressure on the ropes that bound them increased. She opened her eyes, feeling the puffiness of them, and peered down to where a knife blade sawed at the knots between her wrists. The ropes fell away, and then two hands began chafing at her wrists, the thumbs digging deeply. The pain overwhelmed her, and she heard herself moaning in protest. A blackness arose within her own mind then, and she felt herself falling into a whirlwind of chaos where she was battered and assaulted by wildly spinning impressions and images.

A short time later, when her eyes snapped open again, she found herself alone. The sky was still grey—lighter than it had been, but the sun still had not risen. Her wrists burned—she raised them and looked down, feeling, but unable to see, the angry rawness where the skin had been lacerated and rubbed away completely. She was filthy, her naked body covered with dirt, some of it dried mud and crusted with scabbed scrapes and cuts. Remembering then, she struggled to sit up, grunting with pain from the effort, and as she did so, she saw a shape running towards her, stooped over as though to avoid being seen. It was the boy. The boy she had believed dead.

He came to a stop in front of her, kneeling and holding out a double handful of clothes—the single filthy, tunic-like garment in which she had been abducted and the long, saffron-coloured gown she had worn at the start of the previous afternoon before the attackers had found them. Mairidh ignored the offering. She merely blinked at him, devouring every detail of his appearance. He was as naked as she was and almost as dirty, but she was mainly aware of his face, remembering how it had looked gazing down on her from above in the sunlight the previous day, the way the thick, black curls had fallen onto his forehead above startling, bright blue eyes and the solid, tanned column of the strong young neck. A beautiful boy.

"You died."

The boy shook his head, smiling quickly. "No, I didn't. I'm here."

"They killed you."

"No, but they will if they find us here now. There's more of them close by. Can you stand up? I'll help you. Here, put these on." He thrust the clothing at her again, but she still frowned at him, ignoring the clothes, dimly aware of how stupid she must seem, sitting there, naked and filthy, gazing up at him. But her last sight of him filled her mind again, his face screwed up in agony as the larger of her two abductors swung him by one leg and the hair of his head and hurled him, screaming, from the edge of a high cliff.