Shana Abe Read Online Free

father.”
    “He will die!”
    “If he does, it will be as a man. That is the end of it.”
    “We will all die! Don’t you understand? They outnumber us! You would set these villagers to fight with hoes and sticks against arrows and maces?”
    “If God wills it, so be it.”
    The bloodlust in his eyes said much more than his words. With cool efficiency Malcolm pushed her away from him. She fell sharply to the floor, scraping her palms and tangling her skirts. Before she could arise he had closed the heavy wooden door and bolted it shut behind him.
    “We will see you later tonight, Niece.” His voice was muffled by the thickness of the wood.
    “No!” she screamed now, scrambling to her feet, stumbling to the door.
    Of course, it was too late. She was trapped.
    A few hours later, when she smelled the smoke of the burning manor, she knew it was over.

    T he battle at Glencarson was as grim as any that had been seen so far in these bitter Highlands. To someone who, perhaps, had climbed up one of the many rocky hills surrounding the valley, there would at first appear to be nothing notably amiss. The sky was a boiling gray soup overhead, true, but that was typical weather in Scotland in this early spring. There was mud everywhere, also true, but what could one expect when the rains came almost every day? But walking farther up the hill it would not take long to notice the peculiar smell mingled with that of the wet earth; a sharp, metallic odor that raised the hair on the back of the necks of man and beast alike.
    The good brown mud of Glencarson was pooled with red this evening. Red was everywhere, forming puddles, trickling with dirty scarlet streams around the bodies of the fallen. And there were so many bodies.
    Kyla picked up each foot with measured determination, fighting the mud, which sucked at her boots and caked her skirts. She stepped around severed limbs and dead horses without much thought about it, keeping her mind on reaching the men lying near the center of the field. That was where she would find him, she was certain. He would be there.
    A misstep on a slippery sword blade caused her to fall onto her hip in the muck. She caught herself with her hands, and they sank wrist-deep into wreckage of the field. For a broken moment the sounds came back to her as she had heard them even locked inside the manor house, the screams of men, the screams of the horses, and now the screams of women left behind, women like her who were searching the valley for their kin.
    The cries of the women bothered her the most.
    She stood up again and wiped her hands absently on her skirts, smearing the bloody mud around her thighs. She didn’twant to hear the women sobbing any longer. She didn’t want to hear each fresh wail as the next body was turned over, the next face identified as a husband, a father, a sweetheart.
    Kyla moved on resolutely. There was only one sound in her head now, one name, over and over.
    Alister, Alister …
    Of Malcolm she cared nothing. It was his fault this battle had taken place and she wished him to hell for it. But of Alister, sweet Alister, still so young the broadsword given to him had dipped and shivered in his hands, oh, God, Alister.…
    And he was there, limp, quiet, in the mud, his hands and face pale beneath the streaks of sweat and blood and dirt. So very pale. So peaceful.
    She didn’t know how long she knelt beside him, cradling his head in her hands. She didn’t see the clouds grow thicker, hear the rumbling in the skies. She didn’t feel the rain drenching the valley.
    The water washed away the filth on him and smoothed his hair back to dark red, like her own. He was all she had had left in this world, all that had mattered to her.
    Kyla Warwick did not cry. Her hands did not tremble as she wiped the water from his brow. And her knees buckled only a little when she bent over and picked up the body of her little brother and carried him out of the valley of Glencarson.

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