Lachlan was engaged in an authentic struggle. This was no training exercise or sparring session. This was a battle where those who had lifted sword or fist would either claim victory and, as such, live, or they would suffer the highest loss and make restitution in death.
The fight grew more brutal with every passing second. Men shouted and metal blade beat against metal blade so that the whole of the battle was reduced to harsh sounds that stung the ear. But it was the two men in front of her who claimed the whole of her attention. The swing of the men’s blades whistling through the air, steel impacting steel and making her teeth ache, the harsh declarations of extreme effort as each combatant hoisted his respective weapon—each sound was horrifying when singly wrought. Together? They overwhelmed her mind and shouted at her to flee.
Sweat slicked Lachlan’s arms and trailed down his bare chest. He gripped his sword hilt so tightly his knuckles appeared skeletal beneath his sun-kissed skin.
A vicious blow and he knocked his opponent back, down, and afforded himself a brief advantage. But that small triumph changed neither the tenor of the fight nor its probable outcome.
The strength and valor of the honorable could not hold its ground in the face of malicious deception and heartbreaking betrayal.
Lachlan would not, could not, fight an opponent who was possessed with such disregard for honor, but this particular opponent hurt him on a deeper level than any other. The blood tie between them demanded as much. And that, Lachlan’s inability to double-cross the man who would have his head before he’d even hear his brother’s plea?
That would be the cost of Lachlan’s pride and a brother’s love.
Lachlan would lose this fight.
His attacker rose from the ground and charged. Swords clashed. Men shouted unintelligible words. The battle raged. These two men were pitted against each other, a violation of nature’s intent. Their animosity was so strong it fouled the air even as it clung to them, a sticky cobweb of hatred that spun from one and bound the other, back and forth as they moved through the steps of death’s dance.
Lachlan’s opponent lunged at him, and, with what could only be described as willfulness...nay, willingness, Lachlan stepped into the man’s blade. It struck true, the resulting sound disturbingly similar to a butcher’s meat cleaver striking the thickest part of a mutton’s leg—heavy, viscous, dense.
Lachlan stumbled back and the damning sword slid free with a wet, sucking hiss. Eyes bright in a fast-paling face, Lachlan grinned with grim satisfaction. He coughed once. Twice. “I will thank you for this.”
“Then you are far greater a fool than I believed,” his attacker, killer, said, voice muffled as though he spoke with a rag over his mouth.
Lachlan shook his head. “I said I will, not that I do. Not yet.”
“And what, then, is the difference?” came the arrogant reply.
Lachlan lifted his long sword in his dominant hand, stealing his opponent’s attention. Then, his nondominant hand yielding his short sword with untraceable speed, he raised his weapon and swung down as hard as he could. The blade was smaller but not lesser, proving sufficient to near cleave the man’s head from his neck in one blow.
The man dropped his sword and fell to his knees. Defeat fouled the air around them.
“The difference,” Lachlan said with cold indifference, “is that I will thank you for striking my deathblow, as it afforded me the opportunity to reciprocate and offer you the same, save one significant difference. The wounds I bear will end me, but they’ll send me into the welcoming fields of Tír na nÓg. The wounds I deliver shall not afford you the same. They will carry you straight to the Shadow Realm.” Gritting his teeth, Lachlan yanked the shorter blade from deep in his adversary’s neck and then swung again. This time the man’s head separated cleanly, hit the ground and rolled free. “You cannot escape your fate,” Lachlan said as sweat ran freely down his brow and into his eyes. Swaying, he blinked rapidly. “It did not have to be this way...brother.”
Lachlan’s fingers straightened spasmodically, his swords clanging off each other as they fell. The grass muffled the metal’s impact with the earth. He clutched his side, breath wheezing. His eyes lost their intense, sharp look, growing unfocused between blinks.
Isibéal screamed at him to hold on, admonished him to fight, threatened to see that his cherished knarr—the long boat his Viking great-grandfather had sailed—was used as his funeral pyre should he die. All to no avail, for the living held no dominion over the dying, and Lachlan was dying.
Without acknowledging her, Lachlan slipped sideways, caught himself with one hand and, in fits and starts, eased himself to the ground.
Then it was done. The headless body of Lachlan’s enemy lay mere feet from where the Assassin had fallen. Both men’s souls had been set free with their last breaths.
Isibéal knew with absolute certainty that Lachlan’s soul had begun its journey to the heavens. It was no consolation.
She fell to her knees at his side. And while she alone seemed to hear the impact of her husband’s death, hear it she did.
Her heart broke with a thunderous crack, much like a heavy foot on thin ice.
Life as she knew it was over.
Desperate to hide the tear that burned her eyes, Isibéal spun away from the hale and healthy man who watched her now.
She could not, would not, stand by and watch Lachlan enter into a conflict he wasn’t slated to walk out of. She’d seen his death and held suspect one man who should never have been suspect at all. Still, it seemed he would strike the blow that would rob her of her heart’s blood.
How? How could he do this to me?
This vision was the first to reduce her to a shivering mess of skirts and tears. Throat too tight to scream her refusal of what she’d been shown and now revisited, she locked her knees and forced herself to remain standing. The original imagery and consequent sounds had left her a collapsed heap of emotional devastation. One truth had separated from the thousand questions she’d been left with. That truth?
Isibéal wouldn’t survive losing Lachlan. Therefore she’d do whatever was necessary to stay with him. If it meant sacrificing herself so he carried on and met her in the afterlife? So be it. Where he went, she followed.
The affirmation wasn’t based on the melodramatics of a weak-minded woman, but rather a simple, if brutal, truth recognized by her as one of the realm’s most powerful witches. Should she be forced to take matters into her own hands, should she be required to end her own life, she would do so. And gladly.
To that end, she’d sought out a solution in the early-morning mists that silently rose from the floor of Cahermurphy Forest. It meant she’d had to break her geis—the oath she’d taken to honor her magick’s gift and never use it to try to change fate to suit her—but it mattered not.
Isibéal would follow Lachlan into this confrontation.
She had set aside the convictions of her faith that bade her not interfere in the workings of free will or destiny’s machinations. That done, she’d set her circle in place, retrieved a small bowl she carried in her pack and then filled it with water. Settled in her circle, she cast it and worked the deep magick required to scry. She would use the reflection of the water’s surface to look into the future with intent and the belief she could secure Lachlan’s safety.
What had appeared had not been foresight. Yes, the answer to her initial summons had appeared on the water’s surface...but as a reflection of the man who stood behind her.
Lugh, God of Vengeance and Reincarnation and one of the aggrieved parties at the meeting slated for Lachlan’s involvement, had sought her out.
Discussions resulted in a bargain struck in the forest’s ominous hush, sans the whisper of the wind through the trees