scarcely feeling the cold stones beneath her knees. It couldn’t be, yet it was.
The man from her dreams.
“Wh-who is he?” Laurel murmured, transfixed by the sight.
“’Tis Kieran Sutherland,” Duncan replied. “The knight I’ve hired to protect us from those damned reivers.”
Laurel straightened. “You’d bring a stranger here?”
“He’s known to me. A mercenary whose exploits I’ve followed for some time.” Flushed with excitement, Duncan went on to enumerate Kieran’s feats in battle and on the tourney circuit. “He’s the grandson of a lass I’d a mind to wed. A few years ago I wrote her and...well, never mind that now. Suffice to say when a friend sent word Kieran was returning to Scotland, I took a notion to meet him. Never guessed I’d have need of his skills. Luckily my message found him still in Berwick. Luckier still, he agreed to take service with us.”
Laurel stared at the image, remembering her dream and the hunger in Kieran Sutherland’s eyes. “I want everything you are and will be,” he’d said. Greedy sot. Like Aulay before him, Kieran wanted Edin. “He cannot stay,” she choked out.
“I know ye’ve a distrust of outsiders, lass, but young Kieran’s our only hope.”
“He wants Edin,” Laurel insisted, and when her grandfather pressed her for details, she mumbled, “I...I dreamed about him.”
“Are ye saying ye had a vision of Kieran attacking me?”
“Nay, but he—”
“Is here to help us.”
“Grandda!” Laurel began, hurt and frustrated.
Nesta laid a hand on her arm. “What did ye see?”
Laurel sighed. It hadn’t been what she’d seen but what she’d felt. Danger. No one would believe her. She’d just have to find some way to prove Kieran Sutherland didn’t belong in Edin Valley.
Kieran squinted against the sun just peering over the jagged ridge of mountains that lay before them. As majestic as they were unexpected, the peaks seemed to leap from the rolling hills of the Border country like the teeth of some ancient beast roaring at the sky. So rugged was the terrain, that if he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought he was back in the Highlands where he’d been fostered, instead of two days’ march north of Carlisle. In fact, had Ellis MacLellan not hailed them as they rode along the river, Kieran would have passed right by.
At Ellis’s direction, they’d forded at a low spot in the rushing river and now faced a sheer cliff face. “Do you propose we walk up the side of that?” Kieran inquired.
The older man grinned, teeth gleaming in his russet beard, laugh lines crinkling the corner of his eyes. “Nay. The entrance to the pass lies just there.” With that, he kneed his horse around a bend in the trail and disappeared into a cleft in the rock.
Kieran’s gut tightened as he eyed the dark aperture.
“Let me go in first,” Rhys offered. A steel helmet obscured the young Welshman’s features, all save the black eyes narrowed with equal parts concern and determination.
“Nay” He’d not send another where he wouldn’t go himself. “You and the others wait here whilst I see what lies within.”
“Kieran, it could be a trap,” Rhys warned.
“Unlikely, but if so, you’ll be free and able to spring me from its jaws.” He scanned the fifty armored men who followed him, capable fighters all and his responsibility. “I’m not a hotheaded youth who charges rashly into danger.” Nay, he’d learned patience and caution the hard way, and they both knew it. “Stay here till I signal ’tis safe to enter.” Swinging his shield from shoulder to forearm, Kieran drew his sword and nudged Rathadack, his warhorse, into the cleft.
Darkness swallowed him up, pressing all around as Kieran moved cautiously forward. His eyes ached from trying to pierce the shroud. A hundred long paces later, his horse turned to the right. Ahead lay a patch of light. Silhouetted in its welcome brilliance, a single mounted man waited. Ellis.
“Takes a body by surprise,” Ellis called out as Kieran approached. Then his glance flicked to the unsheathed sword and his smile dimmed. “Did ye think we meant ye ill?”
Kieran shrugged, not the least bit shamed by his precautions. “I’ve learned to leave little to chance.” His words were lost in the clatter of hooves coming fast through the tunnel. Fearing the worst, he jerked around just as Rhys popped out of the darkness, sword aloft. Hard on his heels rode Martin and Sim. When they spotted Kieran, they ground to a halt in a shower of fine stone and ripe curses.
“I told you to wait,” Kieran shouted over the chaos.
Rhys lifted the visor of his helmet, completely unchastened. “Ye were gone overlong.”
“What if it had been a trap?”
“And ye caught in it. As your second-in-command—”
“Ye know there is no excuse for disobeyin’ my orders,” Kieran snapped, the Scots burr he’d tried to shake thickening.
“I’m sworn to protect ye, even from yerself.” Rhys glared at him as he used to when they were boys growing up at Carmichael Castle. Kieran, older by two years, had been the leader even then, but the Welsh were not easily led.
“You know the rules,” Kieran growled, furious that the rest of his men had followed Rhys and now waited to see if he’d enforce their strict code. Rhys had acted out of concern for his welfare, but discipline was what kept an army such as his in line. He couldn’t relax the rules. “The penalty for disobeying an order is five lashes. You all should feel its sting, but ’twas Rhys who led this revolt. I’ll defer punishment till we arrive at MacLellan’s Tower.”
Rhys nodded. “I will hold myself ready for ye then.”
“Now, now, surely that’s not necessary,” Ellis interjected. “He was only thinking of yer welfare, and there’s no harm done.”
Kieran turned on him with a snarl that made the man shrink back in the saddle. “My orders are law, as you’ll soon discover if your laird hires me to protect his holdings.”
Ellis blanched. “Aye, well, that remains to be seen.” He headed his horse down the trail, apparently uncaring whether Kieran and his men followed. Unfortunately, pressed as he was for funds, Kieran couldn’t afford to cast aside Duncan MacLellan’s offer of work. He needed every coin he could lay his hands on to finance the scheme he’d vowed to undertake.
“Made another friend, I see,” Rhys said cheerfully as they plodded along after Ellis’s reproving back.
“I’m a mercenary, not a courtier.” He found it best if those he commanded feared him. Still he regretted having to punish his only friend. Raising his visor on the pretext of scanning their surroundings, Kieran said stiffly, “I appreciate your concern.”
“I know.” Rhys glanced at the man whose back he’d guarded as they fought their way across the bloody battlefields of France. Tall and heavily muscled, Kieran was a born warrior, like his long-dead
