LITMIR.BIZ

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his voice didn’t come out a squeak. His opponent was not only larger and better armed, he held the high ground. To reach him, Hunter would have to fight uphill over the rocks. But he’d do it.

      “Bloody hell!” the man exclaimed.

      “Please.” Brenna extended a beseeching hand. “Please go, Hunter, I do not want anything to happen to you.”

      “I cannot leave you here.” Hunter took a step forward, but was stopped by the press of cold steel against his throat.

      “Well, well, what have we here?” a deep voice growled in his ear.

      Brenna cried out.

      “Do not harm him, Owen,” ordered the other man.

      “Why the hell not?” this Owen grumbled.

      “’Tis her nephew. Drop the weapon, lad.”

      Hunter hesitated, weighing his chances.

      “Alex told ye to drop it,” Owen repeated, his blade pressing the point.

      Whispering a curse, Hunter let his sword clatter to the stones. His eyes locked on his aunt’s wide blue ones across the short distance separating them. I’m sorry, he mouthed. Then he transferred his gaze to the man who held her.

      Alex’s eyes were a paler shade of blue than Aunt Brenna’s but sharp and canny. He was well dressed in a wool tunic and leather breeks. His weapon was costly, his speech less coarse than Owen’s. But for all that, he was a fiend bent on abducting a beautiful woman.

      “I’ll fight you, man to man,” Hunter growled.

      Behind him, Owen laughed, the sound cold and ugly. “Cheeky lad. I say we run him through and get out of here.”

      “Nay.” Brenna broke free of her captor and started forward, hands stretched out. “Run, Hunter! Get away from here!”

      As if he could do that. But her bid for freedom caught their captors off guard. Wrenching the knife from his belt, Hunter spun and leaped for Owen’s throat.

      The man was big and bulky, with a barrel chest, long black hair and a blunt-featured face Hunter would never forget. “What the hell!” Owen put up a beefy arm to deflect the blow. With the other arm, he caught Hunter in the chest and sent him flying.

      Hunter landed in the rocks. His head struck something hard. The night went bright, then dark. The last thing he heard before the inky blackness sucked him down was Aunt Brenna’s scream...high, wild and anguished.

      The scream still echoed in Hunter’s brain when he clawed his way back to consciousness.

      “Aunt Brenna?”

      Only the burbling of the burn answered.

      His head pounding, Hunter sat up. He was alone beside the creek, his sword and knife gone.

      “Aunt Brenna?”

      Nothing.

      His stomach rolling, his vision blurry, he crawled to the creek and submerged his aching head in the icy water. It cleared his head but did not ease the guilt strangling his very soul.

      He had to find her. Pulling himself up on a rock, he took two staggering steps, tripped and rolled down the hill. The rocks battered him all the way to the bottom. Vaguely. he heard someone screaming and realized it was him. He landed in a heap against a huge boulder and lay there, too hurt to move. There was blood in his mouth, a sharp pain in his left leg.

      “Hunter! Hunter, by all that’s holy!” Uncle Jock materialized out of the woods, a dozen McKies at his back. “Bloody hell, what happened to ye?”

      “Aunt Brenna...kidnapped,” Hunter said weakly.

      “The hell ye say.” Jock roared the orders that sent his men crashing through the woods. “Do ye know who it was? Where they might have taken her?”

      “Two men ... Alex ... tall ... a nobleman, I think... red hair. The other...” Hunter turned his head and spat out blood. His uncle’s face was hazy, and he knew he was likely to faint again. “Black hair...ugly...Owen. Owen’s his name.”

      Jock McKie cursed, leaped up and kicked a nearby rock. “’Tis Alex and Owen Murray. Bloody hell, I should have known, what with the way Alex was sniffing around my Brenna at the last Truce Day.”

      “She knows him?” That made an odd sort of sense to Hunter’s battered brain. “Mayhap he won’t hurt her.”

      Jock cursed again. “Faithless jade. I should have seen this coming.” He seized hold of Hunter’s shoulder. “Did she have anything with her? A ledger? Tally sticks?”

      “Nay.” Memories dipped dizzily in and out of focus. “Wait. She... she was in your counting room for a time. When she came out, she was carrying the basket.”

      “Dod! Where is it now?” Jock rose with a roar. He shouted for his men, and when they’d assembled, gave orders for some to carry Hunter back to Luncarty while the rest came with him. “Alex Murray’ll rue this night’s work.”

      “You’ll get Aunt Brenna back, won’t you?” Hunter whispered.

      “Aye, that I’ll surely do, then I’ll make certain Alex Murray pays for taking what’s mine.”

      Chapter One

      

      

      Scottish Middle Marches

      August, 1393

      

      A thin crescent moon shed pale light on the Cheviots. Desolate and treeless, the hills stretched toward the horizon like a great rumpled quilt, pocked by narrow valleys and steep bluffs. Atop the most prominent sat Luncarty Tower, its stark stone walls blending with the hillside that plunged fifty feet to the Lune Water.

      Stretched out on her belly in the coarse grass of a neighboring hillock, Allisun Murray scanned the fortress domain of her clan’s most hated enemy. Jock McKie’s ancestors had chosen the site well.

      Small ravines guarded the approaches on either side of the tower, and the only entrance was a winding trail up the face of the bluff to a drawbridge spanning a deep ditch. On the other side stood the tall gatehouse, its stout door tightly shut, a pair of arrow slits staring out like giant, malevolent eyes. A single McKie manned the open battlements above, his round helmet and long spear gleaming in the moonlight as he paced to and fro.

      “It’ll no’ be easy getting in and back out again with our stock,” muttered Owen Murray.

      Allisun sighed and shifted fractionally on the hard ground, her muscles cramped, her bones jarred by the hard ride from their hideaway at Tadlow. But she dared not let her fatigue show. Though the death of her brother, Daniel, had made her head of their small clan, no Scot would follow a woman into battle. She was here only because she’d insisted and Owen, Daniel’s captain, had backed her. “We must find a way,” she said.

      “I’m for throwing our scaling hooks over the back wall, climbing in and fighting for what’s ours,” growled Black Gilbert, hunkered down behind a pile of rock to her left.

      A murmur of agreement swept through the thirty Murrays sprawled along the hill’s summit, clad in riding leathers and armed for battle, their faces bleak with fury and frustration.

      Allisun understood both. For twelve years the feud between the Murrays and the McKies had raged. She’d lost first her father, then her home and finally, her two brothers, Sandie and Daniel to Jock McKie’s punishing raids. Daniel’s death had cut the deepest, for he’d been only twenty and a gentle soul. “Aye, let’s give them a taste of Border justice,” she muttered.

      Owen caught her arm with a wide, scarred hand. “Easy, lass,” he whispered. “I know how you feel, but ’twould be suicide. Getting ourselves killed will not bring Danny back.”

      “Have

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