“You don’t look like it.”
Finian shrugged. “Would you? Out there with them, trapping?”
This was a convincing argument, apparently. The soldier grunted in what she supposed was approval. Men grunted a lot. His eyes slid to Senna.
“And her?”
“She’s mine.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She’s pregnant.”
The leader’s brow took on a suspicious winkling above the eyes. “And she was out there, trapping with you?”
Finian’s jaw set. “I just got back.”
The soldier stared, then lifted his gaze over Finian’s shoulder, to his men.
Finian shifted slightly, a small, unprovoking action, but Senna realized he widened his stance as he did so. He was getting ready to fight. And if she noticed it, they surely would, too. She felt the potency of the masculine posturing vibrate through the air, like she was in a room with a wave.
“Richard?” she said softy, touching Finian’s arm. “Why don’t we just let the good king’s men lighten our load, and be on our way?”
He ripped his arm away and looked at her derisively. “And give the lot of ’em an entire winter’s worth of work?” He glared at the soldier, who was eyeing the sacks.
“They look familiar, Jacks,” muttered one of the soldiers. “That green stamp on the sack.”
“Aye,” agreed the leader. “They do at that.”
“O’Mallery’s,” replied Finian in a tight voice.
Cold chills ripped up and down Senna’s chest, like invisible, saw-edged stripes. This was going to end badly.
“Gaugin’s,” countered the soldier, looking at Finian slowly. A corner of his mouth curled up. “The fur trader in Coledove. Them’s his sacks. And he don’t lend ’em out.”
“And that’s just where we’re headed,” Finian retorted. The tension spiraled thicker.
“Take them,” Senna said hurriedly. Panic jabbed at her belly with cold, stabbing pokes. She pushed her toe into the sack she’d dropped to the ground. “Take them to Gaugin for us, why don’t you?”
The leader looked at her, then back at Finian ever more slowly. “I think we’ll take you instead.” A brief pause. “O’Melaghlin.”
Finian knew a moment where his heart stopped beating, for the first time in a dozen years. He didn’t pause to consider ‘why now?’
He kicked out his boot and stepped in front of Senna, unslung his sword and, before the leader could even lift his own sword, Finian had sliced his through the soldier’s belly. Below the jutting iron nasal of his helm, his face looked surprised, then he toppled over, dead.
Finian spun to deal with the others with deft, rapid sweeps of his blade. His mind closed down during the battle, as always; it was all silence inside, narrowing attention and the feel of the earth under his boots.
But, in complete opposition to ‘always,’ he was for the first time aware of a person who wasn’t about to bring a blade down on his skull. Senna’s lithe form bobbed just outside their ring of battle, in danger, handling…was that a knife?
God save them.
He snapped his attention back and, with grim focus, absolutely overpowered the wiry young Englishmen, taking them down with quick, merciful strokes. And when the four of them lay like downed scarecrows around him, he held his sword hanging by his side, breathing rapidly.
Blood surged through his limbs, wicked fast pounding, urging him on, go, go, get more, now. Climb the side of a cliff, swim to the Aran Islands. It was at these times he knew he was an animal first, whatever God intended for his soul.
Gradually his breathing slowed. When his hearing returned, too, he looked over at Senna.
She was standing, mouth open, as if to make a very important point. Her chest was heaving, her breath short and swift. In her right hand she held a blade by its carved hilt, still hovering at shoulder height, as if she were about to throw it.