With all her might, she stabbed her sword at de Bourgh, but the blade only jumped off the iron armor without penetrating it. At least she’d stopped the blow aimed for Owen’s head. De Bourgh staggered forward and looked at her, surprise and annoyance distorting his face.
Owen stared at her with wide eyes.
Damn, that gash on his thigh didn’t look good at all. “You won’t take him from me,” she growled at de Bourgh and threw the sword aside. The thing was useless in her hands.
Amber launched herself at him. When she’d almost reached him, she rotated and kicked him in the chest. The kick was powerful enough that he fell on his back.
The heavy armor made standing up a struggle, and she stood over him, her foot on his neck.
“I can crush your throat with one good stomp,” she said. “Your airway will swell, and you won’t be able to breathe. It’s a bad death.”
“You won’t do it,” he mused, seemingly unaffected by her threats. “You’re way too noble to kill a man without giving him a chance to fight back.”
“She is,” Owen said as he came to stand on the other side of de Bourgh. “But I’m nae.” He put the tip of his claymore next to Amber’s foot on the man’s neck.
He briefly met Amber’s eyes, and for the first time, she was a little afraid of him. It was a lethal stare.
“This is for Amber,” he grumbled and pressed his sword down.
De Bourgh made a gurgling sound, and his eyes bulged with fear as he died.
Amber closed her own eyes briefly, until she felt Owen collapse by de Bourgh’s side.
“Owen!” she cried and rushed to him.
He was ashen. How had she not noticed that at first? He was losing too much blood.
“Ye came…” he whispered. “Why did ye come, lass? Ye should be far away from here.”
“Shut up.” She took a dagger from his belt and cut several long pieces of cloth from her cloak. The material was far from sterile, but it would have to do. “I needed to stop the bleeding or you’ll—”
She didn’t finish. She couldn’t allow herself to even think about it. He hadn’t said he loved her. But she loved him. That’s why she’d come. She loved him, and she couldn’t stand the idea that he could die. She had to protect him.
It looked like she’d come exactly at the right time.
She pressed the cloth firmly against the wound, but it soaked through quickly. To elevate the gash, she bent his knee and propped his leg against the ground. She pushed more of the pieces of her cloak against the cut, but he was still bleeding. Oh no! The only way to stop it was to find the femoral artery pressure point. She tied a long piece of cloth around his thigh to keep pressure on the wound as much as possible, then she pushed her fingers against the artery in his groin and watched the cloth under her fingers like a hawk.
Owen chuckled. “Lass, I want ye, too, but shall we wait until we’re alone?” His voice was weak and slow, as though he were drunk. She would’ve appreciated the joke if she wasn’t rigid and cold from fear for him.
She kept watching the compress. “Don’t you dare die on me, do you hear?”
“Why would I die? I’d hate to go when I’ve only just found the woman I love.”
“What?”
“I’d hate to go—”
“Not that.” Her heart stopped beating and then launched into a gallop. “You love me?”
He smiled weakly and lifted his hand to touch her face. Around them, the chaos continued, but everything slowed down and blurred, as though an invisible, protective dome had landed over them.
“Aye.” His eyes were ablaze, a deep green, the color of the ocean. “I love ye.”
Amber’s vision blurred, her eyes burning. “You idiot. Couldn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Ye didna ken?”
“Of course not. I was afraid you were just using me for sex. That I was a conquest. That you were pretending to care about me.”
“Can ye please kiss me? I’m having a little trouble moving.”
“I can’t move, or you’ll start bleeding again.”
She stared in his eyes, so handsome and so dear. The dearest set of eyes in the whole world.
“I love ye more than life itself,” Owen rasped. “I need ye, lass, more than my next breath. Staying away from ye all this time was like pulling teeth. I hated it. But I needed to keep my head cool for this to work.” He gestured to the battle with a nod of his head.
Amber shook her head, tears of happiness springing free. “And it worked. Look. The MacDougalls are running in all directions.”
Owen looked around and frowned when his eyes fixed on something. “Is that Ian and John MacDougall?”
Owen held his breath, watching as his giant red-haired cousin grappled with the treacherous MacDougall fifty feet or so away from them. Ian was huge, the tallest of all Cambels, but MacDougall was no small man, either.
The MacDougall was in iron armor, while Ian, like many Highlanders, wore only a leine croich, and a chain mail coif around his head, neck, and shoulders.
The two exchanged blows, the MacDougall coming at Ian with heavy downward strikes like a blacksmith. Backing up, Ian took shelter from the storm of iron under his sword. His bone marrow must have been reverberating from the impact of those strikes.
“Come on, brother,” Owen muttered.
He wasn’t his brother, of course not, but it felt like Ian was. And this was the chance for Ian to get his revenge for what the MacDougalls had done to him. Owen had sworn he’d avenge Amber, and it felt right having just done so. He wished that for Ian, too.
One of MacDougall’s arms was obviously weaker than the other, and Owen remembered how he’d looked wounded in Stirling. MacDougall lowered his sword for a moment, and Ian used that pause to thrust his claymore into the man’s shoulder, but MacDougall deflected it. Ian struck again from the side, but MacDougall deflected that, too.
Ian was getting angry now. Owen had seen his cousin fight in the battle at MacFilib farm, and he could be an animal. A lethal predator. He turned like that now. He roared like a bear that had been poked too many times. He grabbed MacDougall by his breastplate and yanked him forward.
MacDougall’s helm fell from the motion, and Ian slammed his fist into the man’s jaw, and John fell. Ian grabbed an ax that lay nearby, and with a giant swing of his arm, he brought the ax down on the MacDougall’s arm at the elbow, between two mail plates.
MacDougall’s resounding scream made many men turn their heads in horror, and the remaining MacDougalls quickly scattered. Only a few ran towards Ian, ready to fight for their laird who clutched the stump of his arm.
Ian raised the ax for the final blow when one of the MacDougalls threw a hand in the air in surrender.
“Please! Please. Mercy.”
Ian stilled and watched the man in confusion. Then his expression flattened, and he let the ax fall. He looked at the MacDougall again. “Take him. Flee like the shite flies ye are.”
The men grabbed John MacDougall under his arms just as Robert the Bruce came to stand next to Ian. The men tried to hurry, but it was impossible carrying an almost limp MacDougall.
“Wait,” the king said.