Page 6 of The Vicious Laird
They moved faster now, boots pounding through mud that tried to suck them down with every step. The storm provided cover for Isolda, but it also meant she couldn’t see what might be waiting for her in the darkness. Bandits who’d see a lone woman as opportunity rather than person. Animals driven from their dens by the flooding.
Or worse—men who’d been expecting exactly this. Men Ragnar had been waiting for since the moment he’d read the Pact decree with his name on it.
“Where are the others?” Freyr asked, scanning the darkness ahead.
“Preparin’ the birlinn.” Ragnar’s jaw tightened. “If someone’s watchin’ the nunnery, we cannae risk bein’ trapped on land.”
Then, a scream cut through the storm like a blade.
Ragnar’s blood went cold, then hot. He was running before the sound faded, his sword already in his hand, though he didn’t remember drawing it, boots pounding in the mud. Freyr’s footsteps followed close behind him.
The road curved ahead through the trees. Lightning flashed—brief, white, merciless—and in that heartbeat of illumination he saw them.
Four men surrounding a kneeling figure in the mud.
Isolda.
One had her by the hair, head yanked back at an angle that had to hurt. Another pinned her arms behind her. The third crouched before her, speaking words Ragnar couldn’t hear over the storm.
But he saw their cloaks—dark green, the particular cut of their leather armor, the way they positioned themselves like trained soldiers rather than common bandits. He recognized those colors. Had seen them six months past at the border between Uist and the mainland.
Douglas colors.
The fury that swept through him was sharp as winter’s wind off the lochs.
Ragnar didn’t shout a warning. Warriors who announced themselves died young.
He closed the distance in four strides, boots splashing through ankle-deep water. Ragnar’s blade punched through the gap between the first man’s ribs, angled upward toward the heart.The steel scraped bone and the man’s breath left him in a wet gasp.
The others turned, fumbling for weapons, eyes going wide as they registered what was happening.
Too slow.
“Get back tae the horses!” The man who’d been crouching before Isolda stumbled away from her, his earlier confidence replaced by something closer to panic. “Go! Now!”
“But there’s only two of ‘em!” The other man raised his sword to engage, going for bravado despite the fear Ragnar could smell on him. “We can?—”
His words cut off as Freyr engaged him, their blades meeting in a flurry of strikes. The ground was treacherous—mud sucking at their boots with every step, rain making grips slippery. But Freyr had trained in worse conditions. He pivoted on his heel, letting his opponent’s momentum carry him forward into empty space, then drove his blade through the exposed gap in the man’s leather armor. The man made a wet, surprised sound and collapsed.
The third man had drawn a dirk now, circling warily. His eyes darted between Ragnar and the bodies cooling in the mud.
The man was cautious now that he’d seen the others fall. “Ye’re the Stag,” he said, trying to steady himself. “The laird said?—”
Ragnar didn’t let him finish. Didn’t care what anyone had said or promised or planned. He knocked the dirk aside with his sword and drove his fist into the man’s throat. Cartilage crunched beneath his knuckles and the man fell to the ground, clawing at his windpipe, making sounds that weren’t quite human anymore.
The fourth man—the one who’d been speaking to Isolda—was already running, crashing through the trees with the desperate speed of someone who’d finally understood how thoroughly they’d misjudged their opposition.
Smart man.
Ragnar let him go, to return to Douglas Graham and tell him exactly what happened when he dared touch what belonged to Ragnar Ketilsson.
Silence fell, broken only by pattering rain and Ragnar’s own breathing—deep and measured despite the violence, despite the rage still simmering beneath his skin like coals waiting for a gust of wind. But beneath all that was something sharper and more immediate: Isolda’s breathing, fast and shallow and edged with the kind of fear that came after the danger had passed and the body finally understood what almost transpired.
He turned around and the sight before him made his throat tighten.
Isolda was kneeling in the mud where they’d forced her down, staring at him with eyes gone wide and dark. Her hair hung intangled wisps around a face pale as death. Her dress was torn, filthy with mud. She looked both terrified and furious somehow.
Ragnar sheathed his sword and crossed to her, his boots squelching through mud and worse things. He dropped to one knee beside her, close enough that his thigh pressed against her sodden skirt. Close enough to feel the tremors running through her.
