A Knight and White Satin. Jackie Ivie

      Kilchurning was yelling something, probably Dunn-Fadden’s name and a slur on his family, and then a command to yield. All of which couldn’t be heard distinctly, but Payton put it into place in his mind, anyway. He had to guess at the events, since nothing made much sound against the muffle of falling snow.

      A dull thud filtered through the night as what had to be a battering ram hit the solid wood doors of his gate. Then came another thud. Followed by another. Somewhere in the center of his castle complex he heard the sound of a bell being rung, and that was exactly as he’d planned, in the event Kilchurning got through to them. The clansmen within were already warned and armed and ready.

      Kilchurning yelled out another slur on Payton’s mother and accompanied it by another hit with his battering ram. Then another. That was a waste of good wood. And needed to be stopped.

      Payton jogged along the wall, skimming his fingers along stone which not only helped him with direction, but helped with the slide when his feet couldn’t hold the steps he forced on them. The rock surface also made hand-holds for pulling himself back up from the cold wet snow-mash that was blanketing everything.

      He lost his bow at one such slippage, scraping his knuckles on the ice-covered rock and losing feeling in his hand long enough to temper the pain. That might be beneficial if he hadn’t gained both boots full of snow and started a cold ache through his ankles and into his calves. Payton huffed the breath, gained his feet, searched fractionally for the bow, and shrugged it off. In close enough proximity, an arrow worked well enough.

      He could tell he was close. The thudding was transferring energy into the rock at his fingertips, and the noise was louder. It was accompanied by a worse sound, that of splintering wood.

      He could also hear the slurs Kilchurning was leveling at him.

      “Whoreson! Bastard cur! Whelp! Come out of there and meet me like a man, Dunn-Fadden!”

      Another booming thud hit the gate. Payton slid onto his haunches then, earning himself what felt like slices of dirks along the back of a thigh and into the other knee. He knew once it warmed, it would probably prove exactly that, since ice proved knife-sharp and he’d used it as such before. He pulled himself up, glanced at the red-streaked snow, and felt the worry start.

      The lie was missing. His gut told him of it.

      Nowhere in his body was there a core of emotion or a depth of anger large enough to change everything into rage and hate and a lust for the win. He needed the drums. He needed the crowds. He needed the lie. He hadn’t known it until then.

      “Come out, coward!”

      Payton was within shot of them, and could have easily pegged Kilchurning’s throat if he had his bow and wished to. As it was, he stopped for a moment, pulled in a breath and looked about him for the others.

      Nothing.

      “If you will na’ come out, Dunn-Fadden, I’ll take your guts and twine them about your roof!”

      Such a thing would at least untwist them, Payton decided, feeling a twinge in his belly that had nothing to do with championship fighting, and everything to do with fear. He dared not take this many Kilchurning clansmen by himself.

      The felled tree hit the door again with punishing force, although the thudding sound of it was still muted with the damp. Payton saw the men advance into the stone portal itself as the men sensed the give in it, before they were all shoved backward as the bolt once more held.

      Well-aimed arrows would have changed everything, stopping them in the confusion of a hit on legs or arms and making them drop their ram. If only he hadn’t fallen and lost his bow! Payton pulled his sword from the scabbard with his right hand, shoving aside the fur-lined wool cape to make the move, while he gripped an arrow in his left, twisted both in his hands as he gathered courage, and then time stopped as the sound of chain moving filled the night, pulling from the embrace of the bolt as it unlocked his gate.

      Light started as a slice onto the mud-trampled snow, and then broadened until it lit on more than two dozen Kilchurning clansmen, all wearing the same look of astonishment. There was another shadow in the midst of the light, turning from a sliver into a long, form-pleasing woman-size. And then Payton heard his wife speaking.

      “Laird Kilchurning. All you had to do was send word.”

      And Payton went berserk.

      It wasn’t the lie after all. It was him.

      The deep guttural cry filled his chest, boomed out through his throat, and heralded his entrance into the light, and when he slid on the snow-mixed mud, he turned it into a purposeful motion, slicing through the legs of the men he slid beside, and ending up slammed against their battering tree. Where that would have felled him, he turned it instead into an arc of movement and leaped across the wood, slicing another man’s chest with his sword, while the arrow went into a different throat.

      He didn’t need a drum, either.

      Red filled his vision, turning the mud and snow mixture into a realm of hell. Payton slammed and chopped and fought his way through them to Kilchurning. He ignored the blows to his back, shoved aside the pain of a blade as it slid across his belly, missing his vitals by inches, and welcomed the agony of an arrow as it embedded in his shoulder. Kilchurning was backing, the fear on his face a goad to Payton’s rage, and when he’d finished with the Kilchurning laird, he was going to take his wife’s slender white throat and slit it, too.

      “No, Payton! Nae!” He heard the screams behind him, ignored them as much as he was ignoring the new pain of another blow, this time in his left buttock, taking him to a knee, before he was up again and advancing, and feeling the Kilchurning’s fear as if a drug.

      Then he had the man pulled to him, with a fist about the brooch he’d used to clasp his kilt band to his shoulder and Payton was pummeling as much of him as he could reach, ignoring the new pain of a blow to the side of his head, while shaking off the instant dancing of firelike dots. He saw a huge fist coming at his face…a fist with a very recognizable ring on the little finger. A ring he’d designed and had crafted and created so it could grace the finger of his lady wife. For all time. Proving she was his. Showing the world that Payton Dunn-Fadden had burst through the bonds of poverty and filth and degradation and gained himself not only a castle, but the heiress to go with it. But only as long as he held it.

      And then he knew oblivion.

      Don’t hurt him! Don’t kill him! Don’t hurt him….

      The litany went through her like an unfinished sonnet, unspoken and filling her with an emotion close to fear. It was worse than the feeling that had already iced over her entire frame, making it difficult to don her presentation attire, and even harder to make the movement to the door, and give the order to open it before they caved it in. It was the same sensation that kept her standing, aloof and pale and trembling, frozen with a chill the winter couldn’t dent.

      The scene outside the gate was a mix of groans and blood, bodies and clamoring from male throats too numerous to count. And amidst the sea of green and yellow plaid marking a Kilchurning…was the lump of Payton.

      One of the Kilchurning men kicked at him. Aside from a rocking movement his boot caused, and the return back to a sodden lump of red-colored white wool, nothing happened.

      Dallis had her hands clasped to where pain was radiating through her breast and willed herself out of the scene. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She’d wanted him dead, hadn’t she? The emotion close to fear moved then, clogging her throat as Kilchurning…or perhaps it was one of his closest men, pulled a claymore and advanced on the non-moving lump that was Payton. Dallis was grateful then for the lump her throat harbored. The screams didn’t make any sound. She only knew she was making them, and suffering them, and gagging with them.

      Pain. That was it.

      She remembered it at the same time another man pulled another claymore from his side to follow the first man. Dallis shoved a hand behind her and beneath the jeweled girdle at her hips, pricking the soft