“What’s wrong with you? Abby! Answer me!”
She shook her head, struggling to form the sounds she needed to use. “Nothing,” she managed at last.
“Nothing?” He sat back, disbelief written across hisface. “You can hardly expect me to believe that. You stop yer horse in the middle of the road and when I try to speak to you, it’s as if yer no even there.”
“I wasn’t there.” She took a deep breath, hoping to clear her foggy mind. “I was trying to follow the trail to the band. I told you, I’ve never done this over such a long distance before. I guess I just got a little carried away. I’m fine now. A little fuzzy, but fine.”
Fineif she didn’t count the booming headache her unexpected reentry to the real world had brought with it. She reached up to rub her temple, thankful the sun had slipped behind a cloud, leaving only a dappled pattern of light on the road rather than the bright glare they’d ridden through for the better part of the day.
“Stay behind me and keep yer eyes open.”
She looked up at Colin’s urgent whisper. His attention was directed ahead of them, though he continued to speak to her with the same low urgency as before.
“If anything looks to be amiss, turn yer mount and ride hard. Do you ken what I’m saying? Dinna think about it. Dinna pause to look back. Just do what I’ve told you and ride.”
Abby studied her surroundings closely for the first time in a long while. It wasn’t clouds that shaded them but a heavy overhang of large trees on either side of the road on which they traveled, just like those she’d seen in her vision.
In the distance, a man walked toward them, leading a horse behind him. His progress was slowed by a heavy limp, but as he drew closer, he lifted his arm in greeting.
“He seems friendly enough.”
“They always do. Until they turn on you.”
Suspicion must be an instinctive function of the warrior brain.
“Don’t be such a dinosaur, Colin. Look at the poor man. He can hardly be a threat. He can barely walk, let alone—”
A rain of arrows ended her tirade, and the world around her erupted in a cacophony of battle: men yelling, swords clanging, and most immediately, her own horse screaming in response to the arrow sticking out of his shoulder.
Behind her, Colin shouted for her to ride, but fleeing was her last concern at the moment. Her only thought was to stay on her horse’s back. When her mount reared in response to the pain, the reins jerked from her grasp. She leaned against the big animal’s neck and tangled her fingers in his mane while she clenched her knees in an attempt to keep her seat, all to no avail.
The sensation of this particular flight was both unsettling and short-lived, followed by a bone-rattling crash to the hard-packed earth of the road that left her flattened and gasping for her next breath.
She forced herself to her hands and knees, scrambling backward just in time to avoid the vicious kick of her terrorized mount. She pushed up to her feet and lunged for the side of the road, slamming her shoulder into a tree in her urgency to escape the big animal’s frenzy.
On the far side of the road, Colin fought off at least three men, his sword flashing in the dappled light as he kept his back to the forest, drawing them farther away from the spot where she clung to the tree. His sword slashed in a blur of movement, and one of his attackers fell with an ear-piercing scream.
Down to two men. He could handle only two.
Three men.
“Behind you!”
She screamed the warning too late as the third man emerged from the forest, swinging a club that struck Colin in the back of the head. He crumpled forward and fell to the ground, motionless, as an eerie silence filled the air.
“Colin!”
Pushing away from the tree, she ran to reach him, as uncaring of the men standing around him as about the pain searing through her body.
She had almost reached him when arms clamped around her like a vise, sweeping her off her feet. She clawed at the hands holding her and kicked the air, connecting with flesh hard enough to make her captor yelp.
Her efforts earned her a head-rattling shake. “Be still, shrew, else I’ll make you wish you had, I swear it!”
The smelly beast who held her slipped his meaty arm around her throat, leaving just enough space for her to dip her chin and sink her teeth into his forearm.
He yelled out in his pain and slammed her to the ground at his feet even as his companions’ laughter echoed in her ears.
She would have continued to fight, useless though it might be, but from here her view of Colin was unobstructed and what she saw shattered her will.