On a Highland Shore Read Online Free PDF Page B

amazement.
    “Ye are accused of stealing these lasses and killing their mother,” Gannon said. “I am here to bring ye to justice before Patrick Maguire.”
    “Alone?” one of the men asked with a sneer.
    “Will ye come?” Gannon asked.
    “Like hell,” the man said, and started toward Gannon.
    Gannon was waiting. The man fell at once and Gannon turned to the next one. Behind him he heard Tiernan’s shout and the sounds of horses smashing through young trees as his brother led the charge into the camp, the others behind him roaring their battle cries. Most of the Sligo men never lived to grasp an axe or sword, but some fought madly.
    Gannon mowed his way through a small cluster of them, then whirled his horse to plow across the camp again. One of the men thrust Alban’s elder daughter before him, using her as a shield. The noise around him disappeared as Gannon looked into the man’s eyes, then at the young woman with tears streaming down her face. There were marks on her neck already, bruises showing where she had been abused. She clutched her torn tunic across her breasts and closed her eyes, cringing in terror as Gannon raised his sword. He never touched her. The man behind her fell writhing to the ground and a moment later stopped moving. Gannon did not spare him even a glance, but turned to see how Tiernan and the others were faring.
    It was over. Across the glade Alban was embracing his younger daughter. Their uncle met Gannon’s gaze and nodded fiercely.
     
    They spent the night in the walled village where Alban’s brother lived, where they listened to Alban’s brother and Gannon’s men tell the story of rescuing the women, embellishing it each time. Gannon did not mind. He drank their whisky and accepted their thanks, but tried not to look at Alban and his daughters, whose suffering was tangible. The bed the villagers provided Gannon was warm, the woman who shared it more than willing, and he was grateful to have both.
    He dreamt of water closing over his head, of limbs too heavy to raise toward the light that beckoned above, of sinking, slowly, toward the depths. Of knowing that he’d failed and that death was at hand. He could feel the water seep beneath his clothing, heartless liquid fingers that sucked the breath from his lungs and caught at his legs and pulled him relentlessly down, down, while the life left in him floated to the surface. He looked up at the light one last time.
    And then there was nothing.
    Gannon woke with a start, tremors still running through him, to find his hands clenched, his heart pounding, and his body soaked with sweat. It was a dream, he told himself. Not a memory. Not a foreshadowing. Merely the aftermath of the day’s events. He slipped from the bed, careful not to wake the woman, and walked quickly from the house into the night. He stared into the sky, calming himself by naming the constellations. Leo, the lion. Draco, the dragon.
    The whispers, then the dreams. It was always the same. The whispers arrived first, sounding like wind rustling through the trees, speaking words that he could almost hear, faint fragments of sentences. He’d be riding through a wood, or standing on the shore, thinking of something far different, and the whispers would find him, telling their half tale, bringing memories he’d suppressed. And then the dreams, nightmares so real that he could swear he was there, seeing the deaths, or witnessing his own, the images still lingering in the air when he woke. Next came relief that death had not claimed him, swiftly followed by the realization that one day it would.
    He was not afraid to die. He was afraid to fail, and in the dreams he always failed. He’d wake each time, his body in turmoil, and think himself calm again by reminding himself of who he was, of all he’d learned, of the blood he carried in his veins. All men faced death, and someday he would as well. He could not change that any more than he could change the tide.
    The whispers