The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [637]
He recoiled, and the shock of it got him on his feet, with no memory of having stood up. Lillywhite’s back was to him, the linen of his shirt wet and sticking to his flesh. He lunged, grunting, then flung back, beat, riposted . . .
Roger shook his head, trying to clear it of the idiotic terms of swordsmanship, then stopped, gasping with pain. Jamie’s face was set in a maniac half-grin, teeth bared with effort as he followed his opponent’s weapon. He’d seen Roger, though.
“Roger!” he shouted, breathless with the fight. “Roger, a charaid!”
Lillywhite didn’t turn, but flung himself forward, feinting, beating away, lunging back in tierce.
“Not . . . stupid . . .” he gasped.
Roger realized dimly that Lillywhite thought Jamie was bluffing, trying to make him turn around. His vision was flickering round the edges again, and he grabbed for a tree, gripping hard to stay upright. The foliage was wet; his grip was slipping.
“Hey . . .” he called hoarsely, unable to think of any words. He raised his sword, the tip trembling. “Hey!”
Lillywhite stepped back and whirled around, eyes wide with shock. Roger lunged blindly, with no aim, but with all the power left in his body behind it.
The sword went into Lillywhite’s eye, and a slithering crunch ran up Roger’s arm, as metal scraped bone and went through to something softer, where it stuck. He tried to let go, but his hand was trapped in the basket-hilt. Lillywhite went stiff, and Roger could feel the man’s life run straight down the sword, through his hand, and up his arm, swift and shocking as an electric current.
Panicked, he jerked and twisted, trying to get the sword free. Lillywhite spasmed, went limp, and fell toward him, flopping like a huge dead fish as Roger wrenched and yanked, vainly trying to free himself from the sword.
Then Jamie seized him by the wrist and got him loose, got an arm around him, and led him away, stumbling and blind with panic and pain. Held his head and rubbed his back, murmuring nonsense in Gaelic while he puked and heaved. Wiped his face and neck with handsful of wet leaves, wiped the snot from his nose with the wet sleeve of his shirt.
“You okay?” Roger mumbled, somewhere in the midst of this.
“Aye, fine,” Jamie said, and patted him again. “You’re fine, too, all right?”
At length he was on his feet again. His head had gone past the point of pain; it still hurt, but the pain seemed a separate thing from himself, hovering somewhere nearby, but not actually touching him.
Lillywhite lay face-up in the leaves. Roger closed his eyes and swallowed. He heard Jamie mutter something under his breath, and then a grunt, a rustling of leaves, and a small thud. When Roger opened his eyes, Lillywhite was lying face-down, the back of his shirt smeared with sand and acorn hulls.
“Come on.” Jamie got him under the arm, pulled the arm over his shoulder. Roger lifted his free hand, waved it vaguely toward the bodies.
“Them. What should we do with . . . them?”
“Leave them for the pigs.”
Roger could walk by himself by the time they left the wood, though he had a tendency to drift to one side or the other, unable to steer quite straight as yet. Wylie’s house lay before them, a handsome construction in red brick. They picked their way across the lawn, ignoring the stares of several house-servants, who clustered at the upstairs windows, pointing down at them and murmuring to one another.
“Why?” Roger asked, stopping for a moment to shake some of the leaves from his shirt. “Did they say?”
“No.” Jamie pulled a soggy wad of cloth that had once been a handkerchief from his sleeve and swished it in the ornamental fountain. He used it to mop his face, looked critically at the resultant streaks of filth, and soused it in the fountain again.
“The first I knew was the thud when Anstruther clubbed ye—here,