He was mine to control.
It was a monstrous ability to take possession of someone else—to control them as though they were merely an extension of my own body. Still, it was a strength I wasn’t afraid to use on the battlefield because while I knew I wasn’t the strongest fighter, nor the fastest, what power I did have made the difference between life and death for my clansmen. For my family.
I forced my new bodyguard forward. His will rebelled against mine, straining for independence. My will was stronger.
You aren’t the leader, but you’ll do for now, I told him in his mind, and felt a surge of answering fear and impotent rage. I ignored it. Protect me from your comrades until you fall.
Two enemies charged me, their faces grimly determined. My Northman bodyguard met them with his axe. As their weapons clashed, confusion slowed their movements. They halted in their attack, their disbelief paralyzing them. Despite the angry hum of protest within my bodyguard’s mind, he raised his axe again and brought it down upon his comrade’s head. The other I killed with my own sword.
It had taken years, many battles, and many training sessions to be able to divide my attention so totally as to be able to control someone while still maintaining my sense of self. It wasn’t unlike being able to sword fight while still holding a fully engaged conversation. Difficult, but not impossible.
As I fought, I searched for the leader, but there were so many men locked in combat I couldn’t pick him out.
Another Northman attacked from behind. Sleipnir aided me once again, biting and kicking. I swung his big body around so his haunches slammed into the man. My guard was engaged in a battle of his own. This was one of the weaknesses of my ability: I could take possession of only one man at a time.
I was vulnerable to attack.
The man’s hand grabbed my thigh, and I kicked in reflex. He must have been as tall as Sleipnir and almost as broad. He tugged again. I tried to bring my blade down on his head, but he met it with his axe. He smiled, his teeth the color of old leather.
Instead of fighting the Northman, I leaned into his hand. Surprised by the sudden loss of tension, he loosened his grip. I kicked again, and he lost his hold entirely.
All the while I could feel my guard at the other end of my mental tether—he had taken one of his own men by surprise and was currently fending off a second.
When the leather-toothed man came at me again, I smashed the hilt of my sword into his nose. He bellowed and swung his axe wildly. I deflected as it came dangerously close to cutting into Sleipnir’s side. Anger blazed within me at the thought of my horse being injured, and my control slipped. Sensing my distraction, my guard struggled against my mental hold. His desperate fear and frustration hit me with such force that my eyes closed against my will. I had to focus. I brought to mind the lessons my father had drilled into me: when in a desperate situation, take the enemy by surprise.
I wrenched my eyes open again just in time to see the leather-toothed Northman striding toward me, his nose spurting blood.
This time, his eyes were on my horse. I surged into a standing position on Sleipnir’s broad back. The man’s eyes widened. I launched myself at him, bringing my sword down at the same time. He brought his shield up, but the blade smashed through it, into the soft flesh of his neck.
The big man fell to his knees before falling face-first into the rocks. Blood haloed around him, but I wouldn’t stop to think. I wouldn’t let myself absorb the carnage around me—both of my fallen clansmen and of Northmen. I needed to find their leader.
My gaze landed on the corpse of a man cleaved in two. It was Cormac, one of the few who would greet me with a kind word. He had a new babe at home, a bright-eyed boy who would now be raised with no father. The pain of his loss stole my breath away.
And then I felt it: the severing of a connection, like the tautness of string suddenly gone slack. My guard was dead.
Arms grabbed me from behind. I forced my elbow into my assailant’s gut. The grunt I heard in response sounded too youthful to have come from one of the burly Northmen. I spun around and came face-to-face with a boy who couldn’t have been older than thirteen years.
For a moment, all I saw was my sister Alana. Why had these monsters brought a child to battle? I was many things, but I wasn’t a murderer of children—even a Northman child. The rage within died down to a pulse.
He raised his sword, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Run along, boy,” I said, sure that if he couldn’t understand my words, he would understand my meaning. “The battlefield is no place for a child.”
His eyes narrowed. “No place for a lady either,” he said in heavily accented Gaelic.
I laughed again because he had a point. My smile faded when he charged.
He was quick, I had to give him that. He met every blow of my admittedly half-hearted attacks. But when he knocked my legs out from under me, my amusement disappeared entirely.
He leaped on top of me, kept me pinned to the ground. He slashed my face with his sword, and I tasted blood. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to kill him.
I scanned the bloodied cliff. Where was their leader? I shouldn’t be wasting my time with a boy. If I could take possession of the leader, force him to turn on his own, I’d learned from experience that his men would be so taken by surprise that they were easier to kill. Sometimes it so disturbed them that they turned on the leader himself.
An approaching Northman distracted me from my search. I was running out of time. The man shouted and the boy stiffened, but he didn’t stop trying to cut my throat.
With my left hand, I felt around for one of the stones that littered the cliff. I wouldn’t kill the boy, but I had to stop him. As my arm swung the stone into his skull, my eyes met the Northman who had appeared behind us.
His expression almost stopped me. His features were twisted with panic.
The boy slumped, knocked unconscious. Lucky for him, to my clansmen, he’d appear dead. I might be willing to spare his life, but the others wouldn’t.
I pushed him off me and scrambled to my feet to greet the Northman who now towered over me, his shield bearing the insignia of the skeletal red dragon—the same as the one on the sail. Instead of an axe, he carried a massive claymore. He wasn’t surrounded by his own personal shield guard like most I’d battled, but still, I was sure. The leader had found me.
I held my sword at the ready, and as I tried to reach his mind, I studied him. This Northman was different from the others. Surprise trickled through me as I realized how young he was—perhaps only a year older than I was. He was tall, but it was his lightly muscled form that suggested youth. Beneath the splatters of blood, his face was a handsome one with a straight nose, unmarred by multiple breakings like the other men’s. A strong jaw, full lips.
His ice-blue eyes cut to the boy at my feet. When we both watched the boy’s chest rise, the leader’s attention returned to me. Our eyes locked, and once again, I bore the intense pain as I tried to take his mind.
But my power slammed into a wall, as real as the stones surrounding my father’s castle. I took a step back in surprise. Gritting my teeth, I pushed with my mind. Nothing. He didn’t even blink.
But he did swing his sword.
I brought my own blade up at the last moment. The impact was so jarring I felt it in my bones, the metals of the swords coming together in an earsplitting clatter.