“You could learn this, Hope,” she called. “Doesn’t matter how small you are. Aikido uses your opponent’s own momentum against them.” Phoebe demonstrated a few moves, her small hands and feet flying as she once again dropped her sweating brother to the mud-slick ground of the stable yard. “Of course, if that doesn’t work”—she patted the knives at her side—“you just stick them with your blade.”
Collum’s weapon of choice was a short, wide gladiator sword that had belonged to his father. Watching him and Mac spar left me clenching and breathless. Even Doug was astonishingly fast with his staff, a six-foot piece of rock-hard oak.
No surprise to anyone, especially me, I was clumsy and awkward with any weapon they tried to put in my hands. After days stuck inside while the skies shed buckets onto the mountains and moors, I’d discovered the only place I was of any use at all. The library. And even there, practically every time I opened my mouth, Collum shut me down. It was getting old.
The rain had finally stopped. I peered down the misty valley toward the river and wondered if Bran Cameron would be there today.
Even thinking about the possibility that he might be there—could be there—made my face go hot. It was a stupid hope, I knew. But I so needed a little normal in my life just then. Not that meeting up with a boy was normal. Not for me. But I’d take what I could get.
As I watched, Phoebe flipped Doug for the third time. The massive boy landed on his back with a whoomp that shook the ground. He lay still, gasping. Eyebrows waggling, Phoebe held out a hand. “That’s six to two,” she said. “Done, then, are you?”
With a move quicker than I would’ve imagined possible for someone his size, Doug rolled to his feet. And in one smooth motion, he’d hauled Phoebe over his shoulder and—both of them giggling madly—carried her off into the house.
Mac and Collum had finished their earlier battle. The older man was now watching as Collum eviscerated a leather-bound, straw-filled dummy that hung from a beam sticking out the side of the stable wall.
Earlier, I’d tried to chuck a few of Phoebe’s knives at the figure. The few that had miraculously struck had bounced off and splatted to the ground.
“Nice work, lad,” Mac called as he sheathed his blade. “Old Angus will need some stitchin’ up ere we use him again, I bet.”
He strolled toward me, the crow’s feet around his eyes deepening as he called over his shoulder. “And take it easy on our lass here. Remember, this is all new to her.”
Mac’s hand was gentle as he clapped my shoulder. “Ye’re doin’ fine, lass,” he said in a voice for me alone. “Ye’re smart as a whip and twice as tough. ’Tis a lot to take in, I know. But Collum’s a good lad. Ye’ll be right safe in his care.”
Mac headed inside, leaving only me and Collum in the muddy yard. A fact I wasn’t totally thrilled about.
The Highland mist swirled down off the far mountains and writhed across the moors like a mass of angry spirits. Exhausted from three eighteen-hour days of endless study, costume fittings, and practicing the twisty medieval dialect, I turned away to head inside. If I hurried, I could change out of the long practice skirts Collum had insisted on and be headed out on Ethel’s back in ten minutes.
Collum moved to block me, dropping a knife at my feet.
“Not yet,” he said. “You didn’t do so well earlier, and everyone should know how to use a blade. We’re going to a brutal time. You won’t be able to fend off an attacker by quoting passages at him, so pick it up. We aren’t leaving this spot till you know how to use it.”
I frowned down at the slender stiletto. Nothing mattered more than finding my mom, but Lucinda had already lectured us time and time again to have as little contact as possible with the “natives.” So why he thought I’d need to use a blade was beyond me. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew where we were headed was a dangerous place. But I’d already managed to nick myself three times with the miniscule eating knife I’d been rehearsing with—no forks in the twelfth century—so how the hell did he suppose I’d do with an actual weapon?
Grumbling under my breath, I retrieved the knife and balanced it gingerly on my open palm. The color of aged ivory, the hilt was carved with whorls and odd symbols. I smoothed a finger across the satiny surface.
“That’s bone,” Collum said, “with a canny sharp blade. Got it off a count on a trip to 1823. It’ll do for you. Now grip it like this.”
Collum wrapped his rough palm over mine, showing me an underhand grip.
“Okay, okay,” I said. I slapped at the full skirts. “But let me go change. I’ve tripped on these stupid things a dozen times already. If I don’t get some jeans on, I’ll end up gutting myself. “
I was hoping for a laugh. A chuckle. God, even a twitch to break the guy’s unrelenting intensity. But Collum’s expression never wavered as he looked skyward. “And will you be wearing jeans where we’re going? I can’t be with you every second. You have to be able to defend yourself. But if you’re not going to take this seriously, then—”
“Fine,” I muttered. “It’s just that I’m really not into the whole piercing, slicing, mutilating thing. You have to admit that’s not something a normal person learns.”