“BLADE!”
By the time I managed to snatch my dagger from its hidden sheath in my boot and bring it up, it was far too late. My attacker’s sword whipped down, so close I felt the breeze on my cheek and heard the weapon slice the air next to my ear. A few dark curls floated to the muddy ground and disappeared into the muck.
Heart slamming, I tried to dance away. But the tight waist of the practice gown had long ago stolen what little breath I had. The full skirts tripped me up, and I went down hard. In seconds the cold, boggy ground seeped through the thick layers of wool and muslin.
I scuttled back on my butt, boot heels making divots in the mud.
“Stop. Can’t brea—” The sword tip nudged my throat. Cold, sharp, stinging.
Ignoring the raindrops that pattered my cheeks and eyelashes, I glowered up at the grin spreading across my opponent’s broad, freckled face.
“Better.” Collum MacPherson sheathed the short gladiator sword that had once belonged to his father. “You drew quick enough that time.” He offered me a hand up. All pride gone, I took it.
“But you paused,” Collum went on. “And you can’t hesitate, Hope. Not for an instant. Not when you’re under attack.”
“But,” I said, my voice just south of a whine. “I could’ve cut you.”
Collum’s blond eyebrows quirked puppy-like over his eyes, though he was kind enough to hide the smile. “Unlikely.”
That was true enough, though it irked me to no end that he had to look so damn smug about it. Despite weeks of endless training, I was still clunky and awkward with any and every type of weapon. Besides, I’d never seen anyone faster with a sword than Collum MacPherson.
Well . . . that part wasn’t exactly true. But before the image of a dark-haired figure whipping two curved blades like they were extensions of his own body could fully form, I pushed it away.
“What?” Collum’s hazel eyes narrowed on me.
“Nothing. Just cold.” I shivered for effect.
“Cold?” he queried. “In July?”
“It’s a Scottish Highland July. What is it, like sixty-eight, seventy degrees? It’s ninety-eight in Arkansas right now. In the shade. Plus,” I added, gesturing to the mud that was congealing on the back of my skirts. “Ick.”
“Ick?” Collum closed his eyes and pinched the creased skin between his sandy brows. “So what you’re saying is that when you get into trouble on a mission, you’ll simply . . . what? Call a time-out?” His voice went high-pitched in the worst American accent I’d ever heard. “‘Excuse me! Hello, all you murderers. Could you stop swinging at me for a moment, please? I’ve a muddy bum.’”
“Well, I—”
“No.” He picked up my blade and handed it to me, hilt first. “Again. And again and again. And never mind the ‘ick.’”
In the two months since my abrupt return from the past, Collum had been relentless. Two hours. Every day. Tired or exhausted. Rain or . . . well, less rain, I was dragged outdoors to defend myself—?in costume, no less—?against an opponent of his choosing.
With Phoebe, a much more patient and gentle teacher, I learned how to use my opponent’s larger size against them. Only for me, that happened about one out of every hundred times, and usually because my feet got accidentally tangled with theirs.
Phoebe had trained almost since she’d left the womb, in an insane regimen and with a variety of martial arts. With a body weight of a hundred pounds dripping wet, my petite “bestie” could put down any attacker. Usually in less than five moves. Watching her send Collum crashing to the mud was one of the joys of my life.
I wasn’t any better at knife throwing, Phoebe’s other exquisitely honed skill. As Mac often said, “My granddaughter can peel the wings off a fly at thirty paces, she can.”
After days, weeks, two months of kicks and punches, knife chunks and bow twangs. After countless nicks from steel objects—?mostly self-inflicted. After hours in Moira’s Epsom salt baths, trying to soak the feeling back into my numb muscles, you’d think I’d have become at least somewhat less pathetic.
You would be wrong.
“Argh! I can’t do this!”
I threw the light practice sword away in disgust. It twirled through the air, hit the mud point first, and stuck there.
“Hey!” I called to Collum as I watched the part that wasn’t sunk in the mud sway back and forth. “Kinda stuck the landing, didn’t I? I mean, sure, it was an accident and all. But you gotta admit, it was kinda cool, was—”
From twenty yards away, Collum rushed me. Like his woad-painted ancestors before him, he raised his sword and shrieked an ancient battle cry as his large feet pounded across the stable yard.
It happened without conscious thought. A translucent film, tinged neon green, overlaid my vision. Multiple arcs drew themselves from every angle, tracing out possible escape routes and countermeasures. Instantaneously, my mind filtered through every lesson, every bit of training, calculating each possible outcome of this scenario.
As two hundred pounds of bellowing Celtic warrior descended on me, my mind discarded one idea after another after another until . . .
I stepped aside and stuck out my foot.
Collum’s speed was such that he couldn’t veer off in time. His trajectory took him straight into my path, where he tumbled over my outstretched leg and splatted, face first, into the mud.
“Ow!” I hopped on one foot, trying to rub the already bruising flesh where the toe of his boot had cracked against my ankle.
He rose slowly while hunks of slimy earth slid down to glop back onto the ground. Collum MacPherson swiped at his eyes, flinging mud from his fingers as he glared at me for a long moment. All I could see of his face were two clear hazel eyes amid the brown gunk.
“Um.” I grimaced. “Sorry?”
White flashed amid the rich ocher as he grinned. Grinned and began to laugh.
And then I was laughing too because well, it was all so utterly, utterly ridiculous. All of it.
“You . . .” I wheezed. “Covered in . . . And holy crap, we . . . freaking time travelers.” I bent, breathless as I let it all go in a long, soundless spasm that I was sure would burst every blood vessel in my brain. “How . . . st-stupid is that?”
“Aye.” Collum hiccupped. “And damn my eyes if you don’t look like a wee barbarian yerself with yer hair all stuck to one side of yer head!”
We laughed. We laughed until we couldn’t laugh anymore. Until tears tracked through the mud on our faces and the sun peeked through the clouds to infiltrate the raindrops.
“They say when the sun shines through the rain it’s the devil beating his wife,” Collum said as we headed toward the house.