The Hawk (Highland Guard #2)(51)

Seamus shook his head, looking him over. “You nearly scared me half to death the first time I saw you. I thought you were one of the devil’s minions coming for me.”

Erik chuckled. “Not yet, old man. You’ve still got a few more years to atone for the last sixty of hell-raising.”

Seamus snorted. “Sixty? I’m nine and forty, you arse.”

Erik laughed and took his leave.

He was halfway through the tunnel when he felt that first prickle of unease—the first sensation that something wasn’t right. Even before he heard anything, he knew someone was coming. Sliding the dirk from his waist, he stopped against the wall and listened. A moment later the soft rumble of distant voices confirmed what his instincts had already told him.

But instead of a single guardsman, as it should have been, at least a dozen men were coming from the sea-gate. A galley must have arrived.

Damned inconvenient of them.

Normally, taking on a dozen English soldiers single-handedly would be nothing Erik thought twice about. He’d been trained well. That he was naked and armed only with a dirk merely gave the English a fighting chance.

But he couldn’t, blast it. Though it went against every bone in his body to shirk from a challenge, he didn’t want to alert the English to his presence by leaving a pile of bodies around to explain, not if he could help it. Not only would it cut off Dunaverty as a source of communication, it would also draw unwanted attention to an area that was far too close to Arran a week before the attack.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to make it past them in the narrow tunnel, Erik started to retrace his steps backward. He would hide somewhere in the kitchen vaults until they passed.

At least that was the plan.

It was a good one, too, except that when he ducked into the first storeroom, his quick scan of the room neglected to notice the lad who must have been nestled among the bags and barrels of flour, oats, and barley. He was so intent on trying to hear the conversation of the approaching soldiers, he didn’t sense the movement behind him until it was too late.

He spun around. The boy opened his mouth to scream and lashed out wildly in the dark with a knife.

Erik reacted almost instantaneously, clasping a hand over the boy’s mouth and pinning him to the wall with his forearm. He was quick enough to stifle most of the sound, but not quick enough to prevent the blade from slicing across his gut.

Erik winced at the sharp burn of pain and felt the dampness of blood dripping down his stomach, but didn’t make a sound.

The boy’s eyes widened as their gazes met in the darkness.

Erik couldn’t believe it. A lad of no more than seven or eight—probably in charge of keeping the rats away from the food—had not only gotten the jump on him, but had managed to inflict some damage as well. He didn’t want to think about how close that knife had come to gelding him.

Erik was sure as hell glad the other members of the Guard weren’t here to see this; he would never hear the end of it. Especially from Seton and MacGregor, who usually bore the brunt of his needling. It was their own fault for making it too easy on him. Seton for being a bloody Englishman, and MacGregor for that pretty face of his.

“What was that?” Erik heard someone say from outside the door. He went utterly still, disaster only the slightest sound away.

He kept his eyes on the boy’s and shook his head in silent warning not to make a sound.

The boy’s eyes grew even rounder. The wee lad was clearly too terrified to do anything other than stare at Erik as if he were seeing a ghost.

Walk by, Erik silently encouraged the soldiers in the tunnel.

To no avail.

A moment later he heard a commanding voice order, “See to it, William.”

Erik grabbed the boy and moved soundlessly behind the door. He hoped William wasn’t too thorough.

The door pushed open. He held his breath and locked the boy in a near chokehold to prevent him from making a sound. He could hear William’s breathing through the heavy wooden planks of the door. A moment later, the storeroom flooded with light as a torch was extended into the room.

Every muscle in his body tensed; he was ready at a second’s notice to toss the boy aside and fight. Part of him—the part of him that wasn’t used to considering ramifications—hoped for the excuse.

“There’s nothing here,” the soldier on the other side of the door said. “Must have been a rat.”

A moment later the door closed, but Erik waited until the last sound of footsteps faded before he set down the boy.

“No screaming, lad,” he whispered in Gaelic. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Slowly, he released his hand from the boy’s mouth. The boy immediately scattered to the farthest corner of the small room to hide behind a big barrel. “Please, I’ll be good,” he whimpered in a trembling voice. “Don’t take me to hell with you. I promise to listen to my mum.”

Erik’s first instinct was to calm the terror-struck child. But then he recalled Seamus’s comments earlier and realized the boy’s fear would solve the problem of leaving a witness behind. If the boy told anyone what he’d seen, they’d just think it the child’s imagination. Perhaps some men wouldn’t hesitate to kill the lad, but Erik drew the line at murdering innocents. Like Ellie, the boy had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the most eerie voice he could muster, he said, “Close your eyes, don’t move, and make no sound until morning or I will return. Do you understand?”