Logan hunched against the icy rain pelting him, keeping his gaze sharp on the two-man battle before him.
Ansel Sutherland was sparring with Niall Beaumore, and they weren’t using wooden practice swords or weapons with dulled blades. Ansel moved with lethal assuredness, but Niall, at only twenty and still slightly awkward with youth, was far less fluid.
Ansel advanced slowly on Niall, who backed into a defensive semicircle, carefully maintaining distance between himself and the trainer.
“Ye’re letting me control yer movement,” Ansel said to Niall. He proved his words by taking two rapid steps forward. Niall automatically jerked backward, his sword poised between himself and Ansel.
It had startled Logan at first to discover that Niall was an Englishman, but then again, he shouldn’t have been surprised. If Sutherlands, Sinclairs, MacKays, and MacLeods could all train together in the Bodyguard Corps’ camp, why not an Englishman as well?
Despite the remarkable cooperation represented in the Corps’ camp, Ansel certainly wasn’t going easy on Niall for his youth and relative inexperience.
Ansel swung at Niall’s ankles, nearly hamstringing the lad. Niall threw himself back, barely avoiding the blade’s arc.
“Ye’re still fighting on yer heels,” Ansel barked as he lunged forward, his sword darting toward Niall’s stomach. “Find a gap and attack me.”
Niall parried Ansel’s thrust but didn’t have time to draw his sword back and launch his own attack before Ansel closed the distance between them and rammed his shoulder into Niall’s, knocking the lad off-balance.
“Dinnae keep giving me control of the distance between us, lad,” Ansel commanded, letting Niall regain his footing before launching another attack.
Logan’s hands involuntarily twitched. The motion to bring forth one of his throwing daggers was branded into every nerve and fiber, but no blade dropped into his palm.
He clenched his teeth. He’d spent the last five years fighting with naught more than the throwing daggers the Order of the Shadow insisted their bounty hunters use, but Ansel had ordered that he give up the weapons. Logan wasn’t a mercenary anymore, Ansel had said, nor a bounty hunter. He would have to re-learn how to fight with a sword like a warrior if he was going to remain in the Corps’ camp.
Still, a month and a half of training in the Highlands with the Corps couldn’t undo five years of hard-earned lessons from the Order. If Logan had been in Niall’s boots and still had his daggers strapped to his wrists, he would never have let Ansel get so close. That was the beauty of the throwing daggers. He could stand back and pick off men one at a time before they could even touch him.
“Missing your daggers again?”
Logan started at Kirk’s teasing whisper. Logan must have flicked his wrist again unconsciously.
“Ansel’s rules are…bothersome,” he replied softly, sliding a glance at Kirk.
“Ye should be used to taking orders from bothersome men—it isnae so different than training with the Order at the Compound,” Kirk shot back.
Kirk was right. There were six men, including Logan and Kirk, huddled in the training camp’s rain-hammered clearing. At the Compound, there were dozens more recruits, but the routines and lives of the trainees were much the same. Rise at dawn. Train all day. Fall into bed each night sore and exhausted.
“Who is more ornery, Ansel or Hervey?” Logan murmured out of the side of his mouth, referring to the man who had been part trainer, part jailor at the Compound.
Kirk snorted softly. “Hervey always liked ye better than me. Ye’re only grousing because Ansel doesnae coddle ye the way Hervey did.”
It was Logan’s turn to snort. “Says the man who—”
“Mackenzie!”
Ansel’s bark cut off Logan’s whispered retort. He straightened, letting the hard pellets of icy rain hit him in the face.
He hadn’t noticed that Niall’s lesson was over. The lad limped back to where the other men stood, auburn head dipped with exhaustion.
“Ye’re up, Mackenzie,” Ansel bit out.
Normally, the men paired up and practiced sword work with each other, but today Ansel had resorted to sparring with each man individually. That was because of a problem amongst the men, or rather, a problem with a particular man—Logan.
Excepting Kirk’s unfailing friendship and loyalty, Logan was thoroughly disliked among the others. Hated was a more apt word. Apparently the men of the Corps could overcome centuries of clan hostilities, but that goodwill did not extend to Logan.
Ansel refused to trust Logan despite Kirk’s assurances that he was no longer part of the Order of the Shadow. Ansel was utterly devoted to his family, and because a member of the Order had once threatened his wife Isolda and her son John, he seemed determined to despise Logan.
Niall was generally a steadfast and good-natured lad from what Logan could tell, but he, too, had a bone to pick with Logan. Niall’s older sister Rosamond, who was now married to Finn Sutherland, a fellow member of the Corps, had been kidnapped two years past—by Logan. He’d been working under orders—and with the threat that Mairin would come to harm if he didn’t comply—at the time. Though he hadn’t hurt Rosamond, Logan could hardly blame the lad for hating him.
And then there was Will Sinclair. The man shot daggers of hate directed at Kirk with his one good eye. As Kirk’s friend, Logan received much of the same.
When Kirk had been working undercover within the Order, he’d been sent on a mission that had him working at cross-purposes with the Corps. To maintain his cover, he’d had to pit himself against Will. In the fight, Kirk had sliced Will’s right eye with one of the Order’s throwing daggers. Will had lost his sight on that side. Now he wore a patch, his good eye filled with loathing for Kirk and Logan alike.
The only other man who resided permanently at the camp was Angus MacLeod, a distant uncle of Kirk’s. Despite Kirk’s best efforts to soften the old bear of a man toward Logan, Angus was a loyalist to his King and country above all else. He remained resolute in his dislike for any man who could turn his back on Scotland as Logan had.
No one besides Kirk was willing to spar with Logan. Or rather, they were all a bit too willing, especially if they had a chance to land a punch or swing of the sword against him.
As Niall approached Logan on his way to rejoin the others at the edge of the clearing, he extended the rain-slick sword to him. But before Logan could reach it, Niall intentionally let the blade fall in the mud-churned ground.
Normally, Ansel would have berated Niall for disrespecting a weapon in such a way, but this was only normal behavior when it came to how the others treated Logan.
Logan waited for Niall to pass him before bending to retrieve the muddy, wet blade. No one wanted him there—including him. Only the knowledge that Mairin rested safe and secure in the little hut set back from the clearing and a bit separate from the others made him rise and face Ansel.
Logan hefted the sword by the hilt, getting his grip. Though he’d been raised with a blade in his hands since before he could toddle, it felt strange after so many years of only using the throwing daggers to wield a sword again.
As he strode toward Ansel, the freezing rain began to turn into slushy snow, gathering in a slick layer atop the mud and grass underfoot. Logan noted the change as he came to a halt a few paces away from the trainer.
Without preamble, Ansel launched an attack, arcing his blade toward Logan’s left shoulder. Logan blocked the blow, but instead of stepping backward out of Ansel’s range as Niall had done, Logan stepped into the space between them. He lifted one hand from his sword’s hilt and darted two fingers forward to poke Ansel in the side of his neck.
“If my fingers were one of my daggers,” Logan said evenly, “ye’d be dead.”
Ansel stepped back, his dark eyes blazing with fury. “But ye dinnae have yer daggers anymore, Mackenzie, for ye claim ye are no longer a mercenary.” he ground out. “Or have ye changed yer mind? Have yer allegiances flipped yet again?”
Logan clenched his teeth. Despite Ansel and the others’ questions, he’d refused to explain why he’d become a mercenary eleven years ago, even to Kirk. Some things were simply better left in the shadows of the past. But the men had taken his silence as further evidence of his untrustworthiness. He couldn’t fault them for that, but even still his anger rose at Ansel’s barb.
This time he initiated the attack, driving his blade at Ansel’s middle. But Logan was rusty with a long sword, and Ansel easily parried the strike. He tried to bind Logan’s blade to the slushy ground, but Logan slid out of range. Ansel recovered from the failed maneuver quickly, raising his sword for another slashing attack.
Aye, Ansel was better with a long sword. Logan could admit that to himself as he narrowly avoided the slice. But Logan hadn’t fought fair, man against man, blade against blade, in all the long years he’d sold his skills as a mercenary.
He would never live down his past—not in the eyes of these honor-bound men. He would always be a traitor, a coward, a lowly killer for hire. And they didn’t even know the worst of it, of his life before becoming a mercenary and bounty hunter.
If he couldn’t undo what he’d become, couldn’t right the countless wrongs of his past, he might as well use it to his advantage.
As he edged away from yet another of Ansel’s powerful attacks, he let one booted foot slide out from under him on the slick, heavy snow. He landed on his back with a grunt, exposing his chest and belly for an instant.
Just as he’d anticipated, Ansel saw his vulnerability and struck. The trainer darted forward, raising his sword overhead in preparation to force Logan to surrender under his blade.
But Logan caught Ansel’s ankle with one foot. Ansel was moving fast enough over the slushy ground that Logan easily knocked him off-balance. Ansel toppled to the ground beside Logan. In a flash, Logan was up and looming over Ansel.
He left his sword at his side, but once again lifted two fingers to Ansel’s throat.
“Ye’re dead again.”
Ansel swatted Logan’s hand away, his lips curling in anger. “Ye think ye are clever, but keep taking shortcuts and ye’ll end up dead. And now that ye are training with the Corps, more than just yer sorry life is at stake. Quit looking for the easy way out and instead devote yerself to the right way of doing things for once.”
Fury, sudden and hot, spiked in Logan’s stomach. The words hit dangerously close to home—or rather, to the memory of fleeing his home.
Still, he’d lived five long years with his sister’s life hanging over his head. He didn’t need a lesson in responsibility from Ansel.
“I do what it takes to survive,” he shot back. “Call it a shortcut if ye will, but it worked—ye would be the dead one now if I’d wanted it so.”
“If ye liked yer old ways, yer old life, so much, mayhap ye should return to it,” Ansel snapped. He shoved out from under Logan and rose to his feet. “Mayhap ye arenae cut out to be in the Corps. I’ve given ye a chance, as I promised Kirk I would. I can train ye, make ye a better warrior, but I cannae make ye a better man.”
Suddenly Logan realized that the others who’d been standing around the clearing’s perimeter had stepped closer and were watching and listening to the exchange in silence. He scanned their faces. Kirk’s dark brows were drawn together in concern, but the other men’s features were stony with disdain.
Without a word, he dropped his sword in the slushy snow and turned from the practice field.
“Cutting and running, are ye?” Ansel called behind him. Logan burned with silent shame and fury at that, but he did not answer the stinging words.
“Logan, wait!”
He didn’t slow his strides toward the woods at Kirk’s shout, either. No one else tried to stop him.
Kirk trotted up to his side, and still Logan did not alter his pace.
“Ye arenae leaving, are ye?”
“Nay,” Logan bit out. Once he’d cleared the tree line, he let out a long breath. “Ye ken I cannae. Mairin needs this—needs me.” Which meant Logan would swallow his pride and return to the camp soon enough. He couldn’t abandon her again. If he had to supplicate himself before Ansel and the others, so be it—it was a small price to pay for Mairin’s sanity.
“Ye are a good brother,” Kirk said quietly.
“Nay,” Logan rasped again. “If I were, she never would have been taken by Roland Gervais in the first place.”
Kirk opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Logan held up a hand. “It is all right,” he said, suddenly weary. “I’m no’ leaving—I just need to clear my head. Will ye keep an eye on Mairin for me until I get back?”
The request was pointless, and they both knew it. Mairin almost never left the little hut she and Logan shared on the outskirts of the camp. Still, it was the gentlest way Logan could come up with to tell Kirk to leave him be until he got his head on straight again.
“Aye,” Kirk said, slowing his pace so that Logan pulled ahead. “Just remember—ye deserve to be here, Logan. And yer sister is lucky to have ye.”
The snow fell heavier now, and Kirk’s words were quickly swallowed by the muted silence in the forest. Logan strode on alone.