Highland Warrior by McCollum, Heather (good summer reads .txt) 📕

Everyone in the room, except Brenna, looked at Joshua as if he’d lost his mind. “It will keep ye standing to think of it that way,” he said.

“I…I have not seen a horse birth,” Calder said.

“Well, damn,” Joshua said. “Deep breaths then, I guess.”

A tortured groan came from Brenna, and Pastor John closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer.

“Pastor,” Joshua called down. “Ye best start if your blessing is to come before the bairn.”

His eyes snapped open, and he nodded quickly like a nervous bird. “Do you, Calder Flett, take Brenna Muir to be your wife before God and these witnesses, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, until death do you part?”

“Aye, aye,” Calder breathed.

“And do you, Brenna—”

“Aye,” she screamed. “I take him until death do us part. Aye, forsaking all others…” The last word was drawn out with her wail.

Pastor John drew the sign of the cross in the air. “You two are wed. May God bless you and your child.” Without another word, he fled the room, likely to find some whisky, because that was exactly what Joshua was going to do when he managed to escape.

“Good girl,” Hilda said through another of Brenna’s low cries. “The shoulders…”

Brenna grunted, and her breath flew from her with the sound of… Whatever it was, it sounded wet. Holy bloody hell. Joshua drew in a deep breath to keep his feet beneath him while he held her.

“I have it,” Hilda yelled, pulling out from under Brenna’s smock. She held a bloody, slippery bairn, a thick cord over its shoulders. Kára moved forward, catching the child roughly in a towel, rubbing it.

Harriett cut through the fleshy cord with a sharp dagger. “Lower Brenna slowly,” Hilda instructed. Thank the good Lord, Joshua prayed and bent slowly forward with Brenna.

Thump. Calder was no longer standing.

“I caught his head,” Amma said as she lowered Calder to the stone floor, his eyes closed in unconsciousness.

Kára’s head was bent over the bairn, working frantically as Joshua lowered Brenna to the bed. “Come on, little boy,” Kára whispered in the suddenly quiet room. Joshua held his breath as she worked.

“Clear his mouth,” Hilda said. A weak cry came from the bairn, and Joshua released his breath. A small sob made Brenna shake, and tears washed down her cheeks, but she smiled weakly at the noise that proved her bairn had made it out of her body alive.

“There is too much blood,” Hilda said. “Kára, knead her abdomen. Harriett, come look at this tear. Do we need to stitch it?”

Tear? Bloody hell! Joshua’s eyes went wide as Kára stepped over Calder, carrying the bairn that she’d wrapped in a fresh blanket. “Hold him.”

“What?” he asked.

She shoved the tiny bundle into his arms and hurried back to the bed. “Like a baby horse,” she said, a slight grin on her face as her hands went out to massage the new mother’s round abdomen.

He looked down at the blinking little eyes of the bairn. “I will scare it,” he said, but no one paid him any attention except Brenna.

“Smile at him,” she ordered.

He tried but it likely came out like a grimace. The bairn had a spit of dark hair on his head, which was wet with… He did not want to think about it. The lad’s blinks were slow, as if he had drunk too much ale.

“I feel like I need to push again,” Brenna said.

“’Tis the afterbirth needing to come out.” Hilda patted her arm.

“Magairlean,” he murmured, turning his back on the process behind him. He looked down at the wee bairn. His little hand lay across the blanket, his long fingers extended. Were they supposed to be long like that? He looked closer. “Och, but he has wee fingernails,” he said, pushing his thumb under the miniature hand. The bairn’s fingers curled around his thumb, and his breath caught. He chuckled. “Ye have a strong grip.”

Joshua glanced down at Calder, who moved a hand to his face, his eyes blinking. “What happened?”

“Ye no doubt got your strength from your mother,” Joshua said to the bairn. In the background, the women helped Brenna, or at least her lower half while she continued to watch him hold her son.

“What will ye name him?” he asked.

“I…I do not know,” she said, exhaustion and joy on her face with brief pinches of pain. “I tried hard not to think of the babe while I carried him so as not to draw death to him.”

He studied the wee face. “I am not your father, little one. He is still on the floor. Perhaps I should not show ye that,” he said and turned away from where Calder struggled to sit up.

“What names are in your family?” Brenna asked him.

The wee one still held strongly to his finger. “My brothers are Cain, Gideon, and Bàs.”

“Bass? Is that short for anything?” she asked.

“It means death in Gaelic. He was born to execute our enemies,” he said, smiling down, his chest full as he studied the bairn’s puckered lips.

“Death?” Brenna screeched. “Give me my babe now,” she yelled.

“Ho now,” Joshua said, turning to her. “’Tis an appropriate name. He is the Horseman of Death.”

“Give him to me!”

He dodged Calder, who stood but still propped his hands on his knees. Joshua laid the bundle in Brenna’s arms. She frowned up at him. “What type of mother would name her babe Death?”

He opened his mouth to explain that, since his mother died birthing him, she was Bàs’s first execution, and his father had named him Death. But Joshua had enough common sense to shut his mouth.

“Brenna? You are well?” Calder asked, straightening to his full height. He came around to look down on his fresh new son, and Joshua stepped backward toward the doorway.

Kára had stopped massaging Brenna and straightened. Joshua couldn’t help but glance at Kára’s middle. Had he planted his bairn within her? Would she have to battle to birth it? Would it have tiny fingernails and a grip