Free The McKinnon by Ranay James

feeling foreign to him. Surely, it was just fear and concern of losing his horse, he reasoned.
    Morgan was more confident. She knew where she was and continued her trek back toward the clearing. As she walked she picked early ripened nuts and berries along the way. Relieved of the fear of being lost, allowed her to become absorbed in the day and the beauty of this forest.
    She did not hear the noise behind her.
    Once she did there was no time to react.
    The men were on her before she could scream, and one placed a filthy hand over her mouth and nose. Holding his blade tightly to her throat, his rank mouth, full of rotting teeth, hovered only inches from her own. She gagged from his breath.
    Oh, yes, she should have listened to Nic.
    They are going to steal his horse and then Nic is going to kill me for sure, she thought.
    It never occurred to her these three men might save him the trouble.
    Morgan heard a sharp whistle. And then she heard one of the men scream in pain as Trojan reared and came down sharply, ripping his face off and stomping him repeatedly.  Trojan reared again. His hooves flaying at the second man foolish enough to try and steal him. Neither of the two remaining men gave the dead man any attention. And by some miracle, the man got Trojan calm enough to grab his bridle. 
    “’Ey, Gunter look what we ‘ave ‘ere. It must be our lucky day, ol boy. We just found us a fine piece of ‘orse flesh and a sweet young boy to boot. I found ‘im so, I get ‘im first.”
    His partner grunted a reply and began to go through Nic’s bags having somehow calmed Trojan to the point of being docile. He was not looking at her, the dead man to his left or her assailant.
    The man holding her squeezed her tighter, pulling the blade lightly across her skin. “Open you mouth and make one sound, and I will cut your bloody throat, I will. Be a good boy and it will be over quickly.”
    Realization dawned on her, and Morgan began to fight in earnest, realizing his intent was to rape her, even though they thought she was a boy. She was not about to let that happen and certainly not without a fight. She had not managed to escape her uncle just to die in some forest at the hands of this mote scum.
    Suddenly Morgan felt her attacker go limp as his body toppled and pinned her under the dead weight. She heard Nic’s voice through the haze and pounding of her blood coursing through the veins.
    “Continue to touch what belongs to me and you will die. Just ask either of your friends.”
    The statement delivered with no inflection left little doubt in the mind of the would-be thief. This boy was not worth the wrath of a full-blown knight; the horse was another story. In a split second the thug weighed it out and felt the horse was not worth the trouble, either. He dropped the reins of the warhorse and ran.
    “Smart man,” Nic said as he watched the thief run back toward town.
    “Morgan, are you alright?" Nic rolled the filthy dead man off Morgan and saw what she had yet to feel. "Oh, Sweet Mother of God!”
    The blade must have cut her as the thug fell. To him, Morgan looked to be losing blood.
    Feeling the weight lifted from her, Morgan began to kick and claw her way past the dead body. Once she was free on her feet, she kicked him repeatedly before Nic could pull her away.
    "Morgan, stop! He's dead! Easy, easy," Nic said as she began to fight him. "Easy. Just breathe."
    Once Morgan realized it was Nic, she collapsed against him in an adrenalin crash. "Oh, God, he was going to rape me." Her words were muffled into his chest as her knees gave way.
    Nic was not about to tell her that after the man raped her he would have killed her. 
    Cursing himself, he wondered what the devil he could possibly have been thinking to leave her alone. He should have protected her. There was blood everywhere. He picked her up as if she were a rag doll weighing less than his saddle blanket and took her a few feet away from the filthy corpse. Gently,