by Headlee, Kim
The officers began taking their leave. Gyanhumara lagged behind, flanked by her brother and, naturally, Urien. She seemed to be having trouble with the clasp of her brooch but refused all offers of assistance. As the last Manx Cohort centurion left the room, she got it fastened to her liking and looked up. She seemed hesitant, as though unwilling to leave.
“Are you ready, my dear?” Urien asked her. “I’ll be happy to escort you back to the mansio.”
She glanced at her brother and then, imploringly, at Arthur. That she didn’t want Urien for company was obvious; the question was why.
Arthur had a guess. “I’m sure you would be, Tribune,” he said dryly. “But I suspect the chieftainess would like to spend some time with her brother before she departs for Maun. Am I right, Chieftainess?”
For a moment, she looked as though she might say something else. Finally, she nodded.
Urien said, “But Centurion Peredur is—”
“Her escort for the rest of the evening.” He said to Gyanhumara, “You will relay this to him, Chieftainess?”
“Of course, Lord Pendragon.” Despite the formality of her tone, Arthur thought he detected gratitude.
As she translated the order, Peredur grinned at her. He did his best to adopt the expected somber expression as he saluted Arthur. He didn’t entirely succeed, but he looked so much like his sister that it was impossible for Arthur not to like him anyway.
It was also impossible for Arthur not to feel jealousy as Urien kissed Gyanhumara and bade her a pleasant evening. She murmured a similar sentiment. Apparently satisfied by her answer, Urien saluted Arthur and left the room. After giving Arthur one of his I’ll-talk-to-you-later grins, Cai followed Urien. Only Merlin and Peredur remained, which was still too big of an audience, with no good way to change that. So be it.
With her brother a pace behind her, Gyanhumara approached Arthur. “Lord Pendragon, I truly appreciate the trouble you went through tonight. All of it. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better dinner guest.” She looked down; at what, Arthur couldn’t be sure. When she gazed at him, her intense longing smote his heart. “I—Arthur, I’m sorry for—for everything.”
He was sorry too: sorry that she was leaving so soon, sorry that he’d run out of chances to see her, sorry that he had ordered her betrothed to be posted to Maun with her, sorry for writing that bloody marriage clause into the treaty at all. And supremely sorry that he couldn’t tell her any of this. Or change it.
She extended her right hand. Instead of clasping her wounded forearm—the wound he had given her, something else he was sorry for—he took her hand, raised it to his lips, and released it quickly, before Merlin or Peredur could even think of voicing an objection. Her soft intake of breath, the slight flush in her cheeks, and her sad but gentle smile provided the only clues to how she felt. Yet they were enough, and he was grateful for them.
“God be with you, Gyanhumara.” As Arthur took a step backward in preparation for the salute, he felt the tightness in his chest that signaled a surge of love for this remarkable woman. His fist hit his chest over the source of that feeling, but it didn’t abate. He was grateful for that too.
Slowly, she nodded. “And you, Arthur.”
She murmured something to her brother, and together they turned and left the chamber.
“Our Father,” whispered Arthur, “which art in heaven…”
Arthur heard a chuckle. “Thy will be done.” Merlin’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Indeed.”
Arthur cast him a sidelong glance. “God’s will? Or mine?”
“God’s, of course.” Merlin clapped Arthur’s shoulder before removing his hand. “But for your sake, lad, I hope it will be both.”
So did Arthur, to the core of his soul.
WITH HER pulse thundering in her ears and her throat so dry she could barely swallow, Gyan couldn’t retreat from Arthur’s presence fast enough. She tried to tell herself her body was responding to the swift pace she had set. But even as the thought formed, she knew it was a lie.
Beyond the praetorium’s gates, Per caught her shield arm and pulled her to a halt. “Gyanhumara nic Hymar, what in the name of all the gods is going on with you?” He glanced at the praetorium, then back at her. “With both of you?”
She laughed mirthlessly, twisted free, and resumed her pace. “I wish I knew.” At the entrance to the mansio, she stopped and turned toward him. “Per, I’m really going to miss you.”
“Oh, no, Gyan. Don’t go changing the subject on me. You’re either going to tell me the whole story, or—or—” His expression grew thoughtful, before transforming into the biggest grin she’d ever seen. “Or I’ll just have to repeat the first sword lesson Father gave you!”
His good-natured bluff made her smile briefly. Glancing down, she cradled the hand Arthur had kissed against her chest. The skin was still tingling faintly where his lips had touched. With a sigh, she released the hand and regarded her brother. “This isn’t the type of farewell I’d expected to bid you, Per.” Then again, nothing that had happened to her over the last pair of days could have been expected. “But I think it’s the one we both need.”
Resolving to share with her brother every frustration, fear, doubt, and, yes, desire that besieged her heart whenever she thought of Arthur the Pendragon of Breatein, she beckoned Per to follow her into the building.
CUCHULLAIN, LAIRD of the Scáthaichean, woke with a start. Sweat soaked his hair and chilled his brow. His heart was hammering like the hooves of a runaway horse.
Blessed Scáthach, he’d never been plagued by such a dream! The final scene bothered him the most: hundreds of corpses strewn across a blood-soaked plain, while overhead amassed a flock of ravens so vast, their writhing bodies blotted out the sun as they descended to the feast. Cuchullain rolled to the edge of the bed and spat out the bitter taste of troubled sleep. It didn’t help. The grisly image burned his brain.
Beside him, Dierda groaned. As he watched with growing alarm, her lovely head turned this way and that on the pillows as though she were locked within her own nightmarish prison. Gently, he touched her hand and was grateful to see her thrashing cease. But the peaceful expression he loved so well didn’t return.
As he considered initiating an activity they both enjoyed, the light seeping into their bedchamber revealed that he wouldn’t have enough time. Mentally cursing the dawn, the dream, the Aítachaitais, the Bratan, and every other infuriating thing that came to mind, he sat up, eased himself from the bed, padded to the window, and pulled aside the covering. The pale sky was starting to pinken. He was grateful to observe that the myriad gray streaks marring the emerald hills were only from cooking fires, not Aítachasan atrocities. Even so, all too soon would Cuchullain become immersed in the day’s war preparations, just like the day before. And just, he thought with another silent oath, like the next would be.
The swish of fabric alerted him that his wife was awake. She stole up behind him to trace the scars on his back. He fought the impulse to flinch under her touch. She was only demonstrating her love, he told himself. Though he had war-wounds aplenty, the scars she had chosen to caress reminded him not so much of a battle that had been but of a battle to come.
Not even Dierda knew that he had borne those scars since he was a boy of eleven, the day he had hidden in one of the ships of his father’s war-fleet in the hope of winning his first taste of glory at Conchobar’s side. That day had ended not in glory but in disaster: Laird Conchobar and most of his warriors dead, others captured, bodies plundered and desecrated, ships burned. And one small boy was driven screaming from a flaming ship into the arms of the waiting Bhratan soldiers, Uther’s men. Sons of tavern whores, the son of Conchobar amended.
Two decades later, he could still feel the blinding agony and hear their brutal laughter as they scourged him, sluiced the stripes with seawater, and set him, sobbing and shivering, in the one remaining vessel able to take him anywhere but straight to the bottom of the sea. But, oh, how he’d prayed f
or that fate anyway.
By the will of the goddess Scáthach, he finally made it home, only a few weeks older but a lifetime wiser…and bearing three lifetimes’ more hatred toward Uther the Pendragon of Breatein.
No longer able to restrain himself, he turned and seized Dierda’s hands. Her gasp of surprise gave way to a grin as she pressed her body to his. “Oh, I beg ye, my lord, do not be hurting me!” Her upturned chin flashed the white of her neck in a bewitching invitation his body was fully ready to accept.
Even in this game they sometimes played, hurting Dierda was the last thing he ever wanted to do. She was his one pure rainbow in the unending storm his life had become ever since…that day. He brushed his lips across her throat, and she breathed a pleased-sounding sigh.
Reluctantly, he released his wife’s hands to face the window, gripping the stone ledge.
“The war, my love?”
He snorted. “Wars. Aye.”
In addition to the ever-present, thrice-cursed Aítachasan threat, his inner storm had intensified two years ago, upon learning that he would be forever denied the chance of avenging himself upon Uther. Now a new Pendragon patrolled Breatein’s shores: bastard Uther’s bastard son. Venting his rage on Arthur’s messenger last year hadn’t been satisfying enough, not by half. But he was pleased with the progress of his plans. Central to those plans was the capture of Maun. A base there would give his people a much-needed respite from the Aítachaitais, a place to rest and regroup. And if Scáthach favored him, Cuchullain og Conchobar would meet Arthur map Uther on Maun’s shores and carve up the Pendragon himself.
He felt Dierda nod against his cheek as she wrapped an arm around his waist. “I dreamed something.” Her grip tightened.
“Something pleasant?” As the words formed, the pit in his stomach foretold the answer.
She shuddered, and he pulled her close. “’Twas evil, Cucu. Evil! I fear for ye, my love.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “For us all. I—” She studied him for a long moment. “Please forgive me, husband, but killing the Pendragon’s emissary may have been a mistake.”
“Nonsense, Dee. Arthur has not retaliated.” Not yet, his inner voice reminded him, and he silently swore at the seed of doubt it planted. “That be proof enough for me.” For Dierda’s sake, he hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. What if this Arthur, like himself, was a man who did not forget? A man with a spider’s cunning and patience, willing to spin an elaborate trap and wait for the fly to blunder into it?
He pounded the window ledge to banish that womanish line of thought. If Arthur remembered the insult, what of it? Cuchullain had beaten such men before, and by Scáthach he would again! His twenty-year memory had governed his life thus far, and he doubted that it would fail him any time soon.
It couldn’t fail him. His beloved wife and the people on this fair Isle of Eireann who called him laird were depending on it.
“I too had a dream, my love.” Her eyebrows quirked upward, and he smiled, hoping his interpretation would reassure her as much as it did him. “I dreamed I was Laird of the Ravens, leading my flock to feast upon Bhratan flesh!”
Chapter 16
“AND FROM MOUNT Snaefell, you can see the lands touching the Hibernian Sea: the cliffs of Brydein to the north and south and east, and Hibernia to the west. In case of attack, Mount Snaefell serves as the main signal beacon site…”
As Urien rambled about the Dailriatanach island of Maun, Gyan listened with only half an ear. She had every intention to explore the island as thoroughly as time permitted in the coming weeks. For now, the tangy wet breeze and snapping sails and creaking oars and wheeling gulls were far more interesting. But nothing could make her forget the man she had come to love in two short days.
Still her betrothed droned on. During the slender pauses, she nodded or mouthed a word of agreement. Only a few hours separated the fleet from Dùn Lùth Lhugh, and her ship’s captain announced they would be pulling into Port Dhoo-Glass in a short while. To Gyan, it already seemed like the longest day of her life.
Part of the reason was simple fatigue; she and Per had talked long into the night. Although he’d helped her realize she could no sooner stop loving Arthur than stop breathing, he had no solution for how to break her betrothal without courting disaster. But what her brother did offer at their parting meant just as much: a sincere reiteration of his pledge to serve Arthur to the best of his ability and to ensure their clansmen did the same.
She suspected that as one of many cavalry officers, Per would likely experience no more than incidental contact with the Pendragon. Yet it seemed so natural to envision him and Arthur training together, perhaps joking, or charging side-by-side into battle.
A wave sloshed over the rail. Before she could move her arm, seawater seeped through the bandage, making her gasp from the sting.
“My dear, are you all right?” Genuine concern flooded Urien’s tone.
“I will be.” She shook off the excess water as best she could. The sting gradually dulled to an ache. “Please continue.”
With a nod, he launched into a dissertation about the various foreign merchants who regularly visited the island. He sounded especially enthusiastic about the arms dealers who brought battle-gear from the far reaches of the world.
Massaging her arm, she recalled the swordfight and its aftermath. She was surprised to discover how much it hurt to have two of the most important men in her life inhabit some of the same thoughts—men whom, along with her father, she would not see for a long time.
Shadows glided beneath the water’s surface, pacing the ship. She leaned over to catch a better glimpse. As though sensing an audience, the seals began to leap and dive in a playful display. Their capers coaxed a laugh from her throat.
“You’re not paying attention, my dear,” scolded Urien mildly.
“Forgive me.” Reluctantly, she turned her back on the sea clowns. “You were saying?”
“I was saying that Port Dhoo-Glass controls Maun’s shipping activities. Its fort is the largest of the four coastal stations, which is why the headquarters of the Manx Cohort is there.”
And there she would be dining with Urien at every meal, training with him, exercising their horses together, and the One God alone knew how many other times she’d see him during the normal course of her day. What a thought. She closed her eyes to ward it off.
Taking the unintentional cue, he covered her mouth with his. The tender, moist heat of his lips was crueler than any torture she could imagine. Yet, to keep peace, she had to give him a taste of what he desired, but not while envisioning Arthur. That tactic had wrought far more harm than good—to herself as well as to Arthur—and she wasn’t anxious to rely on it anymore.
When at last she could bear his touch no longer, she squirmed away. “No, Urien. We mustn’t.”
He seemed genuinely surprised. “Why not?”
For one wanton moment, she fancied how he might react if she broke the betrothal now. Fortunately, good sense prevailed.
“Not here. It isn’t proper.” She gestured at the deck, awash with crewmen performing their appointed tasks. More than one showed the couple a gap-toothed grin in passing. “Can we not wait until we get to port?”
He frowned. “We won’t have time, Gyanhumara. My cousin Elian will be expecting you at Tanroc.”
“Fort Tanroc? On the western coast?” She could scarcely believe this stroke of luck. But to preserve the secrecy of her feelings, she molded raw relief into refined disappointment. “I’ll be living at Tanroc?”
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” He scanned the heaving horizon. “I suppose there wasn’t time. Fort Tanroc is closest to the monastery where your tutors live.” As he clasped her hand, sadness flashed across his face. “As soon as we put in at Port Dhoo-Glass, you’re to join the troops bound for Tanroc.”
“I see.” With no small effort, she smothered the elation in her tone. “Then we won’t be seeing as much of each other as—as I’d—”
“As
you’d hoped? Don’t worry, my dear.” He lifted her hand to his lips to bestow a lavish kiss and did not see her wince. “Tanroc is but a short ride from Dhoo-Glass.”
Even so, this was far better than having to endure Urien’s presence daily. At Tanroc, she would have the benefit of Dafydd’s company too, and that of his family, since Dafydd had decided to resume his studies at the Breatanach school. Perhaps, Gyan mused, her stay on Maun might not be as arduous as she had come to expect.
FOR INVENTORY and placement of furnishings, Fort Tanroc’s eastern guardroom was no different from its kin. A rack of spears lined one wall. A glittering array of swords, axes, bows, and full quivers faced them from across the room. Every edge was honed razor perfect, every shaft stout and sure. The wall opposite the door featured the chamber’s only window. Four stools surrounded a large, rough-planked table in the center of the floor. An oil lamp perched on each corner of the table.
Though the soldiers were out on patrol, the lamps shed their glow upon the pair of scrolls spread across the tabletop. The two students who had borrowed the haven for the afternoon attacked their work with energetic silence.
Until the rumbling began.
“Horses!” Angusel mac Alayna of Clan Alban of Caledonia dashed from his stool to the window.
His companion didn’t appreciate the interruption. The Latin medical treatise she was studying, written more than three centuries ago by Galen of Pergamum, was difficult at best. But Morghe ferch Uther of Clan Cwrnwyll of Brydein had known Angusel long enough to realize that if she didn’t respond in some way, he’d keep chattering at her until she did.