Despite the armed knights at every hand, and the aging palfrey that was her mount, Meg was enjoying the ride. The pretty sounds of the bells in her jewelry and mantle seemed to incite the songbirds to greater outpourings, making the day alive with music.
Overhead an eagle quested for prey, its keening cry an untamed song of freedom. Meg shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up, measuring the effortless flight of the bird. As always, she yearned to know what it would be like to soar within the sunlit beauty of the sky.
“Simon?” Dominic asked, reining in his stallion. “Is this the place you spotted the stag’s spoor?”
Simon considered the area just ahead, where tributary creeks braided down from the fells into Blackthorne River. Too wet for trees, the ground became a marsh dotted with quiet pools. Rivulets of moving water wound among the brown sedges, joining them with a liquid network that was silver or blue or black, depending on the time of day.
“It looks like it,” Simon said finally. “I approached from over there. The heathen place is beyond, to the west.”
Simon pointed away from the cart road which led to Carlysle, the northernmost of the six manor houses Dominic had acquired along with John of Cumbriland’s only heir and daughter. On the other side of the fen, the fells rose steeply. Many of the ridgelines were brushed with snow from the past storm. The crags themselves wore shimmering white crowns that would not melt until summer was well advanced.
“Meg?” Dominic asked. “Is there a way here through the fen to yonder vale?”
She looked beyond the marsh to the wild glen that cut across the fells. In the summer the vale would be a mosaic of green forest and sunny glades thick with grass. At the moment it was a pale-trunked, dark-branched ghost wood where only the undergrowth had turned green in its yearly race for the sun. A creek stitched brightly through the glades where new grass pushed through the dun mat of last summer’s growth.
“A game trail cuts to the left,” Meg said, pointing. “It will be slow going through the fen, but after that the way is easy enough.”
Dominic gave the countryside a sweeping glance, memorizing the lie of fells and dale, forest and glade and fen. He glanced at the hound master, who nodded eagerly. The hounds, too, were keen for the hunt. There had been little sport for them since they had left Normandy.
Abruptly Dominic motioned the hound master forward. When the game trail winding through the fen was discovered, the man blew a short note on his horn, rallying the dogs.
“You go first,” Dominic said to Simon.
Surprised, Simon reined his stallion past his brother. Equally surprised knights were waved forward. Dominic fell in behind Meg’s palfrey. She turned and gave him a curious look.
“I didn’t want you trampled by the war stallions in the heat of the chase,” Dominic said. “Your mount is willing, but a bit long in the tooth for hunting in country such as this.”
“What of you?” Meg asked. “If I fall behind, you’ll miss the kill.”
“There will be other hunts.”
“My palfrey will be the same.”
“Aye, but you won’t be riding her. When my knights arrive, you will have a Saracen palfrey whose coat is as red as your hair.”
“Truly?” Meg asked, excited.
“Truly. She should have fine colts from Crusader.”
“Breeding again,” Meg muttered under her breath. “Is that the only use you can think of for a female?”
If Dominic heard, he said nothing in response.
Meg had been correct about the first part of the trail being difficult. By the time her mare picked a careful route through the traps and snares of the sedges, the palfrey was breathing deeply and had fallen a hundred yards behind the other knights. Despite carrying much more weight, the stallions were unaffected by the hard going, for Dominic conditioned the war-horses as carefully as he conditioned his knights. A mount that lost wind or strength on the battlefield was worse than useless.
When Meg’s palfrey finally cleared the boggy stretch, Dominic came alongside and waved the squires on past. Almost two hundred yards ahead now, the knights followed the creek through grass and scattered trees, and then into forest. Even without leaves, the trees and underbrush were sufficiently thick to swallow up the knights and the pursuing squires without a trace.
Meg and Dominic had covered a thousand yards when the sound of a hunting horn echoed through the day. They pulled up and listened. The horn cried again and then again, marking the twists and turns of the chase.
“They turned up a side creek,” Meg said, listening.
The horn sounded again, urgently.
“The stag has been sighted!” Dominic said.
Breath held, they listened to the fading sound of the horn. The stag was leading the hounds a fine chase through hill and dale. Dominic had been right; the pace was breakneck. Her palfrey would have been badly outrun.
Without warning, unease slid like ice down Meg’s spine. She looked around quickly in the manner of prey seeking any escape route.
“What is it?” Dominic said.
“I don’t know. Suddenly I feel like the stag. Hunted.”
“Does this happen often when the quarry is sighted?” he asked curiously.
“Never before. I—” Meg’s voice broke off as though slashed with a knife.
A horn sounded from the east, directly between Dominic and Meg and the knights pursuing the stag. The note of the horn was not that of the hound master of Blackthorne Keep.
“Do you recognize the horn?” Dominic asked.
“It can’t be,” Meg said. “He wouldn’t.”
“Who?” Dominic demanded.
“Duncan. ’Tis the battle horn of the Reevers.”
The horn sounded again, closer now. The Reevers were pursuing not the knights and squires, but the two who had strayed perilously far behind.
“God’s eyes,” Dominic hissed. “Is there a place nearby that one man can hold against many?”
“There is a place where no man will go.”
“Lead on!”
“It’s that way,” Meg pointed, “but my palfrey can’t—”
Before Meg could finish speaking, Dominic snatched her from her mount, settled her astride in a wild flurry of cloth in front of him, and put his spurs to the big stallion.
Behind them rose the shout of men who had just spotted their quarry.
22
MEG CROUCHED PERILOUSLY FAR over the right side of the stallion’s neck while the lowest branch of a great oak threatened to sweep her from the saddle. Behind her, Dominic bent to the left. They passed under the branch so closely that his hauberk scraped bark.
What sounded like shouts came from behind them. If it was the Reevers, they had fallen back in the frantic scramble up the hill.
A hound bayed. The sound was deep-throated and supple, the voice of an animal whose wolf ancestors were only a few generations removed.
“They’re tracking us with dogs!” Meg cried, trying to see over her shoulder.
“Don’t look back,” Dominic commanded. “You’ll lose balance.”
Without answering, Meg buried her face once more against the stallion’s muscular neck and hung on with both hands until her muscles ached. Even so, if it hadn’t been for Dominic’s hard arm around her waist, she would have fallen. She wasn’t accustomed to blazing across the countryside on a horse of Crusader’s size and strength.
Meg’s frantic heartbeat blended in her ears with the rolling thunder of Crusader’s hooves, his deep breaths, and the urgent chiming of golden bells. Black mane whipped against her face. Tears were ripped from her eyes in the wind caused by the stallion’s furious pace as he lunged over a rocky hilltop and raced down the far side.
Forest closed around them again, concealing them from their pursuers. Several hundred yards beyond the bottom of the hill stood a grove of massive oaks. They grew so thickly it was impossible to gallop through. In any case, Crusader was showing an abrupt reluctance to go forward at a
ny speed.
“God’s teeth!” Dominic swore, spurring the stallion. “What is possessing you, Crusader?”
Crusader flattened his ears and balked, refusing to move another step.
“Off!” Meg said, sliding down in a jangling of golden bells. “Quickly!”
Dominic dismounted as though for battle, leaping off to land on both feet, his hand on his sword, his body poised and ready to fight.
Meg whipped off her head cloth and held it out.
“Blindfold Crusader,” she said, “then follow me. If the stallion balks again, leave him. Quickly! They will be upon us!”
Dominic grabbed the head cloth, wrapped it around Crusader’s white-rimmed eyes, and tugged on the reins. Snorting, pulling back in alarm, the stallion swung like a pendulum at the end of the reins, trying to go everywhere but forward.
Despite the urgency goading him, Dominic spoke soothingly to the stallion and applied a steady pressure on the reins.
“Hurry!” Meg called from ahead. “I see a dog!”
Crusader snorted, minced, and gave in, following Dominic as he had so many times before, even into the dank, wretched hold of a ship. Walking quickly, then trotting, Dominic led the stallion between trees that grew older and more magnificent the deeper the grove was penetrated.
Standing stones taller and thicker than Dominic loomed without warning between the trees. The stones had been in place so long that they wore thick robes of moss and lichen, as though tiny gardens had been planted in rocky hollows no deeper than a finger’s width.
After three hundred feet, more stones loomed. These were half a man’s height and set so close together that no trees grew between. After the second ring of stones came a circle of grass seventy feet across. In the center of the circle was a large, overgrown mound of earth and rock.
The hair on Dominic’s neck lifted in animal awareness. At some primal level of his mind he sensed what had made Crusader shy off from penetrating the grove. There was a sanctuary within the concentric rings of stones that wasn’t meant to be disturbed heedlessly.
Glendruid.
Wary and curious at once, Dominic looked around as he led his blindfolded war stallion into a place of peace and protection. There was sunlight and grass in the widening spaces between oaks. Wildflowers sang their silent, colorful songs everywhere he looked. The trees were more fully leafed out here, as though the sun came sooner and stayed longer in this one spot.
From beyond the first ring of stones came the frantic baying of a hound that had been deprived of its prey. Oddly, no other hound voices joined it. Dominic looked questioningly at Meg.
“Does Duncan hunt with but one hound?”
“Only when he seeks poachers. Besides, we can’t be certain it’s Duncan.”
“Leave off defending the bastard,” Dominic said harshly. “Who else would it be?”
Meg said nothing. There was nothing she could say to deny the logic of Dominic’s words, but the logic of her emotions was something entirely different.
“I should have let Simon gut the Scots Hammer in the church,” Dominic muttered.
He looked around the sunny glade with its ancient mound. There was no place where a lone knight might have his back safe while defending his front.
“Keep going,” Dominic said to Meg. “We haven’t reached a haven yet.”
“There is no better haven except the keep, and no way to get there but the way we took coming here.”
Meg didn’t add that the Reevers now occupied the ground between the haunted circle and Blackthorne Keep. She didn’t have to point out the obvious. Dominic’s scalding oaths told her that he realized their predicament as well as she.
“Then we are well and truly caught,” Dominic said. “It would take many knights to defend this place.”
“Nay. Not one Reever will pass the outer circle of stones.”
“Duncan is more than clever enough to blindfold his horse and follow our tracks here.”
“I doubt it. I wasn’t certain it would work myself.”
Dominic stared at Meg. “Then why did you suggest it?”
“I knew you wouldn’t leave your stallion until it was too late. The Reevers would have killed you like a stag brought to bay before you made it through the outer ring.”
He grunted. “They may do it yet.”
“I think not. In a thousand years no man has ever passed the standing stones. Not even my father.”
“Did he try?”
“Once.”
“Why?”
Meg shrugged. “He thought the secret to having a son lay inside the stones rather than inside his heart.”
“Or inside his wife’s heart?” suggested Dominic.
Suddenly Crusader’s head came up. He tugged sharply at the reins.
“Gently,” Dominic said in a low voice, stroking the stallion’s neck. “There is nothing to fear in this place.”
“He scents the water,” Meg said, pointing toward a tumble of rocks and lush undergrowth that lay at the base of the mound.
“A sacred spring?” Dominic asked neutrally.
“Nothing Glendruid will be offended if a stallion slakes its thirst. Is that what you mean?”
Without a word, Dominic removed the stallion’s blindfold. Crusader looked around curiously, but showed no fear. Dominic led the stallion to the spring and waited while Crusader drank the crystal water.
It was easy to follow the progress of the Reevers around the outer ring of stones. Faint shouts and the sad baying of a hound were heard from various points around the circle as the renegades tried to pick up the trail on the other side of the haunted ground.
Between the stones themselves, nothing moved but the wind.
“What lies at the center of the mound?” Dominic asked.
“A chamber with no ceiling.”
“Is there room inside for a horse?”
Meg hesitated.
“Never mind,” he said, reading her reluctance. “I’ll tie Crusader out here.”
“Nothing will bother him.”
“Go to the mound chamber,” Dominic said. “If Duncan is brave or clever enough to get through the rings of stones, the chamber will be easier to defend than this open space.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be along as soon as I see to Crusader. Or will I need special spells and incantations to get inside?” Dominic asked sardonically.
“Nothing more exotic than the eyes God gave you,” Meg said in a tight voice. “If this were an evil place, my cross would not tolerate it.”
Dominic shrugged. “It matters not. I would trade with the Devil himself for shelter from Duncan and his Reevers.”
“Nay!” Meg said, horrified. “Never say that!”
He laughed. “What an odd witch you are.”
“I am not a witch,” Meg said, spacing each word. “I am Glendruid. It is not the same thing.”
“The common folk have trouble distinguishing between the two.”
“That is why they are common,” she retorted.
“Go to the mound, Glendruid wife. I’ll join you there.”
Meg walked around the mound until she came to an opening where the earth and rocks either had been sliced away or never piled up in the first place. The passageway was narrow, stone-lined, and thick with last season’s leaves. After a few yards it opened into a circular chamber. If the area had ever been roofed over, all sign of it was gone.
Grass and wildflowers grew in a thick carpet. To the western side, last year’s leaves had piled at the feet of four odd white stones. They could have been supports for a shelter or obelisks surrounding a vanished altar or reference points capturing the slanting light at the change of a certain season. No living person knew.
If the Glendruids had ever known the purpose of the mound, the chamber, or the obelisks, that knowledge had not survived the ages since brother had turned against brother and the Glendruid Wolf had been lost; and with it, the peace of the land itself.
&nbs
p; “You look sad,” Dominic said from behind Meg. “Is this a melancholy place for you or are you unhappy that Duncan missed his chance to take you?”
“Is that what you believe?”
The temptation to goad Meg nearly overrode Dominic’s good sense. With a muttered oath, he reined in his tongue. His temper was always volatile when his blood was up after a battle. His men had learned to walk carefully around him.
“Let me just say I am sick unto death of hearing about you and Duncan of Maxwell,” Dominic said bitterly.
“So am I.” Meg’s tone was as bitter as her husband’s.
It was a visible effort, but Dominic held on to his temper.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll stand guard outside.”
Without a word Meg watched Dominic stalk out of the chamber. It took only a short time for her to find a comfortable place amid the grass and wildflowers. She removed her mantle, turned it inside out to protect the elaborately brocaded cloth, and made a pillow for herself. Her head cloth had come awry in the frantic ride, as had her braids. She removed the golden jesses, shook out her hair, and set to work on it with the jeweled comb that had been Dominic’s gift.
From the top of the mound where Dominic now sat, the shift and ripple of Meg’s hair was like fire combed by fingers of gold. The small chiming of the bells she wore at her wrists and around her hips fit the day as perfectly as did the songs of birds.
No matter how sternly Dominic told himself he must watch for Reevers, the music and beauty of his wife kept drawing his eyes. With a muttered curse he closed his eyes and listened for anything more sinister than the tiny bells and the liquid calling of songbirds.
Nothing came to his ears but the languid drone of insects and the secret sighing of the breeze through the tender leaves of spring. Dominic looked toward Crusader, trusting the stallion’s instinct for danger.
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