Highland Dragon Warrior

by Isabel Cooper

  The name didn’t seem to bother Shadow himself. He stood munching and drooling while Madoc checked his saddle, flicking his tail occasionally but otherwise giving no sign that he noticed the man’s company.

  “All is well,” Madoc finally said and walked out into the main stable, looking around the large and mostly silent building. “Where do you suppose everyone is?”

  “No supposing needed,” said Moiread. “They’re off breaking the colts today.”

  “Ah,” said Madoc. “I’d no notion.”

  Moiread smiled. With her shift of position, the sunlight fell full across her face, turning her pale skin golden. “I was eating with the guards and the servants, mind, while you were charming the Calhoun and his women.”

  “Oh, you did your portion of that as well. Young Seonag’s too well-guarded, or too much the lady, to follow you about, but I’d wager she’ll picture your face when she hears a love song for the next month or two.”

  “Truly?” Moiread chuckled, a low, rich sound, and one full of as much compassion as amusement. “Poor lass. But most of us must fall a few times when we’re young, and at least I’ll vanish and be forgotten.”

  “Perhaps,” said Madoc, “you give too little credit to your charm.”

  He’d been jesting, but as they spoke, he felt Moiread’s closeness, and his own response was almost inevitable. The stables were silent and empty around them. Her eyes were shining with merriment, and her lips were as full and tempting in this guise as when she wore no illusion.

  They curved into another smile. “Flattering,” she said, “but I hope you took no insult. You’ve the rank, after all. Should I worry that I’ve thwarted a…deeper alliance?”

  “No,” said Madoc. “The Calhoun would never marry his daughter to a wizard. Magic, you see, is no fit work for real men.”

  Startled, Moiread threw back her head and laughed, her throat long and pale above the dark collar of her tunic. “Now there’s an insult, if you wish it. Does he suppose you a eunuch, do you think, or effeminate?”

  “I’ve not had the opportunity to ask. Or,” he added, emboldened by her disguise and her way of speaking, “to prove otherwise.”

  Moiread shook her head. “Oh now,” she teased him, eyes sparkling, “you’ve had opportunity aplenty. You’ve just no’ bothered taking the chance, unless the kitchen maids have kept their silence better than they tend to do.”

  “The better part of diplomacy is not seducing the household. Speaking generally.”

  “Wise advice. I’ll have to write it down when I’ve a moment.”

  Flecks of hay spun through the air between them, shining like tame sparks. The horses shifted and sighed behind them, the sole witnesses to their conversation. Madoc was sure of it. They were alone in a way they’d never been on the road, where they’d been on constant watch for armed interruptions.

  “Will that be a change for you?” he asked, stepping forward.

  “Oh,” she said, “I’ve never been the envoy, have I? So it’s never concerned me before.” She tilted her head, mocking deep consideration, and placed a slim finger against her pursed lips for a moment. “Should I have been spreading rumors about your…capabilities? In the interest of diplomacy, that is? I’d not want to deprive you of the girl’s hand by my failure at intrigue.”

  “No,” said Madoc. “Marrying a foreign rebel’s daughter would make the English too suspicious. Besides, my taste runs considerably older.”

  Once he’d spoken, he wondered if he should have done so. They were alone; her father had commanded her presence at his side; and he had no wish to press that advantage, or to assume that her humor truly meant she’d accept liberties. About to draw nearer to her, he hesitated.

  Moiread slowly straightened up until she was no longer leaning on the wall. Hips swaying in a distinctly unmasculine fashion, she took a few steps forward until her chest and Madoc’s almost touched. “How much older, would you say?”

  That was enough evidence for temptation to win out over chivalry. Madoc cupped her cheek in one hand, resting his fingers on a soft patch of skin behind one of Moiread’s ears. “Old enough to know what she’s about.”

  * * *

  Moiread certainly qualified. She had for more than two hundred years. She’d first kissed a boy when she was thirteen, and had not been shy about acquiring experience in the years since. Mortal maidens might need to be chaste and demure. She’d only had to be discreet.

  Yet even as she leaned forward to press her lips to Madoc’s, she felt briefly uncertain of herself. She almost held her breath, waiting on his response, and the sound in her throat when he wrapped his arms around her had relief in it as well as pleasure.

  Pleasure there certainly was. Madoc kissed deftly, his mouth teasing hers, then responding to her reaction, giving her more pressure, more heat as she demanded it. His chest was firm against hers, and the arms that encircled her body were taut with wiry muscle. He splayed one hand across the small of her back and wound the fingers of the other through her short hair, tilting her head up.

  She could melt into this man, Moiread thought, like iron at the forge. The heavy liquid heat of desire was already traveling through her body, as if pure lust ran in her veins instead of blood.

  Running her hands down Madoc’s back, she pressed lightly with her nails and felt him shudder. His hips thrust forward, pressing his swollen shaft against her sex, a weight and contact that made Moiread groan into his mouth. She dropped her hands to his arse and squeezed, pulling him more firmly toward her and relishing the feel of the hardened muscle beneath her palms.

  The hand at Moiread’s back clenched, fingers dragging the fabric of her tunic and shirt across her skin with a marvelous friction that rippled out into her whole body. Teasing was over now. The kiss was forceful, hungry, and almost bruising. Moiread leaned up into it, wrapped one of her legs around Madoc’s thigh, and arched her hips forward.

  She was too distracted to fully control her strength. Madoc was too distracted to resist. The stable floor was not entirely even or level. Madoc shifted his weight too far back and stumbled, without letting go of Moiread, nor she of him. Moiread heard his head hit the stall door at around the same time her arse made contact with the straw on the ground.

  “Damn!” Gingerly she got to her feet, rubbing her tailbone. “Are you, er, well?”

  “I managed not to knock my brains out, yes,” said Madoc. His head wasn’t bleeding, and he was standing up as steadily as Moiread.

  That was not particularly steady, but she didn’t think either of their injuries had anything to do with the situation. Her lips tingled, and even the feel of her shirt against her breasts sent pangs of frustrated longing all over her. She had a good enough opinion of her charms to imagine that Madoc felt similarly, though she didn’t let herself glance toward his groin.

  This was not the place or the time for any further temptation.

  “If you’d like,” Madoc said gravely, “I’ll make a pretty apology and promise to do no such thing again.”

  “Would you mean it?” Moiread asked. These were dangerous waters, but she couldn’t resist dipping her toes. She did, however, move back to the wall she’d been leaning against before, putting distance between them.

  “If you wanted, I’d hold myself to the promise,” Madoc replied with a smile. “And were you to ask an apology, I should be truly sorry for making you feel the need of it.”

  Moiread shook her head and, reminded by the feeling of hair brushing across her cheek, ran her fingers hastily through the tangled strands. “That would be a great pity,” she said, “and I’ll ask no such thing. But wisdom, at least, demands it not happen again while I look like this.”

  She gestured to her chest, flat to appearance if not, evidently, to touch.

  “Yes, there is that,” Madoc said with a wry smile. He paused briefly, then added, “Do you know
, I hadn’t been thinking of that at all.”

  “That could either be very flattering or very not. I shall take it as the former.”

  “Please do.”

  Thirteen

  “I wanted to wish you a good journey, my lord.”

  Little Seonag’s appearance from an alcove near her father’s chambers had been more sudden than Madoc had expected of her, and her actions in meeting him more forthright, but she made him a ladylike curtsy as she spoke, and both words and voice were carefully polite. The propriety of her manner made her actions the more unexpected by contrast, and Madoc could but blink at her at first.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “And I’m guessing you wished to ask me a question or two while you did, isn’t that so?”

  For a girl so young and well versed in etiquette, the first step must have taken considerable courage. Madoc saw no need to make the next ones any more difficult for the child. Indeed, the relief on her face was a reward in itself.

  “The ceremony, the vows… You know, do ye no’, that my lord father would never be able to call on those in any way but the ordinary?” She glanced at the closed door down the hall behind them. “He’s a worthy man, you understand, and he has many other concerns, so…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

  “I know,” said Madoc, “and I agree. No man can do everything. The arts he’s learned have kept your land safe and prosperous for these many years, and I admire him for that. Will you come with me a while, my lady? We can speak on the way.”

  He offered his arm, and she took it with gravity.

  “My brother is much the same,” Seonag went on, “and my lady mother is not familiar with any of this. And I think that someone ought to know, particularly now. Father Parlan says it might not be a bad thing, if I take care and keep God’s will above everything I learn.”

  “He seems a wise man.”

  “Only, my great-aunt died before she could teach me much, and she was never very skilled at writing. She left a few notes, but nothing like what you did.” Her small face looked up at Madoc in the dim hallway, with every inch of her gaze full of earnest determination. “I don’t know how to aid you, if you need it, and I don’t know how I would call on your people, if we have need. I pray neither ever comes to pass, but if they do, I want to know how.”

  “Of course,” he said. “To lend us aid magically… That you don’t need to worry about. By the way you speak, am I right in thinking you don’t know how to draw power from the land?”

  “No… How would I? What does it do?”

  “That depends on the spell you cast. There are those who use the power of their land for oracles, or cast spells with it every year to make for a better harvest or the like, but those are complicated works, the sort that take years to construct. Mostly, if you’re fighting another sorcerer, and you’re of the right bloodline, you can use the land’s strength as well as your own. It may also give you physical strength, if you need it.”

  “Oh. Could I learn to do that?”

  “Yes,” said Madoc, “but it would take more time than we have, and more than we would have had if you had asked me the moment I arrived. If your father would permit further instruction, I might be able to find you a tutor for a season or two. If this peace lasts that long.”

  “Oh, it must!” Seonag said with a smile of pure optimism. “We’ve won so many battles, and the English signed a treaty. The war must be over now.”

  Madoc couldn’t match her smile, but he patted her hand where it lay on his arm. “I hope so. Now, until you have more training, as I said, you need not fear me calling on your family’s power. Were you to try to use the same power at the same time, or shortly after, you might find it drained, like a well in the summertime, but it would come back the same way. You’d need do nothing, nor even know.”

  She nodded, flaxen braids swinging against the shoulders of her pink gown. “And once I’m trained?”

  “Then you’ll know how the land fares, and how to put strength into it if you have need. You’ll get the sense of it without much instruction once you’ve learned the basics, or at least I did. The spells themselves are trickier, but once you know the other world, it reveals itself to you as much as you learn about it. I think you’d do well, if your father allows.”

  They came out into the great hall, with servants around them sweeping the rushes and cleaning the tables, doing the day’s work to make ready for the night’s meal once more. Seonag slipped her hand from Madoc’s arm and curtsied again. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. “God be with you on your journey. And…and with your squire as well.” Her face went nearly as pink as her gown.

  “Thank you,” said Madoc, “and I’m sure he’ll be glad as well. In truth, he needs any divine aid he can get, for his mind’s mostly on a lady back home.”

  There, disappointment on the childish face, but no sign of either surprise or hurt. A heart already given elsewhere was no slight, not even the minor one of youth. This way, she’d have no cause to hope, but no cause to think badly of herself either. “Well, I wish him happiness, my lord,” she said, with a polite smile. “And you as well.”

  Madoc made her a courtly bow and departed for the yard. As he went, he thought how odd it was to be rejecting young women on Moiread’s behalf, doubly so when his lips still felt the heat of hers against them and he could easily call the stifled noises of her desire to his ears.

  The rest of the journey promised to be extremely interesting.

  * * *

  Moiread paced slowly around the pen, not impatient but wishing to stretch her legs out as much as she could before taking to the saddle once again. She kept a careful eye on the horses, who stood more or less patiently, pages holding their reins.

  “Will you cross the border after this?” Clyde asked, walking up to her side.

  “Aye. We’ll have to pass through England to get my lord home, after all, and he’d as soon not risk the sea.” No need to mention the stop they were making, or that their hosts wouldn’t truly be English at all.

  “Some might say there’s no’ much less risk going by land.”

  “Some might,” Moiread said and tried for a joke. “But they’d not be the seasick kind, would they? Green isn’t my lord’s best color. Besides, there’s a treaty now, isn’t there?”

  “There is,” said Clyde, frowning. “But there’s men as don’t need a war to make devils of themselves, lad, and there’s bound to be plenty among the English who take the treaty ill. Grant was bad enough after victory.”

  “Not so bad as that,” Moiread said.

  “Oh, I’ll not deny you’re a bonny fighter, and I’m sure you’re as good with a sword as you were with your fists. But Grant was one man. He’s a soldier too, without any more power than what he has in a fight or what the Calhoun gives him, which wasna’ a great deal. If you come across a local lord or a sheriff with a similar spirit, it could go hard for you.”

  Moiread paused and looked down into the lined face, saw the genuine worry there, and wondered whose face came to his mind when he looked at her: a younger brother, a son, or simply a comrade of prior days? Whoever it was, she would have laid odds that the young man hadn’t survived long past the age she appeared to be.

  Had they been just off the battlefield late at night, or companions in a dingy tavern with worse ale, she might have asked and known the question welcome. Men talked of their pasts at such times. They honored memories. Now there was neither time nor drink nor privacy, and questions on such a subject would be cruelty.

  She asked a different one. “How would you advise me, then?”

  “Only be careful,” Clyde said with a resigned shrug. “Keep your temper about you and your sword in its scabbard, if you can. And I’d say talk no more than needful either. You speak more like an Englishman than I do—meaning no offense—but there are few English who’d mistake you for their own once you o
pen your mouth, I’d say.”

  “And I’m glad of it,” Moiread said with a quick smile, “but I take your meaning. Enemy land, so give them no cause to start anything.”

  “That’s it exactly. And be on your guard in case they try regardless. I hope your lord knows what he’s about, lad. I truly do.”

  “Between the two of us, so do I,” said Moiread.

  When she heard more footsteps, she didn’t have to turn around. Although their time together had been brief, her senses were enough keener than mortals’ that she could now recognize Madoc from a combination of his pace and his scent. The latter, so soon after they’d kissed, stirred sensations low in her body, and she shifted her weight restlessly.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “For a while now, my lord,” she said, playing the cheerfully cheeky squire. “Clyde, it’s been a pleasure. Farewell.”

  “Take care, lad,” he said.

  Mounted, she and Madoc rode out of the castellum and down the road, into a day hazy with clouds but otherwise pleasant. The sounds and smells of human habitation fell quickly behind them, leaving them alone in the middle of the empty road.

  “I told Seonag,” Madoc said, “that you were pining away for a girl in my lands. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Moiread smiled. “Best thing for her, I’d think. And no, I don’t mind the rumor, and it’s not as if I’m likely to be ‘Michael’ again there.” She looked at him across the gap between their horses. “You’re not seasick, by any chance, are you?”

  “Not at all. I’ve always been a good sailor.”

  Madoc sounded proud of it too. Damn.

  “Well,” said Moiread, “if you come back here and the subject arises, I suppose you can always say there was a reason you cast me off.”

  Fourteen

  Turning southeast, they soon found themselves approaching the coast. The road wound through rocky hillsides, with pale ash and trembling aspens beginning to show green leaves on one side, while on the other the cliffs fell away to blue-gray waves below. Salt was strong in the air; Madoc smelled it and thought of home.