by Hazel Hunter
The cook went over to take a bowl out from a niche and handed it to her. “I reckon ’tis closer to what you demand. I didnae cook the oats so long today.”
She and Kelturan had been secretly collaborating on making a medieval version of muesli for her morning meal, and when she sampled the cereal she smiled. “Aw, you added some honey. You do like me.”
“I wouldnae feed that fodder to a horse.” He looked around before he lowered his voice. “If it pleases you, my lady, I’ll roast as much as you wish.”
“You’re a peach.” She winked as she stole a handful of ripe blackberries to top the mixture, and then pretended to scowl as another clansman came in. “The abuse I have to take for a measly bowl of cereal.” She turned on her heel and strode to the door.
“Then eat what the clan does,” Kelturan shouted after her.
Althea suppressed a smile as she walked out into the hall. Curiosity about the news Taran had delivered last night drew her over to stand by his table. “Do you mind if I break my fast with you, Horse Master?” He didn’t say yes or no, but he did get up to fetch a stool for her. “My thanks.” Sitting with him felt a little awkward, as they’d never really spoken since her introduction to the clan. Unlike the rest of the Skaraven Taran had a lanky build, and blonde hair so light it sometimes looked white. “I was with Brennus last night when Ruadri came to tell him that you’d returned.”
Taran nodded but kept watching the entry to the lower levels.
She’d have to go fishing, it seemed. “No luck buying horses?”
“No’ enough for the clan.” He turned to regard her, amusement in his cyan eyes. “You ask many questions.”
“Yes, but you’ll notice that I don’t get many answers.” She took a bit of her cereal and tried not to wish for milk again. “Maybe you could help me figure out something else. How long do you think it takes to ride a horse from here to where I was held?”
His brows rose. “Nineday. Twelve, if giving the mounts proper rest.”
“So even on a horse, your chieftain couldn’t have brought me back to Dun Mor from the giants’ camp in a few hours. That’s okay, don’t do the I-cannae-say-my-lady thing.” She offered him her bowl. “Want to try some? It’s what we eat in the morning in my time.”
Taran peered at the contents. “Willingly?”
“It’s better with milk.” She glanced around the room. “Do the Skaraven by any chance have a Cow Master with, say, more luck than you?”
That startled a husky laugh out of him. “’Tis too cold and rugged here for cows. We always traded for cheeses and beef with the dairies in the valleys. We couldnae keep milk long for spoilage.”
“Raw milk is probably bad for me anyway.” She put down her spoon. “What I really want to know is what urgent news you brought last night, because I’m nosy that way. But if that’s cannae-say stuff I can keep talking about future food. Like sushi. That will probably horrify you too.”
“’Tis no’ a secret,” Taran admitted. “Two druids came from the north to seek us. They have been asking after the clan in every village.” He saw her expression and added, “No’ the pair that took you. ’Twas an old man and a young lass.”
Even hearing the word druid made the Skaraven collectively bristle, so Althea wondered if the pair had a death wish. “They’re the reason that the chieftain was out all night?”
“That, and other reasons, I reckon.” His eyes shifted. “Now we may ken those.”
She followed the direction of his gaze and saw Brennus emerge from the lower level stairs, followed by Ruadri. They both looked ready to punch something, which was not a good sign.
“I wouldnae,” Taran said as she started to rise. “’Tis better no’ to get between them now. They need to settle a dispute.”
Her back grew almost uncomfortably hot. “With each other?”
“Aye.” The Horse Master nodded at her bowl. “That you should keep in your lap now, my lady.”
Without warning the clan got to their feet and began moving furniture until they cleared a large space in the center of the hall. Brennus and Ruadri stopped there and faced each other while the rest of the Skaraven gathered around them.
“Okay.” Althea frowned. “Are we having another meeting?”
Taran coughed. “Ah, no, my lady.”
“Flen can supply us with horses, clothing, food, tools, and what more the clan requires, Chieftain,” Ruadri said, his voice rumbling across the hall. “All we need do is take it.”
“You mean I need beg it from them. I’d rather fight on foot naked with my bare hands. I shallnae take a single boon from the tree-knowers.” Brennus removed the dagger from his belt and tossed it to one of the watching men. “I am chieftain. ’Tis my choice.”
Ruadri pulled off his cloak and a stone vial hanging from a cord around his neck. “I am shaman. ’Tis my duty to this clan. I challenge you.”
Althea jumped as the two men slammed their hands together in a tight grip and squeezed until their arm muscles bulged.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “This is a very bad idea.”
“Ruadri rarely challenges. ’Tis his size. He thinks it an unfair advantage.” Taran leaned forward. “Never fear, my lady. ’Twill be good for them both.”
The shaman swung Brennus around him and released his hand, sending the chieftain tumbling. He flipped over to land on his feet and lunged, catching Ruadri around the chest and slamming him to the floor.
Shouts of encouragement erupted from the watching men as the pair began punching each other. Althea winced at the heavy thud of every blow, and at one point covered her eyes with her hands to peek through her fingers. “Can’t you make them stop?”
“’Tis a challenge. They fight until one prevails. They willnae kill each other,” the Horse Master assured her. “’Tis more about settling serious matters in an amicable manner.”
“Amicable? With their fists?” She winced as Brennus took a left hook to the jaw, and then clapped a hand over her mouth as the chieftain seized and threw a table at Ruadri. “You’re sure they know not to kill each other?”
“Oh, aye. We cannae.” As soon as he said that, Taran grimaced.
The fight went from nasty to brutal, and both men began to bleed. Anything they could throw at each other seemed to be fair game, and neither one seemed to be willing to retreat.
Part of a chair came flying at Althea, which Taran calmly swatted away before it hit her. She grabbed her bowl and held it in her lap a few seconds before Brennus and Ruadri landed on the table in front of her, which collapsed under their combined weight with an ear-shattering crash.
Brennus glanced up at her. “My lady.”
“Chieftain.” She put a protective hand over her muesli.
“Your pardon,” Ruadri gasped out, “my–” He grunted as the chieftain shoved him away from Althea.
“How long do these challenges take to settle?” she asked the Horse Master as she watched Brennus knock the shaman to the ground again.
“An hour. Mayhap two,” Taran said, and then he stroked his jaw as the two men shot to their feet. “Unless they dinnae wish to prevail so soon. Then it can go on until they drop. No more than a day.”
Althea thought of her parents, who hadn’t gone a day without a screaming match over something. While her mother had often slapped or thrown things at her father, Will had never laid a hand on Sharan in anger. Yet even as a little girl Althea had known that the only thing that actually calmed them down was the noisy make-up sex they had after a fight.
Maybe that was why this brawl wasn’t upsetting her as much as it should have. She’d spent half her childhood watching the Will and Sharan version.
Just as she was thinking of finding a bucket of cold water to empty on their heads, Ruadri and Brennus fell struggling to the floor, and the chieftain locked his arms around the shaman’s upper torso. Leveraging his body, Brennus pinned Ruadri’s shoulders to the floor.
The men fell silent, and when the shaman groaned “I
concede” they cheered the chieftain’s name.
Both men looked battered and bloody, and Brennus staggered a little as he got to his feet. He offered his hand to the shaman and helped him up before they nodded to each other and touched shoulders.
“And this is how you settle disagreements,” Althea said to Taran. “Do you ever think about just talking to each other?”
He shrugged. “A fist says as much as a tongue, my lady.”
“Ruadri has counseled that we should accept what the druids may offer the clan,” Brennus said once the shouts died down. “In this he’s right. I put my anger with the tree-knowers before the good of the Skaraven.” He regarded the shaman. “I cannae look upon the old druid again, for I ken my temper shall be the end of him. You’ve my leave to parley with Flen.”
Ruadri wiped some blood from his mouth. “I’ll no’ give him any advantage. The Skaraven live as free men now.” He looked around at the clansmen. “So shall we be.”
The Skaraven echoed his last words, and began cleaning up the mess from the fight.
“You may get your horses after all,” Althea said and handed the rest of her muesli to Taran. “I’d better go offer some first aid.”
“My lady,” he called to her. When she looked back at him Taran nodded toward the chieftain. “’With Bren, ’tis no’ the wounds you see that want healing. Go gently with him.”
Althea cocked her head a little but nodded. She made her way across the hall only in time to see the chieftain take a torch and head down into the lower levels. She followed him to the deepest passage, where she grimaced as she skirted around the eagalsloc. Brennus went to the end of the tunnel opposite the room of carved stones, where he disappeared into a cloud of steam wafting from an archway.
Heat and dampness enveloped Althea as she walked in after him and stopped as Brennus’s torchlight revealed an underground spring pool surrounded by low blocks chiseled in the stone.
She watched the chieftain sit down on one to remove his boots before she said, “That was quite a fight you had with Ruadri.”
“’Twas but an angry tussle. Kanyth and I once fought for all of a day and half a night. ’Twould have been twoday if our trainers hadnae clouted us with cudgels.” With painfully slow movements he pulled his tunic over his head. “At least Ruadri didnae fight me with his battle spirit. His moon can blind my raven.”
Althea took in a quick breath. “You can do that?”
“Aye.” Brennus eyed her. “Our ways seem barbarous to you.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them civilized.” As she saw him unlace the back of his trousers she turned her back on him. “Do you really think you should be taking a bath with all those cuts? The water down here might infect them.”
He grunted, and then the sound of water splashing blended with his sigh. “We cannae grow sick anymore, my lady.”
So he was finally ready to give her some answers. Althea decided she’d get as many as she could.
“Taran said you can’t kill each other either. Your stronghold is a thousand years old. You carried me a hundred miles in one night. And you told me this isn’t your time.” She faced the pool to watch him swim toward her. “Did the druids bring you here from the past?”
“The Skaraven died in battle with the famhairean in the first century.” He propped his arms on the edge of the pool. “The druids brought us back from our graves. They awakened us as immortals.”
Two weeks ago, Althea would have suggested Brennus was delusional and in need of immediate therapy. All she’d witnessed and done since then, however, made his claim a little more plausible.
Because her knees shook like maracas, she sat down on one of the stone benches. “Would you tell me the rest, please?”
Brennus ducked under the water, and when he surfaced the wounds on his face began to shrink and heal. “Ruadri says we shall never age or ken sickness or disease. We can become as water, and he expects we’ll use it to heal ourselves.” He touched his shrinking woulds. “And ’tis so. It too permits us to travel great distances in but a few heartbeats. ’Tis how I brought you to Dun Mor, through the lochan to our river.”
Althea looked at her hands. If she could have the power to freeze anything, then it wasn’t a stretch to believe the Skaraven could turn into water. One thing still puzzled her. “If the druids did all that for you, then why do you hate them so much?”
Brennus’s expression turned flinty. “The last time we fought the famhairean as mortals, we didnae reckon that the battle would end with our deaths. The druids did, but they said naught of it. They brought us back, aye, and bestowed eternal life on the clan, but only to protect them again. They might have awakened us any time, but they waited until the giants returned.”
Knowing how they’d used the clan made her hate the rest of the druids too. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m so sorry.”
“’Twas long ago and cannae be undone. I’ve learned much from it.” He looked up at her. “I dinnae wish you to return to your time, Althea, but I must let you go. To undo this thing forced on you.”
She’d been so caught up in planning the rescue that she’d forgotten what would happen once they freed the other women. Brennus would take them to a sacred grove, where a portal would whisk them back to the twenty-first century. Even if he lived long enough to catch up with her in time, she knew he would never come looking for her. He was immortal, and she wasn’t. They had no business knowing each other in her time or any other. He was just going to send her back, and she wanted to cry and plead and shout at him for even thinking it. But the worst part was that he was right.
“Anyway,” she said tightly, “I’ll…I’ll see you later.”
Hurrying out of the spring kept him from seeing the tears that had sprung into her eyes. It also kept her from saying something stupid, but Althea couldn’t get it to stop repeating over and over in her head.
Don’t undo it. Keep me here. I want to stay with you.
Chapter Seventeen
LEAVING DUN MOR at dawn gave Ruadri time to reach the agreed-on meeting place an hour before Bhaltair Flen and his companion arrived. The shaman found a sunlit rock on which to perch and watch the road leading from the small village where the druids had spent the night.
The spot proved popular. Birds fluttered in the pines and birches around him, scolding him with their piping voices. Their noise roused a sleepy white and brown hare hiding in the snow-patched dried grass, which went still at the sight of the shaman before bounding away.
He plucked a stalk of white heather from a patch near his boot and lifted it to his nose. According to Pritani legend, the rare color only grew where blood had not been shed. Tying it to a sword hilt was supposed to shield a warrior in battle.
Covering the world in white heather would not protect him, but he was not a warrior. He was a traitor.
Galan, the druid who had early on separated him from the other boys, had kept the truth from him for many years. In the beginning the spells and potions he’d taught him had been simply to treat injuries and sicknesses. Because Galan stood much taller and wider than the other druids Ruadri felt a kind of kinship with him.
That changed after Ruadri had been chosen by the moon battle spirit.
Galan began taking him into the mountains every sevenday to train as a warrior apart from the other boys. The first time had been the worst day of Ruadri’s young life.
“I am a healer,” he protested after the druid commanded him to battle bare-handed seven tribal warriors wielding blades and cudgels. “I dinnae wish to cause harm.”
“Aye, but ’tis for you to prevent it.” Galan signaled the men, who came rushing at Ruadri. “Now fight for your life.”
He assumed the druid was jesting, and cast a sleeping spell that caused the tribesmen to drop in their tracks.
“You cannae put an entire army to bed, lad, and you maynae have time to cast the full spell.” Galan looked down at the slumbering men before he raised his hand, and another seven emerge
d from the trees. “Now use your battle spirit to repel them.”
Ruadri had broken into a cold sweat. He knew exactly what his power could do. “No. I willnae.”
The druid murmured under his breath, and suddenly Ruadri had no voice. Galan then gestured to the men, who spread out in a circle around the shaman. Then he pointed at Ruadri.
“Kill him.”
Ruadri stared at his trainer, aghast at his order. Without his voice he couldn’t use magic, and he carried no weapons. As the men closed in on him, Ruadri resigned himself to death.
White light filled his eyes as his arms blazed with the power of his battle spirit, which awoke and took over his will. A moment later it lifted his arms and slammed them together.
The skinwork on his forearms turned white-blue and joined to become a full sphere, which pulled in all the night from around them, making the air itself go dark. Blazing white light then shot out from the sphere in all directions, hitting the face of every warrior.
Each man dropped his weapons and fell to his knees to wail and claw at his eyes.
The light vanished, and Ruadri stared at Galan. He felt the spell silencing him dissipate.
“What did you do to me?” he demanded.
“Naught. The moon cannae be slain. ’Tis beyond this world, and owns you as much as the Pritani do.” The druid pulled back the hood he’d used to cover his own face, and his dark eyes looked pitiless. “You will fight, lad, by blade or by spirit. ’Tis your choice.”
There had been no choice, of course. The seven men he’d blinded never regained their sight. With shame and fury Ruadri had taken up the blade and learned to fight as well as any other Skaraven. He’d hated it, but he soon became one of the finest swordsmen among the clan.
When the Skaraven grew close to finishing their training Galan had come for Ruadri again. This time he took him to the sacred grove, where he spell-bound him and branded him with permanent body wards.
Then came the last, terrible truth.
“Why do you torture me?” Ruadri asked once the ritual was finished.
“You are my son,” Galan said as he smeared a healing salve over his burned flesh. “’Twas decided by the conclave that a druid sire one of the Skaraven, to train the boy in our ways. For my size they chose me to mate with the largest and strongest female among the Pritani. We found love in our duty, but the work of delivering you killed her.”