by Jane Stain
Jaelle couldn’t see the flying dragon on her back, but Deoord put several serpent type dragons on her legs, coiling around them through the gaps in her muscles. His artwork was exquisite, and she could’ve easily sat there for hours, just watching the dragons seem to swim around her legs when she moved them.
Once each person was decorated, they sat down in the center of the sacred grove. Jaelle was the last to join them.
She turned to Breth.
“So what did Deoord mean when he said the woad was filled with protective magic?”
Instead of speaking, with one accord everyone got up and backed away so that they were standing in a large circle, leaving the center open.
Two naked blonde warriors got their weapons and moved into the center space.
The bout that resulted was just as tough as any Jaelle had fought against Cinnead, but these women were fighting naked — and with steel, not padded wood.
They were fighting hard.
And no blood was spilled.
Jaelle sat forward gawping at them with her jaw dropped open.
Breth took her gently by the arm, speaking to her softly.
“Are you glad now that you ‘went along with our tradition’ of the woad clay?”
Dumbstruck, all she could do was nod, making him chuckle. After a long while, she found her voice.
“It seems like you’re invincible and should never lose a battle.”
Breth spoke with his hand on her arm, holding it tenderly.
“No, we are far from invincible. For one thing, a druid’s ritual clay magic only lasts two days, after which we have to give him at least that long to rest. ―Oh, and this is important for you to know: while the clay protects the skin from being cut, it doesn’t prevent blunt force from overcoming us. We are very careful not to let the enemy know this critical piece of information, however.”
She looked up into his tender blue eyes, inches from her face.
“Good plan.”
They searched each other’s faces for a good long while before Jaelle remembered they weren’t alone and looked away from those blue eyes a moment.
And saw couples lying down together in the wet green grass.
Deoord lay with Boann, and the male druid named Nechtan moved toward Jaelle, while the female druid named Ia moved toward Breth, as did Morna.
But Breth stopped that in a hurry, shaking his head quickly at Ia and Morna and turning toward Nechtan in anger.
“Jaelle is very clearly with me.”
Morna stared daggers at Jaelle and then skulked off.
Nechtan raised his chin at Breth and looked at Jaelle with interest.
“Not so clearly. You’ve only just met her.”
Thirteen
Breth squared off on Nechtan, puffing his chest out and looking down on the smaller man.
“She is very much with me, and you will leave her alone.”
Nechtan raised an eyebrow at Breth and dipped his chin with a mocking smile, all the while looking every bit the threat.
“Strong emotion for someone you've just met. Is there some history we should know about with the two of you?”
The druid then turned his back on Breth as if the warrior didn’t worry him at all and commenced studying Jaelle’s naked body even more intently, with even more interest.
It gave her the creeps.
But Breth took up his sword and swooshed it, moving in to settle the matter.
"You overstep your authority, Nechtan. And you will stop."
Jaelle found herself ten feet from the two men without even realizing she had backed away. Her eyes were glued to the drama, but her mind was whirling with what Breth had said.
Was she with Breth?
And for how long?
She really wanted to be with him, but how would that work?
She couldn’t bring him home to her time. Try as she might, she couldn’t make herself picture him in a car. Or wearing sneakers. Or opening a refrigerator. He was like a wild animal who just wouldn’t be happy in a cage amid all the unnatural things, no matter how big that cage was. No matter how much love she gave him.
She could stay here, she supposed, and use the helmet to go home and visit. Even use it to go to the doctor if she needed to. And see her parents. And get her favorite snacks. And watch her favorite shows. Finding herself grinning inappropriately ― given the showdown happening in front of her ― she smoothed a hand over her mouth.
But then Nechtan raised up his hands menacingly toward Breth.
Jaelle gasped, knowing about druidic magic from John.
Yet Breth stood straight and tall, moving directly between her and the druid with focused slow deliberateness.
He reminded her of a cat stalking its prey.
And then things got weird.
The ivy Nechtan was standing near animated. Meaning it moved around like an animal. Quickly, it flung its ends up into the air and grabbed Nechtan’s arms and legs, immobilizing him.
At the same time, Deoord called out from the other side of the clearing in the sacred grove.
"Nechtan, what's gotten into you? Go back to the broch and send Gede in your place."
The vines loosened and then slid down Nechtan’s body and crawled back into their original places on the ground. Once there, they ceased being animated and were once more just vines of ivy.
Thanks to her trained fighter’s reflexes, Jaelle noticed a noise off to her left and looked up just in time to see Nechtan lunging toward her.
She sidestepped him.
Concurrently, Breth stepped in, slashing Nechtan in the leg and speaking with cold harshness.
“Never mind. Jaelle and I will go back to the broch. You all stay here and prepare the grove for the meeting without us.”
He took her gently by the arm and escorted her over to get their things. Finally, they left the area together, Breth looking over his shoulder the whole time. The look in his eyes dared Nechtan to follow them.
Her feet were tender. She hadn't gone barefoot since she was a child. Walking so through the forest was trying, but the feel of his hand on her elbow supporting her the whole way was thrilling. Something told her that if she fainted or tripped, he would pick her up and carry her. It was tempting, very tempting to fake a trip.
After they had walked a ways, he stopped her.
“You can put your shoes on now. And the rest of your things, if you like.”
She had never been nude in the middle of a forest before, but it had seemed less odd while they were moving. Out of habit, she now looked around for a private place to change. And then laughed at how silly that was when she was already showing everything.
He laughed with her, an easy comfortable laugh.
What followed seemed like its own ritual.
To the accompaniment of birdsong and with the trees and the squirrels as their witnesses, they both dressed deliberately and with intensity, watching each other as they pulled their clothes on over all the blue clay markings. Watching each other's muscles animate the illustrations was almost more sensual then actually touching would have been. He was so magnificent. Marked with the woad clay as he was, Breth looked perfectly natural against the grass and the flowers, the rocks and trees, and the distant cloudy Scottish sky.
His eyes were bluer than the clay, and each time hers wandered to them from the rest of his body, they pierced right into her again. They made her feel as if the two of them had already made love and this was the aftermath of it, his look was so intimate, so knowing. So aware of her and nothing else.
Eye sex.
In the briefest of fleeting thoughts, she realized this was what she wanted from a man: his absolute and undivided attention in moments like this.
This was what had lacked toward the end of her relationship with John. Oh, at first it had been like this, all starry eyed stares and delighted smiles. But they had let things creep in between them so that his duties took over his thoughts and then finally he found someone else who he was pa
ying absolute attention to. He mistook that for better love than she could give.
But this was only a fleeting thought.
And she pushed it aside immediately, for these precious minutes were all Breth's and hers. She savored every second.
Even so, too soon those minutes had passed, and they were on their way down the road together once more, both clothed this time, and Breth apologizing for his clan’s wayward druid.
“I’m sorry about back there.”
She turned her head and gave him her most accepting smile, then quickly turned once again toward the faint trail back to the broch, amused that now she did not want to trip so he would carry her. She didn’t want him to think her a fool.
“It wasn’t your fault. You stopped him. Thank you.”
He shook his head no and gave her a pained look.
“You misunderstand.”
She held his look and gave him a puzzled one of her own.
“How?”
“I should have killed him for the way he was looking at you.”
Wishing he had but knowing that was wrong, she turned away as if it were nothing and started walking toward the broch again.
“Oh no. He just got carried away.”
He fell in beside her and took her hand as if they’d been walking together their whole lives.
“No. He was fully in control of himself and deserved to die — both for presuming about you and for gainsaying me. But we need him, my clan. We need his knowledge, and so I am sorry, but I could only wound him.”
They were walking on in silence while Jaelle digested this when they first heard distant screaming and the clash of weapons.
Breth broke into a run.
“That’s home — and I smell smoke.”
Jaelle ran after him, and when she rounded the bend in the trail and cleared the trees, she clearly saw the broch under siege. A hundred Roman soldiers wearing mini-dresses surrounded what was now a pile of rocks with a burning thatched roof.
Breth’s clan members inside were screaming.
A voice came from behind Jaelle and Breth.
“Shall we do one running attack before we retreat to number three?”
Jaelle turned and saw a man hanging upside down from a tree.
The woad falcon on Breth’s face took flight when Breth smiled at the man in the tree, turned toward the broch, and drew his sword.
“Aye, that we shall.”
Fourteen
Marcus marched in the rear of the regiment, shouting orders for his five ceremonially toga’d bagpipers to play whenever his soldiers broke the formation he had put them in so carefully.
“Hold the line!”
“Mind the corner!”
Why did men think just because there was a rock or tree in their way they had to break formation? They ought to hold a straight-line around such obstacles. Wasn’t that why they drilled daily? You would think they sat around on their lazy backsides the way the savages did, his men were so incompetent at marching.
He would have to fix that when they returned to the fort. These men had only been marching half a day. They should be able to hold up this long and more. They were such an embarrassment to him that for once he was glad they weren’t on the mainland, but rather on this Zeus-forsaken island.
He let out all his breath, burbling his jowls as he did.
One of his heralds looked at him in a less than respectful manner.
Marcus backhanded the little man.
Oh, who was he kidding?
He would yank out his eyeteeth if it meant he could return to the mainland and all the comforts there. Well, he would yank out a slave’s eyeteeth. Rank has its privileges, so they say.
He exaggerated a sigh for the benefit of his generals around him before he raised his voice so that he could be heard by his bagpipers ― since his herald was out of commission.
The bagpipers played the tune that signaled Marcus’s command at the only volume bagpipes could play: loud enough so that everyone for miles could hear. But of course only Romans would understand.
“To the top of the far hill. Hold all spears level.”
Marcus smiled with satisfaction.
This rocky and mountainous territory was marvelous for the use of bagpipes. Much better than anywhere he had battled on the mainland. How the noise echoed, announcing his arrival miles before he appeared. It couldn’t get any better.
He gazed admiringly at his bagpipers. They merited their togas. Yes, they did.
And Mars must have blessed him at last, because his men were actually following orders for a change.
This way, the enemy would hear them coming and run into their rock hut. More of the enemy would die in the rock hut, seeing as how Marcus was going to use fire. But he hoped a few stayed out to fight. It would be so satisfying watching the barbarians die at the hands of his soldiers. And he had no doubt his confounded soldiers could take the enemy once they did reach them.
Because the foolish savages didn’t wear armor.
Marcus was even happier when his men halted at the top of the far hill. He told his pipers to announce that they should attack whatever they saw on the other side ― after surrounding them first.
He and his generals all held out their arms out and stood with their legs at parade rest so that their slaves could armor them up from the nearby wagons.
Marcus enjoyed this immensely, being able to armor only at the last moment in front of men who had been made to march in their armor. He was absolutely certain that every man there envied him the ability to walk about armorless. It was so much easier. He smiled smugly at his generals.
They returned his grin.
Once Marcus was encased in two fingerbreadths of leather, he gave the signal and his bagpipers changed their tune.
His men moved in for the kill.
Marcus was a tad bit disappointed. Most of the confounded breek-wearing enemy had escaped over the next hill with much of their livestock ― instead of staying to fight. And some of the savages were trapped inside the burning hut screaming, so that he couldn’t see their deaths.
But other than that, the battle was playing out satisfactorily, with gory bloodied deaths happening left and right in full view. The barbarians were odd even in death, wearing those strange breeks that separated their legs from each other. How did they urinate without exposing themselves? Of course, often as not they went about naked, so why would they care? How primitive.
And then that pesky enemy commander Breth and his exotic woman with the short curly dark hair led a charge down the far hill into the backs of his soldiers, who were pressing in toward the rock hut.
Marcus watched in fascination as the odd woman swung one of his own Roman swords. She must have picked it up from of the fallen men of the squadron he’d sent after Breth the other day, when he was spying on the fort from The Emperor’s wall.
She used the sword skillfully, fighting off all attackers and not taking any hits herself. But she used an odd sort of rhythm that didn’t quite match up with anything he had seen before. He wanted to see more. Up close and personal. Maybe have her give him lessons in that rhythm. Oh yes…
But as soon as Marcus got the idea to have the strange beauty captured, his least favorite enemy leader signaled a retreat. Breth and the buxom sword dancer were gone before Marcus could put words to his imagining and thus make it come to pass.
Oh well. The screaming inside the huge crude rock structure had stopped, which meant it was time to go in and purge the place of all the remains of these vermin.
Again, Marcus told his commands to his bagpipers.
They changed their tune, spreading his word among the common men.
“Go inside that odd structure and burn everything that will burn. Be thorough.”
There.
That would give Breth a reason to come attack Marcus’s fort. The rhythmic woman obviously didn’t leave Breth’s side, so she would come along.
And Marcus would be ready for her. Yes.
Breth would bring her right into Marcus’s trap.
Fifteen
Bloodied from battle but not bleeding himself, Breth looked around for Jaelle with equal parts excitement and anxiety. It would be fine if she had died. He hadn’t gotten too attached to her yet. They didn’t have any children, and he was still young. He would find another. Really, all would be right in his world.
His beating heart belayed the orders of his thoughts, however. She had better be hale.
Earth, please don’t swallow her yet.
Leave her life energy inside her and allow her to yet breathe.
He concentrated on the life force he had sensed within her, willing it to still be strong and hearty. With his eyes closed, he sensed her life force coming near him, and he smiled, reaching out for her.
Her hand clasped his, and then she let go and patted his back, misunderstanding the sorrow on his face, the earnestness of his wrinkled brow.
Hm.
So she had never been separated from a lover before during a battle. How was that possible?
Her voice was soft and low and honey sweet when she spoke near his ear, making him want to lean into her and let that voice run down his throat and into his stomach.
“I know many of your clan members died in the fire and in the battle. I’m so sorry for your loss. If you like, I can leave you alone for a while. I’ll just go over and talk to the women—”
Quickly so she wouldn’t escape, he opened his eyes and retook her hand, using it to pull her toward him into a quick embrace even as he looked her all over, making sure she wasn’t wounded.
Whew.
She wasn’t.
She didn’t move away from his embrace. No, she yielded to it completely, looking up at him perfectly content and relaxed before he pulled away again.
He liked studying the depths of her brown eyes.
“The last thing I need right now is to be alone. I’m glad to see you’re still breathing.”