The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (2 page)

‘If I kept talking like
that
, I wouldn’t blame you, wife.’ Eremon grinned and hooked his arms around his knees, his green eyes catching the light off the waves. The narrow braids holding back his dark hair framed a face painted with sunburn across clear, brown skin. He had rolled his trousers up and cut the sleeves off his linen tunic, and even in this short time the sun had turned his bare arms as dark as oiled oak. ‘Poetry makes my head ache, and it has only just cleared after all those Sacred Isle feasts!’

Rhiann rested her chin on Eremon’s knees and toyed with one of his braids. ‘I did wonder at the island chiefs …’ She cocked one eyebrow at him. ‘Going to all the trouble of proclaiming you their war leader, and then trying to kill you with ale …’

‘Ah! As King Stag I must be able to do everything well, apparently – including drinking.’

‘Well, I think your practice with Conaire stood you in good stead there.’

A shout drew both their heads around, and they saw their friends gesticulating wildly at each other in what passed for them as conversation. Fiery Fergus was daring to provoke the much larger Conaire by twisting the end of his oar, spraying all of them with water. With another squeal, Caitlin cupped a handful from the sea and this time flung it at Fergus, as Conaire folded his huge, sunburned arms over his oar and rocked with laughter. With a long-suffering grimace, Colum wiped his dripping grey hair, even as the web of lines around his eyes crinkled.

As they were thus occupied, Eremon slid his lean frame down the pile of packs until he was pressed against Rhiann’s knees in the bow, his broad shoulders blocking them from the view of the others. The clean lines of his face were still as hard as when Rhiann had first seen him two years ago, his slanted eyes still sharp, and yet nevertheless some tense hunger in him had softened this last week, his defences lowering. And with their faces close together Eremon smiled now, his true smile that Rhiann had rarely seen, for before the Sacred Isle one side of it was always lifted with bitterness. Being on the receiving end of its full power was still a new experience for Rhiann, and she found her breath tripping in her throat again, which was most disconcerting.

‘Rhiann,’ Eremon breathed, as if tasting her name on his tongue. And, more confident now, he brushed back the tendrils of hair at her nape, his thumb moving in circles over her skin.

Somewhat shakily, Rhiann returned his smile. These last days, every time this look of secret wonder stole across Eremon’s face – the look that said
I can’t believe I touch you
– something fluttered at the base of Rhiann’s belly, no, lower, like warm fingers, brushing between her legs. And with it, not surprisingly, came fear.

For ever since those raiders on the island, desire had always been mingled with fear in her. Every reach and expanse of her flesh had preserved the moment when those rough men threw her down and took her, with the blood of her family still on their hands, sparing her life, but not her soul.

In the stone circle on the Sacred Isle – the first time she and Eremon ever lay together – the Goddess energy and the flaming stars and the
saor
herbs had swept Rhiann to some place of surrender. What would happen now it was just she and he alone in their marriage bed? What if the old memories crippled her again? What if she couldn’t help shrinking from him, despite her love, and he turned away?

No
. Rhiann endeavoured to take her racing thoughts in hand. Surely everything had changed now. The Goddess had at last returned to her, the connection she had always felt before the raid. Rhiann’s spirit had touched the Mother in the stone circle; she had filled with light in the old way. And Eremon was hers.

To banish all thought, Rhiann reached out to Eremon instead, tracing one high, sharp cheekbone and then brushing his lips, fuller than those of the other Erin men. This was because Eremon had British blood, too, in his veins, giving him darker skin, a leaner build and those sea-coloured eyes.

Eremon turned his head now to kiss her palm, and then held up the end of her braid so the sun lit it to flame, a flash of mischief crossing his features. ‘Did you know your hair is the exact colour of amber, Rhiann? The darkest amber, not the light.’

Grateful for the distraction, Rhiann laughed. ‘Yes, husband. And my eyes are like
violets
, I believe – the bards have got there before you, I’m afraid.’

Eremon ignored her, pressing her hair to his nose to inhale the scent of the honey soap in which she bathed. ‘You should always wear amber near your hair, against your throat …’

Rhiann closed her eyes, as his fingers stroked the hollow below her ear. ‘Then you may have to sail to the northern seas yourself, my prince,’ she whispered, ‘for it is far too rare for that. Even the amber for the royal jewels was traded long ago.’

‘No.’ His voice also dropped. ‘Not the royal jewels. You shall have a necklace all of your own set with amber, so I can see it shine against your throat.’ He paused. ‘As a wedding gift.’

Her eyes leaped open. ‘
Wedding?
’

Eremon kissed her fingers. ‘What a terrible memory you have, priestess! Our marriage was not to the highest grade, remember, and after a year and a day of the betrothal you were required to choose whether to permanently bind with me … or not.’

Rhiann’s confusion dissolved in a hot flush across her cheeks. ‘Oh, Goddess Mother! After all that has happened, I
did
forget!’

‘I will try not to take that as an insult.’

Rhiann shook her head and laughed. Eremon, do you mean it, truly?’

‘Certainly.’ His brows knitted together in an exaggerated fashion. ‘But will you have me? Now that you know I no longer command any people, beyond these few grumpy warriors …’ He waved a vague hand over his shoulder. ‘And I have no wealth, no home… ‘

‘
Eremon!
’ She thumped his chest, none too gently, and he caught her hand there at the neck of his tunic. When Rhiann felt the thud of his heart beneath her fingers she looked down, her cheeks flaming. ‘Besides, my home is where you are, and yours mine. You were born a prince of Erin, but you are also of my people now.’

She glanced up to see him gazing at their entangled fingers, and the grim lines of old pain were back in his face. A few days of kisses could not erase these, even if she felt that everything inside
her
had shifted and settled into new curves and bends, like a river changing course.

‘That is true,
a stór
,’ Eremon murmured, ‘and because of that I fear our wedding feast may need to be a trifle hasty.’ A black-tipped gull passed over the mast, screeching as it spun. Eremon looked up and tracked it over the sky. ‘Sunseason is getting closer, and I feel sure Agricola will not have rested his soldiers while we rested on the Sacred Isle.’

The day darkened for Rhiann as if a cloud had sailed across the sun. Without volition, her eyes drifted south, towards the distant whirlpool. There it was: the first mention in days of what waited for them at home. By unspoken agreement, each had sought to stretch out that interlude of peace on the island, knowing they weren’t like other couples, free to revel in new feelings. They were pretenders, acting as if they had no cares beyond those of lovers. Rhiann’s fingers pressed to the hollow of her throat, trying to loosen the sudden tightness. ‘What will we do?’

Eremon was now staring east across the sea, where the Alban mainland was hidden by the long, blue islands, as if his gaze could penetrate the leagues that lay between the Epidii lands and those occupied by the Romans. ‘This new alliance with the Caereni and Carnonacae, added to that with Calgacus, makes us a force to be reckoned with, at last. I think it is time to take advantage of that, to strike a blow before the Romans do.’ His eyes came back and fixed on her face, dark with regret. ‘Soon I will have to leave my bride and take to the field.’

‘We knew that our partings would be frequent,
cariad
. Yet by the Goddess, if I’d wanted a quiet life, I would have married a cowherd, wouldn’t I?’

Eremon snorted. ‘Perhaps your council would have been better pleased with that! After all, they gained a war leader, but no gold or cattle in exchange for their princess.’ A thought occurred to him, creasing his brow. ‘Do you think they will refuse to make the marriage binding?’

‘Eremon!’ Rhiann raised herself up, pillowing her knees on her blue priestess cloak. ‘You sail home with two major alliances, and you’ve trained our men so well we’ve already achieved one great victory against the invaders. How can you still doubt your position here?’

Eremon was chewing his lip, as he often did when thinking. ‘Because it still isn’t secure, and I can’t make it so with a sword. Not when the enemies may be inside as well as out.’

‘You mean Maelchon,’ Rhiann whispered. They believed the king of the Orcades had engineered their shipwreck two weeks ago, but did not know his exact motives.

Eremon’s mouth hardened into a straight line. Maelchon had left Calgacus’s fort, so he couldn’t be the only person behind the sinking of our boat. He would not have known we were leaving by sea, or when we sailed …’ Suddenly he bit off his words, clamping his lips together with a hint of his old severity.

And although Rhiann had let the memory of the shipwreck subside, something cold now slithered up her spine. The plunge into the sea … the sucking of freezing water at her mouth and nose …

Eremon saw her shiver and curved his arm around her, lying back to press her cheek into his chest. His tunic was stiff with salt, and smelled of male sweat, although she found this oddly reassuring. ‘I’m sorry I spoke of this now,’ he whispered. ‘Let me deal with it,
a stór
, my beloved.’

His voice vibrated in Rhiann’s ear, yet she resisted closing her eyes and sinking into his strength. ‘You said enemies inside. You mean within the Epidii, my own people?’

Eremon’s hand stilled on her hair. ‘Only the Epidii warriors knew we were setting sail from Calgacus’s fort. No one else within the dun knew.’

Rhiann’s mouth dropped open with instinctive denial, but just then all thoughts were banished by the sudden, startled shout of the boat’s captain. He was a black-haired island man, and keen of eye.

‘Lord!’ he cried to Eremon, and when Rhiann raised her head she saw he was pointing at the mainland, his other arm clasping the mast, each tendon strung hard under the weathered skin.

Eremon leaped up so abruptly that Rhiann fell on her hands and knees across the packs, before scrabbling to her feet.

‘Prince!’ the sailor shouted again. ‘Smoke! Thick smoke, in the air over Dunadd!’

CHAPTER 2

D
riven hard by the now desperate oarsmen, the boat shot between the scattered rocks into the Bay of Isles like an arrow released from its string.

Yet once they rounded the great headland that sheltered the bay from the sea, Rhiann saw that the smoke staining the blue sky came not from Dunadd, but from the signal beacons, lining the high ground to north and south of the bay.

‘They are burned out,’ Eremon muttered to Rhiann, shading his eyes to look up at the ridges cloaked in bracken and sheep-bitten turf, with hazel and oak trees spilling down the slopes. There were no flames to be seen, only the trailing smoke of the bonfires.

Rhiann’s breath was tight and high in her chest. She glanced at Eremon, wanting to speak, but was stopped by the hard glitter of his eyes. The man who had cradled her so gently moments before was gone.

Conaire, Eremon’s foster-brother, had laid aside his oar to join Eremon in the bow, his lithe leaps from rib to rib belying his great height and build. ‘Do you think it safe to land, brother?’

Eremon was still, his dark head thrust towards shore like a hound scenting the air. Ahead, the bay had opened up into full view: the broad sweep of marsh surrounding the mouth of the river Add; the river channels snaking over the tidal mudflats; and, further towards the eastern horizon, the blue hills that cupped the plain on which Dunadd sat. Close to the shore was the cluster of roundhouses and jetties that made up the port of Crinan. A pall of smoke hung over the village, yet the buildings themselves seemed whole.

Across from Crinan, on a headland that curved around the bay like a sheltering arm, the black skeleton of an abandoned dun crouched. That fort had been burned by the Romans less than a year before, and it was the reminder of this attack that had terrified them; the memory of coming over the hills to see smoke against the sky and bodies sprawled among the ruins. Rhiann’s blood was now pounding so hard that her sight shook, and she wiped her sweating palms down the skirt of her dress, trying to calm her breathing.

Caitlin, Conaire’s wife, flung herself across the oar benches to reach Rhiann, her haste making her uncharacteristically clumsy. Rhiann grasped her thin arm to steady her.

‘Wh-what does it mean?’ Caitlin cried, her tiny hand clutching at Rhiann’s fingers. Rhiann looked down into the small, heart-shaped face beneath a cloud of fair hair, tugged from its braids by wind and damp. Caitlin was drawn and pale from the nausea of the voyage, which, though calm, had still affected her now she was expecting a child.

Rhiann forced a smile and stroked Caitlin’s cold fingers, though she herself was fighting down a wave of panic. ‘I am sure it is nothing,’ she murmured. Just then the backwash from the rocks of the headland made the boat lurch, and Rhiann’s hand had to steady both of them against the single mast.

‘There is no outward sign of trouble,’ Eremon at last pronounced, his gaze on the shore. ‘The fishing boats are there on the sand, unharmed. Look! The nobles’ boats are also tied up. There is smoke, but why?’

Rhiann peeled Caitlin’s fingers from her arm and helped her to Conaire’s side, moving closer to Eremon. ‘Goddess, what of Dunadd?’ Their fort sat in the middle of the marsh on a rock crag, and could not be seen from the sea.

Eremon chewed fiercely on his lip, then glanced at Conaire. ‘What choice do we have but to land? We are only a few, yet I can see no people at Crinan.’