The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (52 page)

‘You are a prisoner, madam.’ Eremon’s voice was ice; there was no trace of that moment of weakness now. ‘So are you going to tell me what you know of the Roman movements, and Agricola’s plans?’

Samana rounded on him like a cornered cat, her shock transmuting into spitting rage. ‘No, the Otherworld take me! Why would I help
you
– a stupid, blind, gelded stallion? Never!’

Eremon smiled, all warrior-lord once more. ‘I didn’t think so.’

‘So what will you do with me, then?’ Samana’s chest heaved. ‘Torture me? Or don’t you have the
balls
to do that!’

Yet her fury washed over Eremon, as he stared above her head at the rock. ‘No, I will not soil my hands that way. And I feel that it is not for me to judge you. Not me.’

‘You will send me away?’ Sudden fear extinguished Samana’s rage, for if she was not with him or Agricola there would be little chance for her. And where would he send her? Her hand crept to the leaping pulse at her throat. She had been so sure she could bend his will by mastering his body. Yet he had surprised her once more.

Eremon strode to the edge of the tent and called the blond oaf’s name. In a moment the man appeared, his grin still intact.

The prince gestured at Samana. ‘Bind her hands again for all to see, take her back to Gerat’s men, and send Gerat here to me to receive his orders. Oh, and send me Nectan’s last messenger.’

Conaire cocked one fair eyebrow, his grin widening. ‘Gladly, brother.’

Before Samana could even cry out, he swept her legs out from under her and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack. But it was as Eremon turned away from her with no glance, and no last words, putting her from his mind as if she meant nothing, that Samana snapped. With a screech, a stream of foul curses burst from her mouth, raining down on Eremon even as his brother shook with laughter and strode away from his tent.

Shaking, Eremon sank down to his bed roll, and rested his pounding head in his hands.

Hawen, but that was not what he had expected, none of it. Neither the rage that sprang up when he first saw Samana, though it was two years cold, nor the shocking pang of lust. He pushed his forehead into his hands until his eyeballs hurt, feeling ashamed.

His body had betrayed him, just for that one moment. His mind had stayed firm, of course, for he would never entertain terms with a traitor such as Samana. But for a single, drawn-out breath, his body had wanted to give in to the kiss, to be possessed by Samana in a frenzy that would drown out all hurts and memories just as the fighting had done.

For that moment, he’d yearned for the feel of a body
wanting
his, kissing him and murmuring soft words and stroking his flesh … and then the burning climax, followed by cool relief. Of course, there was nothing to stop him, nothing but the dictates of his own heart. For it was mention of sons that undid Samana in the end, the searing realization that it was Rhiann he needed to bury himself in, despite the hurt. Rhiann he wanted to bear his sons.

Eremon’s chest clenched, and he took a deep breath. Rhiann would know he had betrayed her, and he could not hurt her again, or risk driving her further away. Slowly he let his breath out and raised his face, calmer. He had done the right thing; Rhiann would know he had done so.

He picked at the chunk of deer meat on the platter, wondering about his decision over Samana’s fate. Should he actually try to extract information from her? He could threaten her with pain, but she was right: warriors did not torture women. And after that little show of theirs, he couldn’t pretend an interest in her body just to deceive her. Ah, and he didn’t have the energy for such games, anyway. The time for such things was long past, and that was why, he suspected, Agricola’s attentions to Samana might be waning. Agricola must know, as Eremon did, that it was about war now. If she didn’t know already, Samana would no doubt soon realize that her wiles had little place in such a situation.

He sighed and tore off another chunk of flesh, thinking about what Rhiann would say when she saw the gift he was sending her. For as he had stared over Samana’s head, the impulse had come to him as a bolt of clarity. Samana had to be returned to the Sisters. It was for her fellow priestesses to judge her, woman to woman.

Eremon prayed that Rhiann would see it the same way.

CHAPTER 48

R
hiann’s blood sang with a clear, hard strength this day, despite the sudden rainstorm that swept down the glen they were climbing, forcing them to put up their hoods and huddle over their horses.

The progress north and west through Creones territory had been winding and difficult, but as the same scene from the crannog was repeated, and the calls for vengeance rang out in hall after hall, so the spirits of the young Sisters had soared. Rhiann’s instincts had been right. When the chieftains saw the priestesses’ faces and heard their tales, they had been stirred first to pity, and then to action.

At first, though, Rhiann had deliberately avoided the Creones’ royal dun, the seat of its king. She knew that the news of their journey would travel faster than they themselves could. So the day she received an invitation from him to celebrate the longest day would remain seared in her memory for ever. From the moment of their arrival, the king regarded Rhiann with thinly veiled anger, despite the fact that his tribe’s dead Ban Cré had been his own sister. Rhiann nevertheless understood him, reasoning that he was a man woven of the same cloth as Maelchon: a woman-hater, jealous of sharing power. But a king ruled only as long as his people wanted him to. He did their will, not his own.

And so he feasted the Sisters lavishly, and when they led the longest day celebrations with the most dramatic retelling of their story so far, Rhiann sensed in the mood of the people that the king would receive no rest until he agreed to join them. Through some careful questioning of the king’s aunts and sisters, she discovered that most of the Creones chieftains were now demanding retribution; that his people, young and old, clamoured for revenge; and that his own wife pecked at him night and day, urging him to do something.

Of course, no mention was made of allegiance in any of the meticulously polite conversations Rhiann exchanged with him, but in the resentful cast of his eyes when he helped her to Liath’s back Rhiann sensed triumph. She bid him farewell, unable to contain the pride that glowed inside her, and which carried her forward for many days thereafter.

We can do this for you, she
said to Nerida, as her horse lurched its way over a high, windy pass.

She’d made gifts of half the girls now, distributing them among the Creones, and they’d all gone eagerly to their new positions. Now the smaller party was wending its way further north to Decantae lands.

‘One of my scouts had news of the Decantae, lady,’ Nectan informed her, urging his stocky pony along the slope of the hill beside her. The horse was hock deep in heather, the glowing leaf-fall purple of the blossoms dulled by the rain and heavy cloud shrouding the sky. ‘They offered some warriors to Calgacus’s warband, and allowed him to station his scouts on their coast.’

Rhiann turned to look at him. ‘That means they are already well-disposed towards the alliance. It will be easier to sway them, perhaps, than the Creones.’

‘It would not matter how difficult they were to win,’ Nectan declared. ‘You would still triumph!’

He grinned, blinking rain from his black eyelashes. He wore a speckled seal-fur cloak but had scorned a head covering, and his hair was plastered to his forehead like tendrils of dark seaweed.

Rhiann smiled to acknowledge the compliment. ‘It is the girls who have triumphed, and you and your men have played no small part in that, my friend.’

Yet Rhiann’s voice faded, as Nectan suddenly tensed, peering over her shoulder back down the glen. ‘We are being followed,’ he announced, and pulled up his horse. While he sent two men to identify their pursuer, Nectan urged the remaining Sisters off the high trail and down the pine-clad slope to the stream that raced along the narrow bottom of the glen. There they waited beneath the spreading canopy of pine trees, the rain pattering down through the branches to the carpet of needles below.

After a while they heard a high, swelling whistle, and Nectan and his men lowered their nocked bows. ‘It is safe,’ he told a relieved Rhiann.

Yet her relief quickly turned to puzzlement when the man following them caught up, delivering to her Eremon’s message. Her husband was well, and so far had enjoyed great victories with their raiding, he reported. He had also sent her a strange gift, which was following with a band of warriors half a day behind.

‘And he says I will know best what to do with this gift?’ Rhiann repeated.

The scout nodded, unslinging his bow from his shoulder. ‘He said that he hoped you would understand, lady, and not be angry.’

‘Angry!’ Rhiann’s brows drew together. ‘Do you yourself know its nature?’

‘It is a woman.’

‘A
woman
?’ The pulse in Rhiann’s throat skipped. ‘Why would he send me a woman?’

The man shrugged. ‘I do not know, lady. She was captured by the men that bring her. That is all I know.’

A terrible suspicion was worming its way into Rhiann’s mind. Surely not …

‘Rhiann?’ It was Fola at her elbow. ‘Are you well? You’ve gone so pale.’

Rhiann straightened and caught her breath. ‘Yes, Sister, I am well.’ She addressed the messenger again. ‘They are half a day behind, you say?’

‘Yes, lady. Once I’d found you, I was to go back and lead them here.’

It was afternoon already, and although the evenings were long this time of year, they’d been hoping to reach the next dun quickly, to escape the rain. ‘Then we must wait, I suppose.’

They were carrying waterproof hides on the horses for sleeping outdoors, and Nectan and his men now strung these up in the pine branches to give some rudimentary shelter. For the rest of the afternoon they huddled there, the damp seeping up from the ground. Rhiann sat just under the edge of the hide, on a rock slick with moss and spray from the rushing stream, while the others shivered and sang to pass the time. Nectan miraculously managed to light a fire to dry them out, and proceeded to roast some hares his men had caught the day before.

Towards dusk they heard the whistle once more. Rhiann stood and tried calmly to face the men who came sliding down the slope from the path above, their boots skidding on the wet pine needles. There was no sign of their captive. ‘Lady.’ The leader of the men nodded awkwardly. ‘I bring you greetings from your lord.’

‘Thank you, and you are welcome among us. Yet where is your charge?’

The man’s face contorted with amusement and resignation. ‘She won’t come down here. She waits on the path.’

Anger burned Rhiann’s throat. ‘And who is she who
waits
on us?’

‘I still don’t know her name,’ the man admitted, stifling a smile. ‘But your lord called her Agricola’s whore.’ His eyes darted to the young female faces behind Rhiann. ‘Begging your pardons.’

Though her darkest fears had prepared her, still Rhiann flinched. Samana, here! Her traitorous cousin, who brazenly seduced Eremon just after he and Rhiann were wed. Rhiann hadn’t loved Eremon then, or he her, but it still hurt … Goddess, did it hurt.

‘Go now,’ Rhiann ground out, tucking her wet, cold hands into her sleeves, ‘and take hold of her and bring her to me here, slung over your shoulder if need be!’

The leader of the men grinned, and bowed his head. ‘Yes, lady.’

And that was how Samana arrived, screaming curses and batting the shoulders of the warrior who carried her, until he flung her on the damp ground right at Rhiann’s feet.

Despite her anger, Rhiann was shocked at the change in Samana. Always so perfectly bathed and oiled and groomed, her black hair had long ago escaped its braids and lay wild and tangled about her shoulders. Her dress was so encrusted with mud that the original colour had been obscured, and her bare ankles and wrists were scratched and bruised. She’d stopped cursing as the wind was knocked out of her by the fall, yet now she looked up at Rhiann from all fours, her dark eyes alight with fury. ‘You!’ she spat. ‘You cannot treat me this way! I am a queen—’

‘You are a Roman slave,’ Rhiann cut in, straightening her spine, ‘and when you betrayed your own people you gave up any nobility that we would recognize here.’

Samana merely hissed in rage and frustration and said no more, pulling herself into a crouch. Rhiann stared down, a distant part of her appalled at Samana’s appearance and this uncharacteristic loss of composure. The way Samana’s eyes drooped at the edges, her snub nose and dusky skin all combined, as Rhiann knew well, into an alluring and languid beauty. Yet that sensual potency had been muddied by the desperation Rhiann saw in her face now.

At another time, perhaps this knowledge would have drawn forth pity in Rhiann, for she also had known desperation and great fear. But no longer. She had no room for such feelings even in herself now, for her heart was too scarred to admit them.

‘I would advise you to get up,’ she told Samana. ‘We will not carry you.’

Samana flung up her chin with ill-disguised hate. ‘Then leave me here, cousin. I will be more trouble to you than I’m worth, I promise. Your husband could not get any information from me, and neither will you!’

At mention of Eremon, Rhiann’s skin went completely cold, and the fingers folded in her sleeves tightened. Samana had supreme powers of seduction. She had been with Eremon, probably alone with him. He was no doubt still hurt by Rhiann’s revelation. Had Samana enticed him again? Did he touch her?

Stop it!

With an effort, Rhiann gained control over herself and slowly uncurled her arms, standing tall. She would not give Samana power over her. But what was she supposed to do? Eremon said Rhiann would know, but she didn’t. What she wanted was to be as far from Samana as possible. The revulsion was so strong it was tangible.

Perhaps she should send Samana with these warriors back to Dunadd, to be held prisoner there. Or better yet, with some of Nectan’s men, for Rhiann was sure
they
would never succumb to her wiles. And yet, it was a long journey. Eremon had given Samana into Rhiann’s safe keeping, and she could not risk her escaping. Nor did she wish to lose the protection of any of Nectan’s men.