Maire Read online

  “There will be no bloodshed,” Brude told her as she watched Eochan and Declan meet the tall figure several yards away. “The strings of Macha are not thick with it, but sing clear as a lark’s song. The day is Gleannmara’s.”

  Maire was not so certain. Her brothers’ swords were unsheathed and driven into the ground beside them, ready should any cause arise to use them. The stranger had yet to remove his from its silver-studded sheath. He greeted the Scotti warriors as if they were long-lost friends, gesturing toward the rath below as though in welcome.

  “Perhaps the answer to my queen’s problem with Morlach is at hand.”

  Maire forgot the stranger and her brothers at the mention of the man who’d been appointed by the high king to oversee Gleannmara until she came of age. Morlach was not moved by the spirits as was the wizened Brude, who now pressed his ear to the melody-rich wood of his instrument. No, Morlach’s motivation was nothing short of greed. The druid-sacrificer-turned-lord-of-his-own-tuath had made it clear that he’d not invested his time and interest in Gleannmara to have it snatched from him by an upstart princess of barely eighteen. He intended to wed Maire and join the two kingdoms.

  After her parents had died in battle, Brude and her foster family raised and protected Maire at Drumkilly. She had not set foot on her beloved home of Gleannmara since Brude took her away, beyond Morlach’s reach. But now she’d come of age, which put her beyond the protection of those who loved her. Worse, Morlach exercised his influence over the high king to win royal favor for the union of Rathcoe and Gleannmara. Her destiny though, was in her hands, not Morlach’s, for Maire had made up her mind to die first.

  This raid was to provide the opportunity.

  TWO

  The master of these farmers wishes the contest between us settled by champions,” Declan said, announcing his and Eochan’s return. “I’d like to offer my sword to my queen.”

  “Nay, Maire. I’m the eldest. ’Tis only right that I should be your champion.”

  Maire acknowledged neither offer. While her gaze was affixed on Brude, her thoughts raced on, finding voice. “Am I to assume that if he wins, his people and land go unmolested and if we win…what is it he offers that we cannot already take?”

  “He says to overrun his lands and destroy his people’s livelihood is of far less value to us than a handsome tribute of twenty-five cumals to be paid annually.”

  “A hundred head of cattle or its value?” Maire was astonished. It was a kingly prize.

  “Gleannmara’s pastures are scant of beef, what with Morlach’s bloodletting hand.”

  Maire met the pale blue gaze of the druid. He spoke the truth. The overseer had taken unfair reward for the duty of his appointment by the king. He professed enriching the soil with the blood of their cattle, but his coffers grew fat from the sale of skins and salted meat while the soil produced no more grain than it had before. At first mention of this raid, the men of Gleannmara rallied to Maire’s side, hope in their hearts that she would at long last save them from Morlach’s heavy-handed rule.

  “Like as not, the priest’s people have already buried the bulk of their valuables,” Maire thought aloud. The Britons were known for that, leaving only a showing to satisfy the invaders. This offer of tribute was more than her men could steal and carry back on their small ship. But a tribute from across the sea was more than a notion to enforce. The king of Tara would testify to that, and he had the advantage of his Leinster subjects sharing the same body of land rather than having a sea between them. “And how will I know they’ll keep their word?”

  “He expects us to take hostages to guarantee his people’s fealty to Gleannmara,” Eochan replied. “But in exchange, he expects Gleannmara’s protection against other invaders.”

  “Not that he’ll need it,” Declan interjected. “I expect to add his dark head to my trophies.”

  “His head will be mine, little brother. I am the eldest,” Eochan reminded his bantam-tempered kin.

  Maire ignored the dispute, trying to deal with the quagmire of emotion clouding her judgment. She’d wanted to prove herself worthy as queen, but she also had planned to avoid Morlach by dying in battle. Unfortunately she’d yet this day to come across an adversary who might defeat her. May her clansmen never become as peace-softened as the fishermen they’d faced earlier—or as the farmers collected below!

  Now it seemed her valiant death was not to be. How could she let this stranger win, when the tribute would mean so much to Gleannmara? In an outright fight, her kinsmen would win regardless—or mayhap one of the sodmuckers might get lucky and land a fatal blow against her. Regardless, this stranger had made a good point. Why destroy what might be put to work for her clan? She glanced at the druid, aware that he watched her every expression, perhaps even read her thoughts.

  Brude sang out her decision even as she reached it, ending the dispute festering between the brothers. “Gleannmara’s queen will fight on our behalf. There’s no other choice.”

  His voice was surprisingly strong for his many years as chief bard and elder druid. No one knew the man’s age. It was as evasive as that of the great forest that had adopted him as its own before her mother’s birth. As if in chorus, the clan’s chanting of Maire’s name underscored his point.

  “Of course I will.” A heady rush at the prospect of winning for her people welled in her blood. This was what she was born for. Still…

  “What is the question I see in your mother’s green eyes, child? Do you doubt your skill?”

  “Do you, Brude?” Maire tossed the challenge back in an effort to deny her real quandary over Morlach.

  As if to remove any further doubt regarding her willingness and ability, she pulled off her leather helmet. Her brothers had insisted she wear the worrisome protection on her first foray into battle, while they went bareheaded. They’d pledged no harm would come to her—an irony only Maire seemed to appreciate since she’d bested them more than once in training. Size was Eochan’s downfall, and temper was Declan’s. It had been simple, once she learned their weaknesses, to defeat them.

  Her flame-red hair, battle-streaked with lime like Celtic warriors past, tumbled down her back. Again her name rose enthusiastically from the ranks. She would win for Gleannmara. The spirits of victory were with her. Somehow she’d deal with Morlach and the king later. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind: “Choose your enemy one by one, whenever the gods allow.”

  Maire stepped out of the cover of her clansmen to study her opponent with single interest. “I’d have a song, Brude. A blood stirring one about Maeve, chieftess of the Uí Niall, conqueror and queen of Gleannmara!”

  The bard’s song would give her focus and fire her passion even more against her opponent, though she felt she was about to burst with energy as it was. A right ballad to call up the deeds of past heroes and heroines would show this Welshman that her blood was that of the most courageous and victorious of her ancestors. Her late mother had won Gleannmara; Maire would defend it.

  “Put the helmet on, Maire,” Eochan called after her as she started down the incline to where the robed stranger waited.

  She brushed the suggestion aside like an annoying insect buzzing at her ear. Her brain needed to breathe. The distraction of the confining helmet more than offset its merit. She adjusted a band of tooled leather across her forehead. Although her hair had been stiffened enough with lime to keep it from hampering her vision, no precaution was excess in a matter of life and death.

  She strode boldly toward the waiting warrior-priest, the leather-coated wickerwork shield of her clan strapped on her left arm as she inventoried her weapons with her right. Her mother’s sword; her short, pointed scían; the lightweight ax slung across her back; all were within easy reach.

  Then there was the wee stinger sheathed between the carved swells of her breastplate, the weapon’s hilt disguised as adornment. The blade was but a hand in length and thin as a reed, but it was deadly nonetheless.

  Maire smiled as the
incredulous expression on her opponent’s face gave way to blustering indignation. Go on, fool. I’ll be the last foe you underestimate.

  “I asked for no woman, good fellows. I asked to face a champion.”

  Her opponent’s initial incredulity was exactly the reaction Maire counted on. Except that it went beyond, for suddenly the man stared at her as though she were naught but a spirit, a ghost. Much as she wanted to think she was intimidating, she knew it was neither her boasting nor her appearance that drained her adversary’s face of blood and squeezed perspiration from its pores. She’d seen men about to heave up bad ale who had more color than the man facing her now.

  And those eyes! By her mother’s sword, they devoured her as though starved for and repulsed by her at the same time. Maire felt some of her own blood slip away from her face. Surely he couldn’t know that the blood splattered on her body and sword was her first. Nay, he was just assessing her. She stood taller, defiant to the examination of the gaze capable of peering over the top of her head.

  “What I lack in size, I make up for in speed and skill, sir,” she declared boldly, ignoring the urge to shrink from him.

  He took note of the length of her legs, exposed from the thigh down by her leine so that her hem didn’t impair her movement in battle.

  When his gaze lingered overlong on the embroidery of stick animals and figures on the garment’s edge, she issued a hot challenge. “You’ve never seen Celtic gods before?”

  “Not in such a comely display.”

  Maire resisted the urge to pull the skirt down to the laced tops of her kid boots. She’d not give the man the satisfaction of knowing he’d put her ill at ease by this strange admiration. “Did you come up here to play the flirt or to fight? Either, I assure you, will result with your heart skewered on my sword.”

  “If my heart needs be skewered, it would favor your weapon above any of the dozens I’ve faced in battle.”

  Her cheeks grew hot, as though the sun overhead had kissed them outright. “Then let’s be at it, before your idle flattery turns my stomach.” She motioned down the hill toward the villa. Such word play was not an assault she’d been trained for. It stung and stroked her pride with the same hand.

  She ignored the bewildering mix of reaction his words and attentive gaze evoked. “Will you not treat your people to the spectacle of losing your head to the sword of Gleannmara?”

  The man suddenly looked as though he’d been broadsided with a blade. “Sword of what?”

  Maire blessed whatever it was that swung the pendulum of discomfiture back to her opponent and lifted her weapon high.

  “The sword of Maire, queen of tuatha Gleannmara!”

  Behind the bold warrioress, her name rose from her troops like a chant to the sun, but all Rowan heard was Gleannmara. He reeled inwardly, as though struck full force by the ax slung across her back.

  Gleannmara! The home of his ancestors. The home from which he’d been sold… but not by this clan. In brief seconds, he wondered of the fate suffered by his brother and family. Had they died at the hands of these raiders, who now claimed the green, forested hills as their own? Had he nurtured his bitterness—since he was a child of six, sold and carried in chains aboard a merchant ship bound for the Welsh coast, never to see his home again—for nothing? Had his struggle with his faith—to turn from his desire for vengeance to forgiveness, as had the scriptural Joseph—his thoughts of even returning to preach God’s Word to them, been in vain?

  The irony was not beyond him any more than that which put him up against a female; the soul’s enemy knew his weaknesses and used them without mercy.

  Rowan stared at the young woman’s face as though he might see the fate of his family. Gradually her delicate features became distinctive beneath the blue paint and lime smeared over them. The proud tilt of her chin, the way her small nose turned up, almost as an afterthought, the fullness of her mouth, now drawn into the most pensive of pouts—all were strangely familiar. Was there no end to this dark battery of distraction?

  “Will you summon your clan, man, or shall I cut you down while you stand gawking like a stone-struck fool?”

  Four years it had taken to bury his past pain and anger, yet the sight of a pagan female warrior and the mention of his former home resurrected it in a matter of moments. Only God provided the steel of his resolve, for he knew he was incapable of recovering on his own. Renewed, Rowan jerked his head toward Emrys and stepped off the precipice of his faith. Surely God would not have him spill another woman’s blood. He would die himself first.

  “Come with me, queen of Gleannmara. Let this match take place where all can watch; although I warn you, all your skill will do you little good against my sword.”

  “Your ego is well matched to your size, sir.”

  “And yours to your mouth.”

  Rowan felt the glare of that green gaze burning into his back as he turned away and started down the hill. Soldier sense told him he was a fool for turning his back on an armed opponent; a more spiritual one assured him it was well to do so. From the corner of his eye, he saw her slap her sheathed sword and take double steps to catch up with him. When she did, he could not help but grin. She was game enough, this one, to earn his respect, and not as unwise as her youth might make her.

  “My name is Rowan, son of Demetrius, master of Emrys. It does you credit, Queen Maire, that you see value in not destroying that which can produce enough for us all.”

  “I care not what your name is, or that of this land. I only care what Gleannmara will take home from it. Let them that bury you worry with those details.”

  “I shall do my best to avoid that,” he promised, still unable to wipe the grin from his face. It was a challenge to match wits with this one. Under other circumstances…

  “Rowan of Emrys,” she murmured aloud. “Rowan… like the tree?”

  “And as hard as the blade.”

  “Or at least as hard in the head. ’Twill take more than one swat, I’ll wager, to split it like a practice melon.”

  “Or like that fisherman’s head,” one of the queen’s spokesmen remarked from behind them. He was the shorter of the two who’d come to speak with Rowan—a fair-haired buck who fairly itched for battle even now. Rowan knew one slight mistake and the entire lot would be out for blood.

  Mayhap the protectiveness of the queen’s spokesman was a sign of an even closer relationship? If so, why wasn’t the Scotti warrior the champion instead of the battle sprite struggling to keep up with him? How could the man allow it? Just the mention of a man’s head splitting like a melon had robbed this Maire of at least one shade of color.

  Sudden understanding dawned: She’d drawn her first blood today! Rowan nearly stumbled over his thought. Faith, this was all he needed—standing against a novice and a female in battle. Father, show me a way out of this, I beg you!

  “It does you credit that you would avoid unnecessary bloodshed, Emrys; although it takes little more than a blind eye to see you’re no cleric, but a warrior in a churchman’s robe.”

  “I merely sought to capture your attention that I might appeal to your clan’s honor and spare my tuath by my sword arm. They are good, hardworking people, all of them.”

  “I suppose we both have our little surprises then.” The way Maire’s lips curled, her sideways glance—they were not good signs, not the way they ran Rowan through like a hot iron of seduction.

  She might have no idea the assault she practiced upon him, but that made it no less deadly.

  THREE

  The scent of the grass crushed beneath their feet rose to Maire’s nostrils, a fragrance of new life and peace rather than death and war. Bones! Her warrior’s resolve wavered like the legs of a newborn colt—for all it was born to do, it was wobbly and unsure of itself.

  Realizing that Emrys was a man who cared as much for his people as she cared for hers was like saddling that fledgling colt with a heavy load on its first try to stand. The obvious prosperity of the land and dwell
ings were a sign that his consideration was returned. A barn in the distance housed livestock in a manner better than that in which most of Maire’s people lived. A beloved chief is a prosperous one, her mother once told her.

  As he spoke to his people of their bargain, Maire studied the square cut of the stranger’s shaven jaw, where a shadow of a beard threatened to sprout. What made him scrape his face clean as a babe’s bottom? Even his dark hair was close cropped about his collar, like some of the traders who hailed from the Mediterranean countries. It reminded her of a raven’s wing, alive with more than one color of black.

  As he turned to indicate he was ready for the contest, he froze for a moment, staring at her. Thought enveloped his blue gaze. They were not a pale and lifeless color, those eyes, but a gemstone hue of many facets. He seemed suspended in another place and time, not really seeing her. What manner of confoundment lured him away from the prospect of the impending battle to the death? What nameless anguish cried out from his eyes, making the two of them seem kindred spirits rather than enemies?

  To her astonishment, she found herself once again wishing her visit to the villa and her meeting with its master were not as an enemy. There was something foreign and intriguing about them both; the nature of which she’d never have the chance to know as a guest, only as a conqueror.

  Behind him his people clustered, the farmers and domestic servants who still objected to the terms he’d presented them, if not with voices, with grudging looks. Aye, she mused, they’d have to take hostages, as well as send people of her own to defend this peaceful tuath against others who might be tempted to plunder its unprotected wealth.

  Of course, sending any warriors from Gleannmara would have to come after she dealt with Morlach. One battle at a time. Maire steeled herself against the gnawing fangs of anxiety spawned by thought of the greedy druid.

  “The day is yours, my queen,” Brude told her, clapping a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Make the best of it for all.”