It could not be. No one, not even Cathair with all his arrogance, would do anything so treacherous.
She had it all wrong. Her heart did. Ardahl MacCormac was a serpent.
She needed to keep that in mind.
*
Ardahl slept besidethe door that night. The cold came in under the leather curtain and all his wounds stung. None of that bothered him so much as his thoughts.
His near-crazed thoughts.
He had never wanted much from life. At least, he didn’t believe so. Just to work hard to rise among Fearghal’s warriors. To prove he’d been right to take a different path from his father and turn his back on the chariots. To take care of his mother following Da’s death. To spend time with Conall.
All of that, now gone. He’d become a pariah among his fellow warriors. Forbidden to care for Mam.
Conall, gone from him.
Lying there as the night dragged past, he relived it over and over again. Conall turning upon him, there on the training field. The sheer rage and—aye—betrayal in his eyes. The knife blade coming at him.
He had reacted with pure instinct. Had he directed that blade into Conall’s heart?
If so—if so, it had not been by intention.
Why had Conall been so angry? Why had he turned upon Ardahl that way? Ardahl would have bet his life such a thing could never happen.
He had near lost his life.
Mayhap ’twould have been better if he had. Better than what he now endured. For he had no way to defend himself. No way to make it right. He had to live with the scorn of all who knew him.
The hate and despair in Mistress Liadan’s eyes.
Near morning, her mother came awake there on Conall’s bed and began again with her sobbing. Weeping and lamenting anew. Ardahl had to lie and listen while Liadan rose and sought to comfort the woman. The lass was patient and caring, he would give her that. But he could hear the weariness in her voice. The tears that threatened.
She did not want to dose her mam again. As well she had sent her young sister away from this, to seek some peace elsewhere.
He lay till he could bear it no longer before rising, taking up his weapons, and going out to await the dawn.
Chapter Fourteen
No sooner werethe warriors at practice that morning than a runner came pelting in. One of the younger lads, it was, sent by the guard to Dornach’s ear.
“Master Dornach!”
Some frantic quality in the boy’s voice caused everyone to stop work and turn. Face red and sweaty, the lad fairly slid to a halt in front of the war chief.
“They come! Aldur, of the guard, sent me to tell ye!” He gulped air. “Our patrol spotted them at first light. Movin’ in under cover o’ darkness, they were. Dacha’s men.”
Dornach’s gaze turned hard as iron, and he uttered the kind of curse that could curl a man’s hair. “Dacha’s men, ye say?”
Not their neighbor directly to the west. He was a man named Brihan who had long been on good terms with Fearghal, and acted as a sort of buffer between Fearghal’s tribe and that of the ambitious Dacha, who had been steadily conquering the lands around him. It was rumored he’d left Brihan’s lands alone only because he considered him so weak, he might seize them whenever he decided to bother.
And because Brihan allowed him freedom to cross his lands and attack Fearghal any time he chose.
Blood had flowed on that border many times, but not that of Brihan’s men, who held back from any fray.
Now, at the beginning of the fighting season, Dacha might well be expected to strike. No doubt Fearghal and Dornach hadexpected it. They had left a strong and canny guard on that border, and drilled the men well.
“How many?” Dornach snapped at the messenger. “Could our men tell?”
