Heavily accented the man’s Gaelic might be, but Deathan stood impressed all the same. He would not be able to communicate in the Caledonian tongue. Yet his people called these savages.
Would the princess also speak their tongue? How difficult for Rohr, if she did not.
Da turned to Deathan. “Go and fetch your brother. He maun be here when his guests arrive. And ye, Master…?”
“Urfet.” The messenger bared his teeth again. “I am cousin to the king.”
“Aye so. Let me escort ye to our hall.”
“Da, he wishes to ride back to his company.”
Da looked uncomfortable. “’Tis no’ necessary, that. We will welcome them in.” He flapped a hand at Deathan. “Go. Go.”
Deathan had no idea where to find Rohr. Given the way news flew about the place, he might reasonably expect Rohr to find him. He longed to go back up on the walls so he might catch a first glimpse of the party. Of the princess.
Only so he could inform Mother, of course.
He found Rohr just emerging from the midden. His brother looked green around the gills and had a hand pressed to his stomach.
Presumably he had already heard the news.
“Ye maun come at once,” Deathan told him. “The party approaches.”
“Already?” So Rohr had not heard. His apparent nerves stemmed from anticipation.
That gave Deathan pause. Bold and unflappable, his older brother tended to be. Near impossible to shake.
He stood shaken now.
“Come along,” Rohr said disagreeably, taking out his ire, as so often, on the nearest target. “The nightmare begins.”
Chapter Six
Deathan would stillhave preferred to go up on the walls, a place where his duties so often took him, to watch events unfold. Like a pageant, more or less, from which he was removed.
As, in truth, he was.
None of this was happening to him—the strangeness and immediacy of it all. The heavy weight of duty. The sacrifice and acceptance. For one of the first times in his life, he felt grateful he was not the firstborn.
Rohr hurried, dodging people still dashing around the keep, all of them staring, and headed for the front steps where Da waited. Some color had crept back to his face, but Deathan thought he still looked awfully grim, for a bridegroom.
Da stood with his advisors and the holy man, obviously relieved to see them. He stepped aside to offer Rohr a place, and Deathan fell in behind.
“They come,” Da told Rohr uneasily.
Deathan wondered about the approaching party. How would they look? Deport themselves?
Rohr must have been wondering the same, for he leaned back toward Deathan and said, “Prepare for a throng o’ savages.”
Only, they were not. The party, when it appeared along a track now lined with clansfolk, looked rich and beautiful, like something described in an ancient tale of Erin, from whence Deathan’s ancestors had come. On horseback they were, the messenger now having rejoined them, with what could only bethe king at their head and a decorated wagon rumbling behind. Well clad and colorful, they flew banners and streamers that fluttered in the breeze.
The crowd began to murmur. Da stood like stone.
Deathan narrowed his eyes. Which was the princess? There—that must be she, surrounded by guards at every point. The only woman he could see.
She sat at the front of the wagon, wreathed in dignity. Head high, hands folded on her lap, and eyes gazing straight ahead at nothing. She wore a bronze-colored gown, and her hair hung down like a second cloak over her shoulders, brown and wavy and, aye, wild—though it appeared to be the only thing about her that was wild. She wore a thin bronze circlet upon her head.
A crown?
