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“How do I betray you by leaving?”
“By leaving,” Máel rasped. Fáelán said nothing. Rowan stared in utter shock.
“Then come with me,” he said hoarsely. “All of us, we can do great things—”
Máel gave a bitter laugh and turned away.
“I am doing something great,” Fáelán said quietly, sitting back, his
spine to the great black rock that rose like a pillar, a sacrificial table, near the wall of the high-ceilinged cave. “I’m making the English suffer, every day.”
Fury in his blood, Tadhg gave a clipped nod and turned to sweep up a bundle of his things. Rowan got to his feet in stunned silence. Máel kept his back turned. Fáelán kept cleaning his sword.
Tadhg threw a heavy cape over his shoulders, then looked down at it. Stolen too. With a growl of fury, he flung it off again.
He reached for his pack, stuffed in whatever he could that had actually been purchased.
Fáe gave another long wipe up his sword. “Careful what you wish for, tighearna bó. Kings and great men are perilous things. All great things fall.”
“That is a lie. You fell.” Tadhg pulled the laces on his pack tight, swung it over his shoulder.
“You’ll be back,” called Máel as he strode to the cave opening. Inky black night spread outside, filled with stars, beckoning him. He squared his shoulders. Fifteen was not too young to take on the night.
“You were built for home, Tadhg,” Máel’s voice followed him out. “Of all of us, you are meant for it.”
But they were wrong.
He had no home. He needed no home. He was going to greatness and glory and grand adventures. His horizons were wide and bright and he felt as if he could see forever.
Chapter One
Fifteen years later
January, 1193
Saleté de Mer, Northern France
“GOING HOME, then, are you?” the gnarled sea captain said, eyeing Tadhg warily in the dimming twilight.
Tadhg squinted back; it was difficult to see much in the dimming twilight and the bright circle of torchlight behind the man’s head. He shifted to the side, scowling at this, the third, question about his travels, but he could hardly blame the man.
Tadhg was travel-stained after weeks on the run, heavily armed, and wearing no device to mark him as crusader or bound knight. He could easily be a criminal or an outlaw.
Or both.
Nothing like falling back to your roots.
Still, he had not come though fire and tribulation and a dozen war-torn lands carrying contraband that could get him killed only to be questioned by a middling dock rat about his purposes.
On the other hand, he hadn’t yet come through it, had he? He was still on the run, outlawed, carrying contraband that could get him killed.
From cave to king’s hall to outlaw once again.
Rowan, Máel and Fáelán would just laugh and laugh.
Then possibly aim an arrow at his heart.
“Something like that,” was all he said.
