Free The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge

All at once Togodumnus was on his back, his sword just out of reach, and Cinnamus moved in for the kill.
    Caradoc sprang up, drawing his own sword and shouting bitterly, but his father thrust him aside. “Enough, Cinnamus,” Cunobelin said quietly. “Let the lad get up.” Cinnamus did not stir. He and Togodumnus regarded each other without expression, panting a little, still locked in combat with their eyes. “Cinnamus,” Cunobelin said, “if you kill him you will die. You know this well. If you must feud with him, wait until he is older, but let him up now. I do not want to lose a son, or one of my finest young warriors, in this foolishness.”
    Cinnamus blinked and lowered his sword arm, then contemptuously kicked Togodumnus’s sword within his reach and walked away, loosening his hair as he went. Caradoc found that his own sword arm was sore from the effort of Cinnamus’s capitulation.
    Tog began to grin. “A narrow escape, that one!” he said, leaping up. “My thanks, father. Now call Cinnamus back and have him restore to me all my cattle.”
    Caradoc groaned. Cunobelin took two strides, and with one blow of his big fist knocked his son to the ground once more. “Be quick, Togodumnus,” he shouted, “and grow up, before your honor-price is worth no more than the price of your sword!” He flexed his fingers, grunted and walked away. Caradoc knew what that blow had cost his father, for no one could speak against Tog and not feel Cunobelin’s anger. A buzz of approving conversation broke out, and Togodumnus’s chiefs went to him and helped him to get up, restoring his sword to him and soothing him with soft words. But Togodumnus shook them off and stalked away, the tatters of his torn tunic making him look a little ridiculous.
    Someone tugged softly at Caradoc’s arm and he looked around. It was Eurgain, dressed in yellow and blue, her dark blonde hair parted in the center and falling down her back.
    “What a terrible thing,” she said, a crease of worry between her long, feathered eyebrows. “Cin would have killed him if Cunobelin had not come.”
    “Of course he would. And a happy circumstance, many would have said.”
    “Caradoc!”
    “Well, it’s true. Tog is loved and also hated by everyone, and there are many who are tired of loving and forgiving a liar and a cheat no matter how much charm he has.” Caradoc looked around him and then lowered his voice. “Eurgain, I must talk to you. Where can we go?”
    She hesitated, scanning his face swiftly, aware of some almost indefinable change in him, a new soberness, a sense of stress. “Come to my hut. We can break our fast on cold pigeon if you like.”
    They walked side by side and in silence up the hill, following the path that took them behind the Great Hall to the very edge of the massive earthmound, where Eurgain had a house with a window. The window made her room very cold in the winter, covered as it was by skins which let in the wind no matter how firmly they were tacked down, but she did not mind. She liked to sit with her arms folded on the sill for hours on end, looking out west above the forest to the gently rising hills and the hazed horizon beyond. She and Gladys were very close, indeed the Royal War Band had gradually been breaking up into smaller groups as its members matured—Aricia spreading dissent among all, but spending most of her time with Caradoc or Togodumnus, Gladys and Eurgain growing more companionable, and Adminius, the eldest, withdrawing from them all. The woman and the young girl shared a love of wild, lonely places, an affinity for solitude and oases of quiet. Gladys loved the sea. She went often, and would not come home for days, taking food and a sword and her warmest cloak, and sleeping alone in some dark cave on the beach. She would hold a mystical commerce with the ocean that was far from easy or safe, and what she learned she never divulged. Eurgain’s longings went to the hills, the open, bare spaces of her