Free Dawn of Avalon by Anna Elliott

of his fool guards to watch over me—make sure the doddering old druid didn’t turn an ankle or break a leg out wandering the hillside. Their orders were to stick to me like burrs and see I got back to the fortress safe to perform the ceremony when the lad was recaptured.”
    From somewhere deep in the forest, came another cry of an owl, low and mournful like a wailing for the dead that would never return. 
    Bron shrugged, mouth still tightened to a grim slash. “So I told them I was having a vision of where the prisoner was. Off to the east, far away from where everyone else was searching.” Just for a moment, a ghost of a smile touched his face. “Followed me like sheep, the pair of them, both thinking they were going to get the glory of dragging Vortigern’s captive back. And then when we were off at a distance, I knocked them both over their fool heads and made off. Didn’t kill ‘em, though.” He grimaced. “No honor in killing a man just for doing his duty and when he’s made no threat to you. And when you reach my age you start to have more of a care for your soul than you did at twenty-odd. Didn’t think it would matter. Thought I’d find you and the lad here, and all the rest of your father’s men. But there’s no going back to the fort. Not when those two guards will have woken up with the devil’s own headaches and gone back to Vortigern, spitting mad and swearing vengeance on the druid who fights like a swordsman.”
    Fate can be a freeing thing. If my future were immovable, fixed as one of the wayfarer’s stars, I could not be killed now, tonight. And if I were killed, I would escape the future Gamma had Seen, the one the harpers would one day sing. More than once since that day I had thought that I had now my choice whether to fear everything or nothing at all. And—
    I found my fingers had moved almost of their own accord, to cup my wrist where Merlin’s lips had pressed, as if I could hold the warmth of the touch there even a moment more.
    If I were to die, tonight was no bad time. Few, of a surety, are allowed to live their one perfect day, much less keep it always as their final memory of this world.
    A night breeze had sprung up, whipping my hair back and rustling the branches above. I drew a breath. “You said it yourself, Bron. One of us must go and bring my father and his warriors, tell them that if they are to attack it must be now. And it must be you, since you can’t go back to Vortigern. I will go back to Vortigern’s fort. I’m the one who claimed to have Seen that Mer—that the prisoner was a fatherless child. I can tell him that I know the rituals as well as you, that it’s more fitting I should conduct the rites.”
    Bron’s brows drew together. “Are you out of your pig-swiving—” he clenched his teeth over the words. “Are you out of your mind? When you were a chattering little magpie of a four-year-old girl, I drank Uther Pendragon’s ale and kissed his sword and cut the palm of my hand to swear an oath as your guard. If you think I’m going to break that vow—”
    Twice, now, tonight, I had heard men speak of vows to guard my life with their own. I had asked for neither, and now, facing Bron in the moonlight, my temper broke.
    “You would rather it all be for nothing? The weeks spent digging this tunnel? Our weeks of fawning on Vortigern and standing by doing nothing while he tortured an innocent man? You would rather see it all go to waste? You would rather see Vortigern squatting on Britain’s throne while the Saxons rape our lands and burn our fields?” I stopped for breath. “Look me in the eyes, Bron. Look at me and tell me you believe in your heart that my father would not want me to do this—that he would ever chose my life over Britain’s throne.”
    For a single brief eternity, we stared at each other, my heart beating hard, while all around the branches swayed and creaked in the night wind. Then, finally, Bron’s gaze fell. “I must be out