Free The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy by Jules Watson

Hall.
    Inside, she raised her head in surprise when she saw Eremon on a stool by the long hearth, playing fidchell with Conaire, his wolfhound Cù stretched at their feet. The heavy drizzle was veiling the river and marsh, turning the training ground into a slippery mudpit, and the warriors on it into clay-cloaked wraiths. Yet only weighty matters would have kept Eremon and Conaire here alone, with no one but a few servants tending the fire.
    Rhiann slipped off her muddy boots, laid them on the hearthstone, and tip-toed over to Eremon. With a glance over his shoulder, she saw immediately by the dire position of his pieces that he hadn’t been concentrating very hard.
    Conaire glanced up. ‘Rhiann, I will gladly concede the game if you’ll only put him out of his misery. Such an easy win is, quite frankly, an insult to my honour.’ Yet Conaire’s light tone could not hide the concern in his eyes, and he swiftly excused himself to go to Caitlin, leaping up the stairs to the sleeping gallery that ran around the inside of the roof.
    ‘A stór ,’ Eremon murmured, by way of greeting.
    Rhiann did not move around to face him then, for she also heard the sigh under his breath. Despite her own exhaustion, she drew Eremon’s head back to rest on her chest. ‘How is Caitlin?’ she began, digging her fingers into the hard muscles of Eremon’s shoulders.
    Eremon sighed again, then gasped as she burrowed into a tender spot. ‘Well, I think, although she has not risen from her bed this morning. Eithne is with her.’
    Rhiann stored that fact away with a stab of unease, knowing that Caitlin, when she questioned her, would no doubt make light of it. Looking at Eremon upside down, Rhiann could see that the tautness in his face had not relaxed; in fact, he looked even grimmer than usual. He wore buckskin trousers like her own, muddy to the knee, and a scarlet tunic that for once made him look pale.
    ‘You found something out about the Romans?’ she ventured, digging her thumbs deep into the base of his skull.
    ‘Ah … What? No.’ Eremon shook his head, yet his pupils were wide and dark, and fixed blankly on the roof as if his thoughts were turned inward. ‘I’ve just sent the messengers to our border patrols. I am still waiting for answers.’
    Then that was not it. Forcing a smile, Rhiann flicked the end of his nose. ‘If our entire marriage consists of waiting to extract information from each other, I fear it’s going to be somewhat boring.’
    Eremon didn’t smile back. Instead his hand reached up to clamp on her wrist, and gently he drew her around and pressed her into Conaire’s place on the other stool. ‘Rhiann. There is something I must tell you.’
    She sank back, surprised at the hard tension that gripped Eremon’s forearm. And when she looked him full in the face, in the brighter flare of the great hearth-fire, she realized it was not mere preoccupation that silenced him, but fury, barely held in check.
    And so Eremon proceeded to tell her about his confrontation with Gelert. As he spoke, every one of Rhiann’s muscles became so still she felt as if she were carven from ice.
    ‘Rhiann,’ Eremon prodded at last, when she still had not broken her silence. ‘You do understand? I saw with my own eyes that what we thought is truth. He tried to kill us.’ His voice was harsh, but she only stared at the shower of sparks, as a servant offloaded an armful of hazel logs onto the fire.
    ‘Yet he denied it,’ she whispered at last.
    ‘Of course he did! That changes nothing!’
    When Rhiann next spoke, each word sounded thick, as if forced through honey. ‘It is a serious thing, to accuse a druid of such a deed, with no proof, and no way of getting any.’
    Eremon sucked in his breath, drawing back from her. ‘What are you talking about?’ he burst out, ignoring the faces that turned their way. ‘None of this means anything to me. He tried to kill us, and I should have dealt with it then and