Free The Beast of Caer Baddan by Rebecca Vaughn Page A

had happened but a moment ago played over in her mind until she wept.
    “Leola,” came Ardith’s soft voice. “Are you scared?”
    In spite of her shock and fear, Leola was impressed that Ardith had found her hiding place in the fireless room. Perhaps it was only because the Ardith had discovered Leola there so many times in the shadows under the hanging banners, that the search, even in the dark ,  prove an simple task.
    “No, Ardith,” Leola said, wiping her eyes. “My head hurts terribly. Do not worry for me.”
    Ardith sat down by her side, and Leola could see the terror on the younger woman's face.
    “Yea,” Ardith whispered. “We were woken so suddenly.”
    “Do you know what it is?”
    “The guard said it was the Britisc. I heard him talking to Father. Father was dressed in an instant and left. I hope he is safe.”
    Leola sighed.
    She knew they must sit and wait until the battle was over, but waiting seemed an endless nightmare.
    The screams and yells of war loudly echoed, and the harsh crash of metal and shattering wood resounded.
    Ardith jumped at the noise, as if the walls were reaching out to grab her.
    “Shh,” Leola said. “It is a battle. That's simply what they sound like.”
    Leola had never actually heard a battle before but wished to calm her young mistress.
    She tried to close her eyes and rest, yet the pounding of her heart would not be calmed. Her right hand moved to embrace her young friend, but there in an instant she realized that something was wrong. She held out her knife before her and stared at the drying blood, Raynar’s blood. She had not left the knife in the warrior’s back but had kept it firm in her grasp.
    Leola took the underside of her apron and wiped the knife. She couldn’t very well throw it away for she knew now how handy a knife was, and yet she would not let Ardith see the dark black stain.
    I killed a warrior .
    What a strange thought that was. Strange and horrifying, and perhaps a little gratifying.
    Leola shoved the idea from her head and focused on the younger woman by her side.

    Owain went, sword in hand and voice loud with the cries of war. The soldiers around him, following his lead, plunged into the grouping Gewissae warriors. The Gewissae were no strangers to war, but it was clear to Owain that for this battle, they were not yet prepared.
    Owain came on each warrior and cut him down with clean simple strikes, until his armor was splattered with blood and his painted face wet with perspiration. His mind was on the task before him, and how to most efficiently complete it. He would not stop until the enemy was completely annihilated. He could not even pause for a moment. For if he did, he felt he would have failed his mother once more.
    His pulse beat loudly in his temples and his eyes stung from dirt and salty sweat. His fingertips trembled with every new step he took. Yet he pressed on, dodging the heavy war hammers and long swords of the Saxon men and bringing his swift strikes hard onto their chain-mail covered bodies. He heard their battle cries ringing in his ears at their initial clash and then their agonizing screams of pain as he crushed their collar bones and sliced through their forearms.
    “Owain! Owain! Owain!”
    He suddenly realized that those left standing around him were his own soldiers, and the Gewissae lay dead at his feet.
    “Go on, Men!” Owain cried to his soldiers. “Take the houses apart. Any man you find, kill him!”
    Owain looked over to see a young Gewissae, blinking and staring up at him. The man was bleeding heavily from his abdomen and held a bleeding socket where his right arm should have been. He was younger then Owain, perhaps twenty, but Owain did not take the moment to suppose.
    The man was an adversary to be extinguished.
    Owain placed his sword into the young man’s open throat and drove it deep within. The man’s eyes bulged and blood spewed from his mouth.
    In the distance, Owain heard the high and panicked