Free Éire’s Captive Moon by Sandi Layne Page A

remained upright, blinking back tears. Into her home she went, followed by the four invaders.
    “What happened in here?” Charis bit out, her jaws clenched against the choking sorrow.
    No response beyond being shoved roughly toward the scattered hearth. She wanted to spit.
    All about her, the tables were overturned, small boxes and packs dumped clumsily on the floor. Her dishes had been broken, for they’d been of clay and wood and had no value to the despoilers of her rath and home. But there on the shelf, her medicines had been left alone.
    She didn’t wonder why, but thought it might have something to do with the linked iron circles her husbands had had made for her, years past. As a wedding gift. She had brought the home to their marriage, so they had made things for the home they would have together, to demonstrate their fidelity. It was the way of the marriage of the first degree, between equals of status or wealth. The most honorable, in her opinion.
    She had planned on handing down the circles to her children, but her womb had never quickened.
    The children! For the space of a heartbeat, her fingers stilled as they ordered her herbs and surgery elements. Needle. Thread for the wound. Mandragora. Chamomile for once she’d stitched him up. Yarrow—leaves picked fresh yesterday—to fight swelling and fever. The children! She had to protect them. She had brought about Devin’s death by her intemperate behavior; she could not allow that again. Don’t look in their direction! she warned herself as she blankly tucked her medicines into a satchel. Keep their attention on you, not the children. They have to be safe!
    “All right,” she said, too loudly. “I’m ready.” It was her stance more than her words, she was sure, that alerted her guards. She threw her shoulders back and kept her eyes focused straight ahead of her. If she dared to let her gaze wander, she’d be overcome with memories . . . memories so excruciating she would want to mix some herbs for herself and send her body to the earth.
    The lead Northman guard pointed for her to leave the dwelling. She hesitated and swallowed back her bile. He shoved her then, a sharp pressing of his callused hands between her shoulder blades. She hissed, stumbling over her loosened sandals and almost falling to the rushes near the door. Another intruder snatched her upright before pushing her forward more gently.
    Clenching her jaw, she moved forward again, carefully ignoring all that was going on around her. The smoke from the scattered battlefire, whimpers of the violated, all went unheeded. She did take heed of the inner trickle of relief that no babies were heard crying, but that was all. Step by step she made her way to where Branieucc’s son waited with the invader.
    Her captor smiled benignly at her, as one might to a favored pet. She saw where a gaping wound split his face when he smiled, and was glad in her heart.
    “Healer? You are to work immediately, and then the leader here will tell you your fate.”
    “So if he dies, will he kill me?” Charis asked, bending to the wounded man’s side. “Death would be welcome,” she finished, her voice as empty as her eyes while she measured out the mandragora for her patient.
    It was tempting to give him too much. Tempting to kill him with the drug. But no, she would save that pleasure for their leader. The braided man who had killed her husbands.
    It had been her spear that had taken his helmet. It would be her skills, she vowed, that would take his life.

Chapter 7

    Charis fought within herself as she treated the leader of the invaders. Agnarr, the man who had stolen her life when his blade took the lives of Devin and Devlin. Her whole body tensed with the desire to kill this man, to revenge herself and all her people.
    Cowan, from the west, had perhaps discerned this. He had stayed at her left side as she was treating the invader. While pretending to lean in to see her stitching, he had slipped her knife