Warrior Mine (Foretold #1)

Chapter One

The Dream

Pyrenees border

Lara

Lara woke with a start as the faceless

warrior grabbed for her hair, her heart pounding as hard and fast

in her chest as the hoofbeat of his black charger echoed in her

ears. She sat up on her bedroll and focused her gaze on the

surrounding meadow, slowing her breathing and lifting her

sweat-dampened hair from the back of her neck.

A wet tongue licked her

chin.

“Wolf?” She blew out a

shaky breath at the soft whine he gave and buried her fingers into

the ruff of his thick russet fur. “Just a dream, boy,” she

murmured. “Just a dream.”

A dream she’d had every night for the

past thirteen nights straight. A dream she’d hoped wouldn’t find

her here in the high meadow, a place of peace and solitude where

she brought her small herd of milk goats to every summer solstice.

A dream that had turned out to be as impossible to outrun as the

man in it: a warrior whose face remained hidden behind his helmet,

but for the cold, steel gray of his eyes as he chased her

down.

She stood on shaky legs and gazed up

to a sky as clear and blue as a robin’s egg, without a cloud in

sight. The soft morning sun would be glaring hot by noon. “We’ll be

taking the river path home,” she told Wolf, her constant companion

since she’d found him four years ago as a half-dead, newborn pup

alone in the woods. He’d fit into the palm of her hand then. Now he

was as big as the goats she signaled him to round up.

After plaiting her unruly curls into a

long braid, she piled it high atop her head and pinned it in place.

She bundled up her bedroll and few cooking utensils, threw the pack

over her shoulder, and carried the two sacks full of yarrow,

sorrel, and mustard seed she’d gathered over the past two days to

the goats and slung them over Nana’s back.

Glancing around the meadow, she

strolled over to the little pool formed by a natural outcropping of

rocks and pulled her waist knife to cut a blood-red rose from a

vine heavy with blooms. It felt like velvet and smelled of pure

attar. She stripped the stem of its thorns and wove it into her

braid, then she pulled her skirts up between her legs and tucked

the hems into her waist belt. She’d learned the freedom of movement

this gave her years ago, and had never fully given up the habit,

despite her Aunt Sophie’s repeated warnings about being caught in

such a state.

Which had happened only once, when

Ranulf, the Count of Oloron’s snake of a son, had spied on her and

followed her into the wilderness five summers ago.

Lara tightened her waist belt, checked

the strap to the small dagger she wore tied around her thigh since

her run-in with Ranulf, who wore her mark on his chin to this day,

and smiled grimly.

Birdsong filled the dry mountain air

as Lara, Wolf, and the goats made their way down the mountain’s

side, playing hide-and-seek with the sun as it dappled the canopy

of oak wood or reflected bright and metallic off the rippling

river.

Yet as warm and sun-filled as the day

was, Lara couldn’t shake the shadows of her dream, causing her to

look over her shoulder at every rustle of leaves or snap of a

twig.

By noon, the cool morning had given

way to the heat of day, and after stopping to share the last of her

jerky with Wolf, she waded knee-deep into the river to rinse her

hands and splash cold water onto the back of her neck.

Shivering as icy cold rivulets soaked

into her tunic and pooled at her belt, she pulled an errant strand

of hair from her neck and stuffed it back into her braid. She

turned for the shoreline, but then stopped. Wolf stood erect at her

side, his ears cocking back and forward, his nose thrust high in

the air, sniffing furiously.

“What is it, boy?” she

whispered. His ridge of fur standing on end from neck to tail, he

fixed his gaze on a grove of oak along the river’s bank and growled

low. Lara pulled her knife and dagger, then set her feet as a

shadow the size of a large beast moved in the tree line. “Heel,

Wolf.” She turned to run for the opposite shore, then stilled as

the shadows there moved too.

Lara swallowed hard and gripped her

blades tighter.

“Do not fear, lady,” a man

called, his voice low pitched and deep timbred.

Despite his assurances, every nerve in

her body screamed at her to flee as the biggest, blackest horse

she’d ever seen emerged from the shadows, its head and chest

covered in lacquered plates. The warrior astride the charger wore a

helmet that covered his face to his nose, and a vest of iron rings

set over a sleeveless tunic of leather a shade darker than the

tanned bronze of his thickly muscled arms.

There was a short sword sheathed at

his waist, a longsword at his saddle, and leather gauntlets tucked

into his waist belt. At sight of the gauntlets, Lara’s throat

constricted. She lifted her gaze and squinted to see what she could

of the man’s face. The man curled one corner of his lip, then the

other, displaying strong, straight teeth grinning down at her

through the dark stubble of his short beard.

“Truly, Lady.” The man

pulled his horse up at the water’s edge. “We mean you no

harm.”

We? Lara whirled around as another armed warrior emerged from the

opposite tree line on a gray steed. She shuffled sideways, giving

her a clear view of both. The warrior on the black giant doffed his

helmet, sat it down on the pommel of his saddle, and ran a hand

through thick black hair worn short in the northern

fashion.

As the black-haired warrior

dismounted, Wolf growled low. “Stay,” she commanded

softly.

She gripped her knives even tighter

and glanced at the warrior on the gray, who made no motion to

dismount, then turned her attention back to the black’s rider, who

was wading into the water, toward her.

Though Lara was tall enough to stand

eye to eye with most men, this man was taller than her by a full

head. He had a high, wide forehead and thick black brows. An old

scar slashed across his right eyebrow and down his cheek, and his

nose looked to have been broken more than once and was as crooked

as his smile. Neither of which softened the hard line of his jaw

one whit. He stopped no more than two paces from her, and his eyes

were the color of honed steel.

“Have we met before?” His

deep, resounding voice resonated throughout her body.

Had they met before? Only

every night for the last thirteen nights. Lara shook her head. “No.”

He cocked his head and offered a slow,

lopsided grin. “Let me introduce myself, then. I am Captain Talon

Guiscard, king’s soldier, newly garrisoned at Crossroads

Keep.”

He offered her his hand, large, tan

and corded: a warrior’s hand, well used to wielding the short sword

at his side and the longsword sheathed at his saddle.

Lara wasn’t about to lower her knives.

She’d been running from that hand too long and too hard.

“What is your purpose

here, Captain Guiscard?”

“Here? Today?” His

half-smile widened fully. “A leisurely survey of the river’s

course.” He let his gaze take a leisurely survey of her damp tunic

and bare legs. “And all the wondrous sights it offers.”

With her tall frame and auburn hair,

Lara was used to being stared at by men. From villagers she’d known

her entire life to the hundreds of soldiers garrisoned at the Keep

over the years.

Yet no man’s gaze had ever unnerved

her quite the way this man’s did. And she didn’t think it was

entirely due to her dreams.

Lengthening her spine, she lifted her

chin and met his gaze head on. “Have you had your fill yet,

Captain?”

“Nay, Lady,” he answered,

his grin cocksure. “There are some sights a man will never have his

fill of.”

“Nor of their own charms,

apparently.” Lara dripped her voice with honey. “Meager and oafish

though they be.”

“Oho, better watch

yourself, Talon.” His mounted companion doffed his helmet, and a

head full of golden curls spilled down. “That red hair of hers is

no lie, and her tongue is as sharp as those knives she still

grasps.”

“Aye.” The captain glanced

down as Lara laid a hand on Wolf’s scruff, holding him at bay, then

he grinned up at her as he took a step closer and plucked the rose

from her hair. “She is a thorny beauty she.” He twirled the rose in

his blunt-tipped fingers.

Lara glared from the rose to his grin.

“And you, sir,” she hissed, “are an arrogant ass.”

He burst out laughing, a rich, hearty

laugh that caught Lara unawares. Then she remembered how he’d

chased her in her dreams, merciless and unrelenting. Not about to

let him catch her now, she leapt to the side of him. He grabbed for

her, and she lashed out with her dagger and felt it bite

flesh.

“Bloody hell, woman.” The

woods echoed with his curse.

She scrambled up the riverbank and ran

fast and hard with Wolf at her heels, then turned onto a game path,

listening for the sounds of boot fall or hoofbeat behind

her.

Nothing but her own rapid panting

filled her senses, and she turned onto a smaller game path for

another hundred paces, then hid in a thick bramble where she worked

on slowing her breathing. Mostly she waited to see if the men

followed her, and hoped her goats wouldn’t run off. Telling herself

they knew the way home if they did, she prayed the soldiers

wouldn’t take their anger at her out on her goats.

***

“What ails you, child?”

Sophie eyed Lara closely as they approached the gates to Crossroads

Keep, the king’s holding in the province and garrison to the latest

posting of soldiers. “Are you ill?”

“Nay, Tante.” Lara patted

Gaea’s neck and shifted on the mare’s saddle for the hundredth time

in the short ride from their home to the keep, Wolf loping

alongside them.

Sophie the Sixth. The healer lived up

to her title today. Her gift of a sixth sense had always come with

an uncanny ability to read people and foresee the future. She’d

picked up the title of prophetess as well as a baby when Lara had

been abandoned in a basket on the healer’s doorstep. Sophie had

raised Lara as her own, and Lara usually told Sophie everything,

but hadn’t spoken a word to her of the steel-eyed warrior chasing

her down in her dreams, or of her encounter with him and his

companion at the river yesterday. Why she hadn’t, she couldn’t have

said, though she was fairly certain she’d be trying to explain it

to Sophie soon enough. “I’m overtired, is all.”

“Well, you won’t be

getting any rest anytime soon.” Sophie sat back in her saddle as

the palisade gates to Crossroads Keep creaked open. “By Berta’s

count, there’s twenty horse soldiers returned from the Moorish

wars. All of them battle tested and all of them needing a patch-up

of one sort or another.”

Lara gave a wan smile. Though she’d

been helping Sophie tend the ills and injuries of troops garrisoned

here for as long as she could remember, there had never been a

Captain Talon Guiscard to deal with before. She gave a deep breath.

What lay ahead was as intimidating as the sheer size of the opened

gates. “They always do.”

They followed Denys, the stable boy

sent to fetch them, through the bustling courtyard, greeting the

villagers who stopped with their baskets of wares and foodstuffs to

give nods of recognition in return. But they pointedly ignored the

newly garrisoned soldiers, who stopped midstride at their first

sight of the two women riding with a wolf-dog at their sides.

Outside the stables, a lone soldier lounged askew on a bench, his

eyes as puffy and red as his cheeks as he watched them approach.

Wolf growled low, and Lara gave the man her back as she dismounted

and handed Gaea’s reins to Denys.

“Over here, Sophie dear,”

Berta called out over the din, waving her fleshy arm at them from

the outdoor ovens.

Sophie and Lara untied their sacks of

medicines from their saddles and made their way through the maze of

tables laden with baskets of grains, greens, and new summer apples,

to where Berta, her daughter, Enid, and granddaughter, Marta,

greeted them with floury hugs.

“Smells good.” Sophie took

a deep breath as Enid pulled three loaves of rye from an oven. “How

does this garrison like your cooking?”

As generous of body as she was of

spirit and plate, Berta smiled with satisfaction. “This garrison

likes my cooking just fine. In fact, the captain and his second

have made sure to compliment me on it each meal.”

Sophie nodded. It was well known Berta

was the best cook in the province. “What manner of man do you find

this captain to be, other than sensible enough to compliment your

cooking?”

“A sensible man in

general.” Berta wiped her doughy hands on her apron. “He says

please and thank you, and most of his men mind their manners and

keep their hands to themselves. All the chambermaids keep talking

of it.”

“And not all of them are

happy about it.” Enid, her mother’s daughter in looks and mien,

arched her brows as she sorted apples. “A few are quite

disappointed, for there are more handsome men in this troop than

not, and not all of them young.” She looked pointedly at Berta, who

blushed and giggled like a girl still in side-braids. “Mother has

caught herself a handsome graybeard with her cooking.”

Sophie peered at Berta, who had been

widowed ten years ago and never looked twice at a man since as far

as Lara knew, and there wasn’t much among the women they didn’t all

know. Berta and Sophie had been friends for the past thirty years,

both of them young brides when they’d first met and both of them

gray-haired widows now. Berta’s middle daughter, Patience, was

Lara’s best friend, and had been since they were old enough to

toddle around together.

“Well now.” Berta planted

her hands firmly on her hips. “The pots of water are boiling and

there’s a basket of clean linen strips beside them that need

tending.”

“Let’s get on with it,

then.” Sophie hitched her sack up. “There’s twenty men need tending

too, and I’m curious to meet this new captain.”

Lara clutched her sack to her chest

and nodded dumbly. Maybe it would be best to confess to Sophie

about the captain now.

“You’ll have to wait to

meet the captain.” Berta tossed another lump of dough onto the

table. “He rode up into the mountains this morning. Anglbert says

he’s looking for something very particular.”

Lara choked and coughed and toed the

ground at her sandaled feet.

Sophie gave Lara a sideways glance.

“Anglbert?” she said to Berta.

“Mother’s graybeard,” Enid

told her, and Berta flapped at her like an angry hen.

“He’s not my graybeard.”

She clucked.

Enid laughed. “One more roast pig, and

he will be.”