Chapter Twenty-Four
A rare early summer’s day it was when Fearghal called them all together the next morning. The sun shone golden across the land, setting the river to sparkling, and fair-weather clouds sailed like white curraghs across the sea of blue. A soft, gentle breeze brushed Ardahl’s cheek as he joined the crowd of mostly men and a few women near the spring.
Indeed, Liadan stood beside him. He had just been leaving for training when the call came, and she’d come along with him, leaving her mam behind.
This, since the hall had burned, had become the unofficial meeting place for the clan. Fearghal, with Dornach and the two druids flanking him, stood to one side, awaiting his people as they filtered in.
His gaze roamed from face to face as he allowed them to still before speaking.
“My people! This is a call to arms. Since the last raid, Dacha’s men have been haunting our western border, where Brihan Brioc allows him to be. Naught we have done has succeeded in chasing him from there. I have consulted with my advisors and our holy men. Indeed, we were up all the night. We will ride out in force and chase Dacha from our border. Not only that, we will pursue him through Brihan’s lands. If our closest neighbor has chosen to side wi’ our enemy, we will show him no mercy.”
A thrill went through Ardahl, followed swiftly by a feeling of sick dread. To choose such a course—an attack as opposed to defense—Fearghal must be very certain Brihan had indeed turned against him.
That meant war against not one tribe, but two.
The crowd stirred and muttered with what Ardahl took as approval. Many among the warriors had been arguing in private for such a campaign, wondering why Fearghal did not call them up.
They had their answer now.
Yet Fearghal looked wary and, to Ardahl’s eyes, not entirely confident. Dornach’s gaze, which roamed the crowd made up mostly of his warriors, looked hard.
And the holy men? It seemed very strange seeing just the two of them standing there without Aodh. Aodh, who had always led them. Who rarely allowed any uncertainty to show.
Who had sentenced Ardahl to his current fate.
Before he could contemplate that further, Liadan grabbed his arm. He’d grown accustomed now to her touch when she treated his hurts, or when she reached out impulsively while they spoke together.
She touched him casually, so he told himself, as a sister might a brother. Now, though, the touch seemed to ground him, and to unite them.
“We will ride out with a full complement of chariots and as many men as we can spare.” For the count of ten heartbeats, Fearghal gazed at his people, hard-eyed. “Make your farewells and settle your households. No’ all o’ ye will be coming back.”
The air trembled as it received those words. Someone called, “Chief Fearghal, when do we leave?”
“Before dawn tomorrow.”
He left then, turning his back smartly and walking away. Leaving his people with unanswered questions.
But truly, there was only one answer, was there not? They went to fight. Nothing more.
Liadan turned to Ardahl, her gaze clinging to his, both her hands clutching his forearms.
“It is dreadful news!”
It was, and the kind of bold move Fearghal made but rarely. “He must be very certain o’ the threat, to take such a step.”
“Aye, but—but—” Liadan shook herself. “I cannot like it. So many to go.”
“He wants to be certain we will prove victorious.”
She leaned close to him. “I have a terrible, bad feeling about it.”
“Do ye?” That made Ardahl’s spine tingle. There were feelings, and then there were feelings , some merely the product of fear, and some indicating truth.
Persistently, her gaze clung to his. “What if ye do no’ come back again?”
It was a terrible thing to ask a man, a warrior on his way to fight. A curse, almost. Many among the clan believed it was doom to express such fears aloud.
Ardahl did not take it that way, not in this case.
It meant she cared. It meant she wanted him to come back to her.
And that fair stole his breath away.
“Liadan—”
“We cannot talk here. Come.”
They were surrounded by others questioning one another, protesting, exclaiming. She seized him by the hand and towed him away from the throng, not toward her mother’s hut but a stand of rowan trees that marked the edge of the wood.
There he tried to halt her. “Liadan. Liadan—”
But she hurried him on. Not until they were quite alone, save for the no doubt distant guards, did she pause and turned again to face him.
“Ardahl.” She spoke only his name. But a thousand words warred in her eyes. He stood and watched her fight her way through them till she fair trembled with emotion. “I thought ye a serpent,” she said at last. “A vile nathrach , I did, when I believed ye had killed our Conall.”
His heart clenched in his chest. He had to lick his lips before he could say, “Ye believe that no more?”
“I believe that no more.”
“Och, Liadan, lass—”
She threw herself into his arms. She did it so violently, his weapons rattled. He didn’t care. He gathered her in, close and then closer, arms folded across her slender back.
He’d seen the tears in her eyes a moment before she landed.
“Och, lass. Och, do no’ weep.”
Face half buried in his neck, she moaned, “What if I lose ye? What if I lose ye just like Conall?”
That made him tingle from head to toe. He mattered to her, in some way he could not fairly define. As a substitute for her brother?
As something more?
“I canna bear it.”
Aye, so she was frightened. At being left once more with no one to care for her, her young sister, and her ailing mother.
But her arms, clutching him so hard, argued there might be something else behind it.
Their relationship had changed since the long night she’d sat and held his hand beside the door. Since she’d decided to help him discover the truth.
“Here now,” he crooned to her, speaking the words soft into her mane of golden hair. “I will return.”
“That is no’ certain. A big battle, this will be.”
A series of them, no doubt.
“Much hard fighting. And ye are no’ yet fully recovered.”
“I am as recovered as I need be.”
“What if Chief Brihan joins his forces with Dacha?”
Aye, what if?
“Ye will be facing twice as many men. And I will not know—all that while, I will not know.”
Aye, an agony. If she cared.
He said the only thing he could. “I will come back.”
“How can ye say—”
“Liadan, I will come back. To ye.”
She raised her head at that and looked into his face. Her eyes swam in tears, luminous with her emotions and what lay in her heart. Fear. Hope. Unmistakable desire.
Ah, by all the gods! Despite his wild attraction to her, he’d dared hope for no more than forgiveness and perhaps friendship. Indeed, a tentative friendship had grown between them. Was there more?
“Do no’ fret for me, lass.”
“I canna help it. I—”
“I will return to ye.” He said it for the third time, a charm. “So I do promise.”
She did not say what an impossible promise it was to keep. That in the heat of battle—battle after battle—a man could not dodge every sword and every blow. That death would surround him. That he might well end sprawled on his back in the green turf, staring at a sky as blue as the one that now arched over them.
The promise was what she needed to hear, impossible or not.
Her lips parted with words she did not speak, and she trembled in his arms.
He kissed her, because he could do nothing else.
Ever since he’d moved into her house, since he’d seen her anew, the desire had simmered inside him. As he claimed her parted lips there alone in the grove, tasted of her for the first time, it roused into flame. What began as an attempt to comfort became a rush of pure want.
Strong and bright and victorious, with a life of its own.
A sob sounded in her throat as she wound her arms around his neck, fingers digging into his hair. He made a corresponding sound—inquiry and demand—and she opened for him, allowing him in. Tongue finding tongue. Reaching, reaching—heart finding heart.
He strained her to him, and she clung, she clung, trembling with need equal to his own. From two separate beings, they became one.
How long that kiss lasted, Ardahl would never know. He forgot to breathe. Forgot the tribe and the world around it. Forgot anything existed, save this.
“Ardahl. Ardahl.” They must have stopped kissing, because she spoke his name. In a broken way, she did. She wept, the tears running down her face. “I canna bear it if ye do no’ return to me.”
“Here, now.” He thumbed the tears away, following them with his lips. Salt and sweetness. “Have I no’ said I will?”
“Aye. Aye.”
“List to me. Liadan, listen.” He raised her chin so her gaze met his again. “Ye ha’ the courage o’ a she-wolf in your heart. Rarely ha’ I seen a stronger woman. Ye will carry on while I am awa’, for the sake o’ your mam. For your sister.”
“I will.” Her gaze steadied from what she saw in his. “I will. But ye will be sent in at the head o’ the men—”
He gave a wry smile. “No’ at the head. Cathair claims that place still.”
“And should Cathair fall?”
“Then it rests in the hands o’ the gods. All of it.”
“The gods have no’ been good to us of late.”
“Have they no’?” They had brought him this. Out of a wealth of heartache, pain, and sorrow. This bright and priceless feeling of belonging, as if he had found the one person in all the world who carried a missing piece of him.
Of his heart.
“Aye, so.” She blushed, and her gaze fell from his. “Ardahl, I do no’ understand what this is I feel for ye—”
“Nor do I, in truth.”
“But it is strong. Strong . I will let it be my strength.”
“I ken fine ye have it in ye. Now, ye must get back to your mam, and I must away to the field.”
Still she did not release him, clutching hard. At last she nodded, drew her hands from him reluctantly. “I will see ye later at home.”
“Ye will.”
“Go carefully. Ardahl. Ardahl?”
“Aye?”
“Go carefully,” she repeated. He walked away knowing that was not what she’d meant to say.
What, he wondered, as he reached the field and joined the other men, made up friendship? When did it deepen to love? What fired up such a sense of belonging?
Fragile, but strong. That was Liadan. He set to practice with a will.