Read Online Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] by The Stone Maiden - Free Book Online Page B

her cheeks and strands of hair fluttered across her eyes. She would not look away for pride.
    "Cool your ardor, my lady, we mean no harm," he said. "This wind may not bother you, but I am not overfond of it, nor are my men. We have been riding since dawn. Will you offer welcome to us or not?"
    She sighed. "We will." By tradition, hospitality was never refused, even to an enemy. Nor could she refuse a messenger sent by the king. "Wait with your companions. I will speak to my kinsmen, and we will lead you to Kinlochan. Now that the deer are gone," she added, "we have no reason to stay out here longer."
    She glanced past him and counted at least twenty knights. Without venison, she was not sure how Kinlochan's hospitality would feed such a large host of knights. She doubted that Normans liked porridge any better than they liked cold weather.
    "We will await the lady," Sebastien said courteously, but his eyes sparked like steel. He gathered the reins. As the horse turned, Alainna saw the blue painted shield that hung at the side of his saddle, until now partly obscured from her view.
    The shield bore a simple design of a single white arrow on a blue field. She had seen that design before, in a dream, carried by a mysterious golden warrior. Dear God, she thought. Just as in her dream, she now stood alone on a snow-coated hill to greet warriors, while her kinsmen hunted in the glen below. The golden warrior in the dark blue cloak, with his shield of a single arrow was here too; all he lacked was the magic of the faery realm.
    Her breath caught in her throat.
    "Wait!" she called, running a step or two after him.
    He drew rein and turned. "What is it?"
    "Your... your shield shows an arrow on a plain field. What does it mean?"
    "'Tis for Saint Sebastien," he answered. "An arrow is his symbol, and serves well for mine."
    Why would she dream of Sebastien le Bret before she had met him, and why would she have found an arrow in the grass, as if it were an omen? She did not understand what any of it meant. He was not the warrior her clan needed.
    "Sebastien," she repeated. "Why your baptismal name? What of your surname, Le Bret? The crests that Norman knights carry on their shields and banners refer to their family names."
    "There are many knights," he said, "from Brittany." He circled the horse and cantered away.
    Alainna stared after him. The wind whipped at her plaid, stirred her hair. The sunset glowed over snowy grasses, and sparked bronze in the armor of the warriors and the leader who waited for her. Her dream had come to life.
    Her heart pounded hard. The golden warrior did exist after all. But he brought destruction, not salvation.
    In the glen below, her kinsmen shouted as a stag bounded across their path. They began to chase it, following the dogs. Alainna stood on the hill and watched them, caught in the maze of her thoughts.
    Although she did not look at him, she was intensely aware of the Breton knight who waited with his men.
    By the time her kinsmen returned after losing the deer, the setting sun cast blue shadows over the hills. Alainna began to walk down the hill toward the men. A white hare scurried across her path to disappear beneath a gorse bush.
    She sighed. Clan Laren did not even have a hare to put in their kettle, with so many mouths to feed this evening. A fortunate day had turned unlucky indeed.
    Another hare scuttled after the first. Alainna stopped, wondering what stirred them from their hiding places to cross her path. She turned then, and froze all movement.
    A few yards from where she stood, a boar emerged from a stand of trees. The small, high-set eyes gleamed, the long snout lifted to reveal yellowed tusks and a black mouth. Mottled brown, huge, and ugly, it appeared agitated, head swinging up and down as if it meant to attack.
    The horses on the hill and the hunting dogs in the glen must have disturbed the boar while it foraged among the trees. Alainna knew the animals had uncertain tempers. She stepped