Susan King - [Celtic Nights 02] Read Free

commander, Sir Walter de Soulis, continue his demand that the lady of the castle come out and give up her home to him.
    Bastard , Gawain thought succinctly. He hoped the woman and her servants, whom he had glanced earlier at some of the windows, had found an escape. But he knew they could be dead inside the blazing castle. He was not certain that the girl who had leaped free had survived, either.
    "You—Avenel! Did the girl come out of the water?" a knight called as he ran toward him.
    Gawain turned. "Nay. She may be gone—drowned."
    Another knight came forward and peered at the loch. "Drowned or fallen on the rocks—or even killed by those birds. Swans can fight like demons."
    "Sir Walter wants her captured," the first man said. "The mother and the rest have fled into the forest, they say."
    "And we may find the girl's body tomorrow," the other said.
    Gawain looked up at a soaring swan. "Scots claim that when someone drowns, their soul enters the body of a swan," he mused.
    "How do you know that?" one of the men asked.
    "I heard it as a boy. My... nurse was Scottish. There is a legend about enchanted swans on this very loch, if I recall. Supposedly the first swans of Elladoune, long ago, were drowned souls. Each new swan is the soul of someone deceased, they say."
    One knight looked at the other. "Sir Walter will want to hear about this."
    "Tell him the girl went into the water and has not come up," Gawain said. "She's gone, no doubt. A swan flew up from the spot where she fell. I have been watching."
    "I saw that too," the first knight said. "Enchanted swans or none, Edward of England owns this loch now, and he wants rebels, not children or swans. Come ahead. We'll have to tell Sir Walter the girl has drowned." He looked up at the white birds circling overhead. "How could she change into a swan?"
    "The longer I serve in Scotland, the more I believe anything can happen here," his comrade drawled as they walked away.
    Gawain remained to scan the water. He had deliberately told the knights that tale of enchantment so that they would hesitate to search for her. If the girl had survived, he wanted to give her a chance to escape. He dimly remembered, as a boy, having to flee in the night from unseen enemies; the girl's situation had triggered his sympathy and his interest.
    The burning silhouette of the castle was reflected in the loch. As a lad, he had believed in the eternal magic of Elladoune, yet the English had destroyed a legend in mere hours.
    Memories stirred through him here and everywhere he went in Scotland as part of King Edward's Scottish campaign. None of these knights knew of his Scottish origins—or the fact that his birthplace, Glenshie Castle, was somewhere close to Elladoune.
    Yet he did not even know where Glenshie was located.
    Glancing toward the hills, he knew one of them hid his boyhood home in its lee. Years ago, he had vowed to find Glenshie and claim his inheritance for his own. Now that he was a king's knight, that secret dream seemed remote and impossible.
    He walked along the rocky base that edged the tower. The water lapped at the promontory and sparks from the blaze sizzled in the loch like fallen stars. Searching the loch's surface, he was not yet ready to give up on finding the girl.
    Moments later, he saw the lift of a pale arm and glimpsed a face amid the swans. She was there, he was sure now—although he did not know if she was a drowned or a living thing.
    He yanked off his red surcoat and pulled at the leather ties of his chain-mail hood and hauberk. He laid his sword and belt aside, and struggled out of the steel mesh, his quilted coat, and his boots. He piled his gear, all but his trews, in the fiery shadow of the tower.
    No one watched as he slipped into the water. He did not ask for help, expecting none. His fellow knights were here to claim and conquer, not to defend and rescue.
    Once he had been fiercely proud to be among them. But he loathed what he had seen of the king's army on