The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy Read Free Page A

Epidii, my own people?’
    Eremon’s hand stilled on her hair. ‘Only the Epidii warriors knew we were setting sail from Calgacus’s fort. No one else within the dun knew.’
    Rhiann’s mouth dropped open with instinctive denial, but just then all thoughts were banished by the sudden, startled shout of the boat’s captain. He was a black-haired island man, and keen of eye.
    ‘Lord!’ he cried to Eremon, and when Rhiann raised her head she saw he was pointing at the mainland, his other arm clasping the mast, each tendon strung hard under the weathered skin.
    Eremon leaped up so abruptly that Rhiann fell on her hands and knees across the packs, before scrabbling to her feet.
    ‘Prince!’ the sailor shouted again. ‘Smoke! Thick smoke, in the air over Dunadd!’

CHAPTER 2
    D riven hard by the now desperate oarsmen, the boat shot between the scattered rocks into the Bay of Isles like an arrow released from its string.
    Yet once they rounded the great headland that sheltered the bay from the sea, Rhiann saw that the smoke staining the blue sky came not from Dunadd, but from the signal beacons, lining the high ground to north and south of the bay.
    ‘They are burned out,’ Eremon muttered to Rhiann, shading his eyes to look up at the ridges cloaked in bracken and sheep-bitten turf, with hazel and oak trees spilling down the slopes. There were no flames to be seen, only the trailing smoke of the bonfires.
    Rhiann’s breath was tight and high in her chest. She glanced at Eremon, wanting to speak, but was stopped by the hard glitter of his eyes. The man who had cradled her so gently moments before was gone.
    Conaire, Eremon’s foster-brother, had laid aside his oar to join Eremon in the bow, his lithe leaps from rib to rib belying his great height and build. ‘Do you think it safe to land, brother?’
    Eremon was still, his dark head thrust towards shore like a hound scenting the air. Ahead, the bay had opened up into full view: the broad sweep of marsh surrounding the mouth of the river Add; the river channels snaking over the tidal mudflats; and, further towards the eastern horizon, the blue hills that cupped the plain on which Dunadd sat. Close to the shore was the cluster of roundhouses and jetties that made up the port of Crinan. A pall of smoke hung over the village, yet the buildings themselves seemed whole.
    Across from Crinan, on a headland that curved around the bay like a sheltering arm, the black skeleton of an abandoned dun crouched. That fort had been burned by the Romans less than a year before, and it was the reminder of this attack that had terrified them; the memory of coming over the hills to see smoke against the sky and bodies sprawled among the ruins. Rhiann’s blood was now pounding so hard that her sight shook, and she wiped her sweating palms down the skirt of her dress, trying to calm her breathing.
    Caitlin, Conaire’s wife, flung herself across the oar benches to reach Rhiann, her haste making her uncharacteristically clumsy. Rhiann grasped her thin arm to steady her.
    ‘Wh-what does it mean?’ Caitlin cried, her tiny hand clutching at Rhiann’s fingers. Rhiann looked down into the small, heart-shaped face beneath a cloud of fair hair, tugged from its braids by wind and damp. Caitlin was drawn and pale from the nausea of the voyage, which, though calm, had still affected her now she was expecting a child.
    Rhiann forced a smile and stroked Caitlin’s cold fingers, though she herself was fighting down a wave of panic. ‘I am sure it is nothing,’ she murmured. Just then the backwash from the rocks of the headland made the boat lurch, and Rhiann’s hand had to steady both of them against the single mast.
    ‘There is no outward sign of trouble,’ Eremon at last pronounced, his gaze on the shore. ‘The fishing boats are there on the sand, unharmed. Look! The nobles’ boats are also tied up. There is smoke, but why?’
    Rhiann peeled Caitlin’s fingers from her arm and helped her to