The Eagle and the Raven Read Free Page A

I’ve caused today. Tog only insisted on hunting because of a dare I made. If Cunobelin is very angry I will help you both pay Brutus’s price. I don’t suppose the traders will want him.”
    “No, I don’t suppose so.” He felt his legs trembling loosely with fatigue and he saw her mistily, through a haze of wine fumes. Seeing his hesitation she began to smile. Ah, not now, not tonight, he thought to himself unsteadily. But it was too late. Already his hand was reaching out, lifting a lock of her hair, running it through his fingers to feel its thick, smooth texture. He raised it to his face, breathing in its perfume and its warmth, and she did not move until he had finished.
    “Stay with me, Caradoc,” she said slowly, looking at him enquiringly. “You want to stay, don’t you? I am a Samain demon tonight. Do you feel the spell that I am placing on you?”
    She spoke half in jest but he felt the bewitchment stealing over him like a sweet, familiar song. He knew that he should rush to the door with a protecting spell on his lips, but, as always, he only looked at her with hot stupefaction. He and Tog had often joked about this black witch of whom they were so dangerously fond, and they teased her unmercifully about the paleness of her northern skin in the same way that they teased Eurgain about her long silences, or Adminius about his precious collection of boars’ teeth, but they did it without malice and without forethought, the unthinking words of friends of long standing. If she irritated him lately he put it down to the coming of winter, the time when men looked to the months ahead with tight belts and empty bellies, a time of year when he merely existed. And, if he sometimes wanted to slap her for her superior airs and her fiery will in an argument, well, she was, after all, just a girl, only a fourteen-year-old girl struggling to become a woman.
    As she brought a handful of her own hair to her face, and closed her eyes, he felt a rush of heat from his loins. “You have no choice, spoiled Caradoc,” she said quietly. “My bed is far more comfortable than the damp forest floor.”
    Outside, the rain drummed down. The wind had dropped to a low, persistent moan and inside the room the untended fire was dying, hissing now and then as stray raindrops found it. She reached up to his neck, removed the golden torc, and laid it carefully on the floor. She reached up to unbuckle his heavy belt, and as she did so the sword slid onto the skins. Still he made no move.
    A weakening struggle went on within him and his eyes followed her every motion, but when the thin fingers touched his face he surrendered, grabbing her by her arms and pulling her sharply against him.
    After all, he told himself, it is Samain. Raven of Panic, you will not find me here, he called silently.
    A moment later she pulled away from his grasp. “You are making me wet,” she said evenly. “Take off your tunic, and your breeches. No, I will do it for you. You are standing there as if I have put a holding spell upon you.”
    “You always do. Aricia…”
    She put a finger to his lips. “No, Caradoc. Don’t speak, please.” Her voice shook. Stooping, she drew the short tunic over his head, and as she did so, he saw a flare of mockery in her eyes.
    How strange, he thought. I never noticed before that her eyes are flecked with gold. He grasped her again, kissing her roughly, clumsily, feeling her hands warm on his naked back, losing himself in the softness of her mouth. Her magnificent hair fell tangling over his arms, and as he felt her press against him he caught her up and threw her on the bed, twitching the curtains closed behind them and cutting off the light of the lamp. He looked at her in the dimness as she lay waiting, arms outstretched, her hair spread wide upon the pillow, her thin-lipped smile both enraging him and inviting him to pain.
    “Tog knows,” he whispered.
    Her smile widened. “I don’t care. Do you?”
    “No,” he