Moon Burning (5 page)

“Answer your clanswoman. Tell her you’re not claiming me.” Sabrine looked at the other woman. “He said he’d watch over me tonight, naturally he’d think to do it here. It’s not necessary, I’m sure.”

“Are you a healer then?” he asked.

An unexpected twinge of old pain pierced her heart. “No.” Had her parents lived, she would have been. Her mother had been a healer, but their deaths led Sabrine to the path of a warrior.

“Verica is and she’s decent. She says you need watching, you’ll be watched.”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you didn’t answer her as I requested.”

“Oh, was that a request? Sounded like an order to me.”

“Perhaps I could have worded my request more tactfully.”

“You could have refrained from pinching me.”

“No, really, I couldn’t.”

��Y
ou’re awfully mouthy for such a fragile little thing.”

“Compared to you, a mother bear is a wee thing.” She didn’t deny the fragile argument because she needed him to see her as just that. Weak and not a threat to be watched while she searched the keep and surrounding huts if need be for the stolen
Clach Gealach Gra
.

If only he knew the truth about her.

Verica laughed aloud. “You two are better than the old men over the checkers table.”

Instead of getting angry at the woman’s mockery as Sabrine expected, Barr shook his head as he laid Sabrine on his bed. “With wisdom like those two impart, I’m surprised this clan has lasted at all.”

“You’re not the only one.” But Verica’s voice lacked the humor Barr’s had had; a dark tone Sabrine had to wonder at swam just below the surface of the other woman’s words.

“You’ll not believe what Muin did today and told ’twas because his grandfather taught him.”

“What’s that?”

“He shot at a raven in the middle of our hunt for wild boar.”

“Was the fact he shot at the bird what you find so appalling, or that he did it during the hunt?” Verica asked.

“Both. We’re Chrechte. We respect life; we do not kill for sport.”

Sabrine could not believe what she was hearing.

“What did Muin say to that?” Verica demanded.

“Nothing. What was there to say?” Barr’s unconscious arrogant assurance the other man had to agree with him was as alluring as it was ridiculous.

Sabrine found it difficult to stay focused on the conversation with Barr’s continued nakedness, though Verica seemed utterly unaffected.

Still, Barr’s apparent naïveté astounded her. “You do not truly believe all of the Faol feel the same?”

“Any under my authority had better.”

Verica flipped her uniquely colored hair back over her shoulder. “What did Muin say his reason was for shooting at the bird?”

“He said his grandfather told him ravens were unlucky.” Outrage colored his tone a bright red. “The only thing unlucky about that raven today was it flying in the sky where an idiot boy could see it.”

“So, your clan did not teach as much about ravens?” Verica asked in a neutral voice.

“That they are bad luck?” he asked, as if he continued to find it nearly impossible to believe someone thought such.

This was wholly unexpected and Sabrine did not know how to interpret his attitude as a Faol warrior.

“Yes.”

“No. Every Sinclair knows that all animals are necessary for our world to remain in balance.” He made a sound of disgust. “And Talorc, our . . .
their
laird, would have sent someone to the healer for suggesting a hunter pay closer attention to superstitions than to the hunt.”

“Truly?” Verica asked.

“I do not lie.”

“You told the boy outside that a wild animal had attacked me and taken my clothes,” Sabrine interjected.

“We do not know that is not what happened.”

“So it was not a lie?” she asked, finding the whole conversation beyond her knowledge of the wolves.

Barr shrugged. “There are lies and there is stretching the truth when it will not harm.”

“You need to put a new plaid on,” she blurted out.

The nearness of his naked presence was overshadowing all else.

“You do not like my naked body?”

“I think she likes it too much. I will get my basket of remedies.” Verica curtsied and left the room.

The walls that seemed spacious before started to close in as Sabrine realized they were well and truly alone.

Barr sat beside her on the bed and then proceeded to start tugging his plaid from her body.

She grabbed at it. “What do you think you are doing?”

“Verica cannot clean your scratches if she cannot get to them.”

“I’ll remove the plaid when she returns.”

“You were not so modest in the forest.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Come, I’ve already seen your delectable body. It’s of no consequence if I see it again.”

“Truly? You think to convince me with insults?” But was it an insult? He thought her body delectable. Though his scent had said he found her sexually appealing, ’twas not quite the same.

“It’s not an insult.”

Maybe that was not a lie. “Turn your back and I’ll get under the blanket.”

She expected him to refuse, but he stood and turned around so his back was to her. She made quick work of ripping away the now-bloodstained plaid and climbing between the bedding.

The blanket was the softest wool she’d ever felt and different colors than the Donegal plaid. Sabrine remembered something Verica had said. “Are you from a different clan?”

That would explain his being laird when the Éan spies had named a different man.

“Aye, I was born a Sinclair.”

“But you have the armband of the Donegal laird.”

Verica came into the room carrying a large steaming bowl of water. “That’s because Scotland’s king and our former laird,
Rowland
”—she practically spit the name—“saw fit to give my brother’s rightful place to another clan’s warrior.” A girl followed behind her, carrying a basket that was half her size.

“I am training your brother to take his rightful place when he has reached maturity.” Barr donned a plaid with deft movements.

“And when will that be?” She put her hands on her hips and stared her laird right in the eye. “When he’s a grandfather?”

The girl put the basket down, her downcast gaze flitting back and forth between her mistress and her laird.

“If the boy isn’t ready to lead by his twenty-fifth birthday, I’ll wash my hands of him and this superstition-riddled clan.”

Rather than look offended at the slur on her clan, Verica nodded as if pleased. “I have your word on that?”

“You do.”

Verica opened the basket and handed the girl a packet of herbs from within. “Drop two pinches into the water and stir.”

The girl did as she was told, then Verica took some of the water and mixed it with several other ingredients in a smaller bowl. Verica wet a cloth in the large bowl of water and began thoroughly cleansing Sabrine’s wound on her arm. When she was done, she and the girl made a poultice and applied it to both sides of the wound. “That should draw out any poison.”

Verica wrapped the upper arm in a linen bandage before carefully washing each scratch and treating it with salve. Barr watched everything with close scrutiny. Verica showed no more concern for Sabrine’s modesty than Barr had though. Which was no surprise, Sabrine supposed. They were both Chrechte after all. Humans in the Highlands were not an overly modest bunch, and the Chrechte were even less concerned with exposure. However, in her case she’d discovered a sense of modesty she’d not known she possessed.

She felt as shy as a human virgin in Barr’s presence.

 

 

B
arr knocked a young human male on his backside, the impact sending up a cloud of dust around the warrior in training.

He’d left Verica watching over Sabrine, with instructions not to allow anyone else in his room. There were things he was certain she had yet to reveal. Determined to be the one she told them to, he used her injury as an excuse to keep her isolated. If keeping her in his bed and away from the other males of his clan pleased the wolf more than it should, that was his secret to keep. His new clan was curious about her though. No fewer than five people had asked about the naked woman he’d found in the forest. Gossip spread faster than a pitcher of spilled ale.

Barr was too busy training soldiers to satisfy their curiosity and he left it to Muin to tell what he knew. Which was less than Barr; that was little enough.

Though the younger Chrechte still managed to make a full meal out of it.

“When your opponent is bigger than you, use his size against him. Use your speed, your agility to stay out of his reach,” Barr instructed the young man he had knocked down.

The soldier’s intent expression would be a welcome sight on some of the Chrechte Barr and Earc had been working with.

These human men wanted to learn.

“I try, laird, but you’re faster than me despite your size.”

“Keep trying.” Excuses wouldn’t protect the clan.

The soldier nodded, falling back into a fighting stance.

“Muin, stop your gossiping and get over here,” Barr yelled to where the young male flirted with a Chrechte woman.

“Rowland didn’t allow us to train with the elite soldiers,” one of the other Donegals mentioned from where he and a small group of human men waited their turn to spar with their new laird.

Disbelief jarring him harder than any of these soldiers’ attempts at a strike, Barr stopped and turned to face them. “He kept you separated for training?”

“Aye.”

What kind of fool did not prepare his clan to battle other Chrechte? Relying on the wolves completely for protection was a weak strategy that left far too many in the clan vulnerable. It was no wonder their king had demanded the older Chrechte step down from his role as laird. Not that the king would know of Rowland’s bias toward his Chrechte brethren, but even a human would see the misuse of clan resources and poor tactical stance the old man had taken.

If a human warrior did not learn how to fight his stronger counterpart by training with them, the clan was left weakened and vulnerable when their enemies might well outnumber them in Chrechte warriors.

“Who did you practice with then?”

“Each other.” From the look of things that was not exactly stone sharpening stone.

“Who taught you?”

The men looked down and at each other but would not meet Barr’s gaze.

“Answer me.”

“Rowland said we had to earn the right to be trained by staying on our feet for one minute with an elite soldier. We never could.”

Of course they couldn’t. Without proper training, a human soldier had no chance against the wolf nature of even the poorly trained Donegal Chrechte. “Rowland is an idiot.”

A shocked gasp sounded. But the man who had spoken looked like at least he openly agreed with Barr.

“He’s our laird,” Muin said in a scandalized tone as he jogged up.

Barr didn’t hesitate. He knocked the Chrechte flat on his back with a blow meant to get notice. “
I
am your laird. Rowland is an old man who forgot the importance of every member of his clan. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

“No, my laird.” From what he’d seen the former laird was close friends with Muin’s grandfather, but there was no hesitation in the younger warrior’s agreement.

“You earn your right to be trained by giving your loyalty to your clan,” Barr said to them all.

The youth he’d been sparring with drew himself up, his face set in hard lines. “We’ve done that.”

The other men nodded.

“Aye?” Barr prodded.

He did not doubt it, but they needed to be made aware in their own minds that they spoke bone-deep truth.

“Aye.” The youth’s tone was vehement, his head jerking up and down in agreement. “We build homes and repair our keep. We hunt to put food in hungry bellies, no matter our circumstances or the weather like to freeze us. We stand by our families, serving them as we do the clan as a whole. We try to learn to fight, but are left to train amongst ourselves.”

The other men nodded, adding comments of their own, the frustration they knew at the hands of Rowland and his ilk evident in every tense fist and grinding jaw. Their loyalty had been met with mockery and disdain.

Barr would allow no such travesty to happen again.

“Teaching you to hold your own against superior strength, skill and speed is my responsibility. I don’t fail at the tasks I take on,” he warned them.

Several of the men smiled, looking pleased by his promise. They weren’t smiling two hours later, but they weren’t complaining, either. Though each and every one of them, including Muin, sported fresh bruises and some had been bloodied as well.