The Valiant Read online

  Over near the mead vats, there was a commotion as Mael struggled against the crowd toward Aeddan and me. I thought I might have actually seen him throw a punch. But then Aeddan blocked my view and forced me back a step. That close, I could see his face was flushed—with drink or desire or both—and his dark eyes shone. The crush of bodies, the brightly woven cloaks and jangling jewelry, the braided hair and painted eyes, lips, mouths, tangled tattoos and torcs and shouting, the stench of beer and bodies and meat . . . for the first time in my life, I thought that I might actually faint.

  When the scuffle by the vats upended a large, foaming tub of mead, the crowd suddenly ebbed in that direction with cries of outrage and shouts of drunken laughter cheering on the combatants. In the ensuing chaos, I ducked beneath Aeddan’s arm and ran for the great hall doors.

  III

  LIGHTNING LASHED THE NIGHT SKY over Durovernum. In the time I’d been inside the great hall, black storm clouds had rolled in and the sky was pouring rain. I could barely see to make it back to my house.

  Once inside, I stirred the banked coals of the brazier to sullen life. It did nothing to ease the chill that gripped my bones. Not only had my father as good as severed the sword-hand from my arm, he’d cut the heart out of my body. And then given it to the brother of the boy I loved. My father had betrayed me not once but twice.

  I spat out a string of curses wrapped around Virico’s name and dropped to my knees in front of the fire. And then I began to slowly, methodically, remove all the ornaments I had so carefully chosen just hours before. The rings and the bracelets and earrings that marked me as a woman . . . the torc around my neck that marked me as a princess . . . even the dagger in the sheath at my hip that marked me as a warrior. Suddenly, I wanted none of it. One by one, I stripped them all off and dropped them onto the fire, watching as the pale flames licked the shining, precious metal black.

  I wished, in that moment, that my father had never come home from Caesar’s camp. It was his fault Sorcha was dead. She’d gone to save him and died a hero. The kind of hero my father had just denied me every right and opportunity to ever be.

  And I hated him for that.

  For that, and for taking Mael from me. That morning, I’d turned down Mael’s marriage pledge, and for what? For the chance to seize a destiny that had never been mine to take in the first place. The brazier flames blurred before my eyes as I fought back furious tears.

  “Drink with me?”

  I spun around on my knees, blinking away the wetness, to see Aeddan leaning on my doorframe. He pushed the hood of his rain-soaked cloak back from his face and dangled a small amphora of Roman wine and two mugs with his other hand.

  “Well, wife?”

  “I’m not your wife.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not ever,” I said. “And if you call me by that word again, it will be the last sound that ever worms its way between your teeth.”

  He laughed.

  “Come on,” he said through a grin. “Fallon, think of your father.”

  I stood to face Aeddan, wary. My gown was soaked through from the storm and clung to my body, but I refused to hide behind crossed arms. Instead, I dropped my right hand to rest on the hilt of the dagger at my belt—except the sheath was empty. I had tossed the dagger into the fire. Aeddan’s glance flicked from my hand to the fire in the brazier, and he frowned faintly. He stepped inside, and the curtain fell closed behind him, shutting out the hiss of the rain.

  “Think how much Virico wants—needs—alliances like this one,” he said.

  “Surely he could have given me to your brother and still had his alliance with the Trinovante.”

  “True.” Aeddan shrugged as he stepped further into the room. “Indeed, I think it was Virico’s first thought. But fortunately, I convinced my uncle to counsel him otherwise.”

  The packed-earth floor of the little roundhouse felt as though it were dropping out from beneath my feet. I was so angry that I couldn’t even find words to hurl at Aeddan. My rage had me dumbstruck.

  “Virico knows how close you and Maelgwyn have always been,” Aeddan continued. He moved across the room to a low couch and sat, placing the wine cups on a small table. “Close as brother and sister . . .” The shadow of a sneer curled his lip. “Your father—after a deal of convincing, to be sure—came to realize it. He came to see that it wouldn’t be fair to give you away in a match that was nothing more than sibling affection and no real love.”

  But I do love Mael.

  And I’d had the chance to tell him—to be with him—in the vale that morning. I loved Maelgwyn Ironhand, and Aeddan knew it. He’d known it all along, even before I did. I saw it in his gray eyes, and I saw that he hated his brother because of it. Because of me.

  “Count yourself lucky that your father has a care for your heart, Fallon,” Aeddan said, working the stopper from the wine jug. “As do I. You should be glad.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t rejoice,” I spat.

  Aeddan stood, and the amphora slipped from his fingers and smashed on the floor. Wine leaked out of the broken vessel like blood from a wound.

  “There has always been something between us, Fallon,” he said urgently. “Hasn’t there? If I hadn’t gone away—if it had been Maelgwyn and not me who had been forced to flee to Rome . . .”

  In two paces he was across the room, gripping me hard by the shoulders. A flush crawled up Aeddan’s sharp features, and a vein pulsed at the side of his neck.

  “I never forgot about you,” he said. “I always knew that one day I’d come back for you. I can take you places, Fallon. I will take you places. It’s all set in motion already. And you’ll be happy—I promise you! Rome is a place of wonder. They build palaces of gleaming stone, and the air is like perfume. But there’s more, Fallon. They’re fierce. They have fighters, warriors like you’ve never known.”

  “Like the Roman legions your father sold our people out to?” I snapped.

  Aeddan barely flinched at my outrage. “I’ll show you things you could never have imagined, Fallon. Not even in your dreams. And we’ll finally be together.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. I had never—not once in my life—thought of Aeddan that way. The very idea that he had woven some kind of fantasy in his mind and wrapped me up in it was beyond me. He leaned in to kiss me again, but this time instinct took over as Aeddan’s fingers dug into my flesh. I dropped back into a defensive stance, knees bent and head down. I went again for my knife—which, of course, wasn’t there—and instead gritted my teeth and jammed my knee into his groin, shoving him away as he gasped in pain and staggered back.

  From behind a sweep of dark hair, Aeddan’s eyes glinted dangerously in the darkness. His fists knotted at his sides. “That wasn’t nice, wife.” The breath rasped in his throat. “A Roman woman would know how to better control herself. But there’ll be plenty of time for me to teach you—”

  “Aeddan.” Mael’s voice cut through the air like a knife.

  “Hello, brother.” Aeddan straightened up and turned around slowly. “Come to share in my soon-to-be-wedded joy?”

  Two swords flashed in the darkness, and Aeddan suddenly found himself collared by Mael’s twin blades, crossed in front of his throat. They bit into the flesh just above the king’s torc he wore. Mael pressed his brother back toward the door, relentless.

  “Get out,” he said. “Before I stain my swords with your worthless blood.”

  “And here I thought that you’d be happy for me, little brother.” Aeddan lifted his chin and glared at Mael above the blades, but he backed up a step nonetheless. “For her, at least. I bring Fallon a chance to escape. I will take her to a place where she’ll live like the warrior queen she’s meant to be. You? You’d just wind up getting her killed in a tribal raid one day.”

  “I said get out!” Mael roared and drew back his blades to strike.


  But Aeddan was already gone, slipping out and disappearing into the black rain. Mael stood there for a long time, his back to me, shoulders heaving. Then he sheathed his swords and turned, anguish twisting his face.

  “Where were you tonight?” I asked.

  “Aeddan,” he spat. “His chieftains kept me from you.”

  His gray eyes were full of anger and hurt. There was blood at the corner of his mouth and the shadow of a new bruise blooming along his jaw. I remembered the uproar near the beer vats in the hall.

  “Did you know this was going to happen?” he demanded. “Is that why you refused me this morning? To be with Aeddan?”

  “What?” I stared at him, incredulous. “How could you even think such a thing? I meant what I said, Mael. You alone have my heart.”

  Mael’s anger vanished almost instantly, but the hurt remained deep and dark in his eyes. “Fallon, I’m sorry. I just . . .” He swallowed thickly. “You are all that has been in my heart since the day we met. When I sleep, I see your face. When I wake, I long to. You are as fierce and as beautiful and as deadly to me as your sword is. And so I promised to wait, but then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “Then Aeddan was there.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “And he was kissing you.”

  “I wasn’t kissing him.”

  “I know!” He angrily clawed back the wet hair from his face. “I know that now. I’ll go to him. Virico. I’ll tell him that we’ve already laid claim to each other’s hearts.”

  “You can’t. It’s too late.”

  I knew my father. Had Mael fought his way through to me in the hall . . . if he had stood before Aeddan and challenged him there and then, Virico might have considered such a claim. But it was a lifetime too late for that now. My father would not go back on a pledge—one made in front of the whole of the Four Tribes—and he would not change his mind. He would not suffer his chiefs to call him weak. Or cowardly. He had suffered enough of that in the days after the Romans had returned him from capture. How, his freemen had asked, had the king not taken his own life rather than suffer the shame of Roman captivity? How had he come back to Durovernum alive when his own daughter had died in battle?

  It had taken Virico Lugotorix years to regain the respect of the chiefs.

  He would not risk it now. Not on my account.

  “And I’ll never be a warrior now,” I said slowly, feeling the weight of each word.

  Mael shot me a sharp glance.

  “Don’t.” I held up a warning hand. “If my father had made me choose, if he’d even bothered to give me a choice, know this: I would have given up my sword for you, Maelgwyn Ironhand. You. Not your brother.”

  “Well, it’s too late for that now, isn’t it?” The bitterness returned to his voice. “If we had gone to your father this morning, none of this would have happened.”

  “How could I have known, Mael?” I almost shouted. “I am the one left with nothing, and you’re jealous of cold steel!”

  A wave of misery swept over us both, and we stood there, staring at each other with helpless regret and longing. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? It should have been a night of celebration for me. But my proud moment lay shattered and strewn at my feet.

  “We’ll go,” I said. “We’ll leave tonight and go west. There are tribes who would be happy to have us, and we can be together.”

  “No.” Mael’s fists clenched, white-knuckled, at his sides. “I’m not running like a coward. This is my home, your tribe, and Aeddan has no right to take that away from us.” He strode to the door, slapping aside the leather curtain to let in a gust of dark rain.

  “Mael!” I ran after him, grabbing him by the arm. “Where are you going?”

  “To find him. He will set this right.” Mael shook free of my grip. He hitched up his swords and tugged his cloak hood over his head. “And if he doesn’t, I’ll kill him.”

  “I’d have killed him myself if it would have solved anything! Mael!” I called. “Mael!”

  But he was already gone, vanished like a shadow into the stormbound night. What he left behind was a hollow space in my chest that began to fill with a hot, heavy anger. I would be the master of my own fate. Me and the goddess Morrigan. No one else—and certainly no man. Mael and Aeddan could fight over me until they were both bloody. My father could deny me my blade. But they couldn’t force me from my warrior’s path unless I let them. Sorcha never would have let anyone choose her fate for her.

  “Go then,” I said, my voice loud in the emptiness of the room. “I won’t be here when you get back.”

  IV

  WHEN MY FATHER WAS A BOY, he’d traveled far to foster with a fierce warrior tribe across the narrow Eirish Sea in the west. That was where he’d met my mother, herself no older than I was when I first met Mael. Years later, when Virico was a man grown, he’d returned to woo her.

  She’d waited, knowing he would.

  I wasn’t about to wait around for Maelgwyn to return for me.

  Not in Durovernum.

  I couldn’t possibly stay the night somewhere Aeddan or my father could find me. Instead, I picked up my sword in its doe-skin scabbard and stuffed it inside the bedroll I slung over my shoulder. There was one place I could spend the night—the one place Mael alone knew to look for me, whenever his foolish pride and rage left him.

  He should have said something, I thought bitterly.

  You didn’t.

  The thought stopped me in my tracks. No. I didn’t. I hadn’t.

  When the moment came for me to stand up to my father, I’d just stood there dumbly.

  Target practice.

  Well. No more. Now I would be a moving target.

  I threw on my cloak and slung the strap of the bedroll across my torso. With one last glance over my shoulder at my house—a place I suspected I might never see again—I pushed through the doorway and out into the night. I could hear the distant sounds of the revelers gathered in my father’s great hall, still celebrating my vile betrothal, but beyond that, the bustling town of Durovernum was a place of shadows and fog. The rain had abated, and a silvery mist began collecting in the ditches. The gates of the town would be shut and locked, the walls guarded for the night, but that didn’t matter to me. I slipped between the chieftains’ roundhouses, past the smithy and the stables, to the place where I knew the earthworks were piled up close enough to the top of the town wall that I could climb over. I’d taken that route so many times with Mael that I could probably have followed it blindfolded.

  Mael.

  I tugged the hood of my cloak around my face. I would go to the Forgotten Vale, and I would wait there to see if Mael would follow. A day—two at the most—and then I would leave.

  He’ll come. He has to.

  And then we would run. Go west. Travel through the mountains of Cymru where the Dobunni tribe lived and on through the territory of the mysterious Silures. I would sail across the Eirish Sea to the land of my mother. A place where it’s said that if the land ever felt the tread of legion sandals, the very earth itself would rise up like a wakening green giant and shrug them off like fleas.

  I can make a life for myself there, I thought as I ran. We can.

  My mother’s kin would welcome me as a warrior, and Mael and I could fight side by side the way we were supposed to. That thought kindled the first tiny spark of hope since Virico had stood in his hall and pronounced my doom.

  “She’s not yours, damn your eyes!”

  I froze.

  The damp air distorted the cry, turning it ghostly, but it was Mael’s voice—followed by a grunt of pain and the muted clashing of blades. My heart hammered in my chest as I eased around the corner of a goat shed, peering in the direction of where the noise came from. The fog had grown thick, and I saw ghost-dancers whirling in the heart of that silver pall.

  Mael and Aed
dan.

  Their shadowy forms grasped and grappled with each other, pulling apart and lurching together. The fog suddenly cleared enough for me to see Mael’s face as he charged toward Aeddan, the circling blurs of his two swords clearing the air before him. The blades rang as they met with Aeddan’s, locking up in the space between the two brothers as they tried to overpower each other. Suddenly, Aeddan reared back and head-butted his brother sharply. Mael reeled away in pain, blood running down his face. The fog swirled, hiding them from my sight again.

  When it parted once more, I saw Mael, blades held high above his head, charging at Aeddan. My heart hammered, and I heard myself whisper, “Mael.”

  There was no earthly way he could have heard me.

  They were too far. It was only a whisper.

  And yet, his swords—slashing downward to block his brother’s attack—faltered. For just an instant. It was enough. Aeddan was right there. Charging forward, his blade thrusting for Mael’s heart—

  NO!

  My scream echoed silently inside my own head, but Mael’s shocked cry alerted Durovernum’s wall sentries. I heard a shout and the sound of running feet.

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

  I clung to the wall of the goat shed as Mael’s eyes locked with mine. He opened his mouth, and a dark gout of blood bubbled up and spilled down his chin. Aeddan wrenched the dagger out of his brother’s flesh, and Mael collapsed. He fell on his face in the mud, horribly still. Aeddan’s teeth were bared in a grimace, and he looked half-mad.

  “Brother,” he croaked. “Maelgwyn . . .”

  Then he turned, searching to see what it was that had fatally distracted his brother. His eyes found my face in the darkness.

  “Fallon?”