Her cousin smirked.
“Why capture a clag-doo?” Lara spoke up, interrupting them.
Mor glanced her way, gaze widening. She hadn’t realized she’d drawn a crowd. “An age ago, when faerie creatures stillinhabited Sheehallion, my predecessors didn’t ride upon an elk or stag … but on a ‘black claw’,” she replied, her tone growing wistful. “Long have I wished to have one as my own.”
The clag-doo made an angry spitting noise, the hackles on its back rising. It was eying the Raven Queen as if it wanted to rip her apart.
“You’re a beauty, aren’t you?” Mor murmured.
A growl rumbled in the clag-doo’s throat in reply.
“I shall name you Dorka … ‘Dark One’.”
It was a fitting name, considering the clag-doo’s plush obsidian coat. However, Dorka didn’t look impressed. The huge feline continued to watch Mor with burning eyes.
“You intend to travel north onthis?” Lara was incredulous. Surely, they had more important things to worry about.
A smile tugged at Mor’s lips, excitement kindling in her gaze. “Aye.”
5: ASHES
THE NOISE INSIDE the hall was deafening: a roar of Marav and wulver voices. They rose and ebbed like waves upon a shingle shore. Usually, Alar found the sound of conversation at mealtimes soothing, but today, it got on his nerves.
Tonight, he was in the mood for silence.
Leaning back in the carven chair one of his brothers had made him in the days following their victory, he picked up his pewter goblet of apple wine. Taking a sip, he surveyed the facesof those seated around him. Many of the Circines warriors’ cheeks were flushed with drink.
There was no high seat in this hall. He and Beathan had decided that from the first. Instead of a long table upon a raised dais at the far end of the hall, where the chieftain of Dulross had once sat, the tables had been arranged into a large square in the center. Here, Alar and Beathan faced each other—as equals.
A fire pit smoldered between them, lumps of burning peat sending oily dark smoke wreathing up toward the smoke-blackened beams that crisscrossed overhead. Smoke vents lined the surrounding walls, but it wasn’t enough to clear the fug from the air. Around the two rulers of Dulross sat wulvers and hill-tribe warriors.
“By the Warrior balls.” A drunken man shouted above the din. “Not fried fish again!”
Jeers followed these words, and Alar tensed, casting a glance right at where Lyall and Dolph sat. Neither of them appeared offended by the jibe. Instead, Lyall, who had one arm around Dolph’s broad shoulders, merely lifted his cup of wine in a mocking toast to the warrior who’d spoken.
Slaves had just carried in platters of fried eel and pike. Wulvers loved fish; they preferred it to all other foods. And since his brothers and sisters had taken over the cooking, they decided on the meals. The Circines were happy to have someone else cook for them; however, that didn’t stop them from complaining about the fare. They were mountain people. Hunters of deer, boar, birds, and hares. A rich venison stew was what they really wanted.
Usually, their comments washed over Alar, but this evening, they vexed him.
Upon taking Dulross, Beathan had promised that wulvers and Circines would have the same rank here. Nearly the turn of a year had passed since then, and Alar had noticed a gradual shift. The Circines were becoming dominant, while his brothers and sisters bowed to them. He didn’t like it.
“We’re doing you all a favor,” Lyall called out then, his low, gravelly voice cutting through the heckling. “Fish keeps you lean and quick … meat makes you sluggish.”
Snorts followed these words.
Meanwhile, across the table, Beathan mac Glen raised his cup high. “A toast!” he boomed. “To our wulver brothers and sisters … and to victories … past and future.” His blue eyes, bloodshot from drink, were still as sharp as ever. A comely lass with thick flaxen hair perched on his knee. Duana, the daughter of the hapless chieftain—Og mac Alpin—who’d ruled here before they arrived, was now Beathan’s bed-slave.
The young woman’s face was impassive this evening, despite the livid bruise upon her cheek. Duana gave little away. She was strong, which was just as well, for Beathan was reputed to have quite an appetite. The Circines chieftain had given her younger sister to one of his captains. A sneering warrior named Lorc. The man’s rough hands were squeezing Eithne’s breasts now, as she struggled on his lap. Unlike her more stoic elder sister, Eithne’s face was stricken.
Alar’s jaw tightened. After seizing Dulross, the surviving residents of this broch were now slaves—including the chieftain’s daughters. He’d thought about challenging Beathan over taking mac Alpin’s daughters as his prize when they’d seized Dulross, but it was hill-tribe tradition to do so. As such, he’d let it lie. The sight of Duana and Eithne each mealtimethough, their bronze bed-slave collars gleaming at their throats, never failed to unsettle him.
He’d crossed so many lines over the past couple of years, another one shouldn’t matter. And yet it did.
“And to our ever-widening territory!” Beathan added. His gaze glinted as it met Alar’s. “Long may this alliance between Circines and wulver continue!”
Alar raised his goblet of wine. “Aye … here’s to that.”
There had been plenty to celebrate of late. Ever since taking Dulross, they’d gone from strength to strength. The Ring of Ard now belonged to them, as did the villages around it.
