The Beast of Caer Baddan by Rebecca Vaughn

to the creek behind the mead hall, and Leola looked along the bank for evidence of Raynar and his surprise attack on her the night before. There was a patch of dried blood in the moss, but no body, as she had expected to find.
    Perhaps these Britisc have burned it with the bodies from the battle.
    Her eyes went wide as she stared down at the bank.
    Her tattered goat hide shoes still sat idly by the steam, right where she had placed them the evening before.
    My shoes!
    She realized that the man had stopped walking and she was now very close to him. Her right hand moved to the knot of her apron where she kept her knife.
    “Where did you get that blood on you?” the man asked in Saxon.
    Leola glanced down at her apron to see the black blood stain streaked across it.
    “I know not,” Leola replied, not looking up at him.
    Indeed, it would be dangerous to say to one warrior that she had the daring to kill another, even if that other man was his enemy.
    “I do not remember it, Master,” she said.
    This last part she uttered, “Agend,” was simple enough but seemed to twist her stomach within her.
    “Master!”
    She really was his slave.
    “It is of no consequence, Beauty,” he replied.
    The word he called her now surprised her, for she had never considered herself to be exceptionally pretty. Even before her status in Holton had sunk, people had never considered her beautiful. And now to hear it on the lips of her enemy was too strange to understand.
    Why are you giving me a term of endearment? What can you be thinking?
    The Saxon speech had fallen so easily from his tongue, that she was sure he knew the meaning of the word. Yet for a man to call his slave such was ridiculous.
    “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
    For a moment she could not answer. She was certain that he was not a soldier, for he seemed in command of those on guard at the entrance to the mead hall.
    “A ridend, Master,” she replied.
    “Nay, Beauty, far from,” he said.
    There was that word again, in all its contradiction, and Leola frowned thinking on it.
    She was not his sister, daughter, or wife, for him to call her thus, yet he persisted in it. She did not understand why.
    “I am an aetheling,” he said.
    Her eyes grew wide and her lips parted as if saying the word. Her whole face revealed her horror.
    “Aetheling?” she gasped.
    She looked up at him as if searching his eyes for a falsehood.
    “Yea,” he said. “I am the Aetheling of Glouia.”
    His deep eyes never wavered.
    You are an aetheling!
    Leola’s right hand moved from her apron knot and folded into her other hand before her.  She did not dare attempt to kill an aetheling. The risk was too great, and the consequences too frightening. Whatever determination she had on seeing that strange Britisc aetheling, Cadfan, many days before, now shriveled up into a frightened stone at the bottom of her throat.
    “Yea, Master,” she said, in a quiet voice.
    “My name is Owain Irael-son of Baddan,” he said, “and I'm an Andoco.”
    But she did not know where this place Baddan was or what he meant when he said “Andoco.” Her eyes traveled back and forth as she thought, trying to decipher his words.
    “The Andoco are my people,” Owain said, as if understanding her thoughts.
    “You are not Britisc?” she asked, confused.
    “The Andoco are Britisc,” he replied.
    “Oh,” she replied, still unsure what he meant.
    “Wash, and leave your clothes here. There is a dress, soap, and a towel for you over there.” He directed her to where these things were laid on a fallen willow trunk.
    “Yea, Master,” she replied.
    Although she cast her eyes down again so that he could not see them, she felt his heavy gaze on her face, as if he were trying to see her thoughts.
    “Do not be long,” he said.
    Then he left her and walked up the side back towards the road.
    Her eyes followed him as he went.
    Now what should I do?
    The forest was but twenty paces from the stream, but to flee there