The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy by Jules Watson

the move – you must find out where they will strike, for they sit idle no longer.’
    He was silent for a long moment. ‘Are you sure?’
    In answer her fingers found his mouth, and unthinking, desperate, she pulled his lips to hers as if to assure herself he was here, warm and alive. He tasted of ale and salty meat, he tasted of Eremon, and she broke away and buried her face in his shoulder.
    When he felt her trembling, he rolled over to his back and pulled her into the curve of his body.
    ‘I am sure,’ she whispered, her eyes open in the darkness. ‘They are moving.’
    Though Eremon at last fell into an uneasy sleep, Rhiann could not. She lay until the grey dawn crept under the wide oak doors below and climbed the stairs.
    Then she rose, sliding her cloak from the wicker screen, taking her shoes from beside the bed. Silently she crept past the other bedplaces and down the stairs.
    By the banked fire, Cù raised his grey snout from among the old king’s hounds. She paused to pat him as she stirred the coals up with a poker, feeding them with twigs and bark from the wood basket until the flames were bright and new, pushing back the last of the darkness. Against the walls, the dark humps of the other men did not stir, for they had sat up late drinking, judging by the scattering of empty alder cups on the hearth-benches, and the few pig-bones that even the dogs had left.
    Rhiann set the tripod over the low flames, filled the iron kettle from the water pot by the door, and scattered in a handful of dried nettle-leaves. Then she went to the porch and scraped open the door, settling her cloak around her shoulders, deep in thought.
    The eaves outside dripped with dew, and all was grey and cold, the thatched houses below hunched and silent, awaiting the sunrise. The women’s waste pit was against the south-east wall of the crag, and she was returning through the Horse Gate, her head burrowed into her cloak, when she realized someone was blocking her path.
    It was Gelert, on his way to the shrine for the sun greeting, his owl-head staff held high before him as if to cleave the mist.
    The druids concerned themselves with things of the sky and stars; the science of marking time; when to sow and harvest and hold the festivals to honour the gods. The priestesses were of the earth, the slower rhythms of growth and birth. Each could respect the other, yet Gelert despised all things female. Rhiann knew that her mother had rejected him in his youth, but the hatred of women must come from somewhere deeper even than that. She didn’t understand; she would never understand.
    Such confusion always unnerved her, and now Rhiann drew her cloak closed and made to go past him, her chin down. As she did, she glimpsed the way Gelert’s cold, yellow eyes slid over her body, suggestive not of lust, but of other dark things. Once, he’d waited to see that belly swell, as proof Eremon had taken her by force, making her life a misery. Now, she realized, he would want to see it flat, for his hopes of controlling them had come to nothing, and he would not want their heirs ruling Dunadd.
    In a sudden burst of defiance Rhiann dropped her crossed arms and straightened. Don’t be afraid. It feeds him .
    At her scornful gaze, something in his own eyes lit and he smiled, the faint tattoos on his ageing cheeks stretching into jagged lines. ‘I am pleased to see our Ban Cré so robust, so healthy. So unharmed by her recent travails.’
    Rhiann’s mouth twisted, the accusation hovering on her tongue. But she’d already decided she didn’t want to invite his ire; she didn’t want him to think of her and her loved ones at all. So she swallowed down the bitter words, brushing her hair back from her shoulders. ‘Yes, I am well, as you can see, and I have you to thank for that.’
    The wing of Gelert’s eyebrow quivered among the straggling strands of his long, grey hair. ‘Oh? Pray do tell me, that I may serve you the greater.’
    ‘Why, choosing