Read Book 2 - October's Baby for Free Online

reluctance to tell Bragi about Turran's interest?
    By midafternoon the milkiness had consumed the jewel's clarity. The light from within was intense. She checked the sky. Still only a scatter of clouds. She returned the casket to the clothing chest, went downstairs. Bevold clumped round the front yard, checking weapons for the twentieth time, growling.
    "Bevold, it's almost time. Get ready."
    Disbelief filled his expression, stance, and tone. "Yes, Ma'am."
    "They'll come from the south." The glow of her jewel intensified when she turned the pointed end toward Itaskia.
    "Send your main party that way. Down by the barrow."
    "Really..."
    What Lif meant to say she never learned. A warning wolfs howl came from the southern woods. Bevold's mouth opened and closed. He turned, mounted, shouted. "Let's go."
    "Dahl Haas," Elana snapped at a fifteen-year-old who had insinuated himself into the ranks. "Get off that horse! You want to play soldier, take Ragnar and a bow up in the watchtower."
    "But..."
    "You want me to call your mother?"
    "Oh, all right." Gerda Haas was a dragon.
    Elana herded Dahl inside, stopped at the weapons rack while he selected a bow. The strongest he could draw was her own.
    "Take it," she said. She took a rapier and dagger, weapons that had served her well. She had had a bit of
     success as an adventuress and hire-sword, herself. She added a light crossbow, returned to the horse left by Dahl.
    She overtook the men at a barrow mound near the edge of the forest, not far from the head of a logging road which ran to the North Road.
    In military matters Bevold was unimaginative. He and the others milled about, in the open, completely unready for action.
    "Bevold!" she snapped, "Can't you take me seriously? What'll you do if fifty men come out of the woods?"
    "Uh..."
    "Get run over, that's what. Put a half dozen bowmen on the barrow. Where's Uthe Haas? You're in charge. The rest of you get behind the barrow, out of sight."
    "Uh..." Bevold was getting red.
    "Shut up!" She listened. From afar came the sound of hoofbeats. "Hear that? Let's move. Uthe. You. You. Up. And nobody shoots till I say. We don't know who's coming." She scrambled up the mound after Haas.
    Lying in the grass, watching the road, she wondered what prehistoric people had built the barrows. They were scattered all along the Silverbind.
    The hoofbeats drew closer. Why wasn't she back at the house? She wasn't young and stupid anymore. She should leave the killing and dying to those who thought it their birthright.
    Too late to change her mind now. She rolled onto her back, readied the crossbow. She studied the clouds. She had not looked for castles and dragons in years. Childhood memories came, only to be interrupted when a rider burst from the forest.
    She rolled to her stomach and studied him over the crossbow. He was wounded. A broken arrow protruded from his back. He clung weakly to a badly lathered horse. Neither appeared likely to survive the day. Both wore a thick coat of road dust. They had been running hard for a long time. The man's scabbard was empty. He was otherwise unarmed.
    She glimpsed his face as he thundered past. "Rolf!" she gasped. "Rolf Preshka!" Then, "Uthe, get ready." While the bowmen thrust arrows in the mound for quick use, she
     waved at Bevold. A lot of horses were coming. She had no idea who their riders might be, but Preshka's enemies were her own.
    Rolf had been her man before Bragi, though Ragnarson didn't know the relationship's depth. She still felt guilty when she remembered how she had hurt him. But his love, rare for the time, and especially for an Iwa Skolovdan, was the unjealous kind. The kind that, when at last she had set her heart, had caused him to help her snare Ragnarson.
    Preshka, like Bragi, was a mercenary. After Elana's marriage he had joined Ragnarson as second in command. When Bragi had gotten out, Preshka had joined the party that had beat its way in to the landgrant. But he had been unable to put down