Read Time Masters Book One; The Call (An Urban Fantasy, Time Travel Romance) for Free Online

hopped out of the chair. “Th e Lord Councilor is waiting for you in his quarters.”
    “Aye, lad. I ken he is.” Dallan wrap ped a clean and readied kilt about himself and again stared at the water pitcher and wash bowl. “Tell him I’ll be along. Off with ye now, dinna keep yer mother waiting.”
    Padric stepped to the door, paused a moment, then turned to Dallan. “You fought Kwaku good today. He really is proud of you.”
    Dallan’s face nearly fell at the pleased tone in Padric’s voice.
    “I’m proud of you, too.” Padric quickly added then scurried out of sight.
    Now Dallan’s face did fall, into regret. He shouldn’t have tried using the lad to obtain information he wasn’t about to get anyway. No one in the village would tell him where he was, who they were, what he was doing here, why he was being trained as a Weapons Master.
    Dallan would have to face it one day. He was doomed. Doomed to spend the rest of his days in the company of a seven-foot-tall heathen whose only purpose was to make his life as miserable as possible. Och, by all the Saints how he hated that man!
    The Weapons Master grabbed a hand towel and went to the small table ho using the pitcher and wash bowl . As he cleaned his physical wound, his emotional ones began to split and crack open with his thoughts.
    Dallan, by his own admis sion, had two goals in life. The fi rst, and often foremost, was to fi nally get his hands around Kwaku’s heathen neck, take his time with the slow, steady, pleasurable squeezing of it and ignore the strangled pleas for mercy the good-for-nothing might manage to squeak out.
    The other, equally unlikely goal was to get out of wherever he was and back to Scotland and his people. To just go home. And at this point, Dallan was ready to do almost anything to get there.
    Dallan tossed the now dirt and blood stained towel on the table, reached for his plaid, and headed for the door. Perhaps this interview was what he’d been waiting for. Perhaps this time he’d fi nd an ally in the Lord Councilor from Sutter’s Province. Perhaps, at long last, he’d fi nd a way to be rid of the painful company of Kwaku Awahnee.
    Dallan left his cottage, one thought burning in his mind, a rekindled idea that always gave him hope. With determined steps he strode to the Lord Councilor’s quarters, his face etched in fi rm resolve. No matter what it took, this time he’d do it.
    This time he’d escape.
     
    * * *
     
      John stared at the dying fi re, his face locked in serious contemplation.
      The Scot was unstable.
      Not only was he unstable, he was frustrated and discouraged. A nasty combination any way you looked at it. How in the Creator’s name was John going to get him to open up?
    He sighed, saddened by the circumstances surrounding the Weapons Master’s removal from his home by Kwaku ten years ago. Th e Time Master should never have allowed Dallan’s deep emotional wounds to go unhealed, or let bitterness and vengeance be used to bind them. John’s people knew from experience that bitterness and vengeance were poor healers.
    A knock at the already open door snapped John out of his thoughts. He sat up and turned in his chair. “Come in.”
    To John’s surprise, Dallan entered. “Were ye no expecting me, sir? Ye look as if I’ve given ye a start.”
      John quickly collected himself. “No, you didn’t startle me. I just didn’t expect you this soon. I thought you would need more time to get cleaned up.”
    “Ye thought wrong.”
    “Yes,” John began as he judged the stern tone in the Scot’s voice. “Please, sit down.”
    Dallan took a chair opposite John’s an d placed it before the dying fi re. He sat and immediately assumed what John had learned was his favorite position, legs outstretched in front of him, crossed at the ankles, his massive forearms crossed over an impressi ve chest. Th e Scot ’s six-foot-six frame, in a one- room cottage, seemed even larger and more intimidating. John was glad