Page 6 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

W hen Adair awoke the next morning, he did not know where he was. Sunlight poured through the smoke hole at the center of the roof above him. The fire had long gone out. Very close at hand, surely up in the thatch, a bird sang a heartbreakingly sweet song.

Slowly it all returned to him. The wicked crossing from Erin and the climb up from the shore in the rain. His cold reception at the hands of his mother’s brother.

The lonely night.

He sat up with a groan and took stock of himself. Hunger and the desire to use the midden beset him. A land—a world—awaited outside.

Last night before taking to the bed, he’d changed into clothing from his pack, only slightly less damp than those garments he’d had on. He’d draped the others to dry, but they proved still wet to the touch now. He straightened what he had on, ran his fingers through his hair, and stuck his head outside.

What he saw made him emerge from the hut.

So this was Alba.

The large bulk of the great hall stood before him. Built of rough stone, it looked somehow unfinished in the raw morning light. The rain had flown while Adair slept, rolling inland over the rise he could see beyond, where the land clawed its way up from the shore. The sea…

Stepping out and around the dun, he got a good look.

A great, restless, ever-moving world.

Deep combers raked at the shingle shore where he’d disembarked yesterday. In fact, he could see their little boat hauled well up there above the water, in addition to several other small craft also securely beached.

The sky, fresh-washed, pale blue, stretched limitless toward home. Not far. Surely he could sail there on his own if need be, though he could not imagine his two companions wanted to stay here any more than he did.

A cluster of huts spread haphazardly over the shore and turf as if they’d grown up there and perched wherever they could get a hold. The partial stone wall encircled all. Others were up before him. He could see men on the shore, and a few women hurrying about. A pen off to one side contained some cattle. Beyond, a number of ponies and what might be one or two chariots.

As if anyone could run a chariot over this stony ground.

At home they were within an afternoon’s walk of the sea but did not live like this, hard upon the shore so the hiss and rush of the waves remained continually in the ears, and one could pick up its restless mood. From the heights of their home hills, they could glimpse it like a field of blue.

Just south and west of here, not so very far.

Standing there with longing pulling at him, he wondered how many days it might be before he could decently leave off trying to persuade his uncle and take himself home.

His father had told him not to return, not to come home, unless he had a promise of the land. But he would tell his father, when he arrived, Ye do not want any part o’ that place. It is wild and unwelcoming. Leave it go as a bad bet.

He heard voices raised and what might be laughter. He walked around to the front of the dun.

Two young men approached the building from the direction of the field that held the ponies. Very alike they appeared, of a height with fair hair and lanky builds. Dressed in kilts and cloaks, they sniped at each other, half laughing in a manner Adair recognized.

Just so did friends beset one another back home. Or relations.

As he stood watching, one of the young men shoved the other in a companionable fashion. They both laughed.

Adair stepped out.

The pleasant, teasing expressions the young men wore disappeared the moment they noticed him, replaced by something hard and disagreeable. As one, they changed their course toward the door of the dun and came to meet Adair.

They had to be related, brothers, far too alike to be anything else. Somewhere near Adair in age, they had broad foreheads and narrow, light brown eyes. Wide mouths with lips now also narrowed into hard lines.

Their manner in approaching Adair could not be considered aggressive; neither was it friendly.

“Here he is,” said one. “The next o’ the Erin cousins bent upon stealing our lands.”

Their lands. “Ye must be my cousins.” Kendrick’s sons. What were their names? Aye, Kerr and Toren. Adair stepped forward. “Guilty as accused. Adair MacMurtray. Ye be my Uncle Kendrick’s sons, aye?”

They exchanged glances. One—he on the left—stepped up, all confidence.

“Toren MacCaigh. This is my brother, Kerr. We thought we were rid o’ you lot.”

“So I gathered from my reception yesterday.”

Kerr stepped forward, a glower heavy on his brow. “These are our lands, ye ken. Clawed from the wilderness and fought for. Bad enough having to battle against the local savages without ye lot back in Erin.”

He said the last word with utter scorn, which put Adair’s back up, though he did not let it show. Seldom did he lose his temper. This did not seem a good time to begin.

“Erin is a fine place,” he declared equitably enough. “Ha’ ye ever been there?”

“Nay, and no wish to go,” said Kerr, who seemed the more irascible of the two brothers. “No need to be anywhere save here.”

Aye, so they would have been born here and knew nothing else. They were not, as Adair knew, the sons of Mistress Tavia, whom he’d met yesterday, but of Kendrick’s first wife, whom the chief had brought with him from Erin.

“Well,” Toren said, “I suppose ye had best come in for breakfast.”

Adair barely heard the grudging invitation. For someone else stepped up, and as he turned to regard her—for aye, it was a woman—the light streaming in from the east hit him full in the face and dazzled his eyes.

At least, that was what he later told himself. In truth, he was never really sure, save that a brightness took hold of him, one he felt sweep through him from his head to his feet.

A woman, aye, a young one. Tall for one of her sex, she had hair the color of dark honey, tawny with strands of gold, that hung in waves over one shoulder, bound round with green bands. She wore green also—a plain underdress with a cloak over, and hide boots not far different from his own. Her face…

But her back was to the light and he did not get a clear look at it. He did not need to. The impression she made pierced him through.

Indeed, he could have sworn that everything, the world itself and all the rush of the morning, paused. The birds ceased to sing, the waves to rake the shore. His very heart stuttered in his chest.

She had a hound at her heels, a big gray one that rushed forward, breaking the spell. Everything, including the blood in Adair’s veins, began to move again.

The hound thrust its great head at Adair. The best welcome he’d had thus far from anyone.

He stepped toward its mistress. “Adair MacMurtray,” he said.

*

She’d not got a good look at him yesterday—no more than a glimpse when he’d come up the slope soaking wet, and when Torlag led him from the great hall after. Now he stood revealed to her in the clear light of the morning.

The impressions came hard and fast. Brown hair hanging down, a rich color that had threads of copper woven through, picked out by the sun. A clever, charming sort of face, the kind made to smile, though he was not smiling now and looked, rather, as if he’d been struck a hard blow. A good body of more than average height—making him a bit taller than she—but with fine, broad shoulders and narrow hips that made a woman think about… Well.

Lithe, that body would be. Fine to the touch.

Shocked by her own thoughts, she called the hound to her, struggling to look away. “Wen, come.”

The hound, usually so obedient, disregarded her. He liked the new arrival, as shown by his great plume of a tail sweeping back and forth.

“Good morn, Bradana,” Toren called. “This is our new guest. Yet another one from Erin.”

Aye. She knew that. She should speak, say something courteous in the face of Toren’s sarcasm.

She could not say anything at all.

“This is our stepsister, Bradana. Bradana, this is—” Toren turned to the man in mock confusion. “What did ye say was your name, again?”

“Adair MacMurtray.” He stepped forward, his gaze fixed upon Bradana as if he sought to memorize her.

By all the gods, he was pleasing to look upon. And the force of him—the essence—struck her in a wave that froze her where she stood.

“The last of Gawen’s three sons,” Kerr drawled, “who he sends to try to steal our lands. As if the first two were no’ bad enough.”

Still Bradana—usually so unhesitant with her tongue—could find nothing to say. That tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth.

He had green eyes. Grayish green, at least, pale in that clever, tanned face.

“Mistress Bradana,” he said as if he memorized her name as well as her face.

She wanted to touch him, wanted to reach out and clasp one of his hands as, surely, a polite woman might do in greeting. Only she was not all that polite, as a rule.

Having been greeted by Kerr and Toren, he must think them all savages. And why should she care what he thought?

Fortunately, Wen deserted him then and returned to her side. Instead of reaching out to the stranger, she buried her fingers in the hound’s fur.

Adair smiled. “That is a fine hound. My brother has one at home called Lir. I tell him ’tis not a very original name.”

“Better than Cu.” Was that her voice? It served her at last, shaken loose perhaps by the force of that smile. Men were not supposed to be beautiful, were they? He had a beautiful smile. “Welcome to Dalriada.”

“Thank ye.”

The smile again. It did not flash so much as light him from within.

“Come to breakfast,” Toren said. “Ye will see soon enough, we may be a rough sort o’ family, but we do stand together when need be.”

Against one such as you , he did not state, but implied.

Adair shrugged in an affable manner. She’d seen both his brothers in turn, one after the other. He appeared nothing like either of them.

And naught like any man she’d ever known.

But then why, she wondered as she and Wen followed him into the dun, did he feel so very familiar?