Page 10 of Taming the Eagle
He never finished his warning, for a spear thrust suddenly through his chest.
Fenella’s heart bucked against her breastbone. She recognized the protruding iron, arrow-shaped shaft of the pike: a Roman pilum. The warrior’s face went ashen, and then blood leaked from his open mouth.
An instant later, he toppled forward—only to be kicked out of the way by a helmed figure.
Toutorix’s shout of rage echoed through the structure.
His warriors cast aside their horns of mead and lunged for their weapons, as did the chieftain.
But it was too late.
Roman soldiers, their plate armor glinting in the firelight, poured into the hall. Men broke upon them like waves upon the rocks, but all of them fell under the sharp jab of those vicious daggers and the short stabbing blades the enemy carried with them.
The clash was brutal but short—and it ended with Toutorix disarmed and cursing as he stood between two enemy soldiers. Blood trickled down his forehead, but the Wolf paid it no mind. Instead, he snarled like a cornered animal.
Meanwhile, Fenella backed up against the hearth.
The heavy tread of approaching soldiers filtered into the roundhouse then, and those soldiers already within parted for the newcomers.
Like everyone else, Fenella’s gaze shifted to where a tall figure strode inside.
As it did so, her breathing slowed.I know this man.
Tanned skin, arrogantly hawkish features, and golden eyes. She recalled too the ornate helmet bearing a black fan that ran from front to back rather than side-to-side like those some of the other Roman soldiers wore, and the purple-red cloak that swept over one shoulder.
Even three years on, she recognized him: the man who’d spared her that day in the pinewood.
But that unnerving gaze ignored her, instead sweeping to the chieftain, where it rested.
“Aquila,” Toutorix spat the man’s name, and Fenella swallowed a gasp.
The man she’d encountered that day—the one who’d let her go rather than turning her over to his soldiers to be raped—was the infamous, and hated, general who commanded Ardoch and the other forts that ran in a spine down the eastern edge of Cruithentúath.
Her people knew him as ‘an Iolaire’, the Eagle.
One glimpse at those unnerving eyes, and she knew why.
Drawing a dagger at his hip, General Aquila advanced upon Toutorix. “You butchered every last man at Ardunie, Wolf,” he growled in her tongue. “What did they do to provoke you?”
To her husband’s credit, he didn’t wilt in the face of the furious general. Instead, he eyeballed him as he approached. Toutorix’s face then screwed up, and he spat on the ground between them.
“They didn’t need to do anything, Roman,” he snarled back. “Their presence onmylands is enough.”
“Yourlands.” General Aquila halted, tension rippling off his big body. “Last I looked, Toutorix the Wolf wasn’t High King of Caledonia. Emperor Hadrian rules here.”
When Toutorix didn’t respond, the general’s lantern jaw tightened. His fingers flexed around the hilt of his dagger. It had a leaf-shaped blade, very different from the long, thin knives her people favored. “Tell me why I shouldn’t tear out your belly right now? Tell me why I shouldn’t torch your crannog and put every last one of your warriors to the sword?”
Long moments passed inside the hall. It had gone deathly silent, except for the crackling of the hearth.
Toutorix continued to stare back at General Aquila. However, Fenella noted that he’d gone pale. And despite the savage expression that twisted his face, a nerve twitched under one eye.
It hit her then that her husband feared this man.
Fenella’s breathing hitched. The Wolf was afraid of no one.
But with The Reaper breathing down his neck, one skeletal hand upon his shoulder, Toutorix wasn’t as confident as he’d been when his wife had dared question his foolhardy act. Aye, she hated these Roman overlords as much as he did—but a savage, unprovoked attack like the one on Ardunie was always going to end in reprisal.
That was what she’d been trying to tell him before he’d struck her.