SIXTH DAY OF THE MOON
By
Celia Ashley
Published originally as part of the Relic Anthology, © copyright 2006
Reissued March 2008, (C) copyright Celia Ashley
Cover art by Alex DeShanks, March 2008
Published by New Concepts Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
County Galway, Ireland
Lifting her head, Moira lowered the long lids of her eyes, brown lashes shielding them from the brilliant reflection of the sun. The oddly lunar landscape of Connemara was gilded by the radiance of late afternoon, every naked crag, every tumbled rock, limned in gold. The low-lying scrub, which varied in shades of green from sage to emerald, appeared painted by it in highlighting strokes. Even the small herd of wild, long-legged, sure-footed ponies that had ventured nearer as the day progressed looked as though their hides were coated in honey. Yet she knew that behind her head, if she would turn to look toward the coast, the sky was nearly the color of fading ink as storm clouds rolled toward land on the Atlantic winds. Like a distant drumming of her own blood beat, she felt the vibration of far-off thunder.
Breathing in, then out, then in again, she smelled the damp, loamy soil, the cool air, the warmth of the sun trapped in the fabric of her tee shirt, the scent of well-earned sweat, not only her own, but that of her nearest neighbor, a man about her age, perhaps thirty-four or so, and also from the States who was crouched over the turned earth beside her feet. She listened to the whispering noise of his trowel moving carefully through the dirt, followed by the quieter sound of a soft-bristled brush, whisking aside the loosened soil to reveal what lay beneath.
Despite the approaching storm, she felt relaxed, releasing all tension from her muscles as the breeze tossed her golden-blonde hair forward across her eyes. It had been a good day, a very good day. To her right, toward the east, she heard the noise of the tent flaps whipping in the rising wind, the guide lines singing in counterpoint to the strains of a bit of classical music coming from the CD player. Someone had changed the disk, she realized with a smile. A few minutes ago they had all been listening to the rather raucous sounds of heavy metal. The former had been the choice of one of the younger members of the group, to be sure. They were a varied fellowship, brought together by a common goal to unearth the past.
Beneath the tent’s stretch of canvas countless artifacts had been arrayed to be identified, photographed, sorted, catalogued, packed in gauze in sturdy boxes for the trip to the Kildare Street lab in Dublin. So many times a site yielded little, sometimes nothing, in terms of relics of the past. Oh yes, it had been a very good day.
Planting her hands in the small of her back, fingertips meeting, Moira arched her spine backwards against the pressure of her fingers, easing a knot of tender tissue. She could feel it just below the surface of her flesh, a result of being hunched over her bent knees for hours on end, and she dug one knuckle directly into the muscle, feeling a satisfying pop as the blood released. A sigh of pleasure, of relief, moved low in her throat.
“Feel better?”
Cracking one lid, she glanced sidelong in the direction from which the voice had come. Her companion for the afternoon had risen and was dusting dirt from his knees. His tee shirt was faded with age and abuse, but she could still make out the brittle depiction of the New York City skyline and the single word title of the popular television sitcom about six friends. Steve, she thought the fellow’s name was. Since moving into the place vacated by her former partner, his conversation had been minimal. The only reason she knew he also had come to Ireland from the United States was his obvious and almost stereotypical New York accent and the fact that he had actually told her as much, when he mentioned his name.
“I do,” she told him. “One tends to get stiff, hunched over like that. How’s your back?”
“Fine,” he said. “Took some ibuprofen. Storm’s moving in. Maybe the damp doesn’t help, huh?”
Her other eye opened as she studied him critically. “Possibly not,” she agreed.
“Water?” he asked, turning to expectorate the dust he’d been breathing in. He jerked his chin in the direction of the cooler containing bottles of Avian.
She nodded her thanks, pushing wind-whipped hair from her eyes. By the very nature of its location, the operation was plagued by daily rainfall, usually followed by a spectacular rainbow. When this storm got closer, the team would scurry to place everything under cover, wait for the rain to pass, and then set about business as usual. Knowing she still had time, Moira dropped to her knees to take up where she’d left off before standing, warming once more to the work at hand. Her trowel immediately struck something hard, gleaned more by the feel of the blade rather than any sound of contact. The wind whistled through the vale. Glancing up, Moira noted that preparations were calmly under way to move the packaged items to a waiting vehicle for later transport. She returned her attention to the earth beneath her hands, digging with the tip of her finger before applying the brush.
“Oh.”
Despite the sun warm on Moira’s back and in her hair, and glinting off the object barely unearthed, the sporadic wind matched the chill that coursed her spine. The voice of the approaching storm growled, vibrating the earth beneath her knees. Willing herself to remain calm, Moira utilized the brush to delicately clear away the clinging debris that time had wrought. As she worked with painstaking care she had to remind herself to breathe. Her heart pounded in her breast, a forceful rhythm of suppressed excitement echoed by another roll of thunder. Grain by grain, she cleared the dirt away, wriggling the pointed end of the brush handle underneath the object when she felt certain she could pry it loose without damage. With the unknown object balanced in the loosened cradle of earth, Moira slipped her left hand into a latex glove hanging out of her pocket, pulling it on with her right and the additional aid of her teeth, and then she popped the item out of the soil and into her palm.
“Oh,” she said again, a bare expulsion of air.
About the length of her hand, the object was clearly gold, as the elements and time could do nothing to tarnish the beauty of that particular metal. Shaped like a curved sickle, the object was scribed with images of a language that predated most of the other artifacts pulled from the site. Thus far, the relics identified seemed to date roughly to an eighth century Christian settlement. This, if her initial supposition proved correct, was a Druidic relic. A crescent, or cead-rai-re, meant to denote the first quarter in the lunar cycle or, more specifically, the sixth day of the moon.
Awed, Moira wiped the pointer finger of her right hand on the fabric of her pants, to remove as much of the natural oils as possible, then touched the edge of the relic. Finely wrought, it was not much thicker than the cover on a paperback book, but still solid and unbent. The chance shifting of the earth that had brought it to the surface had, amazingly, left it unharmed, as had all the hundreds of years between its casting and use and its finding its way into her hand.
Lowering her lids, she tried to imagine the passage of time, the myriad lives, the moments of epochal and mundane occurrence, the changes wrought, the static element of being. In her mind’s eye she saw the countless days, or her concept of those days, arrayed in lightning speed, back and back and back, to a hand, lean and calloused and strong, burying the cead-rai-re in the soil, for remembrance....
Sucking in a gasping breath, Moira’s eyes flew wide. She blinked as a darkness passed over her, blocking the sun’s warmth. Driven by the fierce coastal winds the storm had arrived, blue-black clouds roiling, the shadow of their arrival flying before them across the craggy landscape. A fork of lightning lit the bruised horizon as she turned her head.
“Oh, hell,” she whispered and struggled to her feet against the buffeting wind. Looking all around, she found everyone in a flurry of activity, clearing the site, covering the exposed dig. No one was near her, nor had alerted her to the sudden, emergency status. How long had she been sitting there lost in contemplation of the relic still grasped in her hand?
She bent to gather her tools, first pushing the dirt she had just removed back into the ground, in the hope that it would provide some protection from the threatened onslaught to whatever else lay hidden. There was no plywood nearby, no tarp. As she straightened again, her respiration caught in her lungs. Every hair on her arms and on her head seemed to lift at the same instant as if charged, waving madly, and not from the wind. With a small cry she realized what was about to happen and leaped to roll for cover, eyes closing instinctively against a star-bright flash that never came.
Chapter Two
Moira opened her eyes to a vague green atmosphere through which the sun was filtering with very little success at illuminating the earth beneath. She closed and opened her eyes again several times in rapid succession, trying to clear her vision. After a moment she realized what the problem was.
The sunlight, descending into the west, angled steeply through the canopy of foliage to the place where she lay, colored by the leaves through which it passed. Wait. That couldn’t be right. Where had all these trees come from? Vast forestation had ceased to exist in Ireland long ago, trees felled for building material and to clear the land for planting. On the watery plain where they had been digging there was no growth taller than her waist. And yet here she was, gazing up through a vast canopy of dark, intertwined branches in heavy leaf. Hmm.
She sat up, instantly regretting her action. Her head felt like an overripe melon, mushy on the inside and ready to split wide open. Fighting back nausea, Moira clutched her forehead in her hands, dimly aware of a strange smell, a smell like--
Like burnt cloth.
Peering out between her fingers, Moira let her gaze rove along her legs sticking out in a ‘v’ before her. The khaki material of her pants was barely there. A swath of cloth hung from her waist with a few strands of charred material clinging to the rough edge. The skin of her thighs, her knees, her shins, was blackened with soot, although, with a bit of tentative poking, seemed otherwise undamaged. She was missing one boot and both socks, even on the foot where her boot remained tied in place, the shoelace ends emitting thin wisps of what appeared to be smoke. Dropping her hands, she stared at her arms, first one, then the other. The fine, blonde hairs were singed clean off them, leaving the lean length of each as bare as a baby’s bottom and slightly pink. Her tee shirt had pulled through the worse for wear, slashed as if by strokes of a tiny blade, each incision scorched, the thread of the hem burned away so that the fabric hung ragged. Judiciously she checked her eyebrows and lashes, both of which appeared to be where last she had known them, though she was unsure if her tingling fingers actually felt the hairs there, or merely sensed what should have been. She ran her hands through the hair on her head, which she found in wild disarray. Removing her hands from her scalp, she folded them in her lap.
After several minutes of sober contemplation, she understood that she had been struck by lightning, even though she did not remember the flash. Struck and survived. It was known to happen, on rare occasion. Wasn’t there a gentleman in Iowa or somewhere who had been struck and lived to tell of it seven times? Yes, yes, she was sure of it, although she couldn’t quite remember through the buzzing in her head where she had picked up that tidbit of information.
Turning her head on her neck, she checked for soreness, then moved all her limbs for the same reason, thinking surely something must be damaged. Nothing. Good. Maybe she could stand up, then.
Before doing so, she decided to remove her lone boot, unlacing it with shaking fingers. When she pulled it off, the unburned section of sock stayed inside, seared to the leather uppers. She tossed the footgear aside, catching the glimmer of something in the grass.
“Well, well,” she said, her voice hoarse, “I’m surprised you didn’t melt away to a puddle of molten metal.”
Grasping the druid’s crescent in curved fingers, she held it close, studying the surface for any indication that it had been harmed by the lightning. In point of fact, it looked in better condition than it had. Where the lightning had burned and blasted a portion of the hair and most of the clothes from her body, the force had apparently detonated the dirt from every crevice, leaving the gold to gleam like new. As she held it, the crescent seemed to thrum in the wind, making a delicate music just beyond hearing.
Clutching the artifact in her sooty grasp, Moira rose shakily to her feet, the grass cool beneath her bare soles. Frowning, she peered through the boles of trees marching down the hillside, searching for anything that looked even vaguely familiar. There was nothing.
“Hullo?” she called, pausing to listen. The buzz had lessened, which was a good thing, because otherwise she would not have been able to hear anything at all.
Funny. She really didn’t hear anything at all, with the exception of a bird repeating its trilling warble over and over from a tree branch high above her head.
“Hullo?” she called again, quieter now, a little less certain of a responding greeting.
The grass was not wet, nor was there any sign of recent rain. Wherever she was, she was a good distance away from where she had been. She wasn’t certain if Ireland experienced tornados, but she wondered briefly, her thought processes trying to deal in a semi-logical fashion with a very illogical and improbable occurrence, if she had been picked up by one and deposited somewhere else, free from harm.
Narrowing her eyes, Moira turned slowly on her heel in another observance of her surroundings, as if by squinting the truth of the matter might be more clearly revealed to her. If, in point of fact, she had been struck by lightning--which, seemed rather likely, despite the narrow chances of survival--and if she had also been whisked away by a tornado (which was seeming increasingly unlikely, given the whole and healthy state of the landscape around her), shouldn’t she be injured? Not that she wanted to be suffering any sort of injury, and was grateful that she hadn’t, but such a stroke of good fortune was staggering in its extreme stretch of the odds, as well as baffling.
And if she hadn’t been whisked away by a phenomenon of nature, then just where the hell was she? she demanded in silent accusation of her surroundings.
A cool, marginal breeze wafted beneath the trees, just enough to chill her exposed skin, floating into the holey tee shirt and up under pants that had become little more than a ragged skirt of negligible length. As to her panties, they were apparently non-existent, if the feel of the wind on her buttocks was any indication. Bending her head, she studied what was left of her clothing with an attempt at humor.
“Alright,” she said, finding comfort in the sound of her own voice, despite its tendency to crack, “not only do I not know where I am, but to the amusement of the powers that be I have been dropped here dressed like some pornographic Daisy Duke.”
Slipping the artifact into what remained of the pocket at her waist, Moira decided her best bet was to just start walking downhill and hope to find someone who could be of assistance. She cautiously tucked her brittle hair behind her ears, setting one foot in front of the other in slow locomotion, her balance slightly awry. The going was rough, the ground rocky and uneven and her bare feet markedly tender, but after what might have been an hour of walking she came out, exhausted and sweaty, from beneath the trees into an open field.
Although the general configuration of the craggy hills bounding the large undulating plain seemed something like those at which she had been gazing on and off throughout the past weeks, she could not be certain. They were definitely not as barren, but sparsely forested. Beyond, the taller peaks stood blue with distance.
The small village where she had been staying with the others while excavating was nowhere in sight. No smoke rose toward the deep blue sky, no sounds of traffic drifted in the air, or of voices, nor even the chorus of dogs which seemed a constant counterpoint to the day’s activities. Of course, it would all be different, wouldn’t it be, if she was somewhere else entirely. And however it might have happened, it certainly seemed that she was.
Shielding her eyes from the sun rising above a low cover of cloud to the east, Moira pivoted in a full circle, checking again. Nope. Nothing that she recognized. However, she did spot the glimmer of water in the scrubby growth and made for it, her throat contracting with thirst.
Lowering herself to her knees in the heather, Moira leaned over the still pool, preparing to dip her cupped hands into the calm surface. She paused at sight of her own reflection.
“Holy crap,” she breathed.
Her countenance was barely recognizable, striated with soot like a painted Celt going into battle. She twisted her mouth, making a fierce face at herself, her eyes then straying to the mop of her hair. Normally sleek and shining, it stood out around her head like a lion’s mane, tawny and wild. What she could see of her upper body revealed the torn shirt, one shoulder nearly bare, the line of her collar bone smudged with dirt and carbon. Bending nearer, she gazed long at her eyes for telltale signs of damage, although she suspected there was none as her vision showed no evidence of harm. The whites of her eyes were still white, the green of her iris looking very green indeed in the still water, her pupils dilating normally to the movement of her head to bring her eyes into and out of the sunlight.
Releasing a held breath, she dipped her hands into the water to drink before sullying it with the residue of the ablutions which were her next intent. The water soothed her throat, the cool liquid weaving a chill trail into her stomach, down her chin and along the scorched skin of her arms. As she bent to drink again she heard a noise, the sound of loose stones rolling, and straightened, turning her head.
About a dozen yards away stood a long-legged pony, a wild Connemara pony, its mane tossing in the breeze. As she watched, several others mounted the rise from a small declivity beyond and paused beside the first. She could hear the soft whickering as they studied her, tails swishing calmly to and fro. Not wishing to alarm them, she eased slowly back over her heels, returning their mute regard.
If there were herds running free, she reasoned, then she could not be so awfully far away from where she had been. The trees, however, were throwing her off, as the landscape had been decidedly bare and craggy.
“Good morning, my pretties,” she murmured. The closest flicked its ears forward at the sound of her voice and took a hesitant step in her direction. Behind, the horizontal clouds were beginning to shred in the morning breeze. Several large, black birds--rooks, she thought--winged their way westward, cawing raucously. These were followed by several more, then by a veritable eruption of flight as a whole flock burst from the trees to her right in full cry. The ponies started and fled, hooves beating a rhythm over the packed soil. Moira rose, swiveling on her bare heel to see what had startled them all.
From out of the forest came several more of the ponies, perhaps a half a dozen in all, and these all obviously broken to riding as each possessed atop its back a man. Beneath the soles of her feet she felt the vibration of hooves pounding the earth. The sound of motion drummed the air all around, much like the beating of wings. She could hear the chuffing breath of each animal in full gallop, and the creak and ring of harness and metal, but from the men there came no sound, intent as they were on their headlong trajectory down the hillside. For a moment, Moira wondered if they were engaged in some sort of race, and in the next she wondered if they noticed her standing there at all, or if they were going to ride right over her.
“Hey!” she called, and cleared her throat for a repeated warning. “Hey!”
If she ran in any direction, she would cross the path they were taking, so she opted to stand her ground, waving her arms in a frantic bid for attention. When this proved unsuccessful, she folded her arms before her face, uttering a brief prayer as she made herself as small a target as possible, waiting for collision. The ponies parted at the last instant around her, drawn aside by their riders who hauled back on the reins just past where she stood, wheeling the sure-footed beasts around. Together, all six riders began to circle her as she peered out from between her fingers.
Her breath rasped from her lungs. “Shit,” she said quietly.
She turned her head to follow the pattern of the riders on their beasts as they studied her, one or another of them turning constantly toward the forest they had just vacated. As Moira stared back at them she felt a cold creep into her blood, slowly working its way to the surface of her skin, and then into her brain. There was not a man among them who wore any type of garment with which she was personally familiar, although she recognized the style of attire from a variety of documents she’d had the opportunity to peruse over the years. Each man was garbed in a pair of brigis, or breeches of woven cloth, feet tucked neatly into boots of untanned leather. Above, they wore shirts or tunics crossed over the front and belted about the waist, multi-colored cloaks heavily laden with fringe draped around their shoulders. All but one had his hair shorn at the temples and tied at the nape in a single, long lock called, she remembered, a glib. The one whose hair was unshorn possessed an abundance of jet black locks, loosely braided and coiled in the folds of his cloak, which was of finer stuff than the rest, the outer surface napped and with the added colors of scarlet and a deep blue. All were clean-shaven. Most disturbing of all was the fact that they were, to a man, armed with lance and dirk, two of them also bearing double-edged swords secured to their bodies by a loop of chain.
Run she told herself silently. Just run.
But some other part of her brain, more intent on self-preservation than reacting to the fight or flight impulse, knew that she could never hope to outrun a mounted man, and even if she did, where was she to go? Besides, she continued to reason, these men were perhaps part of some local festival, dressed in ancient costume, and no reason to be assuming they were anything like what they appeared to be.
She did not speak, tilting her chin up in defiance of the place to which her thoughts wanted to lead her, waiting for the first word to come from one of them. The dark-haired man reined his animal in before her, returning her defiant glare with speculation. Beneath him his mount shifted, pawing the ground. One of the others rode close, speaking something into the first fellow’s ear that she could not hear, afterward jerking his chin toward the forest. The dark one turned on him with a fierce shake of his head.
“Is fear rith maith ná drochsheasamh,” he growled.
A good run is better than a bad stand.
Moira blinked at her easy recognition of his words. What the hell was going on? She took a small step away.
“They come!” This from one of the others. He spoke in a language not her own, though subsequently studied, but the words resounded in her head in free translation. Moira took another step backward. From the direction of the hillside she could hear the noise of concerted movement across a forest floor coated with leaf-mold and seasonal debris. Branches snapped in distant percussion. Voices raised as one voice filled the air with an inhuman yowl. Moira felt the hair stand up on the back of her arms.
The dark man spurred his mount nearer and reached down from its back. His arm shot out, large hand snaking around her upper arm in a fierce grip. With apparently little effort he yanked her from the ground, tossing her across the rump of the pony, who objected mightily to the abrupt deposit. The dark-haired fellow fought to rearrange her person on the back of the animal, not much caring where his hand fell in the process.
“Straddle the beast, will you?” he rumbled, shoving her in the proper direction. “And cling tight.”
With some misgiving she complied with his commands, spreading her legs over the pony’s back behind its male rider and wrapping her arms around the man’s mid-section. His hand reached back, cupping her bare bottom, and pushed her a little closer. Then he settled that same hand onto the hilt of the knife in his belt.
The cry from the forest grew louder. She could hear the varied intakes of breath from those pressed closest, whispered pleas of mercy or of anger she could not discern.
“Christ,” she whispered herself, and felt the man in the circle of her arms stiffen at her utterance. Then he dug his heels into the pony’s sides and the beast lurched forward into an effortless stride. Sinking her teeth hard enough into her lower lip to draw a welt, Moira clung to the man with all her strength, pressing her forehead between his shoulder blades and shutting her eyes against the impossibility of revelation.
Chapter Three
Moira slid gratefully to the ground, her legs like rubber beneath her. She watched the man who had just ridden for the better part of another hour, apparently unaffected, tend to his mount, walking it around to slowly cool its blood as he wiped the lather from the animal’s chest and withers with the edge of his cloak. His muscled legs in pale blue breeches were long. He was a tall man, well-built, with the dark complexion and hair of the Black Irish, legacy of a distant intermingling of the blood of Spaniards with the Celt. His hair, freed from the thong that bound it by the wind of passage as they rode, was thick and raggedly cut, the ends curling below the slope of his broad shoulders. He moved with grace and strength, his countenance, in profile, handsome and possibly quite young. Although a life rough-led leant him a well-seasoned demeanor, she suspected he might not be more than twenty and four.
The others with him were roughly the same age, somewhat paler in complexion with hair varying from the color of iron oxide to brass. The dark-haired fellow was, she had come to realize, in command of the others in some fashion. The one who had spoken to him earlier might have some familial connection, she thought, as they shared a certain look and bearing, despite the difference in general coloration. They also spoke to each other with a casual familiarity which none of the others displayed.
Closing her eyes, Moira leaned her head against the rough bark of the tree at her back. She crossed her feet at the ankle after she had ascertained that the trailing edge of the fabric hanging from her waist was tucked discreetly between her legs. Breathing slowly and evenly, she succeeded in warding off panic. As impossible as it might be, she had come to believe that what she suspected was true. There were not men in costume, but wearing the garments of everyday existence. No mock battle had been taken place from which they had fled. The rust dulling the edges of forged metal was not that of neglect, but dried blood.
And now she was far from the place where she had regained consciousness to find herself displaced in time. By the lightning? she wondered. No matter. It was not something she would care to attempt to duplicate in order to return to her own place in time. Very likely death would be the only revelation there. What, exactly, she was going to do would require long and careful consideration. Her main goal was to maintain a level head, together with her existence. Most immediately, that maintenance was going to involve the continued assistance of the man who had lifted her out of the field to save her life from a small, marauding, battle-maddened army who had chased them on foot for as long as rage had sustained them. Even after the warriors had dropped back in defeat the large ponies had thundered on, fleet of foot, until it had been determined there was no further chance of pursuit.
Lifting her lids just enough to peer through her lashes, Moira watched her young rescuer bend to dip his waterskin into the stream. He tipped his head back, drinking thirstily, water coursing along his jaw and neck, glistening in the last of the sunlight where it fell into strands of jet-black hair. He crouched to fill the skin again, turning to gaze at her across the small distance between them, one arm levered across his bent knee. His expression caused her to pause, mid-swallow, her pulse leaping in the side of her throat.
One by one, the others turned to follow the direction of his gaze.
Moira tensed where she sat, uncertain of the intent gathering in their eyes. She wished, not for the first time, for something more concealing, for one of their cloaks, perhaps. She did not expect to be given one, of course, even if she asked politely for the loan. She well knew that the feeling of being naked, exposed, was not merely her imagination. The chill on her skin was more than the composite result of shock and fear. Now, watching the small gathering of young warriors from beneath her lashes, she knew that her ruined garments were exposing her to more danger than just those posed by the elements.
She glanced around her immediate vicinity, seeking anything that might aid in her protection. A stout stick, a rock, anything, but the grass, though trampled, was clear. If all six made up their mind to violence, nothing of that sort would make a difference anyway.
Opting for reason, Moira stood up instead, with the intention of speaking to the dark-haired man. She made several steps in his direction and was brought up short by the shaft of a lance lowered across her mid-section.
By the stream, the dark one had risen as she did. The breeze knifed through her clothing, stirring dirt at her feet into a small cloud that spiraled across the ground toward him, dissipating just short of reaching the bank of the stream. His cloak fluttered back over his shoulders. In spite of the loose cut of his breeches, Moira plainly observed that she had not been incorrect in her assumption regarding the proclivity of his thoughts as he watched her.
As if his patent erection was of no consequence, he held the waterskin out to her with a slight inclination of his head. The lance was lifted, the butt end grounded beside the heel of the warrior who had extended it. Squaring her narrow shoulders, Moira walked forward. She extended her hand to the unstoppered skin. In the next instant, she was shoved forcefully behind the knees with a booted foot, a hand on her shoulder forcing her to kneel on the ground.
“You will display proper obeisance before your prince,” she heard a voice mutter fiercely behind her.
Moira yanked her shoulder free of the unseen warrior’s grasp. She lifted her gaze to the dark eyes of the man still holding the waterskin. “I do not know you,” she said, “but I meant no disrespect. I thought you were offering me water.”
“As I was,” he answered her genially enough. Bending, he slipped his hand beneath her arm, assisting her to stand. Moira felt a stinging of the flesh of her knees, no doubt grazed by her abrupt descent to the pebble-strewn bank. He pressed the skin into her hand, waiting patiently for her to drink her fill. To the man behind her he gave a brisk nod, dismissing him. His anger at that man was evident. Moira relaxed a little, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Thank you,” she said.
He stoppered the skin in an absent motion, handing it off to another of his men. “Who are you?”
“I--my name is Moira,” she told him, speaking to him in the language not her own, but his. Odd. Had the strike of lightning rattled loose some unconscious learning from the past, which had taken place during the long course of her studies?
His nostrils pinched slightly as he drew an impatient breath. “Where is your mate? Your tribe?”
“I have no mate,” she said.
“Your tribe?” he prompted.
Better, she decided, to tell the truth when pushed to it. “Gone,” she said. Yes, that was true enough. If she was to accept her situation, then anyone and everything she had known was yet to be, and therefore, in simple terms, quite gone from her life. At her admission, sympathy flashed briefly in his eyes, then vanished, concealed by a certain wariness glittering behind the length of his long lashes.
“I am Padraic,” he stated.
Patrick. Well, judging by his apparent and continued arousal, he was not the saint. As a prince, of course, he would not be.