Chapter One

The region of Pitlochry, Scotland, 754 AD

She could not breathe. Oh, dear goddess, why couldn’t she breathe?

Flat on her back and disoriented, Barta stared upward. A sharp crescent moon hung in the black vault of the sky like a shard of ice, pinned stark against the darkness—the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. She blinked at it, wondering where she lay and just how she had come here. Deep silence drummed in her ears, and a terrible, great weight pressed down on her chest, making her fight desperately to inhale.

What did she recall? With her eyes fixed on that wicked, deadly moon, she groped mentally for the pieces of reality. There had been a raid. She herself had precipitated it and had attacked, accompanied by several companions. She’d thought they could do a nighttime hit-and-run on the Gaels who’d been so insistent about pushing into their territory all season long. Others among her tribe’s warriors had disagreed. She strove to remember the course of things beyond that and failed. She recalled only the crash of weapons, the screams of ponies and men, and the terror caused by the Gaels’ chariots, which they used like mobile weapons.

Now all lay still—far too still to bode well for Barta and her fellow tribesmen. The moon—not yet risen when she and her companions left home with their spears on their shoulders—hung far to the west. Time had passed, too much time. Why couldn’t she recall?

A strange and terrifying thought occurred: her headlong impetuosity, for which her father ceaselessly faulted her, might have caught up with her at last. He’d long insisted death must come for her before her time and that it stalked her even more surely than it did other Epidii warriors. She might be dead. Was that why she had to fight so hard to breathe?

She’d often declared she didn’t fear death or the subsequent flight over land and water to the afterlife. Had that been a lie? She certainly tasted terror now in the back of her throat and knew herself unprepared to leave this wild, dangerous world with all its beauties, or this land for which she’d been so willing to fight.

Barta blinked at the moon again and focused on sensation. Not dead, no—she could feel far too much: pain from a half-score of wounds and the dreadful struggle to drag breath into her lungs. Her heartbeat, so strong it shook her body. This terrible weight pressing down on her and a persistent, wet warmth. The smell of…

Blood.

Ah, goddess, she lay here soaked by it!

That knowledge got her moving, scrambling up, fighting against her panic and the pain in every limb. She slid with difficulty out from under the mighty weight that pinned her and fought her way to her feet, where a terrible sight met her eyes.

Destruction spread around her in a wide swath. Here a downed pennant, there a smashed chariot. The bodies of the fallen, both Epidii and Gael, sprawled everywhere. The living—gone. Impossible to tell in this stark, uncertain light how long ago the skirmish had ended or who had won. She must have been left for dead beneath…

She looked, blinked, and stared in disbelief. Her heart seized in her chest.

No. Goddess no, not that. Not…

For an instant her mind refused to accept the evidence before her eyes. But yes, if she, Barta lay here, Loyal would be here also. She should have remembered that at once, should have thought of him as soon as she opened her eyes. Because he was the embodiment of his name, had been from his first breath right up to his very—

Last.

No, by the hart and hind, no. He must merely lie injured—knocked down senseless like Barta herself. He’d done what any good war hound should and laid his body over hers in an act of protection.

A final act.

But he couldn’t be dead. She wouldn’t allow it. The goddess, merciful and beautiful, wouldn’t allow it. He merely slept.

With a cry of distress, Barta fell to her knees beside the deerhound’s sprawled form and placed her hands in his fur. He lay on his side with his long legs outstretched, head drawn back in what looked like a strain of agony. Others of their fallen lay around him, for the heart of the fight had taken place here. Barta began to remember it now, the chariots—accursed weapons on wheels—had herded the Epidii like beasts, and the Gaels had cut them apart. Trapped. A knot of Epidii caught just here fighting desperately.

Loyal, at Barta’s side as always, snarling, leaping to her defense, throwing himself between Barta and the weapons of her opponents. That did not mean he now lay dead. They’d fought together so many times and always survived.

Why did she not remember him falling?

The answer came to her even as she ran her palms across his fur. Still warm. Yes, he had to be alive. But her hands came away drenched with his blood.

She gazed at her palms by the cruel light of the glittering moon. Loyal’s blood covered them. Yet it took her an instant to realize the truth: his head had been drawn back not in agony but so some Gaelic warrior—now dead or departed—might slit his throat.

A cry of despair escaped her, and she collapsed over the hound’s body, denial pounding through her. She could smell the beloved scent of his still-warm fur along with his blood—ripe, sharp, and primal.

Her mind told her no one, not even a courageous war hound full of strength, could survive such a wound. Her heart and her lips cried out for him.

Loyal—do not leave me. You cannot! How can I go on if you leave me? Come back…please come back to me!

****

Wild with pain, Barta cried into the darkness and received no response. The limbs beneath her hands did not stir; the hound did not strive to rise to her call. Slowly, heart burst and aching, Barta dragged herself to her feet.

The battlefield, deserted except for the dead, glittered with blood and abandoned weapons. Two of Barta’s tribe mates, both staring sightlessly at the moon, lay close by. Barta, who herself bled from several places, eyed their wounds and gulped back another sob. Oh, what had she done?

And what to do now? At first light, the crows would come and begin their work. She did not want to leave her companions—and especially Loyal—here for them to pillage. She wanted to carry him home and assail him with honor, but doubted she could. The great hound weighed more than she did, and she alone appeared to have survived the battle.

Alone.

She had never felt more alone than she did at that moment. She cried out to the goddess again in a wail of pain that split the night.

“Help me! I cannot leave him here. I will not.”

Unnatural strength came and filled her, fueled by her agony. She bent and attempted to gather the great hound into her arms. His head lolled and revealed his terrible wound.

Another sob tore from her. Though every muscle quivered, she could not succeed in lifting him, not even with the goddess’s assistance. She must leave him here. Unless…

One of her fellows, like her, survived.

She abandoned the hound and went about from man to man, stooping and steadily weeping harder. Six men lay nearby, close friends all, and every one dead. She had not meant it to end like this—it had been a simple act of defiance on her part, intended to discourage the Gaels from encroaching further onto Epidii land. Barta’s idea, all hers. By the goddess, she had persuaded them. To their deaths.

A quick blow, she had thought to strike, hitting from out of the dark at an unprepared scouting band. But the Gaels had proved more in number than expected and had fought back hard. She now recalled seeing their leader—a man with flying, yellow hair—rallying his men and using those accursed chariots to best effect, cutting the Epidii apart.

Now, though, every living soul had departed. That didn’t mean the Gaels would not return—several of their dead still lay here on the bloodied ground, and experience told her they would not neglect them for long.

She had to get away from here at once. But how to leave her friends…and Loyal?

She tried to think how long it would take her to get home and back again with the help needed to fetch her dead. She could not be sure how far off the Gaels’ main encampment might lie, but it should take them considerable time to return.

She fell to her knees again and twined her arms about her hound, planting one palm against his great chest, where she’d always been able to feel his heartbeat.

Stilled now.

She kissed his muzzle and tasted his blood on her lips. She wailed again in despair, heedless of her danger should the retreating Gaels hear. Let them return and slay her; her heart already lay here on the ground.

She’d been no more than seventeen when her father’s bitch, Bright, had a new litter.

“Choose one for yourself,” Father told Barta. That had been before his injury on the field, back when he still retained his strength and vigor. “The hounds are always following after you anyway, and if you intend going into battle like a son rather than a daughter, you will need a good hound at your side.”

It had been easy to choose. Eight pups had Bright whelped, all brindle-gray like her. They’d played, climbed, and tumbled over each other in the way of pups everywhere—all but one who focused on Barta with bright hazel eyes and tottered after her whenever she took a step.

Father had laughed. “That’s the one, Daughter. A male, and he’s going to be big and strong, judging by the size of those paws. You could do worse.”

Barta already knew that. The pup had chosen her rather than the other way round.

She’d taken days to decide on a name for him. Even that had come naturally when folk saw him trotting after her around the settlement, each of them saying with a smile, “Well, Barta, he looks to prove loyal.”

Loyal he’d been for every day of the four years since. They’d walked together, trained and played together, eaten their meals and slept together. Inseparable.

Until now.

Tears streamed down her face, making the hound’s body blur before her eyes. “Oh, Loyal, how can I leave you when you’ve never, ever left me?”

Yet he’d given his life in her defense. Could she turn around and throw that gift away by letting the Gaels return and catch her here?

She must go. And she could not take him with her.

Again she kissed him, her tears mingling with his blood, again got to her feet, moving like an old woman. She found her knife—half under Loyal’s body—and rifled the corpses of her friends for their weapons. Weaponry was scarce and too valuable to lose.

Just like these lives, her heart whispered to her.

The Gaels had already stolen enough. Still it took many long moments before she turned her back and slipped away into the consuming darkness.

****

Loyal!

He lay enfolded in darkness, floating like a bark on a vast ocean, peaceful enough until he heard that cry of agony and—as he had all his life—strove to respond. He must go to her when she called him. His very existence revolved around that truth. His mistress was his sun, his moon, his reason for drawing breath. No thought for himself could ever intrude ahead of a thought of her.

And she called him. More, she needed him. He must respond.

Why could he not rise?

He remembered the battle—he could see it all now in patterns of black and white. Violence had its own aura, as did so many things in the world, a combination of sight and smell. People smelled different when angry or afraid.

He’d fought at Barta’s side as he always had and always would, and taken a number of wounds. They didn’t matter, only her welfare mattered, and his presence at her side.

For him, battle felt like a game, a violent one. So long as Barta remained with him and protected, he cared little what else happened, even to him. He existed to be with her, to protect her—nothing more.

But now she arose from the place where they’d both gone down—where he’d thrown his body in defense of hers—and he could not follow.

For the first time in his life he could not follow.

Oh, unbearable agony. For, faintly, he could still feel her, smell her tears, sense her touch. He could feel her starting to move away from him, feel her spirit tug at his. They were bound together, always had been, by a silver cord stronger than leather and more potent than magic.

Love.

Do not leave me here, Mistress. I cannot rise. I cannot follow you.

Like hers, his spirit howled at the sky.