Excerpt: The Irish Warrior by Kris Kennedy

 Check out an excerpt from The Irish Warrior by Kris Kennedy, available now from Zebra.

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…They came to the edge of the king’s highway and ducked low.  A breeze rustled the reeds, making a low, seething sound, like a hiss through teeth.  They stretched on their bellies side by side, peering at the puddle-strewn, rock-encrusted, muddy path that marked the main passageway from the north to Dublin.

            “‘King’s highway’ has a rather overstated magnificence,” Senna murmured.

            “So does most of what the English say and do.”  Finian pushed forward on his elbows.  “The way is clear. We’re off.”

            They hurried across, staying low.  The highway might only be wide enough for two wagons to pass, but it ran straight as an arrowshot in either direction.  It would be easy for them to see anyone coming.  And easy for anyone to see them.   There was also a ridge a few yards back that lined the far side. Anyone could be up there waiting with arrows.  But apparently, they had no choice. They had to cross the highway.

            “Why is that?” she asked when they were safely across and striding up a steep, narrow, almost imperceptible path that Finian had found on the hill beyond.  “Why did we have to cross the highway?  Could we not have kept to the east side and headed south for Dublin?  This is the way to Dublin, is it not?” she added after a long moment of silence ensued.

            He still didn’t reply.  The hill was long and steep, and as climbing was beginning to take all Senna’s strength, she was just as glad to have the conversation halt momentarily.

            They climbed swiftly, ducking under sloping tree branches that dripped with moss maybe a hundred years old.  Silvery light slanted through their feathery veined fingers, making the world glow with greenish-grey light.  It smelled fresh.

            They finally crested the ridge.  The path, while still only wide enough for one at a time, at least leveled out.  Senna stopped and bent over, breathing hard.   Behind her, Finian was breathing slightly heavier than usual.  Very slightly.

            She looked back.  He was mostly a silhouette of power, standing upright, looking down to the road below.  With the moonlight washing over him, his body was cut clear, like something hewn from rock.   Dark hair spilled down to his shoulders.  Impatiently, he raked it behind his ear, revealing the dark outline of a square, stubbly jaw and chin.  She could see the thick hilt of his sword rising up above his left shoulder.

            “Ready, Senna?”

            She straightened and nodded, although another hour of rest would not have been misplaced.  Keeping account ledgers at a copyist’s desk did not tend one towards physical exertion.  Still, she rode and fished at times, and of course had to practice every day with—
      
            “Senna?”

            But being a merchant did not quite prepare one for rabid barons, or raging rivers, or nighttime flights across a foreign frontier.

            It was not often she was faced with a situation she did not have a ready reply for, an answer that could be written in ink, tallied in rows, stamped and scrolled and signed by witnesses who could prove, and ensure, and make sure no one could ever take away—

            Warm fingers crooked under her chin.  “Senna?”   He angled her face to his, his eyes searching.  “Are ye with us?”

            The feel of his fingers, strong and thick, solid and real, funneled some measure of calm back into her.   She nodded.  He nodded along with her and dropped his hand.  Her chin felt cold where his fingers had been.

        “Forward, then, angel.  We’ve far way to go.”

        She started walking.  “To Dublin?  A long way to go to Dublin?   I may be off in my reckoning, Finian, but we seem to be headed west, not east and south.”

        “Baile alth Cliath.”

        She paused.  “West.”

“Baile alth Cliath.   Keep walking.”

“Is that intended to mean something?” she asked after a moment of trying to ascertain his meaning.  Which she could never do, because firstly, she was being baited—growing up with a brother provided sufficient experience to know when she was being toyed with—and secondly, Finian was speaking Irish.  The low-spoken syllables were strange and evocative, as if he were chanting an incantation, murmuring spells.

 “It means Dublin,” he said shortly.

“Bally cle, cle—.”  She sailed an irritated glance over her shoulder, even though she knew better than to expose a weakness such as irritation. Again, the experience born of being a sister, even if she was the eldest.  “Why not just call it by its name?”

 “’Tis its name.  Dublin is what the Northmen called it.  And now the Saxons gall.  But her name is Baile alth Cliath.”

Not Vikings, not English foreigners. Irish.

She glanced over her shoulder again. He didn’t appear angry, or any less imperturbable than he had thus far. He was walking as steadily as ever, obviously adjusting himself to her pace, because again, he barely appeared to be exerting effort.  His eyes caught hers.

She faced forward.  “Oh.”

The trees to their left opened slightly. She could see the road a few hundred yards below them, winding its silvery outline under treetops, hugging the hillside.  From out of the silence came his rough-edged murmur,  “And, nay.”

The trail had narrowed to a rather alarming degree, so Senna didn’t bother to look around this time.   “Nay, what?” she asked, as calmly as possible.

“Yer query, Senna.  Nay, this isn’t the way to Dublin.”

She stopped so short he walked up the back of her heels.  “What?” she whisper-shouted, trying to turn around on the sinuous path.  “You promised to take me to Dublin.”

“I ne’er promised such a thing, lass.”

    She glared over her shoulder.  His chest was bare inches from hers, and she contemplated elbowing him over the side of the ridge.  “You did!”

    “I did not.  Becalm, yourself,” he added quietly.

    She glared.  She was practically crackling with fury.  She was also being quiet.  Angrily quiet.  Vehemently quiet.

    “I will be calm when you—”

    His hand snaked out and closed over her mouth, silencing her.

    “Riders.”  His gruff voice was a notch above silence.

    And like that, Senna’s orientation shifted. No longer was she aware of her leaden, weary limbs, nor her desperate situation, nor the fear that had been marking its way up the back of her neck like the tip of a knife.   She wasn’t even terribly aware of the riders on the highway, some forty feet below.  She was aware, only, of him.

    His fingers gently held over her lips. The touch of his wide wrist against the side of her neck.  His thighs just behind hers, pressing heat onto the back of her legs.

    She drew a steadying breath and inhaled the scent of him, the river and the wild, stones and pine.

    “Fimiam?” she puffed against his hand.

    “Can ye not hush for a single second?” he whispered back, but his words were made of breath, his jaw an outline of heat beside her ear.  Her back and buttocks were warm from him. She could hear the men on the road far below, muffled voices and shuffling hooves.

    Riders?  What of it?  What did this man taste like?

    She trembled, from fear, surely, but more, from the power of this new, reckless desire.  The root of her mother’s evil.  Reined in for years, bound by books and ledgers, now being released?  While she was on the run from a madman? The onrushing strength of it shocked her.

    He must have felt her trembling.  The hand covering her mouth slid to her cheek, and his thumb stroked gently by her jaw.   His other hand skimmed up her back and rested warmly between her shoulder blades.  She shivered, not whatsoever from fear.

    “Nothing to fear, lass,” he murmured.  “’Tis but a messenger and his man.  They are not seeking us.  All we have to do is let them pass.”

    All I have to do is taste you.

   Senna jerked at the thought.  No, not a thought, an urge, rising out of something so deep it pulsed with each heartbeat.

    He put his mouth by her ear.  “Easy, now, Senna.”  His thumb stroked her jaw as if he were gentling a wild thing. His sculpted body was hot behind hers.  “Be easy.”

    “Stop touching me,” she pleaded in a whisper.

    His thumb stopped moving.  “What?”

    “Kiss me.”

    The rest of him went completely still.

    Oh, please Lord, deliver me from this. But it was too late.  His body was too hot.  She was too far beyond the Pale.  

    “What did ye say?” he asked in a low, masculine rumble…

© 2010 The Irish Warrior by Kris Kennedy, Kensington Publishing

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