Rowena

  A mournful procession left the village early in the morning to retrieve the bodies from the mining site. Rowena did not go with them. There was nothing more she could do there, and she was too afraid to let her younger siblings out of sight. Leaving her own household chores unfinished, she followed them while they tended to the animals and gathered firewood. The forest she had always enjoyed as a place of peace and retreat now looked threatening. Every noise and shadow made her suspicious. She pulled herself together, trying not to scare the children even more.

  ‘How beautiful,’ her little sister sighed from behind her.

  Rowena looked around to see what she meant, but then she too heard a choir of pure, melodious voices raised in a joyful song about a water sprite being born from a clear stream. She smiled in relief. Her brother was coming home with the druid Taliesin. She hadn’t met him herself, but her father had been very impressed by the young man.

  ‘He is as handsome as he is talented. Unfortunately, he is also a scatterbrained dreamer, or I would have tried to win him as a son-in-law,’ he had teased.

  But there were more voices. At least one of them was female. Maybe all three druids had come to her aid? The calm and pragmatic Brin and the wise Gwydre, the Soul Gazer? They would certainly be more useful than a bard. Finally, some good news!

  ‘Finn is coming home! Let’s go meet him,’ she told the children.

  They all ran towards the voices when the song abruptly ended in a shout of warning. Her brother and sister clutched her skirts in fear. Why had she allowed herself to be so stupid and venture into the woods when she knew there were enemies around?

  Yet after a short commotion, there was a cheer, and she could recognise her brother’s voice as he shouted, ‘What a throw! Well done!’

  Encouraged by his happy tone, she ran forward only to find herself with a sword point less than an inch from her breast. Something was shimmering in the thick shades of the trees, but she couldn’t see a face.

  ‘Run!’ she told the children and raised the thick roots from the ground to trap her attacker's legs before she even looked at him. The sword moved away from her breasts and cut through the gnarly, thick roots around the man’s ankles. She was terrified to see them retreat into the ground despite her best efforts.

  The man took a step forward so she could see him more clearly. Her breath caught as she looked up at him. This was surely not a bard. It was a very tall, broad-shouldered man in shiny silver armour, with long dark hair and a face of such beauty that she felt dizzy for a moment.

  ‘I apologise, Lady Rowena. I didn’t mean to scare you,’ he said in a deep, softly accented voice. How did this strange being know her name? Maybe gods did wander the earth sometimes. Had he come to help her or punish her?

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  ‘Rowena? Can we come out now?’ Iseult called shyly from the tree behind her.

  That brought her back to her senses. Finn appeared between the trees, followed by another beautiful being in armour. This one was a female with honey-coloured hair, almost as tall as the man.

  ‘Rowena. Iseult! Niall!’ Finn exclaimed happily, and the little ones ran to seek comfort in his strong arms.

  ‘Are you the one who maimed the bastard? Well done!’ the female being said with approval and a wink.

  Rowena was taken aback. What kind of people did her brother pick up along the way? Those were not druids. Were they even human? How did someone get out of the forest after who knows how many days of travel looking like a white lily, without a speck of dust on those perfect faces and gleaming armour? And what kind of unimaginable riches would one have to possess to afford so much silver?

  ‘Rowena, these are Killian and Aliena,’ Finn finally explained.

  ‘Approximately right. He is Caell’ian, I am Halliena,’ the woman said indulgently.

  ‘You are so pretty,’ Iseult told her in awe.

  The woman beamed down at her. ‘Thank you, little hum… uh… little… woman?’

  ‘I am Iseult,’ the girl declared earnestly.

  ‘Is that your name or what they call your kind?’ the woman asked curiously, and Rowena caught the warning look her male companion directed at her.

  ‘It is my name. Iseult of the Ravenstone.’

  ‘Can I see your sword?’ Niall asked.

  ‘Uh, no. You are too young for that,’ Finn said hastily when the woman pulled the sword that was strapped to her back and offered it to the boy. It was as long as Niall and the shiniest, sharpest-looking blade Rowena had ever seen.

  ‘Sorry little… eh…man?’ the woman apologised, as she sheathed the sword again.

  ‘I am Niall.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here first,’ Finn suggested.

  He led them back to the trodden path where he’d left his cart. There were even more people. If those beings in shiny armour were people at all. Two of them were looking down at a dead wild boar with great curiosity as if they’d never seen a pig in their lives. Another woman in armour came over and withdrew her sword from the carcass with one swift move.

  A horrible feeling came over Rowena. Strangers with extremely sharp swords. Had Finn led a band of murderers directly to the village? Just looking at them, one would have assumed they were the friendliest of beings, but she knew that such beauty could be deceptive.

  Her attention was torn away from them when her brother introduced the three druids. They at least seemed normal and just as friendly as her father had described them. Her fear abated a bit. If anyone could recognize malevolent otherworldly beings, it would be druids.

  ‘Maybe we should proceed to your village,’ Killian suggested earnestly, and Rowena couldn’t help but stare at him again. Now, in the light, she could see that his eyes were not black as she had assumed, but of an unusually dark blue.

  Don’t behave like a moonstruck calf, girl! she reprimanded herself harshly.

  ‘Let’s first load up the boar,’ Finn told one of the beings. That one had light-brown hair and amber eyes.

  ‘But it’s dead.’

  ‘I certainly would not like to try to take it if it were alive. When it rushed out of the undergrowth, I thought Taliesin was a dead man.’

  ‘I think it didn’t like his singing,’ the beautiful woman with dark wavy hair suggested earnestly, and the bard looked genuinely hurt. ‘But I liked it. The animal… the boar has no taste in music,’ she added, her serious expression unchanged.

  Rowena couldn’t tell if she was joking or if she was as muddle-headed as her friends. Taliesin, however, seemed appeased.

  ‘Whatever his taste in music, we are going to have a great feast tonight. Nothing better than a fat acorn-fed boar slowly roasted on a spit over a birch fire,’ Finn declared happily.

  ‘Are we going to eat its flesh?’ the young man with amber eyes asked with an enthusiasm that made Rowena shudder.

  Finn just laughed and clapped the youngster on the shoulder. ‘You are funny, Sandor. I like you. But we call it meat.’