C. Dale Brittain Read Online Free PDF Page A

pledging eternal love to each other.
    Their future together had looked so hopeful then, and Roric had been so sure that Hadros, who had been a father to him his whole life, would raise no objections.   That hope had lasted until last week when he had finally decided the moment right to raise the topic.
     
    Karin scraped the last of the porridge out of the pot and sat down to eat at the opposite end of the table from King Hadros.   “I went for a walk,” she said shortly when he looked a question at her.   Her firmly set jaw and lowered eyes kept anyone else from speaking to her.
    The king’s sons were discussing the horses.   It was the season to bring the mares and the young foals in from pasture, to introduce the foals to humans and rebreed the mares, and almost time to start breaking the yearlings for riding.   She listened absently to their conversation as she finished breakfast and braided her hair.
    “We’ll have to see how well the foals came out this year,” said Valmar with a laugh.   He was the king’s oldest son, two years younger than Karin, and had red hair and dark blue eyes with lashes that had always seemed to her too long for a boy.   She still thought of him as her little brother, even though in the last few years he had shot up from boyhood to young manhood.   Though most men stayed clean-shaven until marriage, he had managed to grow a somewhat patchy beard.   “And we’ll have to see if the mares will be satisfied to be covered by an ordinary stallion this time.   I’m afraid Roric’s troll-horse may have sired some of this year’s crop!”
    His younger brothers, Dag and Nole, laughed too, then glanced toward her as though recalling her presence and stopped abruptly.   They all knew better than to say anything that could possibly be considered crude or lewd in her presence, but King Hadros did not seem to have noticed.
    Valmar rose.   “Coming with us, Father?   Or is your knee still bothering you?”
    Karin looked up sharply at that.   The king sat with one leg extended straight out from the bench.   “Oh, my leg is fine,” he said easily.   That was the leg, she recalled, that he had broken in the fall last year—or was it the year before?   “But perhaps I shall let you go ahead and catch up with you.”
    His three sons clattered out, taking the housecarls with them.   Karin stood up with a swirl of her skirt, thinking that she would work in the weaving house; it did not require much concentration, once the pattern was established, and the tension burning inside her needed an outlet.   The maids would be impressed at how fast she threw the shuttle today.
    But King Hadros motioned to her.   “Come here, Karin.   I would speak with you.”
    He smiled when he spoke, and she went somewhat reluctantly to sit beside him, looking at him steadily.   Hadros was no taller than she but twice as wide, all of it muscle.   He had little white scars all over the backs of his hands and arms and a long one on his cheek, which just barely did not reach his eye.   Ever since she was fully grown, she could usually manage to talk and smile him into being agreeable.
    Today she was less sure that she could control herself.   This was the man, she thought, who had ordered Roric murdered.
    But the man she saw now was the one who had taught her to ride, the man who had given her the direction of his household when the queen had died and she was still only a girl herself.   She had known him both in riotous good humor and in black rages, especially when he had sat drinking long with his warriors.   It was Hadros who, when she had first started developing a woman’s body, and one of the housecarls had made a remark to her so coarse that she had been another year older before she understood it, had seized the man by the neck and smashed him to the floor with such force that he died.   But at some point, almost without her noticing, Hadros had developed lines in his tanned face and gray