In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) Read Online Free PDF

sounded through the brush behind her. Heavy-footed and out of breath, Aeldra waded through the grass. “Where have you been? I …” she stepped up beside Risa and saw the figurines.
    “What are these?” Aeldra reached out one hand toward the red lady.
    “No!” Risa smacked her hand away. “Leave them. They are cursed. I’m sure of it.” She took Aeldra’s arm with one hand and the hems of her skirts with another. “Let us leave here, Aeldra, and find Innis. I would be back at home.”
    Risa set off between the trees. She very carefully did not look back.
    Harrik, Hullward’s son stepped into the council tent. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he surveyed the gathering. There were a dozen men, all Saxons, like himself, most battle scarred, also like himself. They squatted or lounged on piles of furs around the smoking central fire.
    Dogs
, Harrik thought.
Dogs at the feet if their master
. He lifted his gaze.
    Wulfweard, called Wolfget by those who knew his vicious nature, sat in a slatted chair. He alone of the gathering was armed. A naked sword lay across his thighs. The symbol was hardly needed. The menace in Wolfget’s hooded blue eyes shone plain enough.
    “Be welcome to this assembly, my Lord Harrik,” said a musical voice.
    Harrik started. A woman, clothed in a gown of smoky red circled the fire toward him. “Let me offer you the guest cup and bid you know my Lord Wulfweard wishes you to sit at his right hand.”
    Harrik struggled to keep himself from gawking like a boy. Wolfget had never before taken a wife, let alone one so blindingly lovely. Her golden hair hung to her waist and was plaited with a thread of silver. Her face was smooth and round with hazel eyes set wide above a slim, straight nose. Her breasts and hips swelled amply beneath the dark red of the gown which hung from her shoulders as if to call attention to their perfect roundness.
    Harrik mastered himself and took the wooden cup from her soft, clean hand.
    “My thanks.” He took a swallow of the mead.
    Wolfget was flanked by two empty chairs. Harrik took his place in the right-hand seat as invited. The woman took the left.
    Wolfget swept his cold gaze across the assembly.
    “Brothers.” His voice was hard. “It is ten years since the defeat at Mount Badon scattered our strength. Since then, Uther’s upstart bastard has held us as his vassals, claiming our lands, our sons, our very bodies as his own. We have submitted in silence, knowing ourselves to be weak and divided.” He laid a thick hand on the sword’s hilt.
    “Wounded to the death as we were, we were wise to do so. But now, our wounds are closed. Our sons grow tall and strong. Our brothers eye the rusted swords and axes hanging on our walls with restless anticipation. Now is the time to force Arthur the Bastard to pay for what he has stolen.”
    An angry rumble of assent rose from the assembly. Wolfget smiled and Harrik felt a chill cross his skin. He cast a glance toward the woman. All her attention was fixed on Wolfget in an attitude of rapt adoration. Harrik’s chill deepened. In the flickering firelight he could see the stump of the ear Wolfget had lost at Badon. Harrik himself was missing two fingers from the same battle. The ghosts of them twitched in memory of the blow.
    Kolbyr, who’d seen both his brothers ridden down by Arthur’s captains, got heavily to his feet. “My heart is with you, my Lord Wulfweard, and I would sooner die in battlefield mud than a vassal’s bed, but how can we wage such a war? The Bastard sits secure in Camelot with a hundred captains who will leap into action at the flick of his little finger.”
    “Truth, truth,” said Ehrin, whose jaw had been so broken his words slurred in his mouth. “Strong of purpose we may be, but we are not so strong of arms and warriors.”
    “Our course is simple,” said Wolfget. “Does the Bastard think us divided? Divided we will appear. In our separate lands we will strike here, there, take this