Keeper of the Dream Read Online Free PDF

were thirty knights and over a hundred and fifty men-at-arms in Raine’s army, and he wondered what in hell had them all so busy that they couldn’t come take this cursed madwoman off his hands.
    “Will”—he grunted as her head flew up, connecting with his chin, and nearly causing him to bite off half his tongue—“somebody get her off me, for God’s sake!”
    He spotted his second-in-command standing in front of him, a grin like a drunken jester’s all over his gnarled and pitted face. Raine thrust the squirming, clawing, kicking, and scratching female into a startled Sir Odo’s arms. The big knight automatically wrapped her up in a bearlike embrace. She struggled a moment longer, then stilled. But her eyes, glowing like a pair of firebrands, remained fixed on Raine’s face.
    “Murderer!”
    It was the first sound she had made.
    Raine daubed at the blood that trickled down his neck. He spoke to her in Welsh, the language she had used. “What hell spawned you, woman?” When she said nothing, he snapped, “Answer me. Who are you?”
    The girl’s full lower lip curled into one of the finest sneers Raine had ever seen. “I, you Norman piece of filth, am the woman who’s going to kill you.”
    Her vehemence startled him a moment, but then he laughed. “The road to hell is littered with the corpses of those who’ve tried to kill me.”
    “Doubtless they were all cowards. Surely none was Welsh, else you’d be roasting in hell yourself by now.”
    Raine laughed again. But then he glanced down at the discarded quillon knife and his face sobered. The day he had seen a five-year-old child slice through a man’s tendon, he had stopped thinking of anyone, no matter what their age or sex, as harmless. He wouldn’t put it past the wench to have a dozen such daggers hidden about her.
    “Strip her,” he said to Sir Odo in a clipped voice. The girl sucked in a sharp breath.
    Sir Odo grinned, flexing his arms. “No reason to get her naked, sire. The wench is all bones. If you want to swive her, why not just toss up her skirts?”
    The girl’s eyes opened wide. Then she exploded like a bung out of a fermenting cask, rearing, flinging back her head, smacking it into the knight’s jaw so hard, Raine heard the bones crack together. “Christ Jesus!” Odo bellowed. She jammed an elbow into his midriff. Snarling another curse, the big knight shook her until her neck snapped.
    “I said strip the wench, not kill her,” Raine called out, though he made no move to take the girl off Odo’s hands.
    “I don’t guess the wench is in the mood for a tupping, sire,” Sir Odo said around grunting breaths.
    At his words the girl stiffened, then she made a strangled, whimpering noise, sagging back into the big knight’s arms. “Please, don’t …”
    Sir Odo looked down at her lolling head and a look of tenderness came over his gnarled face. “Ah, the poor dearling … sire, will you just look at the poor dearling?”
    Raine looked. The girl’s eyes, glazed now and filled with terror, had focused on the body sprawled before the gate and a dry sob tore from her throat. Raine saw a wretched, pathetic whore. But Sir Odo, Raine knew, had suddenly seen a broken sparrow that needed mending. The big knight was always swallowing some wench’s sad tale, and though Raine kept expecting these rescued waifsto strip the man down to his braies and leave him with the pox, they never did.
    Sir Odo stared at his liege lord with big, sorrowful brown eyes that often reminded Raine of a milk cow’s. “If you’re still feeling randy, sire, let me find you another girl.”
    Raine stared at her a moment longer, at her pale, mud-streaked face. “Christ’s bones … just get her out of here.”
    Rich laughter floated over his head, and Raine turned. His younger brother sat atop his palfrey, one leg hooked negligently around the saddlebow, amusement brightening his splendidly handsome features. “Can this be the Black Dragon’s legendary