Medieval 01 - Untamed

Dominic swore, spurring the stallion. “What is possessing you, Crusader?”
    Crusader flattened his ears and balked, refusing to move another step.
    â€œOff!” Meg said, sliding down in a jangling of golden bells. “Quickly!”
    Dominic dismounted as though for battle, leaping off to land on both feet, his hand on his sword, his body poised and ready to fight.
    Meg whipped off her head cloth and held it out.
    â€œBlindfold Crusader,” she said, “then follow me. If the stallion balks again, leave him. Quickly! They will be upon us!”
    Dominic grabbed the head cloth, wrapped it around Crusader’s white-rimmed eyes, and tugged on the reins. Snorting, pulling back in alarm, the stallion swung like a pendulum at the end of the reins, trying to go everywhere but forward.
    Despite the urgency goading him, Dominic spoke soothingly to the stallion and applied a steady pressure on the reins.
    â€œHurry!” Meg called from ahead. “I see a dog!”
    Crusader snorted, minced, and gave in, following Dominic as he had so many times before, even into the dank, wretched hold of a ship. Walking quickly,then trotting, Dominic led the stallion between trees that grew older and more magnificent the deeper the grove was penetrated.
    Standing stones taller and thicker than Dominic loomed without warning between the trees. The stones had been in place so long that they wore thick robes of moss and lichen, as though tiny gardens had been planted in rocky hollows no deeper than a finger’s width.
    After three hundred feet, more stones loomed. These were half a man’s height and set so close together that no trees grew between. After the second ring of stones came a circle of grass seventy feet across. In the center of the circle was a large, overgrown mound of earth and rock.
    The hair on Dominic’s neck lifted in animal awareness. At some primal level of his mind he sensed what had made Crusader shy off from penetrating the grove. There was a sanctuary within the concentric rings of stones that wasn’t meant to be disturbed heedlessly.
    Glendruid .
    Wary and curious at once, Dominic looked around as he led his blindfolded war stallion into a place of peace and protection. There was sunlight and grass in the widening spaces between oaks. Wildflowers sang their silent, colorful songs everywhere he looked. The trees were more fully leafed out here, as though the sun came sooner and stayed longer in this one spot.
    From beyond the first ring of stones came the frantic baying of a hound that had been deprived of its prey. Oddly, no other hound voices joined it. Dominic looked questioningly at Meg.
    â€œDoes Duncan hunt with but one hound?”
    â€œOnly when he seeks poachers. Besides, we can’t be certain it’s Duncan.”
    â€œLeave off defending the bastard,” Dominic said harshly. “Who else would it be?”
    Meg said nothing. There was nothing she could say to deny the logic of Dominic’s words, but the logic of her emotions was something entirely different.
    â€œI should have let Simon gut the Scots Hammer in the church,” Dominic muttered.
    He looked around the sunny glade with its ancient mound. There was no place where a lone knight might have his back safe while defending his front.
    â€œKeep going,” Dominic said to Meg. “We haven’t reached a haven yet.”
    â€œThere is no better haven except the keep, and no way to get there but the way we took coming here.”
    Meg didn’t add that the Reevers now occupied the ground between the haunted circle and Blackthorne Keep. She didn’t have to point out the obvious. Dominic’s scalding oaths told her that he realized their predicament as well as she.
    â€œThen we are well and truly caught,” Dominic said. “It would take many knights to defend this place.”
    â€œNay. Not one Reever will pass the outer circle of stones.”
    â€œDuncan is more than clever enough to blindfold his horse and follow our tracks here.”
    â€œI doubt it. I wasn’t certain it would work myself.”
    Dominic stared at Meg. “Then why did you suggest it?”
    â€œI knew you wouldn’t leave your stallion until it was too late. The Reevers would have killed you like a stag brought to bay before you made it through the outer ring.”
    He grunted. “They may do it yet.”
    â€œI think not. In a thousand years no man has everpassed