The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One Read Online Free

he fought.
    Another wave was bearing down, and Eremon ordered the men back to bailing and rowing. He was no mariner, indeed he’d hardly set foot on a boat before. Yet common sense told him that they must keep head-on to this swell, or be lost.
    In the ridiculous way of crises, at this very moment a scrap of old lore from his father’s druid tumbled through his mind: The gods’ smiles bring the sun, the thrust of their swords a king’s death, their frowns the thunder and wind that split the sky .
    Ha! Gods!
    As the foam rushed around him, sucking at his feet, Eremon frantically shook hair back from his eyes. If the old druid was right, then he knew what he now faced, for surely only a god’s wrath could conjure this storm from a calm sea!
    Even the fisherman could barely cling to the tiller, his eyes glassy with terror. Eremon fought down a rush of guilt. The man had only ever sailed curraghs , and those little hide boats could skim lightly over such waves. This craft was a larger trading vessel: planked instead of hide hull, ten oars each side and the square-rigged sail. Not only that, but the fisherman was the most reluctant of guides, for he’d been stolen as well as the boat.
    If Eremon had known the danger they were sailing into, he might have spared the man. But the day they fled Erin in a hail of arrows had been calm and bright. It wasn’t until the second day that the sky darkened and the wind rose, and the fisherman began to mutter at the threatening bank of cloud that loomed up in the south.
    The storm front attacked with stark ferocity, the wind, waves and rain rolling together into a grizzled beast that sprang on them, gripping and shaking the boat in its jaws. They hardly noticed as day fled into night, and they could see no more in the darkness. Their world narrowed to sound and touch and taste: wind roars and cold lash of rain; spume on their tongues; the creaking of rigging; the breaking of blisters on the oar.
    Now the star wheel must have swung well towards morning. The whole sky was heavy with cloud, yellow where the moon was sinking. Like an eye, that baleful glow seemed to Eremon, the merciless eye of a god. Was it Hawen the Great Boar, totem of his tribe? Dagda the Sky God? No, more likely it was Manannán, Lord of the Sea, protector of Erin. Maybe Manannán was angry that Eremon had abandoned his own land.
    Then just take me! he silently cried to the eye. Spare my men!
    He received no answer, no slackening of the wind or softening of the sea. The next wave hit, and a great gout of water slapped into Eremon’s mouth and filled his nose, and he snorted and spat and held tight until it set the boat free again in fickle disgust.
    Cù was cringing as low as he could, belly and chin flat, rangy legs spreadeagled as if to grip the hull. Eremon spared a moment to pat the shaggy head, and felt the dog’s tongue on his hand where a sword callous had been torn away by the damp, splintered oar. In the lull, Eremon cast a glance back to Conaire. He was rowing strongly, histhick, sinewed arms and immense back pulling with as much strength as when he was fresh two days before. True to form, Conaire was the only one not struck by the sea sickness.
    Eremon managed a grin, and although Conaire’s teeth flashed in the dimness, the feeble light that caught his eyes showed something else. With a shock, Eremon realized his foster-brother was afraid.
    He turned back to his own oar. This was bad. Conaire had never been afraid of anything in his life – man or beast. He met every fight, every challenge, with fierce joy and laughter. But even Conaire had never been in a boat before. Eremon thought: He doesn’t believe we’re going to make it .
    And then the next surge hit. The men held tight to their oars as he’d instructed, except young Aedan the bard, who would not let go of his precious harp. However, this wave was the greatest yet, and it felled Aedan with one blow, and tore him from his braced stance against