Three Hands for Scorpio Read Online Free

in Gurlyon?” I demanded.
    â€œLoosy’s report must be told to Mother,” Bina returned. “The Gurlys are overfond of powerful ale, and wine will also be brought out at the feast. No servingmaids should be present, I think.”
    We nodded as one at that. It was customary that the ladies of the house withdraw at the end of a feast, leaving men to their professed pleasure of tippling. Our father was an abstemious man, and so was the majority of our household. However, the far-riding, hard-living Gurlys were different.
    As we reached the foot of the staircase, we heard a roll of drum, a blast of trumpet. Our visitors had been sighted from the watchtower. Raising our skirts two-handed, we hastened.
    We were breathing faster as we passed swiftly through the great gate into the foreyard to take our proper places behind Mother. Our household made a fine array, the men all in their green livery-coats and the maids
wearing vests with the Scorpy arms catching the sun’s rays in gold-touched broidery.
    The company that entered was a large one and plainly set to make a show of its own. At the fore a mount pranced, clearly no northern bred pony but a powerful black warhorse to match the cream of our father’s stable. The man who besat it with easy grace was steel-bonneted as might be any Border Reiver. A socket on his helm sprouted aloft the two eagle feathers denoting a clan chieftain.
    Beneath that helm showed the strong, browned countenance of a man well acquainted with wind and sun. His beard, which cloaked half his face, was not the neatly trimmed and chin-pointed one our father wore, but a wild gray bush, streaked with white. His buff coat was caped before and behind with steel, bearing at heart level the crooked device of a striking red adder in faded shades of yellow. Boots climbed to cover his legs near to his knees where butter-bright yellow breeches showed. He reined in his mount even as my father approached to join him, striding through the opened ranks of our household. Serving as his squire, Starkadder’s second son followed him, swinging down to catch the chieftain’s reins as he left the saddle.
    My father advanced, made his bow to Mother, and introduced our principal guest. We all curtseyed as one. However, Starkadder’s greeting for my mother held very little grace; he even plainly stared at her for a moment before returning a shallow bow of his own.
    â€œRogher had the right of it!” I mind-sent. “This one is not used to niceties.”
    But if Starkadder did not seem ready to follow social rules, his squireson was even worse lessoned. The youth’s clothing and armor echoed in richness that of his sire, but he was eyeing the three of us as if we were mares at the horse market.
    Doubtless by the standard of the clans he was a handsome man. Tall, broad of shoulder, with red hair—and very red it was—falling from under his bonnet to touch those shoulders. He had even, well-cut features, though his skin was not tanned enough to hide his freckles. One of the mounts might have blown bran into his face.
    We took time to study him, being careful not to meet him eye to eye, and our universal—albeit unspoken—decision was that we did not care for what we saw. However, our first view of the chieftain’s second son was interrupted as another man rode to the fore of the waiting clansmen. His
mount was one of the ponies, a tough and sturdy beast, ungroomed and mud splattered, with neck bent by far too short a rein.
    Here was no steel bonnet but a hood, pushed back so that we saw the features of its owner plainly. His skin carried none of the browning the others bore; it showed, rather, the sickly grayish hue of a prisoner long pent in a lightless dungeon. And just as no hair showed under the edge of the head-covering, so was the face bare of beard.
    His nose was like a sharp-edged knife bridging between dark eyes set overly close together. His mouth he held