A Warrior's Passion. Margaret Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ final words. Patience? Oh, yes, that he had—as well as the ability to overlook emotional outbursts, which he considered childish indulgence.

      Indeed, he had always thought any display of extreme emotion rather distasteful and weak, even as a child. Like his mother, he could hide his feelings:

      Not like his cousin and foster brother, Dylan. Dylan’s every emotion flew across his face and shone out of his eyes. There was nothing secretive about him, and no solemnity, either. He seemed to fall in love with a different woman every day of the week and clearly thought this something to brag about. He had already fathered three bastards that they knew of, and Dylan’s purse was perpetually empty supporting them and their mothers.

      Being Welsh, of course, there was no shame to him or the women or the children—and yet no glory, either.

      In Griffydd’s eyes, Dylan’s boisterous behavior was nothing more than rank foolishness and vanity. To be sure, Griffydd was no virgin, but he made no declarations of passionate, everlasting love to any woman. Why would he, when he never felt anything except the pleasure of physical union? No emotion had ever affected him the way the bards claimed love should. That such love existed he knew—his own parents were proof of that—but he mercifully had never felt the uncontrollable desire, the fierce longing that made all else unimportant, or the despair if the woman did not reciprocate.

      The captain of the ship barked an order. Suddenly the crew jumped into motion.

      They all had the look of the worst of Vikings about them, with long, tangled hair, thick, filthy beards and clothes that smelled as if their wearers had been living in them uninterrupted for the past ten years.

      As the men lowered the square sail and prepared to out oars, the ship rounded a rocky point, exposing a sheltered bay. On one side of the bay on the top of a bluff stood a round stone tower that had obviously fallen into disrepair.

      Inside the bay, several midsized vessels used for transport and trade sat at anchor. He could not see one longship, the low, dragon-prowed Norse warships all of Britain feared.

      The captain pointed at the cluster of buildings now visible beyond the wharf at the edge of the bay. “Dunloch,” he called to Griffydd, who acknowledged his verification with a nod.

      At the man’s next command, the oars slid out into the water. At his signal, the men began to pull in unison and, more surprisingly, sing.

      At least Griffydd supposed that’s what they were supposed to be doing, for they started chanting rhythmically.

      The reason became clear: it was to keep the men rowing in unison, the oars dipping and rising in time to the song.

      As Griffydd hummed the tune, which was not difficult to learn, his shrewd, gray-eyed gaze swept over the village, noting the number of stone buildings, the wooden wall of the fortress on a slight rise beyond, the activity on the right side of the bay that bespoke both the building and repair of sailing vessels, the fish drying on the beach, and the women and children working and playing there. Smaller vessels were beside a wooden pier stretching out into the water, or drawn up on the rocky shore.

      Dunloch seemed a very prosperous place, and Griffydd would remember that when Diarmad complained of the harsh winter, as he surely would.

      The captain came to stand beside Griffydd. “You sing well,” he remarked, speaking the language that was common among men on the coast of Britain, a traders’ amalgamation of Gaelic, Norse and Celtic. “Must be the Welsh in you.”

      “Perhaps.”

      The man heaved a tremendous sigh. “A poor village, I’m afraid,” he said mournfully, gazing out over the water toward Dunloch. “It was a very harsh winter.”

      Stifling a wry smile, Griffydd nodded his head, giving the man a sidelong glance. “Harsh in Wales, too, it was.”

      “Oh, aye?”

      Griffydd nodded. “There seems to be no lack of fish on the shore.”

      The captain cleared his throat and ran a brown, brawny hand through his thick red beard. “That’s the way of it here. Good fish one day, no fish for ten.”

      “A pity is that.”

      “Aye,” the captain agreed.

      “Tell me, are the chieftain’s sons in the village?”

      A wary and yet relieved look came to the captain’s eyes. “No.”

      Griffydd was glad to hear it, and he could understand the man’s response. Diarmad had six strapping, obstreperous sons who were known to treat everyone with arrogant contempt. They commanded their own small fleets, quartered out of six villages within a day’s sail of Dunloch. A wise plan to give them each their own village, Baron DeLanyea thought it, otherwise whelps like that would be at each other’s throats constantly.

      A cry went up from a watchman on a rock near the shore, which was answered by the captain. Another call sounded in the village, and now Griffydd could make out more clearly the people on the shore.

      And they would be able to see him. With that in mind, he made his way to his chest in the stern to don his mail, hauberk, finest cloak, best brooch and valuable sword.

      As he did so, Griffydd DeLanyea felt no sense of foreboding, or fear that he would not be successful in his quest for a good rate for the transportation of his father’s goods. He truly believed that he would conclude this business and be safely home in no more than a fortnight.

      Such is the folly of young men.

       Chapter Two

      As the ship slowly drifted into its place beside the wharf, the left-hand side closest to shore, Griffydd scrutinized the men assembled there.

      The stocky one in the center wearing the fur robe would be Diarmad. Not only was he in the position of leadership, there could be no mistaking the man, to go by his father’s description.

      The collective expressions of the men clustered around him indicated something less than joy at Griffydd’s arrival.

      This did not surprise the young Welshman. Alliances, whether political or mercantile, were not something to be taken lightly. The political affected trade, and trade affected politics, so no transaction of the magnitude of the agreement Griffydd was going to attempt to negotiate could be a simple business.

      Men in the bow and stern leaped from the ship to the wharf, carrying ropes to tie the vessel in place.

      As Griffydd jumped nimbly to the land, Diarmad MacMurdoch stepped forward with open arms to embrace him and give him the kiss of greeting.

      “Welcome!” the chieftain of Dunloch cried heartily. “Welcome to Dunloch! My hall is yours!”

      As Diarmad drew back, Griffydd managed not to wrinkle his nose at the man’s powerful stench. Instead, he acknowledged the greeting and gravely said, “I thank you for your kind words, Diarmad. My father, Baron DeLanyea, sends his greetings and some gifts from Craig Fawr.”

      The old man’s eyes gleamed СКАЧАТЬ