Read Online The Complete Kingdom Trilogy by Robert Low - Free Book Online Page A

off, tongue lolling, moving swiftly from point to point, bush to root, head down and snuffling impatiently as he hauled Malk after him. He paused, stiffened, loped a few feet, then determinedly pushed through the scrub and off into the trees at a fast, lumbering lope. The houndsmen and dog boys followed after, struggling with the carts.
    Hal turned to Tod’s Wattie, who merely grinned and jerked his head: Gib came up on foot, the two deerhounds loping steadily ahead and hauling him along like a wagon. Hal returned the grin and knew that Tod’s Wattie would keep a close eye on the boy and, with a sudden sharpness deep in him, saw the dark dog boy slogging through the bracken.
    Sim Craw saw it too and caught his breath – wee Jamie’s likeness, just as Hal had pointed out. Now there is a mystery …
    â€˜Follow Sir Wullie and stay the gither,’ Hal said loudly, so that his men could hear. ‘Spread the word – bide together. If something happens, follow me or Sim. I do not want folk scattered, eechie-ochie. Do this badly and I will think shame to be seen with you.’
    The men grunted and growled their assent and Sim urged his horse close to Hal.
    â€˜What of the wummin, then?’ he asked, babe innocent. ‘Mayhap ye would rather chase the hurdies of the Coontess of Buchan?’
    Hal shot him daggers and felt his face flame. God’s curses, had he been so obviously smit with Isabel MacDuff’s charms?
    â€˜Let that flea stick to the wall,’ he warned and Sim held up a placatory hand.
    â€˜I only ask what’s to be done,’ he said with a slight smile and the mock of it in his eyes. ‘Leave the Coontess to her husband – or Bruce, who is sookin’ in with her, as any can spy but the blind man wed on to her?’
    Hal shot a look at the Countess, a flame in the dim light under the green-black trees, remembering how she had shone in the dark, too.
    He had been fumbling his way to the jakes after the awkward feast, flitting as mouse-quiet as he could through the chill, grey, shadowed castle to the latrine hole. Halfway up the turn of a stair he had heard voices and stopped, knowing one was hers almost before the sound had cleared his ear. He moved on, so that he could peer over the top step along the darkened passage.
    She was at the door of her room, barefoot and bundled in a great bearskin bedcover and clearly naked underneath it. Her hair was a russet ember in the shadows, tumbling in tendrils down white shoulders.
    At the side of her door hung a shield, a little affair glowing unnaturally white in the grey dim, with a bar of blue across the top and the Douglas mullets bright on it. A gauntlet hung over it.
    â€˜Young Jamie’s shield,’ she explained to the shadow, who clasped her close. ‘He hung it there with the metal glove, look there. He has sworn to be my knight and champion and hangs that there to prove it. If any refuse to admit that I am the most beauteous maid in all the world, they must strike the shield with the glove and be prepared to fight.’
    The shadow shifted and laughed softly at this flummery while Isabel pouted hotly up into his mouth. For a moment, Hal’s breath had caught in his throat and he wished he was looking down, feeling that warmth on his lips.
    â€˜Shall I strike it for you?’ she’d asked archly, and raised her long, white fingers, which spilled the fur from her shoulders and one impossible white breast, ruby-tipped like flame in the grey; Hal’s breath caught in his throat. ‘A tap, perhaps, just to see if he storms along the corridor.’
    â€˜No need,’ the shadow declared, moving closer to the heat of her. ‘I have no argument with what he defends.’
    She reached and he grunted. She smiled up into his eyes, moved a hand.
    â€˜Nevertheless, Sir Knight,’ she said, slightly breathy. ‘It seems your lance is raised.’
    â€˜Raised,’ the shadow