Gwenhwyfar by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

the wrong way, or do something else that would startle them, he said. They could sprain a muscle or make a misstep and hurt themselves some other way.
    So Gwen could only watch from afar as the bettors circled the chariots, eyed the great beasts knowingly, and conversed in mutters.
    Gwen thought that Braith looked exactly like her team; she was stocky, weather-beaten, rough. Her bright brown eyes peered out from under a kind of forelock of coarse, dark hair that looked as if she had hacked it off with her own knife in a fit of impatience. Her voice had the same intonation as a horse’s whinny, and when she laughed, it was loud and sudden and exactly like a neigh. Gwen adored her.
    If there was anyone in the world she would have liked to grow up to be, it was Braith. Power? Braith had Power! If anyone doubted, all they had to do was see her with her horses! That was Epona’s Power, and if Epona was a lesser goddess, well, perhaps she was closer to those who served her.
    The race was to begin at the sacred oak grove, and Gwen pressed herself against the bark of one of the great trees, hoping her brown gown would blend in with the bark, and yearned after Braith and her team with a passion she never felt for the gods.
    Suddenly those bright brown eyes caught sight of Gwen and locked on her. As if pulled by their reins, her horses turned to look at what Braith was looking at, so now there were three pairs of eyes gazing thoughtfully at her. Slowly, Braith smiled. And Gwen felt a jolt of something that took her breath away.
    Then she went back to whispering to her team. But now and again, she looked over at Gwen and smiled.
    No one else seemed to notice—or if they noticed, care that Gwen was there. Her ability to be quiet and unobtrusive was working even in this crowd. So she was allowed to watch with the rest as the drivers got into their chariots, as the chariots maneuvered into a roughly straight line, and then, at the shout from the king, reins slapped on backs, whips snapped, and the teams plunged out onto the rough sward for the outward leg of the race.
    Gwen would have swarmed up the tree, but she was wearing her one good gown, and she knew what her nurse and the queen would have to say about it if the garment was ruined before it was even dinner.
    So she just ran to stand in front of the shouting, cheering men, who were now so focused on the race that they didn’t even notice her.
    The hoofbeats didn’t sound anything like thunder—more like rocks tumbling down a cliff. Thunder wouldn’t make the ground shake; thunder didn’t make her heart pound or her throat dry with excitement. Four lines of rising dust followed the teams, but the colors painted on the chariots made it easy to tell which was which. What you could not tell, until they turned at the opposite end, was who was in the lead.
    That was signaled by the servants at the end, who raised a pole with the owner’s pennant on it as soon as the chariot made the turn.
    And the first pennant up was for Braith’s team. Gwen gave a squeal of glee, and jumped up and down, her hands clasped under her chin. She knew better than to pray to Epona, the goddess of horses, for Braith to win—that was frivolous use of prayer, which was important; the queen had made that very clear to all her daughters. If you pestered the gods with petitions all the time, they’d grow tired of hearing from you, and when you needed them to answer, the prayers would be ignored. But she could hope, and she could wish, and she wished with all her might.
    But right behind Braith’s team was her father’s, a pair of handsome grays out of his warhorse herd. If the Romans had still been here, he’d have lost them for certain. The Romans would have whisked them away for tribute before you could say “knife.”
    The other two teams were lost in the dust, but the king’s, and Braith’s, were so close that Gwen held her breath; it looked from here as if they were literally one team of four