The Tower of Ravens by Kate Forsyth

astride?”
    “He wears the coat o‘ a Yeoman.”
    “Indeed?” Niall’s voice rose in interest.
    “He’s been tied on cruelly tight. I dared not cut him loose; the bonds were too tight and the light too bad. I am afraid though…”
    “Ye did well, my lad. Bring them to the stables. I’ll call Lilanthe. She’ll ken what to do.”
    Lewen knew his mother had learnt her healing arts from Isabeau the Red, who was now Keybearer of the Coven. Lilanthe’s knowledge was so deep, she was often called away to help at a difficult birthing, or to splint a shattered bone. His family’s trip to Ravenscraig a few weeks earlier had been to help ease the last painful days of the old MacBrann, who had died slowly and with ever-increasing madness.
    The final few yards to the stables seemed to take forever, with the horse barely able to put one hoof after another, and Lewen’s boots seeming very hot and heavy. At last they were within the dim, hay-smelling vastness, and Niall was kindling lanterns and exclaiming aloud at the sight of the winged mare in the golden fullness of their light.
    She was a magnificent beast, even as worn and tired as she was, with great black wings shading through blue to violet at the tips, and long scrolled horns with the iridescence of dark mother-of-pearl. Every curve was beautiful and proud. She was delicately made for such a long-limbed animal, with a luxuriant mane and tail, and feathered hocks. She was so very weary she hardly flinched as Niall drew his dagger and carefully sawed away at the ropes that bound the rider to the beast. At last the ropes frayed and fell away, and they were able to lift the rider down and lay him in the straw and lift the lantern to examine him.
    There was a long silence.
    “She’s a girl,” Lewen breathed at last.
    “And no‘ so very auld,” Niall said. “What is she doing in the uniform o’ a Yeoman?”
    “And tied on to the back o‘ a winged horse?”
    “Eà kens! Come, let us leave her for your mam and look to the horse. She’s a noble beast and cruelly used. Look at her bleeding mouth.”
    Niall had been a cavalier for many years and knew just what to do for the exhausted beast. He kept Lewen busy mixing warm mash, applying poultices and anointing the horse’s many cuts and abrasions but, despite his fascination with the winged horse, Lewen could not help casting many a glance at the girl lying in the straw. She was so dirty and bloody it was hard to see much of her face, especially with all that black, matted hair straggling all over it, but her figure was tall and lithe with a deep curve from breast to hip, and her mouth had as sweet a shape as any he had seen on a girl. She was beginning to stir as Lilanthe gently bathed her swollen, lacerated wrists, and Lewen stopped to look again as her eyes slowly opened.
    They were not black, as he might have expected with all that raven hair, but a clear blue-grey colour, and fringed with very long, dark lashes. For a moment she stared up at Lilanthe blankly, and then she glanced round the dimly lit stable, seeing the winged horse tethered in its stall, and the man and boy cleaning the tack nearby.
    With a vicious snarl, the girl was on her feet, knocking Lilanthe over with the violence of her movement. She looked about desperately, seized a pitchfork from its place on the wall and raced at Niall, her lips drawn back from her teeth.
    Niall dropped the saddle, holding up both his hands in a pacifying gesture, but the girl only growled and drove the pitchfork towards his heart. Niall lunged forward, caught the handle just below the tines, and wrested it from her. As he flung it away into the straw, she leapt at him with her nails raking at his eyes. He managed to block her with one arm, but he was knocked off balance by the speed of her attack and fell back on to the straw-scattered cobbles, the girl on top of him.
    Lewen dropped his polishing rag and leapt to his father’s aid.
     

The Wild Girl
      
    Though he