“I will train her, truly?” he asked, and Philip nodded. He could hardly believe he’d be allowed that much time at the task, for it took weeks. Every hour of the day must be spent in the mews with her. He had heard Philip tell his father already that Gryff was possessed of a falconer’s steady temperament, unusually patient and observant for such a young boy. It made him glow with pride when he heard it.

“How long until she is tame?”

“You will both be trained, but is only you who will be tamed, little fool.” It was affectionate, but serious. There were few who were permitted to call Gryff a fool, though he was only a boy. But Philip could. “You could raise her from the egg and still she would not think you her master. Never will she truly need you. She will stay with you so long as it suits her. But she will never be tame.”

They began the long process of coaxing the falcon to accept the hood. All the while, Philip explained that the fiercer the creature, the more gentle must be the man, or they would never be in accord. This was why his father wanted him to learn this art, so that he would know what it was to be a servant to one who served you, to have dominance but never complete control.

Gryff looked at the bright eyes of the young falcon, and was glad it could never be tame.

Chapter One

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It began in beauty and in blood.

He saw her face in an improbable moment, amid chaos and carnage – startling blue eyes and a soft mouth set in perfect, graceful lines – and then he saw the blood. Not a drop of it touched her. It was all around her, and all of her own doing. Ferocity and beauty, that’s how it began.

At first he only saw men dropping on the road, an incomprehensible sight. Eight men, vicious criminals, who had lain in wait behind the trees and sprung themselves on the small party with whom she traveled. They had done everything as they always did, Baudry and his men. Their habit was to fall on the armed knights first, while the women and children screamed in terrified confusion. It was always over quickly.

But this time Baudry and his men only crumpled to the ground one after the other, though it was clearly not the armed knights who caused it. Gryff looked up to the trees for archers, but there were none. This was not a rain of arrows. The horses reared and the women screamed and the attackers merely fell down dead, as though from a plague.

She was the plague.