She was tall. She was built and muscled like a lioness, and she walked
with a flat-hipped arrogance, and her hair was like coiled flame. Her
eyes were blue, hot and bright, as Faolan's might have been once.
She looked like Faolan. She was dressed like him, in a leather kilt
and sandals, her magnificent body bare above the waist. She carried
a longsword slung across her back, the hilt standing above the left
shoulder. She had been using it. Her skin was smeared with blood and
grime. There was a long cut on her thigh and another across her flat
belly, and bitter weariness lay on her like a burden in spite of her
denial of it.
"We've stopped them, Faolan," she said. "They can't breach the Gate,
and we can hold Crom Dhu as long as we have food. And the sea feeds
us." She laughed, but there was a hollow sound to it. "Gods, I'm tired!"
She halted then, below the dais. Her flame-blue gaze swept across
Faolan, across Romna, and rose to meet Hugh Starke's, and stayed there.
The pulse began to beat under Starke's jaw again, and this time his
body was strong, and the pulse was like a drum throbbing.