He let her step back, not far. "Do all the women of Crom Dhu fight like men?"
"If they want to. There have always been shield-maidens. And since Falga, I would have had to fight anyway, to keep from thinking." She touched the collar on Starke's neck. "And from seeing."
He thought of Conan in the market square, and Conan shaking his chain and gibbering in Faolan's hall, and Beudag watching it. Starke's fingers tightened. He slid his palms upward along the smooth muscles of her arms, across the straight, broad planes of her shoulders, onto her neck, the proud strength of it pulsing under his hands. Her hair fell loose. He could feel the redness of it burning him.
She whispered, "You don't love me."
"No."
"You're an honest man, Hugh Starke."
"You want me to kiss you."
"Yes."
"You're an honest woman, Beudag."
Her lips were hungry, passionate, touched with the bitterness of tears. After a while Starke blew out the candle....