Riona (16 page)

“Boils eat your worthless hide!” She stomped the instep of the unsuspecting warrior.

Startled by her outburst, Kieran grabbed his foot with a gasp, whereupon Riona shoved him soundly into the gentle lap of the tide. He landed with a bellow and splash.

“I
prayed
for you!” she shouted, kicking at him in her indignation. “I thought you and the lot were at the mercy of the soldiers.” When that would not assuage her ire, she turned and unsheathed the sword from Gray Macha’s tack.

“Milady!” Fynn exclaimed, reaching to stay her arm.

“And
you
think he’s a hero?” Riona demanded, pulling away. “Well, here’s what I think of your hero.” She drew back the sword and swung it with all her might.

“Riona!” Kieran leaped backward, dodging the broadside of the blade.

“Gleannmara has met his match,” Bran chortled. He danced away as the weight of the sword carried Riona about full circle.

She silenced the bard with a glare and wrenched the sword from where it was buried in the sand. With a grunt, she raised it again and turned to take up her chase, but Kieran wasn’t there. Viselike fingers grasped her wrists from behind but not soon enough to offset the upswing of the blade over her head. Riona felt it strike and heard Kieran’s cry of pain.

He stumbled backward, taking her and the sword with him. As they struck the beach, the impact knocked the wind out of her. Stunned, she rolled away and grasped the friendly hands Bran and Fynn offered. The seawater soaking her skirts seemed to add half again as much weight to sustain on legs already overtaxed. She swayed against Bran and looked over to where Fynn helped Kieran to his feet.

His hand laying across his forehead, the soaked lord of Gleannmara took the sword the lad fetched from the beach and leaned upon it. As he lowered his arm, a smear of dark blood streaked his furrowed brow.

“Faith, woman, you’ve wounded me!”

“I meant worse,” Riona huffed. “But since God’s seen fit to spare you, I will as well.”

“I don’t mean to interfere, good people, but I leave with the tide.”

The captain’s interruption fell upon Riona like a cooling shower.

“Them that will go, best come now,” the man said. He held out his hand to Riona. “Milady?”

“I can’t go to Wicklow, Riona.” Kieran told her. “ ’Twill only invite my trouble to Gleannmara. My men are weary of war and have gone to their homes. I’m off to Drumceatt.”

“Near Derry?” the captain asked.

“Aye, to the synod of the high king. It’s my only chance to be heard fairly … and for that I’ll be needing your testimony, milady. You know where I was when the abbot was murdered.”

“And me,” Fynn spoke up. “I’ve the knot on my head to prove it.”

“And us.” Liex stepped up, tugging a nodding Leila with him. “He’s going to be our father. We have to save him.”

Kieran shot a disconcerted look at the twins. “I never said I’d be
anyone
’s father. I don’t care what that invisible friend of hers says.”

Liex’s face fell.

If Riona had had the sword in her hands, she could have run him through. How could her foster brother be so heartless when the plague had inflicted the same loss on him?

“Who needs you anyways,” Fynn said flippantly. “We belong to Lady Riona, and it’s clear she has no intentions of taking you to husband.” The lad tugged Liex and Leila over to where Riona stood, the pain of his disillusionment with his hero ringing bitter in his voice. “But the fact o’ the matter is, ’tis
you
that needs us.”

“And we’ll go to Drumceatt to save your arrogant, insensitive skin, Kieran of Gleannmara, but then we’re done with you.” Riona turned her back to the disgruntled warrior to put a plaintive hand on Bran’s sleeve. “But someone needs to take Siony and the youngsters to Dromin. They’ll know no one there.”

Looking as if a rogue wave had slapped him full in the face, Bran threw his hands up in protest. “Why me? I’m a bard, not a nursemaid.”

“Bran, please. It’s safe passage home—”

“Not with that kicking banshee.”

“But they’ll need a man with them. You’re known—”

“What makes you think that anyone in Dromin will receive them with Heber gone?”

It was a valid point. There would be quarrel enough to elect a new lord. Riona could not count on Kieran as the overking to allow her sovereignty, even if she won the favor of her clan.

“Declare your interest in becoming chief. You’ve as much right as Colga and are far more well liked,” Kieran put in. “ ’Twould save all a lot of grief.”

“I wonder which of you is more daft.” Bran shook his head. “I’m neither chief nor nursemaid.”

“Take them to Gleannmara then,” Kieran said impatiently.

Riona’s eyes widened. “You’d take them?”

“We’ll decide what to do with the lot after we return.”

Bran spared the lord a dour look.
“If
you return. When those soldiers regroup, they’ll be after blood.”

“Which is why we need to be off.” As if the decision were made for
all, Kieran pointed to Riona’s children. “And why it’s safest for
them
to go with the others,” he told her. “We’ll discuss your keeping them later.”

The three youngsters stepped closer to Riona. They’d not be separated without a fight, and, in her current humor, she was fully with them. The gall of the man. To think that for even the span of a breath she’d believed Kieran was softening when he offered safe harbor at Gleannmara. This was more of a plan to rid himself of what he considered excess baggage.

She put a reassuring hand on Fynn’s shoulder. “They’re
my
children, and
I’ll
decide what’s best for them, not a glory-seeking oaf with a sword sharp with folly.” She plied her cousin again. “Bran, I am not thrilled with my present calling to help Gleannmara any more than you are to aid the orphans, but I am obliged by duty to do so. Kieran needs our testimony. The homeless need you. How could you, in good conscience, refuse?”

With a groan, Bran looked away and ran his fingers through his dark shock of hair. “I hate it when my conscience is thrown in my face. Mine is a free spirit. Faith, I might as well return to the monastery.”

Riona stepped up and kissed her cousin on the cheek. For all his bluster, Bran had the tender heart of a poet. “God will reward you richly. You know it.”

“We’re off, all that’s going,” the captain impatiently called out from the coracle. Inside were the remaining orphans, bobbing with the tide.

Bran looked as if he would protest once more but then slapped Kieran on the back. “Well, my backside would delight in a break from the horse, that’s certain. I know not which adventure will make the most fascinating rhyme, yours or mine.” He fetched his sack from Bantan’s back and blew a kiss to Riona before jogging toward the coracle. “God’s speed to us all!”

Riona watched him wade into the water, where one of the brothers and the captain hauled the bard into the craft. For all his effort to look otherwise, he appeared as though he were off to an execution. In truth, she felt little better at the prospect of her own journey.

Second thought assailed her as the men rowed the coracle toward the
moored ship. Kieran was right about the children being safer with Bran and the others. She’d allowed anger and defiance to override reason, not to mention composure. She flinched as her tempestuous outbreak replayed in her mind. Heaven help her, she’d turned into a madwoman, no kin to the lady she was raised to be, or the sister of faith to which she aspired.

“Mount your brood up,” Kieran called over his back as he walked to Gray Macha. Still infused with the excitement of the evening, the horse stomped eagerly, ready to race again as Kieran sheathed the sword in its sling. “The journey’s just begun for us. If the children can’t keep up, we’ll leave them at the next cloister.”

“And to think, I was starting to admire him.” With a cryptic grimace, Fynn led his younger siblings toward the cart.

T
he morning sun bullied its way through the leafy covering of the glen where Kieran elected to rest for a few hours at dawn. Another half-day’s journey would take them to the main crossroad where they could procure provisions at a hostelry before moving on. If there was no sign of Maille’s soldiers, which was unlikely now that they’d left his territorial land, he promised them a night under a dry roof rather than another in the damp outdoors.

Riona feared they’d all take a chill after a soft rain soaked them during the night’s long ride. It came upon them in the wee hours of the morning before sunup, so they’d kept to the edge of the trees for cover. As Kieran pointed out, since they were to be soaked anyway, they might as well keep moving.

But these were children, not an army of hardened men, Riona thought, breaking off another tree branch to allow the warm, drying rays of the sun through the canopied fringe of trees. Everyone had stripped down to their leines and laid their outer garments out to dry in the small clearing. The three children slept in a huddle on a blanket Kieran had managed to keep dry in his travel sack. Next to them, he nodded off, his back to a stalwart oak.

For some reason, Riona had been unable to sleep. She’d heard Fintan say from time to time that he’d been too weary to sleep. Now she knew what he’d meant considering the lack of rest she’d had since Kieran’s arrival—how long ago? Four, five days? It felt like months.

She stumbled through the thick grass to the clearing to check the brats and cloaks. The rising sun brought a sparkle to the surroundings, giving them an ethereal appearance. It’s warmth felt good to her body, sore as she was from the hard travel.

Dry
, she thought gratefully, fingering the rich woolen weave. She took Kieran’s brat and spread it over the children, tucking it carefully round them. The instant relief of the warmth relaxed the huddle of
small arms and limbs. Riona’s mother had often warmed the blankets by the hearth on cold nights, making Riona and Heber feel extra special—safe and loved.

The thought of Heber and her mother acted like a vise upon her heart, closing painfully. At least he was with their parents. She was alone. Well, not quite. God had taken Heber, but He’d sent her three of His children as alone as she, and it did ease the pain. Their need for her left little time for grief and self-pity. They were her angels, delivering the message that life must go on, even if not as she had planned.

Throat constricting at God’s overwhelming goodness in such a time of travail, Riona gently placed her palm against the children’s cheeks and foreheads—no sign of fever. With a prayer of thanks, she again studied the fringe of branches overhead to make certain the sleeping figures had the maximum benefit of the climbing sun without it shining in their faces and then fetched her own cloak.

Kieran’s rumble of a whisper startled her as she settled next to him by the tree. “If you’d care to share that, I’d be obliged.”

Given that the children had both his blanket and his brat, she couldn’t refuse, even if she were inclined. Warmth was warmth and needed to be shared. This was survival, not courtship. She’d do as much for anyone. Riona stopped the nagging voice of reason, annoyed that she felt obliged to justify herself. “It’s nice and warm, thanks to the sun and its Creator.”

With a noncommittal grunt, Kieran leaned forward so that Riona might spread a portion of the noble cloak with its five great folds representing the five provinces of Erin over his shoulders. He took up the majority, leaving her a portion of the fourth and the remaining fifth for herself. When he wrapped his arm as well as the cloak around her, Riona could not bring herself to object. But she felt the need again to reason out that this meant nothing, certainly not forgiveness for his arrogance and vexing ways. Aye, he was warm-blooded. So was a flea-bitten hound.

Not a single dream invaded the exhausted sleep that claimed Riona. All she knew was warmth and the comfort of Kieran’s strength. She could remain like this forever.

Kieran roared and rolled away from her as if she’d bitten him in her sleep.

Robbed of his shoulder, Riona’s head struck the tree trunk. With a cry, she sat bolt upright, instantly alert, certain Maille’s entire army surrounded them.

Leila lay sprawled at Kieran’s feet as well, staring up at him fearfully.

“What is wrong with you?” Riona demanded upon seeing nothing that offered threat in the sunlit glen. Nothing to explain a comfy shoulder being snatched from under her and the rough bark of a tree smacking her in its place. She brushed the annoying pain at the side of her head. It was wet, as if she’d sweated profusely. What in heaven …

It must have come from her
pillow
, for the other side of her head was dry.

A second shout distracted her. Kieran grabbed at the front of his leine and stared at Leila, mouth hanging open.

“I’m wet, that’s what’s wrong! And I suspect yon lapdog’s the culprit.” He pointed to Leila, and the child scrambled backward toward her brothers at the fierceness of his accusing glare.

Fynn and Liex unfolded from their huddle, grinning sleepily.

“It happens to us all the time,” Liex consoled the glowering man.

“She wet on me, Riona,” Kieran exclaimed. “She sneaked onto my lap like a mangy cur and
wet
on me.”

Riona tried to master the humor tugging at the corners of her mouth. Poor Leila was terrified, and Kieran was in no mood to see the humor of the situation. “Come here, love,” she said to the child. “Did you and Kieran have an accident?”

“I
had no accident. ’Twas her.”

Riona flashed a warning look at him. “Stop acting like a baby. Like Liex said, it happens.”

Mortified, Leila mumbled something into Riona’s skirt.

“What’s that, little one?” Riona asked.

Liex giggled. “Seargal did it.”

“Seargal?” Riona cast a dubious look at the little girl, but Leila wouldn’t glance up at her. She glared at Kieran in disgust. “This child
has never lied about this before. You’ve frightened her into lying with all that bellowing.”

“The devil take him,” Kieran swore.

“Who? An imaginary figure?” Riona chuckled wryly. “Faith, you become more childlike by the moment. Next I’ll be wondering if you seek to blame this little one who cannot defend herself.”