The Irish Warrior (13 page)

She froze.

“Finian,” she muttered, barely moving her lips. His back was to her as he heaved their packs and the last sack of hides over the side of the boat, onto the grass. Then he turned and froze, too.

“Shite,” she heard him mutter. He came to shore, shaking water off himself.

“They have quite a range, don't they?” she said, trying to keep her voice light, panic at bay. Truly, this was not what she'd been about when she agreed to come to Ireland. How had it gone so wrong? Seasickness or terror, she was going to vomit from one thing or the other before the day was through.

Seeing as they were now off the boat, that left just the one option.

Finian's eyes never left the soldiers' helmed, featureless figures. He moved about, tossing Senna her pack, picking up one of the sacks and resting it on his shoulder. He squeezed the slack neck of the other sack in a wide palm and, bending slightly, sailed it up onto his other shoulder.

“I wouldn't suggest trying yer previous trick here,” he said. “They might insist on seeing the whole show.”

She shivered. The sun was hot and she was freezing. “What do we do?”

“Act like a poacher.” He started walking.

She hurried behind, lugging the heavy sack. They crossed the meadow at an angle. The soldiers made their way to intercept, getting closer. She could see their eyes beneath their helms, their unsmiling faces and sharp swords. Hear the creak of leather and the hard thud of wooden bootheels on the earth.

Finian finally stopped and dumped his bag to the ground, waiting for them. “How are ye feeling, lass?”

She jerked her gaze over. He looked like he was waiting for mass to begin.

“How are ye feeling?” he said again.

Terrified.
“Fine.”

“That's my girl.”

Four grim-faced soldiers stopped in front of them and fanned around to form a perimeter circle. Silence descended, then one of them, obviously the leader, spoke.

“What are you about, on this fine day?”

“Walking.”

He poked at the packs with the tip of his sword. “What's in the sacks?”

“Otter hides,” Finian said.

She wasn't surprised that Finian didn't break gaze with the leader. She wasn't surprised he could act so calm in the face of such danger. But she was
stunned
to hear a West Country accent come out of his very Irish mouth.

The soldier looked up sharply, too. Finian was dressed like an Englishman, as that's what she'd grabbed for him from Rardove. But nothing about him bespoke the civilizing influence of the most predatory English. Long dark hair, sloping Celtic bones, those ever-blue eyes, his tall, muscular body, less accustomed to wearing mailed armor than to wielding a huge blade, or running for hours on end, or cutting peat out of the earth for winter fires.

Finian was as wild an Irishry as they could ever want to destroy. Even the young soldiers up the riverbank had known that.

But, just now, he sounded like an Englishman from Shropshire.

“You're English,” said the soldier. Suspicion hung from his words like moss.

Finian nodded.

“You don't look like it.”

Finian shrugged. “Would you? Out there with them, trapping?”

This was a convincing argument, apparently. The soldier grunted in what she supposed was approval. Men grunted a lot. His eyes slid to Senna.

“And her?”

“She's mine.”

“She's pretty.”

“She's pregnant.”

The leader's brow took on a suspicious winkling above the eyes. “And she was out there, trapping with you?”

Finian's jaw set. “I just got back.”

The soldier stared, then lifted his gaze over Finian's shoulder, to his men.

Finian shifted slightly, a small, unprovoking action, but Senna realized he widened his stance as he did so. He was getting ready to fight. And if she noticed it, they surely would, too. She felt the potency of the masculine posturing vibrate through the air, like she was in a room with a wave.

“Richard?” she said softy, touching Finian's arm. “Why don't we just let the good king's men lighten our load, and be on our way?”

He ripped his arm away and looked at her derisively. “And give the lot of 'em an entire winter's worth of work?” He glared at the soldier, who was eyeing the sacks.

“They look familiar, Jacks,” muttered one of the soldiers. “That green stamp on the sack.”

“Aye,” agreed the leader. “They do at that.”

“O'Mallery's,” replied Finian in a tight voice.

Cold chills ripped up and down Senna's chest, like invisible, saw-edged stripes. This was going to end badly.

“Gaugin's,” countered the soldier, looking at Finian slowly. A corner of his mouth curled up. “The fur trader in Coledove. Them's his sacks. And he don't lend 'em out.”

“And that's just where we're headed,” Finian retorted. The tension spiraled thicker.

“Take them,” Senna said hurriedly. Panic jabbed at her belly with cold, stabbing pokes. She pushed her toe into the sack she'd dropped to the ground. “Take them to Gaugin for us, why don't you?”

The leader looked at her, then back at Finian ever more slowly. “I think we'll take you instead.” A brief pause. “O'Melaghlin.”

Finian knew a moment where his heart stopped beating, for the first time in a dozen years. He didn't pause to consider
‘why now?'

He kicked out his boot and stepped in front of Senna, unslung his sword and, before the leader could even lift his own sword, Finian had sliced his through the soldier's belly. Below the jutting iron nasal of his helm, his face looked surprised, then he toppled over, dead.

Finian spun to deal with the others with deft, rapid sweeps of his blade. His mind closed down during the battle, as always; it was all silence inside, narrowing attention and the feel of the earth under his boots.

But, in complete opposition to ‘always,' he was for the first time aware of a person who wasn't about to bring a blade down on his skull. Senna's lithe form bobbed just outside their ring of battle, in danger, handling…was that a knife?

God save them.

He snapped his attention back and, with grim focus, absolutely overpowered the wiry young Englishmen, taking them down with quick, merciful strokes. And when the four of them lay like downed scarecrows around him, he held his sword hanging by his side, breathing rapidly.

Blood surged through his limbs, wicked fast pounding, urging him on, go, go, get more,
now.
Climb the side of a cliff, swim to the Aran Islands. It was at these times he knew he was an animal first, whatever God intended for his soul.

Gradually his breathing slowed. When his hearing returned, too, he looked over at Senna.

She was standing, mouth open, as if to make a very important point. Her chest was heaving, her breath short and swift. In her right hand she held a blade by its carved hilt, still hovering at shoulder height, as if she were about to throw it.

“I—I. Y—you. But, th—they…”

She was babbling.

“Ye're all right,” he murmured, keeping his speech low and calm, to bring her back from the fringes of panic. “We're well. 'Tis over.”

Her gaze was locked on him, wide, staring. She still held the blade, shivering, near her ear. He reached out and slowly pushed it down.

“Ye didn't have to use it,” he said quietly, calmly. “Ye're a'right.”

“I would have,” she whispered, vehement. Her voice shook. “I would have used it. I just didn't want to…strike you. By accident.”

“My thanks.” He looked down at the soldiers, scattered in a semicircle, bleeding in the sun. Rardove's men. Soon, someone would find the bodies. They had a day now, maybe half again, until the baron knew they were not headed north, but south.

Would he figure out they were going to Hutton's Leap? Had Turlough, his captured kinsman, finally broken and revealed their mission to retrieve the dye manual? No way to know. And it didn't matter. Nothing would stop him.

“Let's go,” he said.

They left the sacks of skins. Someone would be along. And whomever it was, Finian had no desire to meet them.

“You saw them where?”

Rardove repeated the question slowly, as if the newly sworn-in soldier was stupid. Which, Pentony decided, he probably was. They usually were. Stupid enough to swear fealty to Rardove for a position or some land.

Some might say the same about him, of course. But then, Pentony was doing penance.

“By the river. He was Irish, for certain. But she was, too, my lord,” the young soldier added weakly. He looked at his equally shamefaced companion, then tugged on the belt around his waist. The belt came with the hauberk, their lord's livery as their mark and first payment for service. It looked cracked around the edges, old. “She was Irish. I'd swear to it.”

“Would you?” Rardove snapped. “Was she comely?”

“Oh, as anything.”

“Red hair? Long?”

“Well, mores like yellowy-red, all curvy—”

“That's my goddamned dye-witch!”

The soldier's pimply face was not glowing red just from the sun he and his companion had endured all afternoon on their lark by the river, derelict in their duties at the keep. But what a gift, this truancy. Pentony was as certain as Rardove: these two sluggards had encountered O'Melaghlin and Senna.

“What were they doing?” Rardove demanded.

“Stealing a boat.”

Rardove stopped his furious circuit while behind the table. He leaned across its wooden width. “And you didn't stop them? You let them just”—he flicked his fingers—“sail away, to go downstream and kill four Englishmen?”

“We thought they were delivering goods for the old man,” the other unhelpfully piped in. Rardove's eyes snapped to him. “We thought she was his flaming doxy.”

The baron went still. A muscle ticked by his jaw. “What did you say?”

The soldier swallowed. “No offense, my lord. Now that we know…'Tis just she was, was…”

His voice trailed off.

“She was what?” The baron's voice was thin and low pitched. Pentony felt the urge to cover his eyes.

“Aw, bollocks,” the soldier muttered. “She was sucking the Irishman's cock, and they—”

Rardove exploded. He bent his knees and upended the huge oaken table with a roar. A jug of wine and half a dozen scrolled parchments careened into the air, held a moment, then came crashing back down into the rushes Rardove was now stomping across, hurling curses and objects through the air as he went. The jug smashed, and pottery shards skittered everywhere. The table came crashing back to the ground, too heavy to be overturned completely. It trembled on all four legs.

“God's bloody
bones!
” Rardove punched the door of a wardrobe that held parchment and inks and wax for seals. It bounded open, the iron lock cranking wildly. He spun back and tried to yank the door off its hinges, then flung himself away, stalking across the room.

“Goddamned
whore!
” He picked up one of the fallen earthenware jugs and threw it back onto the ground. It shattered into a hundred pieces. “She will kneel at my feet and
beg
—” He smashed his hand into a tallow candle hanging on the wall. It fell, still aflame. Pentony put out a toe and quietly extinguished it. “She will bend that godforsaken head and—”

Rardove went still and spun to the soldiers. “They were going downstream?”

The soldiers, now utterly pale and huddled together like ducklings, nodded energetically. “Downstream, indeed. Far downstream.”

“Just so, milord. Downstream.”

Rardove looked sharply at Pentony. “South. They're going south.”

Pentony nodded.

“But, why?” His voice quieted, as if on some inward journey. He felt for the edge of the bench and sat. “Why south? O'Fáil is to the north. What is O'Melaghlin up to?”

A few candles sputtered in their holders on the walls, casting pale, angular wedges of light across the room. One still huddled on the table, plunged deep enough in a puddle of tallow to have withstood the earlier quake. Its small, wavering light was almost depressing; it had no chance against the surrounding darkness.

Rardove stared at it, then cursed quietly.

“He's going to meet with the spy Red.” His voice was hushed, perhaps in awe. “O'Melaghlin's taken over the mission. God's teeth. But…where? Where were they to meet? South. What lies south? Near enough for a foot journey, safe enough for the Irishry near my borders?”

His forearms were laid flat across the width of the huge oak table, a foot apart. The candle flame sucked and sputtered a few feet away as he sat, deep in thought. Then he lifted his head with a smile.

“Is not the abbess at Hutton's Leap an Irishwoman?”

But they both already knew the answer to that.

Rardove actually threw back his head and laughed. Another candle flickered out. Only one burned now, a fat tallow one, guttering in its iron holder on the wall.

Rardove called for one of his captains and gave his orders. “Any guests of the abbey, be they cleric or lay, round them up. Question them, break them. Find out if one is the elusive Red. Then bring him to me. Be quick about it. I expect you back by Sext on the morrow.”

The guard nodded and spun on his wooden heel. Turning back, Rardove sailed a brief look over the young, derelict soldiers. “Return the armor and find another lord.”

Their mouths dropped open. “But sir—”

Rardove turned on them. “You were not at your posts. You were playing at shuttlecocks, jacking off while an escaped prisoner sailed by your stupid faces. You do not know Finian
fycking
O'Melaghlin when he's standing right in front of you. You are of no use to me. Begone. Or stay,” he added, turning away, “and if either of you are here by
couvre-feu,
it shall be your last.”

Pentony watched as they made their dazed way out, escorted by one of Rardove's faceless helmed guards. The baron had taken to keeping his personal guard with him at all times, even about the castle. Perhaps that was wise. There might be need for such caution. Especially if Balffe succeeded in bringing Lady Senna back.

Rardove reached for the candle on the wall and pinched it out.