The Irish Warrior (30 page)

De Valery's one-eyed captain was summoned forth. Half of his not-insignificant force was dispatched to the stables to ready itself for the sortie onto the Irish countryside. The others were told to hold at the manor, until de Valery sent word. Then the three of them strode to the stables, weapons slung and belted across their bodies.

“Tell me about Senna,” de Valery asked as they crossed the courtyard. “How is she?”

“Reckless. Resilient. Startling.”

De Valery looked over, his eyebrows raised. “I meant, is she hurt? She's bewitched you, has she?” They reached the stables and began saddling their horses. “Not many see the charm. But then, she terrifies them with her stylus. Wields it like a sword. Very dangerous.”

“Yer sister is a force of nature. Most men hunker down.”

Liam considered him. “How did she get recaptured by Rardove's men, anyhow?”

Finian shrugged. “She was out on her own.”

De Valery glanced at Alane, then back. “How'd she manage that?”

Finian scowled. “How does yer sister manage anything, de Valery?”

Liam looked at him in surprise, likely at the vehemence of his reply. “By saying she's going to do it, then doing it. That's how Senna does everything.”

Finian tested the cinch of his horse's saddle by slipping a finger underneath, just behind the gelding's front leg. “Aye. That's her.”

“So,” Liam said, his tone contemplative. “She left.”

“Aye.”

“What did you do, to make her leave?”

Finian returned his gaze with a level look of his own. He could almost feel Senna's presence under his skin, her heated touches, her roiling spirit. The eyes that peered at him were so much like her own they tugged at his heart.
Do
? God save him if he did anything but her bidding if he could only get her back.

“Whatever yer sister and I did, Liam, we did together.”

Another suspicious slant of the hazel eyes. “What exactly did you do together?”

“Everything.”

A pause. An arched blond eyebrow. “
Every
thing?”

Finian swung up on his horse. “Everything she wanted to do.”

“Mother of God,” her brother muttered.

The sun was almost too bright, filled with petulant, gray-bottomed clouds. They gathered in small, patchy bunches, like young, angry men posturing and rumbling to themselves. They had a greenish tinge to them, and roiled within; a low rumbling sound they sent out made the ears hum. The three of them mounted up swiftly and reined toward the gate.

“So, do you know where this sortie is, the one that captured Senna?”

“Aye. By now, easily two hours north. Their leader is Balffe, and for the next few hours, we've need to worry about him much more than Rardove.”

“You know Senna's captor?”

“Aye. I know Balffe.”

“You know Balffe,” de Valery echoed. “Why do I trow that has some significance?”

They passed under the small inner bailey gate. De Valery's men followed behind.

“Balffe has a wicked temper, and the temptation to right what he sees as an old wrong may prove too tempting for his conscience, which is a skinny thing in the best of times.”

De Valery's glance moved to Finian slowly. “What old wrong has Senna done him? She can be more vexing than an infection, but she's only been here a week.”

Finian shook his head. “'Tisn't her. She's been with me, and Balffe knows it.”

“And?”

Finian plucked his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger and tugged before responding. “We've a score to settle from years back.”

“Plague take me,” he snapped. “'Tis like a hornet's nest out here, all this swarming of secrets. Is it not possible to meet someone who has no old scores to settle?”

“Aye.” Finian tossed him a level look. “Yerself.”

“Ah.” He settled back and ran his hand over the hilt of his sword. “Well.”

“Aye.”

“So tell me: what did you do that knocked—what's his name? Balffe?—off his oats?”

“Bedded his sister,” Alane piped in.

De Valery froze. “Do you do that a lot?”

Alane cocked an eyebrow, a weary, faint smile on his face. Finian shook his head and looked away, unamused.

“Balffe's sister was a waif, sad and slender, with less color than wheat powder. Years ago, when Rardove and my king still pretended to be allied, The O'Fáil hosted a feast. Rardove and his minions came. Balffe came. He brought his sister.”

“And you slept with her?” de Valery finished incredulously. “By the arm of St. Peter, O'Melaghlin, couldn't you—”

“I did not bed her. I talked to her. She'd been betrothed to a man who was harder than Balffe. And I mentioned to her that her face need not be beaten at each mealtime to serve some dim-witted man's notion of knighthood, and that there were men who did not whip their women as a prelude to their evening entertainment.”

De Valery considered this. “And?”

“She chose to not return with the rest of Rardove's party.”

A smile crooked up the corner of Liam's mouth. “And?”

Finian shrugged, but Alane spoke up into the dark air. “She found a husband who does no' beat her, bore five children, all of whom have lived, and she gives Finian a hand-dyed cloak every Yuletide, smiling through her tears.”

De Valery was quiet a minute. “Well, I cannot see why Balffe—what an ungodly name—would be angry with that.”

Finian glanced over. “Because we are Irish. Because his sister defied their father. Because the father then proceeded to die an hour after the wedding, no doubt from horror.”

“No doubt,” he murmured as they rode under the outer gates. “So, you stole his sister and killed his father.”

“Something like that.”

They were quiet a moment. Liam observed, quite unnecessarily, “We'll hardly beat them to Rardove Keep. They've got a fearsome head start.”

Finian gathered up his reins. “I know a shortcut.”

The gate creaked shut behind and they galloped silently out under the storm clouds about to unleash themselves on the land.

Senna pressed her eyelids shut but could not make the world dark enough to blot out what was happening to her.

By late afternoon the next day Balffe almost had them to Rardove Keep. He'd not let them stop all morning and afternoon long, most of it at a lope, and the tension in Senna's throat rose to almost throttling proportions as each mile disappeared behind them.

They climbed to the top of a rolling hill. The view lasted for miles, spilling greening hills into valleys and lowlands. Small blue watercourses sparkled in the distance. And all around the lowlands and draped up the hills like multicolored blankets, were armies. Armies mustering to decimate the Irish.

On the distant rise, swimming before her gaze, was the hated castle. Faded red pinions fluttered from the stone ramparts, snapping in the sharp breeze.

She could almost see the gate through which she and Finian had escaped, the moat where he'd tossed her to ensure their safety. Perhaps at this very moment the afternoon sun was hitting the spot where he'd acquiesced to her plea for a kiss, and she'd known everything in her life before Finian had been pale and flat.

She bent her face, her breath catching over and over.

Balffe grunted and stared determinedly ahead. Women's tears came cheaper than basil, and he was not going to be turned by the threat of them, not even if the fat, wet drops started dripping down her cheeks.

“Who are all those people?” she asked, pointing at the crowds milling on the plain before the castle gates.

But she knew. Villagers, fleeing the armies that were marching to war. Uninvited guests. They would not be asked in, not even when the battle began, nor would they be allowed to pass through the ring of any opposing army encamped outside the castle walls. They would hover in between the warriors, nothing but unwanted mouths. It was a killing zone.

Balffe's armor creaked as he turned to look at her. It was silent except for the sudden flutter of bird wings somewhere to their left.

Then, from out of nowhere and all around, came a pounding of hooves and rough cries. From behind and on each side galloped a muster of knights on horses, racing toward them with bright swords drawn, arrows fitted. Steel-tipped points whizzed by Balffe's head and bit into the earth beside them. The slender, graceful shafts of ash belied the death carried at their steel tips.

With a curse, Balffe whipped the horses into a wild gallop and they raced ahead of the armed throng. Senna screamed at the suddenness of the charge, tossed around on her saddle like a sack of wheat.

They sped across the open plain, racing for the castle that emerged from the evening mists. She clutched at the mane of her horse. Her knee smashed into the knobby pommel and her teeth clattered inside her skull, and through the vibrations, she espied her brother.

“William!”

Then she saw Finian.

“Oh, please Lord, no,” she whispered, then screamed as a surge of scalding fire exploded across her scalp. Balffe was hauling her toward him with an armored fist, by her hair.

Dragging her back into the saddle, he wrapped the reins of her horse around his palm and hauled her close, until their horses' red-flared nostrils touched as they galloped like a devil's tongue across the plain.

Balffe contemplated stopping to do outright battle with O'Melaghlin, went so far as to sit upright in his saddle and rein in his stallion, when a small ax hurtled past his head, close enough to trim the day's growth off his jaw.

He crashed his nose into the horse's mane to escape death. An arrow skidded across the equine's rump and the horse bolted into a wild dash Balffe no longer had the inclination to oppose.

He urged his stallion into a pace violent enough to hurl rocks and small farm animals from under hoof, speeding toward the castle. Lifting himself in the saddle, he spurred the horse in a savage, reckless leap over a heather-strewn hedgerow, dragging Senna's mount behind.

The keep was close now, the draw only a quarter mile away. Flaring his nostrils like his frenzied mount's, Balffe pushed the pair of horses with his thighs, his arms, his fury, until they breached the wooden bridge and flew under the outer gates.

Guards stood in stupefied amazement, their jaws agape.

Balffe roared,
“Raise the fycking draw!”

Like maggots on a mound of meat, the guards swarmed to their posts. Heaving and grunting and sweating to rival a seaman in a whorehouse, they dragged on the heavy chains, tearing open hardened calluses as they hoisted the bridge.

Balffe didn't wait to see the outcome. He urged his horse on, bending low over his withers, until they crossed over another bridge, under another gate. Another bellowing shout, another phalanx of grunting soldiers, and the portcullis gate crashed down behind them with a reverberating thud.

And there Senna sat, swaying in the saddle, back in the center of the baron's bailey, ringed by iron and steel and armed guards.

She threw her hand out reflexively as Balffe propelled her to the top of the stairs outside the great hall. It was so brilliantly light outside, and so densely dark inside, she was blinded for a moment. Balffe dropped down the stairs into the hall, herding her before him.

Rardove sat in his chair on the dais, wrapped in a cape that grew his shoulders out like a crow's wings, watching their approach. His cold features—nose, chin, cheek—were set in a pinched, translucent mold. Whatever had been golden about his presence before was now tarnished. Only his eyes revealed life.

He rose from his seat like a bird taking flight. Senna wanted to fling herself at him, scratching and clawing. Or, preferably, throw a knife into him. Instead, she forced herself to stumble. Appear weak.

Balffe bent to her, hand extended, but a sharp glance from the baron drew him upright again.

It was utterly silent. Silence seeped from the walls, a wicked, waiting thing. No one spoke. The clatter of a dropped mug brought a clumsy maid to tears. The baron's furious gaze fell on her, which only made things worse. It took two varlets and a strong tincture to get her huddled, weeping figure out of the middle of the hall floor.

The hall was almost empty now. Only Senna, Balffe, and Rardove. And Pentony. She sensed him there, in the shadows.

“Sir,” Balffe said, stepping forward. He pushed Senna out in front of him. “As ordered.”

Rardove's gaze slid over her, from head to dirty yellow skirt hem. “Where?”

“Near The O'Fáil encampment, by the old barrows hill. No escort. She'd escaped, or left, or something. She won't say.”

Rardove looked her over, his eyes glittering. “Certainly she will,” he murmured, coming around the table and down the dais stairs.

She stared at the far wall, where a faded, limp tapestry hung behind the dais.

“So much trouble, over one small woman,” Rardove mused, striding around her. Suddenly, his breath was on the back of her neck, sliding over her like smoke. His hand slid up under her skirts, up her thigh. She shuddered, but his fingers found the blade she'd lodged in a band there. He slipped it free and stepped back.

“I do not know why you came back, Senna—or were sent back—but I will learn. And you shall not like my methods.”

She stopped breathing.

Balffe cleared his throat. Rardove's eyes darted from Senna's determined profile, still angled toward the wall behind the dais, to his captain, who obviously had more news to relay. “What is it?”

“They attempted a capture. Just outside your gates.”

“Did they?”

“Aye. The Irishry. And her brother.”

Rardove twitched slightly. “De Valery?”

“Aye. With O'Melaghlin.”

Rardove contemplated this a moment, then swung out his arm. “So be it. De Valery has made his choice. He shall die with the rest of them.”

Senna swallowed thickly, her jaw set.

Rardove nodded to Balffe. “Ready the men. The plain is fat with villagers and their whelp. Gather every male over twelve and put him on the castle walls. Siege measures to be enacted, in the event. Send a messenger to the sortie we sent to intercept Wogan. Tell them to shoot de Valery on sight, should he try to establish communication with Wogan. Come dawn, the rest of the troops will arrive, and we shall be ready for battle.” He looked down at Senna. “By then, who knows what my dye-witch will have done for me?”

No one moved. Balffe glanced at Senna. He shifted uncomfortably.

Rardove turned slowly. “Balffe?”

The soldier's gaze snapped from Senna.

“Why are you still standing there like a dolt? Round up the men.”

Senna saw a telltale flicker shudder cross the veteran warrior's face. It was nothing of note, a flash by his lips, a tightening along his jaw. He turned to his men-at-arms, who were lined up along the walls.

“You heard what your lord said. Double the watches, everyone on half rations. Mac and Conally, round up the men from the rabble out front.”

A slow groan rose from the war-wasted men, some of whom were only here on castle duty from their own lords, a service that was due to end for some of them within a dawn.

At the sound, Balffe turned back with a blank and utterly terrifying look. “You want for me to convince you?”

The men scattered. Wood-soled boots cracked stone as they barreled up the stairs out of the hall. Angry echoes bounced back into the hall as the soldiers passed along the long, dank corridors to the barracks.

Rardove turned to Senna. “And now, what shall I do with you?” he said, his tone contemplative.

“Do with me, my lord?” The interchange with Balffe had given her just enough time to gather her wits, and she needed them all to carry her next words into the air. “Why, you shall marry me.”

Rardove's attention narrowed in on her like an archer's. “I somehow doubt you will say ‘I will' in front of a priest.”

“I somehow doubt you would have a priest who much cared. But I shall come willing enough.”

“You will?”

“Aye.”

Rardove's hand shot out and gripped her shoulder. The pain had begun. “Willing? You lie,” he spat. “That is as big a lie as the other.”

Cold drops of fear slid down the back of her throat like medicine. “Aye, I lied. But we both knew that, did we not? I am a dyer. As skilled as my mother was.”

“You are like her in every manner,” he snarled, then reached into his tunic and slammed something into her chest. She toppled backward a few steps, gripping what he pressed there.

The missing pages. He'd found them.

Indeed,
she found herself thinking—some rational, orderly part of her mind was still in working order—
no more concerns on how to proceed. We know just what to do.

She pushed back her shoulders and said in a clear voice, “I will make you the dyes.”

He burst out laughing. “I know exactly what you will do, Senna. When, and how.”

“Do you?” She met his gaze. “Tell me, do you want them explosive or”—she paused for effect—“camouflaging?”

His face underwent a series of small metamorphoses, from startled, to impressed, to furious, to…desirous. She seized the moment.

“You call off this war, and I will make you the dyes.”

His breathing, made unsteady by her admission, slowed. “I cannot. It has gone out of my hands.”

“Retrieve it back into them,” she said coldly. “Tell the king the dyes are only legend. A lie.” She looked down at the pages in her hand. His tongue flicked over his lips as she smoothed them. She perused them briefly before looking up. “I do not want King Edward to know of this. Do you?”

His eyes were slightly distant as they met hers. He looked in the beginning throes of madness. Or passion.

“I do not want anyone to know,” he agreed hoarsely.

She lowered her voice to match his. “No. 'Twill be our little secret. Tell Wogan, the governor. Send word to King Edward.” She looked down at the manual languidly, ran one finger slowly over it. “Call them off, and I'll stay here with you. Willingly.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?” He might be pure evil, but he was pure cunning evil. Incipient madness—or lust—had been overtaken by scheming. “You do not want me to have the dyes.”

She had to find a way to bind him to her more than Edward. More than his hatred. She took another intuitive step in the dark.

“This is what we do, the women in my family, is it not?” she murmured. “We start as de Valerys, but we end with you. I know my mother was here, with you.” She took a step closer. Desire swept over his face, slackening his jaw. He nodded as if in a trance. “And now, 'tis I.”

“You are mine,” he said thickly. He shoved his hand through her hair, dragging her head back. “Your mother is dead.”

“I know.” She fought off the urge to mark him, to carve up his face. Ten years ago it had gone like this, and she hadn't known how to defend herself. The knife on the marriage bedstead had been a stroke of luck. Now, she knew very well how to defend herself. And she couldn't do it.

If she killed Rardove, if news went out that he was dead, King Edward's men would crawl over the castle like fleas on a straw tick, and they would find the pages. They would find her. And they would find someone who, given time, could decipher the deadly recipe of the Wishmés. Then Ireland would fall, Scotland would fall, and Finian would have ropes tied about his wrists and ankles.

Rardove's vile lips were by her ear, breathing into her hair. “And I swear, Senna, I will kill you, too, if you do not craft the Wishmé dyes for me.”

She gathered every scrap of reason and sense from the cold, trembling corner of her petrified mind, and drew herself up. “I will work on the dyes this night,” she said, putting a hand on his chest. “In the morning, come to me.”

In the morning, she would kill him.

Or he would kill her.

But really, it couldn't go on like this.

 

Twilight poured through the high, narrow windows of the empty great hall, creating a mingling of firelight and pale purple light, illuminating the spinning, dancing dust motes into an unearthly glow. Blue-black. Much like the Wishmés.

Pentony should know. He'd seen the color they made. And not the sample that was hundreds of years old. He'd watched a fresh batch be born, hatched by Senna's mother.

Sooth, he'd helped pound out mollusk shells himself, when the baron was out hunting one afternoon and Pentony had not yet fully adapted to the groaning silences of Rardove Keep.

Elisabeth de Valery had been like fresh air when she arrived, twenty years ago. She'd chatted and laughed in that winsome, unique dialect of hers, some melding of Scots and mid-England French—and her hair practically glowed red, and she'd cared not a whit for Rardove's rage or the gloomy Irish winters, which is probably why, when she'd handed him a mortar that dreary afternoon, Pentony simply took it and started pounding.

It is probably also why, when it became needful, a year later, he helped her escape.

And it is certainly why, when she entrusted him with the last copy of the dye manual, he did as she bid.

He'd sent it, along with a small sample of the dyed fabric, to her husband, de Valery. ‘He'll either receive me or the secrets,' she'd said to him, smiling. Pentony knew which he would have chosen.

Then, the night she fled, she handed him a clutch of parchment sheets, scribbled over with her mad, beautiful sketches.
For my daughter, on her wedding day. Just in case,
she'd whispered, and this time her smiles were covered in tears.

Then she slipped out the gates and ran for her life.

Ten years later, Pentony had followed up on that final request. He had sent the parchment sheets to her daughter. Under cover of darkness and packaged to appear a gift from an ‘unknown' Scottish grandfather, on her betrothal eve, Senna de Valery, at fifteen, became the possessor of the last secret of the Wishmés. The only person who could create the beautiful weapons.

Right now, Pentony knew two things with absolute certainty: Rardove would never call off this war—probably couldn't now—and Senna was a dead woman.

Just like her mother.

He stood a moment longer in his vantage point of shadows lurking at the corners of the hall, then stepped out and hurried across the room.