“Not we, I’m afraid. The kidnappers’ instructions were quite clear. I, who they think is Paddy, am to come alone. And if anyone accompanies me, Paddy, who they think is me, will be killed.”
“But surely—” she began.
“Surely nothing, Meig. If they still have Paddy, I’m not willing to jeopardize his life by deviating one bit from those instructions. Are you?”
The frown returned and she bit her lip as she shook her head.
Liam reached over and took the girl’s hand. “You and the escorts can ride along as far as Ráth Gabhrán, but no farther. I have to go the remainder of the way by myself.”
“But, Liam, what if the kidnappers—”
“No buts! Paddy saved my life. I have to do this their way…for Paddy’s sake.”
Oakday - Wolf 48th
Gabhrán Shire
Liam, Máiréad, and the four lancemen comprising the prince’s military escort, followed the same route that Brynmor and Lairgnen had taken earlier that morning, north from the Citadel of Cruachan and into Gabhrán Shire.
Although the sky was clear and the sun bright, the cold winter winds whipsawed them—at times blowing from Saltwater Bay on the west, then swirling and changing directions, coming at them from the Sea of the Dawn in the east.
The riders all had their cloaks or capes wrapped tightly about them to fend off the chill. Aside from Liam, who wore Pádraig’s gray cloak, the others were all decked out in blue, Máiréad’s dark-blue ruana almost matching the blue capes of the soldiers, although hers did not bear the symbol of the gold tríbhís with a lightning bolt in its center.
Once on the west-east road in Gabhrán Shire, they headed eastward toward Fort Gabhrán. However, where the elf and troubadour had changed directions at the S-curve by Stag Pond, Liam’s party continued on until the Coastal Road going north to the fort was within sight.
Signaling a halt, Liam pointed at the captain from the Cruachanian Defense Forces, and said, “We’ll wait here. Take another soldier with you and continue on up the Coastal Road and into Ráth Gabhrán. Locate Shire Reeve Lorcan. Explain that the High King has need of the farrier’s wagon that was brought in from Cairbrigh Shire the other day and that you’re there to take possession of it.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the man responded. Nodding to one of the lancemen, he spurred his horse forward. The lanceman followed along in his wake.
“Why don’t we just go and get it ourselves?” Máiréad asked.
“Although it seems that quite a few people already know that I’m back, there’s no sense in advertising it to everyone else,” Liam told her. “The kidnappers are expecting Paddy the farrier, so”—he gestured toward his clothing—“Paddy the farrier, at your service.”
* * *
Within a three-quarters of an hour, the prince’s party saw a black draught horse pulling Colm’s farrier’s wagon, driven by the lanceman. The soldier’s horse had been tied to the back of the wagon and trotted along behind. Bringing up the rear was the captain.
“Well, Stumbles, my old friend,” Liam said, pulling on one of the draught horse’s ears as the lanceman reined the wagon to a stop. “It looks like they’ve been taking pretty good care of you. Fancy a ride up north?”
Stumbles snorted a reply.
Dismounting, Liam tied Bucky’s reins to the back of the wagon as the lanceman untied his own horse. “Captain, I appreciate the escort,” the prince said, “but you and your men can head back to your barracks, now. The Lady Máiréad will ride along with me until we reach the Dúnfort Road, then she’ll also return.”
“Are you sure, Your Highness?” the captain asked. “It’s no trouble for us to accompany you to the Dúnfort Road, then escort the Lady Máiréad home.”
“I thank you for your offer,” Liam replied, “but, perhaps you didn’t catch the name of this horse.”
“I believe you called it ‘Stumbles,’ Your Highness,” the captain answered.
“And, believe me, he’s earned his name. Take your men and go. I don’t want to have to answer to Field Marshal Gearóid as to why it took you until mid-afternoon to get back to work.”
The soldiers laughed, then the captain said, “So the field marshal strikes fear into the heart of even a prince? Very well, then, Your Highness. We bid you safe journey.” With that, he spurred his horse in the direction of the road to the citadel. His men did likewise.
Climbing up onto the wagon seat, Liam flicked the reins and Stumbles started forward, tripping as he did so over a tree root that had grown up in center of the road.
Even though she realized the seriousness of Liam’s mission, Máiréad couldn’t help but snicker as she pulled her dapple-gray mare up next to him.
“Hey!” Liam chastised her. “Don’t laugh at him, Meig. He has feelings, too.” Stretching out over the front of the wagon, he patted the horse on the rump. “It’s okay, Stumbles. Don’t you pay her any mind at all.”
“My, my, what a few weeks with Paddy will do,” Máiréad said. Growing serious, she asked, “Do you really think he’s all right? I know you said that he had an escape plan; but, if he wasn’t able to get away, do you really believe the kidnappers will release him once you’ve paid the ransom?”
The prince said nothing, and Máiréad didn’t ask again.
Both continued on in silence, lost in their own thoughts—thoughts of their friend Pádraig and of what might lay ahead.
Oakday - Wolf 48th
Cairbrigh Shire
After maneuvering the unconscious Pádraig back into the bed, Yseult had bathed him with cool water from the snow she had melted.
“This is good, my pinkie,” she had cooed softly to him. “Your fever has broken. Now you must rest and build up your strength. When you awake the next time, I’ll have a nice bowl of root-and-herb broth for you. For now, though, just sleep. Sleep and recover.”
The little wood-nymph had stayed by his bedside for a while, humming to him and bathing his head with the cool water until she was sure that he slept soundly.
* * *
As the sun rose, and while her patient continued to sleep peacefully, Yseult headed outside and went about her wood-nymph routine, tending her trees, making sure that the snow was not damaging their boughs, and humming encouragement to them.
From atop a yew, she watched as a horseman in the corral readied himself to depart the compound. From his gestures, it was obvious that he and the boss-man were in the middle of a heated discussion.
Silently and unseen, Yseult moved from tree to tree around the pond to a large pine on the other side, closer to the corral so that she might catch a fragment of the conversation. What she heard was the tail end of their disagreement.
“We deliberately selected that group of men so they wouldn’t know the whereabouts of this encampment,” the horseman asserted, keeping his voice low so that the two grooms, going about their business at the other end of the corral, wouldn’t hear.
“A contingency plan, Captain,” the boss-man said. “And it comes straight from the top. Just in case your ambush should fail.”
Although addressed as ‘Captain,’ the horseman was clad head to toe in leather, as were all the other men in the compound, with no outward identification as to any military affiliation.
“It isn’t right! And you know it!” he continued to protest. “Those men waiting for me are our friends and comrades. They’re fully prepared to lay down their lives for the Northern Alliance. This is no way to treat a friend.”
The boss-man raised both palms upward. “Then you’d better take care of business up there, hadn’t you?” He stopped and shook a warning finger at the horseman. “But if your trap doesn’t work and the hidden force that the prince is bound to have with him somehow overpowers you, and you have to fall back, an injured comrade can still be of service to the Alliance.”
“I don’t like it!”
“You don’t have to like it,” the boss-man told him. “You just have to follow orders and do it.”
Raising his right fist into the air, he said, “Long live the Northern Alliance!”
The captain’s response was a halfhearted salute accompanied by an equally unenthused, “Long live the Alliance!” Reining his mount away from the man-in-charge, he headed toward the ford in the stream.
As he neared the water, Yseult sensed the concealment/containment spell lift, and she watched as the horseman galloped across the ford and through the tree line into the forest beyond. But just before the spell was reimposed, she also observed a jet-black mare gallop through the tree line from the forest, splash across the ford, and continue on around the pond past the corral. There it stopped, pawing through the snow in an attempt to locate some grass.
The boss-man and grooms also spotted the horse.
“Where’d that come from?” Slim asked.
“Probably got separated from the herd last night,” Porky replied. Calling over to the man-in-charge, he said, “You want us to go get it?”
“Don’t bother,” came the reply. “Just set out some food in the corral. Its empty belly’ll do the work for you.”
Both grooms snickered, and Slim went to fetch a half sheaf of hay.
* * *
With the black mare still running loose, the little wood-nymph continued on with her duties. Along about mid-morning, the concealment/containment spell was again temporarily lifted, allowing a party of some two-dozen horsemen to enter the compound. Each was dressed in deerskin. However, these men all had longbows slung over their shoulders. They also carried two sheaves of arrows apiece, one on either side of their horse.
The boss-man directed them into a section of the corral that could be closed off, rather than the open part where Slim had placed the black-mare bait. There the men dismounted and walked up to the longhouse with their weapons.
* * *
Although late morning, in the wood-nymph’s phosphorescently lit underground cavern, Pádraig had no sense of time when he awoke. Remembering his jumbled dreams, he thought, Whatever time it is, I need to get out of this cave and make my escape before what I think is going to happen actually does.
Sitting up in the makeshift bed, he once again threw back the covers and swung his legs over the side.
The boy stopped as a sound like the tinkling of bells came from somewhere within the cave. It was almost as if the bells were laughing. The only sound that came close to what he was hearing was when the wife of the chieftain of Dealbhna Shire had asked Finbar to make a set of wind chimes for her garden. His father had forged a series of varying length, thin iron rods that, when strung together, would bump one another every time the breeze blew, making a delightful ringing sound.
But there was no breeze in this cave.
From the roots of the hawthorn where Pádraig had thought he had seen movement one time when he had briefly awoke in fever, he now saw it again. This time, though, Yseult stepped away from the roots, showing herself. Only then did the boy realize that the tinkling sound was this creature laughing at him.
“Don’t make the same mistake again,” Yseult warned, in her lilting, musical voice. “Picking you up is getting to be a bit of a burden for someone my size.” She stood there, holding a bowl and smiling at him.
Taken aback at the sight of the twig-like hair and the tiny brown-and-green mottled body, Pádraig’s first instinct was to protect himself from the unknown. Raising his right hand, he tried to use his gift to thrust the creature backward, commanding, “Away!”
However, as weak as he still was, the little wood-nymph just continued to stand there and smile as she countered his pitiful display of force with her own magic.
“Now, is that any way to treat someone who saved your life, my pinkie?” she asked in a mock-scolding voice.
“W…w…what are you?” he asked, looking at his hand and wondering why his gift wasn’t working, and at the same time, backing away from her in his bed as far as the cave wall would permit.
“W…w…what am I?” Yseult mocked. “Have you never seen a wood-nymph before? I am a keeper of the trees?”
“One of the Daoine Dofheicthe?” he asked, frowning.
Using her free hand to gesture to her diminutive body from head to toe, she replied, “What else would I be? An Fearglas created my kind soon after He fashioned this world.”
After hastily performing the submission ritual, which Yseult did not, Pádraig asked, “But I thought the elves were created to look after the trees.”
Once again, Yseult let out her tinkling laugh. “Having found a hoof-pick among your belongings, I had assumed you to be a farrier. I must have guessed incorrectly, you’re really a jester, aren’t you, my pinky?”
“No. I am a farrier, as is my da. And my name is ‘Pádraig’ not ‘Pinky.’ What did I say that you found so amusing?”
“There is a vast difference between looking after the trees and using the trees, Paddy. My name, by the way, is ‘Yseult.’ And as a keeper of the trees, I look after the trees in this area of the forest, tend them, see to their well-being from the tips of their highest boughs to the bottom of their deepest roots. An elf, on the other hand, cuts them down and uses their wood.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh, indeed. Now, drink this. It will strengthen you.” The little wood-nymph stepped forward and handed him the bowl.
“W…what is it?” Pádraig asked, looking suspiciously at the greenish-brown liquid.
“Why, poison, of course,” Yseult replied, facetiously.
“What?!” the boy shouted, stretching the bowl at arm’s length in front of him and almost spilling the broth all over his bed.
Yseult heaved an enormous sigh for her size and said, “No, it’s not poison, silly. If I had wanted to harm you, would I have nursed you back to health? Drink it. It’s good for you.”
Pádraig sniffed the contents of the bowl and wrinkled his nose.
“Drink it,” Yseult told him.
Having gotten over his initial shock at seeing the little wood-nymph’s odd appearance, Pádraig finally became aware of something other than her twiggy hair and bark-like skin. And what he now noticed was her almost total lack of clothing and the mature figure that the vine she wore barely concealed. Although no larger than the miller’s daughter and her two pre-teenage friends that he had spied on in the mill pond a year before, Yseult had the form of a miniature adult woman—a very curvaceous miniature adult woman.
“Would you be more at ease if I covered myself with a horse blanket?” she asked, slyly.
“N…no!” Pádraig replied, quickly, raising his teenage eyes from where they had been focused. “Th…that won’t be necessary.”
“Good. Now drink!”
Pádraig took a sip of the tepid liquid and grimaced. “Oh! Yuk! What is this?” As disgusting as the weak porridge that the kidnappers had fed him may have been, he now remembered it fondly.
“It’s root-and-herb broth. And it will help you get your strength back.”
“Either that or make you puke,” a throaty voice from the back of the cavern spoke up.
Both boy and nymph turned in the direction of the voice.
Siobhán, dressed in her black, mid-thigh, skin-tight gown approached them, stooping over as she walked so that her head would clear the roof of the cavern.
“Siobhán?!” Pádraig called out.
“I perceived it to be a phooka that had galloped across the ford earlier, but I didn’t recognize that it was you, Siobhán,” Yseult said. “What brings you this far north from your poulaphouca?”
“I sensed that my young friend, here, needed a ride home.”
“Well, he won’t be going anywhere anytime soon if he doesn’t regain his strength.” Turning her attention back to Pádraig, Yseult pointed at the bowl and said, “Drink! All of it!”
The dark maiden leaned over and smelled the bowl. “Oh, yuk! He’d be better off eating hay.” Patting the boy on the head, she said, “As soon as it gets dark, I’ll fetch you some nice hay that those two buffoons set out i
n the corral to entrap me.”
“He needs the nourishment of my broth,” Yseult insisted. “Besides, he’s too weak to travel, and will be for quite some time.”
“I’m right here, ladies,” Pádraig spoke up. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding when I should leave. And it’s now! The High King’s son may be in mortal danger.”
“Be quiet!” both of the Hidden Folk commanded in unison.
“Didn’t you hear me?” the boy asked. “I said that—”
“Shush!” Siobhán told him. “We’re not deaf.” She and Yseult moved a yard or two away from him to continue their conversation.
“I’ve nursed him back to health,” the wood-nymph said to the phooka.
“And I see you’ve done a fine job of it. Now I’m here to take him off your hands.”
“He’s not strong enough to travel!”
Siobhán sat on one of the three saddles that the nymph had stolen from the corral during the time since the kidnappers had begun constructing their encampment; then, after making a ‘tsk-tsk’ sound, said, softly, in a sing-song voice, “Yseult and a pinky under a tree, K-I-S-S—”
“That’s not it at all!” the little wood-nymph protested with a stamp of her tiny foot.
“The soldiers are gathering out there, Yseult. Strength or no strength, he must rejoin his friends.”
“…When?”
“Tomorrow at the latest.” Glancing over at Pádraig and seeing how weak he still was, as he leaned up against the wall of the cave for support, Siobhán sighed and called over to him, “Hold your nose and drink the broth, Paddy. It probably tastes terrible, but Yseult is right. You need your strength. I passed a few search parties on my way here. I assume they’re looking for you. Plus, and this is most curious, I spotted an elf lurking around near the Central Road south of Cairbrigh Shire. It’s extremely rare for elves to travel this far north of the Coedwig Dryslyd,” she said, using the elvish name for the Tangled Woods.
The boy’s countenance brightened. “It has to be Brynmor or his son Cadwgawn. They’re friends of my da. And that means he won’t be far off. I’ve got to get out of here. Now!”
A Spark is Struck in Cruachan (The Chronicles of Pádraig Book 1) Page 25
