* * *
From outside the compound, a horseman approached at great speed, pulling up his mount so severely that the animal reared up. Covered with sweaty lather, the horse panted while his impatient rider walked him around in circles near the boulder.
The boss-man said something to Slim, and the groom raced toward the longhouse. Within a few minutes, the wood-nymph and phooka sensed both the concealment and containment spells dissolve.
With the compound now visible from the outside, the rider raced across the ford directly to the corral.
As he dismounted in front of the boss-man, he shouted to Porky, “Take care of my horse and saddle me another! And be quick about it!”
“What are you doing here?” the man-in-charge asked. “And don’t tell me that there’s been another change in plans, because, in case you haven’t noticed”—he gestured to the archer blinds that had been set up—“we’re a little busy right now.”
“I’ve come with a warning. It turns out that the Lady Máiréad is accompanying the prince, and she’s a gifted one. She is—”
“So? Why aren’t you telling this to the captain at the ambush point?” the boss-man interrupted.
“Because I don’t know where that is. No one bothered to tell me.”
The man-in-charge massaged the back of his neck. “Oh, for the love of An Fearglas.”
The groom momentarily halted his resaddling and quickly performed the ritual act of submission. Neither of the other two men bothered.
“The ambush party will just have to deal with it the best they can,” the man-in-charge continued. “If they fail in their mission, we’ll be ready for the prince when he gets here.” He waved dismissively at the other man, whom he considered a mere messenger rather than a real soldier. “Thanks for the warning, but I’m certain we have more than enough magical power at our disposal to counteract the untrained talents of a gifted one.”
The rider bristled at the boss-man’s treatment of him, and smirked slightly as he continued. “That’s not the warning I’m bringing.…The warning is this: Under no circumstances is the Lady Máiréad to be harmed.”
“What?!”
“Let me be even more clear. “Under penalty of death, the Lady Máiréad is not to be harmed. Is that understood?”
The boss-man, with half-closed eyes, let his breath escape slowly from his nose. “Understood.”
“Good! Now I’ll let you real soldiers get back to work.” With that, he mounted his fresh horse, stuck his right fist into the air, shouted, “Long live the Northern Alliance!” and galloped across the ford and out of the compound.
Although the man-in-charge echoed the salute, with the reinstatement of the concealment/containment spell, he turned and headed toward the longhouse, thinking, If this is any indication of how we’re going to fight this war, our Alliance will be short lived, and we’ll all be hanged as traitors.
* * *
The wood-nymph and phooka, sensing the dual spells being restored, looked at each other. While neither had been able to hear what was being said, with the exception of the exhortation of ‘Long live the Northern Alliance!’ they both had been able to read the rider’s and boss-man’s body language.
“Appears to be some sort of trouble,” Siobhán remarked.
Yseult positively beamed as she replied, “And trouble for them bodes well for our Paddy.”
Yewday - Wolf 49th
Cairbrigh Shire
Cadwgawn reached down and pulled his arrow from the dead man’s throat, wiped it off in the snow, and returned it to the left quiver of the two he carried. The mock crow-call had been made with the soldier’s last breath.
At the sound of the answering call from farther up the road, he imagined his father retrieving an arrow from the second soldier. Two down. Eleven to go, he thought as he picked up his pace, moving stealthily and silently through the trees.
Although not blessed with the bark-like coloring of a wood-nymph, an elf could make himself just as invisible in a forest setting, if he so chose.
* * *
At the alert of the second faux-crow call, the commander of the ambush team signaled his men to get ready. He suddenly scowled, though, as he heard the sound of bagpipes coming his way from the east.
His men, also hearing the music, had all eyes turned toward their leader for some sort of instruction as to what they were supposed to do.
Giving a ‘hold your position and do nothing’ signal, the commander knelt down in the thicket where he had set up his command post, watching eastward as the sound of the pipes grew closer and closer.
* * *
Lairgnen, dressed in his usual troubadour garb—short-tailed, dagged hood with a red border, blue tunic, gray cloak, and brown huntsman’s knee-high boots—seated atop Killian the mule, squeezed out Digging Peat in the Bog on his set of elbow pipes. The lute, normally slung across his back, was nowhere in sight, replaced on this occasion with the scabbard containing his hand-and-a-half sword.
As he kneed Killian into the clearing through a stand of alders and silver birches, the elderly man let up on the bellows. The pipes gave a fading screech into silence.
“See,” he said to the mule, “didn’t I tell you there was a stream running through this glade? And you didn’t believe me, did you? ‘Addlepated,’ I believe is the term you used, wasn’t it? Well, I’ll accept your apology, Killian. Addlepated, indeed.”
Spotting a dozen sheaves of straw near the spot in the middle of the clearing where the tanner’s campfire had once burned, he noticed a piece of parchment affixed to one of them with an arrow.
Lairgnen shook his head in disbelief, using all his willpower not to burst out laughing, and coaxed Killian up to the bundles, attaching the elbow pipes to the saddle, then sliding off the mule’s back.
“And what have we here?” he said, pulling the arrow from the sheaf and picking up the parchment. “Humph,” he grunted, turning it over and over in his hand. “There’s nothing written on it, Killian.” He held it up for the mule to see. “I guess that means we can read whatever we want from it. How about this?” He held up the parchment so that the mule could read over his shoulder as he ran a finger under words that weren’t there. “‘Dear, Killian’ it says—It’s addressed to you, lad.—‘Dear Killian. You are the finest mule in all of the three kingdoms. In case you plan on spending the night, please help yourself to this nice bedding straw.’ Now wasn’t that kind of someone? Well, we’ve a long ways to go today, lad. Let’s go over to the stream and get us a drink.”
Lairgnen used the arrow to restick the blank parchment in the center of the sheaf, then led the mule over to the stream, trying very hard not to appear to notice the soldiers who were attempting invisibility behind the various trees and shrubs as he assessed their deployment.
Once he and Killian had finished, the elderly troubadour wiped his mouth, hoisted himself up onto the animal’s saddle, stuck the bagpipe’s bellows beneath his right elbow and filled the bag with air. As they left the clearing the way they had come in and headed westward, the troubadour started piping A Man from Muraisc.
* * *
During Lairgnen’s diversion, Brynmor, the elf from the Tangled Woods in Muraisc Shire, had made it to the edge of the clearing where Liam was to bring the wagon. From his position, high up in a big yew, he surveyed the deployment of the enemy troops. So confident were they, the majority of the soldiers faced the direction from where Liam would come into the glade, through the stand of alders and silver birches where the troubadour had entered and exited. Only three faced in the direction of the stream, covering their rear flank—one swordsman and two bowmen. Unfortunately, the commander had positioned himself in a thicket of small shrubs and briars, opposite from where the elf now perched.
Regrettable, Brynmor thought. I will not be able to target him unless he leaves his blind. Hopefully Cadwgawn will be better positioned.
A ‘prrrrt’ sound rattled from off to his left—a much better imitation of a mistl
e thrush than the soldiers’ crow. Brynmor answered his son with a ‘tseep’ sound of a redwing.
Both elves were now in position.
* * *
Rounding a curve in the road, which put him out of sight of the ambush team, Lairgnen quit his playing, pulled Killian up, and dismounted, securing the elbow pipes to the saddle. Leading the mule over to the tree line, he tied his reins to a small sapling.
“I’ll be back shortly for you,” he told the animal, giving him a pat on the muzzle. Then shaking an admonishing finger at the mule, he said, “Don’t you go worrying, now. You hear me?”
Killian bobbed his head.
Crossing back out to the road just as Liam and the farrier’s wagon came by, the old troubadour trotted along behind, grasped Finbar’s outstretched hand, and clambering up and over the tailgate.
Once inside, he rolled over on the wagon bed, bounced to his feet, and, with a flourish, removed his short-tailed, dagged hood and bowed to Máiréad, saying, “Lairgnen, troubadour extraordinaire, at your service, My Lady.”
The young girl looked at him skeptically, but said nothing in return.
“My Lady,” Finbar said, noting her uncertainty, “Lairgnen is also a swordsman extraordinaire. There’s no one I’d rather have at my side in a fight.”
* * *
Liam guided the farrier’s wagon through the tree line and into the clearing, reining the draught horses to a halt at the side of the straw sheaves. He slowly lifted a satchel from the foot-well of the wagon and held it up, so that anyone watching him would see it clearly. Setting the satchel on the seat next to him, he reached down and pulled out the arrow from the sheaf of straw with his left hand, removed the parchment from it, and tossed the projectile away. As he sat back up straight in the wagon’s seat, two arrows, simultaneously fired by two of the bowmen, struck him in the chest. Dropping the parchment to the ground, the prince slumped over on his side, his body sliding into the foot-well.
Aside from the rustle of leaves in the breeze, an occasional flap of wings, and various bird sounds, the glade remained silent.
During the next five minutes, the ambush team waited and watched. The bowmen and swordsmen periodically glanced at their leader. He, in turn, knelt in the thicket, his eyes riveted on the farrier’s wagon.
Finally, the commander pointed at three of the swordsmen, signaling them to take a closer look. The fourth swordsman, the one guarding the rear flank with two bowmen, remained in place.
The three soldiers spread out. One warily approached the wagon head-on while the other two circled around in opposite directions, advancing on it from different angles.
The commander signaled again. This time four bowmen stood up. Each had an arrow notched in his bow string, ready to provide covering fire, if necessary.
As the lead swordsman reached the wagon, he took possession of the satchel, then gingerly stood on his tiptoes in order to see into the foot-well. His eyes barely had enough time to register what they saw before Liam buried his dirk in the man’s throat all the way up to its brass guard. Gurgling, with blood spurting from his neck, the man staggered backward, dropping the satchel and keeling over.
For the next fifteen minutes, a series of events happened in such rapid succession, they almost seemed concurrent.
In the short time it took for the dead soldier to hit the ground, Lairgnen, hand-and-a-half sword already drawn, jumped through the front curtain of the wagon, over the prince and confronted the swordsman to his right. Behind him, Finbar vaulted to his left, facing the other swordsman with his quarterstaff. And Brynmor and Cadwgawn fired off two arrows each with such rapidity that the four bowmen were cut down before they could get off a shot.
The swordsman in front of Lairgnen, so surprised at the sight of the troubadour, froze momentarily. When he finally gathered his wits, all he could do was defend himself as the hand-and-a-half sword began its assault. In short order, Lairgnen ran him through.
The other soldier, mistakenly thinking his short-sword to be a superior weapon to the quarterstaff, did go on the offensive. However, his slashes were expertly parried by the farrier, who made him pay for his arrogance with repeated blows to the arms, knees, and ribs. Finally, a hit to the center of the forehead by one of the iron tips on the quarterstaff knocked the swordsman to the ground. Finbar wasted no time in drawing his own blade and driving it into the man’s chest.
Cadwgawn, who had been keeping a mental tally, as he notched another arrow, thought, Nine down. Four to go.
The three soldiers guarding the rear flank suddenly joined the fray. The lone remaining swordsman, a veteran of the War for Independence, spotted Liam struggling to extricate himself from the wagon’s foot-well. Drawing his sword, he left his position and raced toward the prince, shouting to his two compatriots, “Cover me!”
The two bowmen altered their positions, putting trees between themselves and the elves, and fired around the trunks, up and into the branches where they thought Brynmor and Cadwgawn to be hiding. By moving to protect themselves from elfin arrows, though, they left themselves exposed to a direct line-of-sight from the wagon.
Máiréad pushed her way through the curtain in the front opening of the cart and made the bowmen pay for their error, registering direct hits on both of them with successive balls of lightning. However, so great was the power of the lightning balls, the girl was left weakened by expending so much of her essence at one time. Lightheaded, she sat on the wagon seat and tried to maintain her balance.
Prince Liam leapt from the wagon, arrows still sticking through his cloak and shirt, their lethal points securely anchored in the leather vest. Transferring his bloody dirk to his left hand, he drew his own short-sword to confront the remaining swordsman closing in on him.
Field Marshal Gearóid would have been proud of his pupil. Despite all his experience in the field, the veteran swordsman didn’t last but three minutes before the prince killed him.
With the counter-ambush over, Cadwgawn’s tally now stood at eleven down with two to go.
In the final minutes of the slaughter, the ambush party commander had called for the lone remaining bowman to fall back; and, as he did so, the leader reached the second of the soldiers felled by Máiréad’s lightning balls. The man, though severely burned, was still alive.
Taking him by the sides of his face, the commander locked eyes with him while giving him a final set of orders. “You’ve acquitted yourself well, today. Now pay attention. This is of the utmost importance. There is one more thing you must do, or in this case, must not do. Under no circumstances are you to give up the position of our sanctuary. Do you understand me?”
“Y…yes, s…sir,” the glassy-eyed man mumbled, even though in acute pain. “But, you needn’t worry, sir. I would never do that. I couldn’t. I don’t know where it is, myself.”
Filled with self-loathing at what he was about to do, the commander, nevertheless, quickly imparted to the wounded bowman the location of the kidnappers’ compound. After issuing a final caution not to give up the position, he retreated through the thicket of briars and shrubs to where his horse and his surviving bowman waited for him.
* * *
“Ten dead, one wounded, and two escaped,” Lairgnen announced as the elves dragged the bodies of the two lookouts into the glade and flopped them down next to the other eight corpses that the troubadour and farrier had lined up next to the bundles of straw. “Unfortunately, since we left Taran and Killian back a ways, Cadwgawn and I weren’t able to follow them.”
Head-gesturing to the wounded bowman, still lying at the base of the tree over near the stream where Máiréad had felled him with a ball of lightning, Finbar asked, “How do you want to handle it?”
Brynmor glanced over in that direction. Seeing that Liam stood over the soldier, guarding him, Brynmor replied, expressionlessly, “Call the prince. Leave the prisoner to me.”
The farrier beckoned Liam over to him. When the prince got there, Finbar said, “Let’s see how the La
dy Máiréad is getting on, shall we, Prince Hedgehog?”
Liam smiled as he looked down at the two arrows still sticking out of his leather vest. “It did the job, all right,” he said, pulling the arrows from it, “but it sure is uncomfortable.”
“A word to the wise, Your Highness. If you wear it over your shirt, it won’t chafe so much.”
“I sort of figured that out, belatedly. Before we leave here, I’ll switch things around.”
They crossed to the girl, still sitting up on the wagon seat trying to recover from her bout of weakness.
“Are you going to be all right, Meig?” Liam asked as he picked up the brown leather satchel and set it on the wagon seat. “Nice aim, by the way.”
“Excellent sword-work, yourself,” she countered, managing a small smile. “But I’ve never felt like this before. Those two lightning balls seemed to sap all my strength.”
“They were, indeed, powerful, My Lady,” Finbar told her. “Here, let us help you down from the wagon. The more contact you have with the ground, the sooner your essence will return.”
The girl looked down at him, quizzically. “What does the ground have to do with anything, Finbar?” Nevertheless, she offered him her hand and allowed him and the prince to assist her.
“From whom did you inherit your gift?” the farrier asked. “I wasn’t aware that either the earl or the countess were gifted ones.”
“They’re not,” Máiréad replied. “We’re not sure who I received it from. Probably some long-forgotten ancestor.”
“As you may be aware, my late wife was a gifted one. Sit here on the ground with your back against this rock, My Lady. Contact with the elemental forces in the earth will allow the essence within you to recharge more quickly.”
“Really?”
“Trust me.” He winked at her, then moved away to intercept Brynmor, as the elf crossed toward them from where he had been questioning the bowman. “Anything?” he whispered when the two met.
A Spark is Struck in Cruachan Page 28
