The Irish Warrior

by Kris Kennedy

  “No,” she screamed, thrusting her palm outward. “No! The baby!”

  Rardove faltered, his face bleached white.

  Then, with a tumultuous, thundering racket, the door suddenly cracked and was flung open. A black silhouette stood in the battered frame with a drawn sword.

  It paused for the briefest moment, then Finian vaulted over the threshold and into the room.

  Chapter 59

  Finian wrenched Senna away by her wrist just as Rardove’s blade came whizzing by in a horizontal swipe that would have severed her head from her shoulders. Flinging her behind him so she fell and sprawled on the floor, Finian turned to the baron.

  Rardove stared at him with red-rimmed eyes. Finian bent at the knees and reached behind him. Grasping Senna’s arm, he yanked her to her feet. “Go. Now.”

  She didn’t. Instead, she reached down, felt along Finian’s thigh, and yanked out a blade—the long-handled knife she and Finian had stolen from Rardove’s armory, a hundred years ago.

  “Had I known you were planning a visit, O’Melaghlin,” Rardove snarled, his gaze trained on Finian, “I would have arranged a more fitting welcome.”

  “This will do nicely.” Finian circled the perimeter of the room, keeping Senna tucked behind him as he maneuvered her toward the door. Rardove followed their progress, turning in a slow revolution.

  “But now that you are here, I shall give you a choice much like the one you offered me: you can stay and have my men slay you slowly—”

  “Which men would those be, cruim?”

  Rardove flicked a wary glance at the door. Two armored bodies were slumped one on top of the other, swords not even drawn. The edge of a third boot nudged in the doorframe. It was attached to a body bathed in blood.

  “Or,” Rardove finished slowly, turning back, “you can leave now and meet the armies at my gate for a quicker death.”

  Finian kept backing toward the door, Senna behind him. “I would weep for yer soul, if I thought ye had one.”

  While the men taunted one another, Senna squinted an eye and lifted her arm, testing the weight of the blade versus the weight of the hilt, shifting it between her fingers. Rardove’s neck. That was the only thing not armored. No. Too narrow. Move lower.

  The baron smiled thinly. “English rage will be murderous.”

  “Ye’re about to get a taste of Irish rage.”

  Rardove glanced over Finian’s shoulder. She had the blade up, her arm cocked. Their eyes met. Rardove’s mad gaze didn’t leave hers as he said to Finian, “Your woman is going to try to kill me.” He sounded amused.

  Senna couldn’t see Finian’s face, but she felt him grin. “She’s not going to try.”

  Rardove lunged. Senna snapped her arm down, launching the blade. It sank into his belly. The force of her throw through his armor was not quite equal to his furious momentum, but it slowed him down. And he no longer looked amused.

  Finian pushed Senna away and crashed his sword against Rardove’s, smashing it aside. The baron lifted his again and their blades met in a V in the air, holding. Finian moved relentlessly forward, propelling his weight against the baron, then suddenly stepped to the side. Rardove went stumbling forward.

  “Quickly it is,” Finian muttered and, taking his sword in two hands, he spun in a full, howling circle, sword outstretched, and swung it into Rardove’s torso.

  Rardove staggered back a few steps. A bubble, a wet gurgle. Gasping for air, he dropped to his knees. His hands clutched to his belly. He stared down in amazement, then tumbled in a heap to the ground, dead.

  Senna looked to Finian, who stood watching Rardove and slowly fell to her knees. It was dark in the room; the candles had all blown out. All she could see was his gleaming eyes. Just as in the prison, when she’d first truly met him.

  His gaze shifted to her. Slowly the haunting gleam dimmed and he went down on a knee. One wide hand reached out to her, stretching across the shadows. She reached for it.

  “Well, you have, in truth, rescued me,” she announced in a wobbly voice, then gestured to the shattered door frame. “But that was purely showing off. I could have managed better.”

  Finian knelt on his other knee and folded her into his arms. He rested his chin on the top of her head for a brief second. “I know, lass. Ye do everything better.”

  Then, because it was needful, he pulled her to her feet, placed a hard, swift kiss on her lips, and led them away from the dead bodies and blood.

  They crept through the dim castle. At times he jerked on her hand sharply, and they would both halt and press their backs against the wall, their eyes wide, breath stilled, as from another corridor they heard fragments of rough conversation, heavy boots pounding, frenzied cursing. The search was on.

  Shouts and the sound of hurrying feet bounced and echoed throughout the stone and wood castle, making Senna feel crazed. They rounded another corner. Finian threw his head into the air and froze.

  At the end of the corridor stood Balffe. Armored, sword in his grip, and he stared directly at them.

  All the breath left Senna’s lungs. The world slowed, each moment ticking by like an eternity. Colors were surprisingly bright; the fiery glow of torchlight, the black of Balffe’s scuffed boots, forest green breeches, the dull, sand-colored tunic under the red Rardove surcoat. Balffe’s belt buckle and sword gleamed dimly, and the vein on his neck pulsed.

  It was silent. Someone held their breath, someone let theirs out in a long, slow hiss. There was a single intersecting place in the corridor, a point where the lines of their sights crossed. Invisible vectors ran at odd angles across the stony space.

  A scuffle came from behind Balffe on the curving stairwell.

  “Balffe?” a hoarse voice called up.

  “Aye?” He threw the word over his shoulder.

  “Any sign?”

  His eyes held Finian’s. “Nay.” A series of curses floated up. “Search the stables.”

  Senna squeezed her eyes shut. Finian nodded once and turned her away, guiding her down the stairs behind them.

  “My sister,” Balffe called out quietly.

  Finian craned his neck to look over Senna’s head. “Is well.”

  Balffe nodded.

  Finian turned and guided Senna away. Balffe watched from the shadows. A gleam of reddish light from a torch shone on the side of his face, then he turned away.

  Chapter 60

  Out on the fields, the grass was a bloody mattress where dead men lay. Brian O’Conhalaigh, locked in a death struggle with an English soldier, gripped the hilt of his sword tighter with a sweaty hand and swung. The blade met bone and the man fell over, his last words an unintelligible groan.

  Brian was pulling his sword free of the body when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mace being lifted, hurtling toward his head.

  With a shout, he threw himself to the side. He fell across the body of the man he had just killed, and found himself staring into the sightless eyes of another dead man. Beyond him lay another, and another.

  He rolled to his feet. The iron ball was coming again and he couldn’t move away fast enough. It barreled toward him.

  Something changed its trajectory. Instead of smashing into his skull, it blew by, an inch from his nose. Its owner dropped to the ground in an openmouthed scream that never made it out. Above stood Alane.

  Grim-faced, he stuck out a hand.

  “Jesus,” Brian muttered, grasping it to rise. “I owe ye my life.”

  “I’m no’ worried of that debt. Stick close and you’ll repay me soon enough.” He turned back to the chaos raging around them.

  Brian looked around in stupefied amazement. The carnage seemed to stretch for miles. The stench filled his nostrils, his feet walked on blood-sodden ground. His arms, his legs, were leaden weights, dragging on him, as if he’d been dropped into an ocean fully clothed. The muscles were cramping and shuddering, but he couldn’t stop lifting his blade. He couldn’t stop killing them or they would kill him.

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nbsp; A horse galloped by, jarring him. He stumbled and dropped to a knee.

  “’Tis only de Valery,” Alane’s voice said from behind.

  “Oh,” Brian replied dumbly, stumbling back to his feet. He was so thirsty his throat crackled when he inhaled. When he exhaled, it was like hot wind blowing over a burn.

  “We’re outnumbered,” he muttered.

  “Aye,” Alane agreed. “Let’s go,” he said, and plunged down the small hill back into battle.

  Weary hotness filled Brian’s eyes as he followed him down, but Alane was only approaching a small group of Irishmen who stood in an area the fighting had passed by. Brian followed. In the distance, he could see the de Valery knight urging his horse up a hill, straight for the justiciar’s standard.

  “He’ll get himself killed,” he croaked.

  The Irishmen turned.

  A small band of horsemen appeared on the far hilltop. At its head rode Will, flying through the butchery, seeking Wogan.

  His one-eyed captain looked over as they galloped up the hill. “Sir? Is this the wisest thing to do?”

  “No.”

  He kicked his horse into one last gallop. At his side rode his squire Peter, the king’s crest prominently displayed. The pennant snapped in the morning breeze. Hands were raised, pointing at them. The justiciar’s guard turned their horses and unsheathed their swords. Two men wearing Rardove’s livery lifted longbows and aimed them at William’s head.

  The justiciar threw out his arm and shouted something. The bows hovered a moment, then lowered.

  “Wogan!” Will shouted, hauling on his horse’s reins as they crested the hill. The stallion slid in on his haunches, tossing his head.

  “Who the hell are you, and what the hell is going on?” the justiciar demanded.

  Will swung off the horse, ignoring the battle behind them and the swords angled at his neck. “I’ve a story to tell, my lord.”

  When Finian walked out of Rardove Keep with Senna, Wogan, the king’s governor, stood atop the hill, his pennants blowing in the breeze. He was not on his horse. Senna’s brother Liam and The O’Fáil stood beside him, talking. There was no fighting. Everything was quiet. Even the birds flew away when battle came.

  Finian stopped, stared at the sight of the men talking on the hill, then simply dropped to the ground where he stood, holding Senna’s hand. She sat down beside him. It was a long time before anyone spotted them.

  Senna dragged Finian to Wogan’s tent, not so much because she wanted Finian to meet the governor, but because he would not let her out of his sight. And when it became clear Senna was going to speak to the justiciar come a plague of locusts, it became evident Finian would be meeting the king’s governor, too.

  “There is no such thing as Wishmé dyes,” she insisted, after every moment of her time with Rardove had been explored and exhausted in excruciating detail. “Lord Rardove was mad, I am sorry to say. The Wishmés are mollusks, not some mythical dyes. And certainly”—she gave a tinkling laugh—“not weapons.”

  Wogan did not have a hard time believing her report. But after an hour of nonstop conversation and a few cups of wine, he did see fit to say, “You’re not quite what I expected from a wool merchant.”

  Finian, sitting in the governor’s tent beside The O’Fáil, replied with feeling, “Ye’ve no idea.”

  Wogan nodded at Finian, a slight smile lightening his somber visage. “I’ve found some women can hide many layers.”

  “Have you found that to be a problem?” Senna interjected brightly.

  “I have found it,” he said, shifting his gaze her direction, “to be invigorating.”

  She smiled even more brightly. “The highway back to Baile Átha Cliath is a long one, my lord governor. If I may, I would suggest a small detour. To the town of Hutton’s Leap.”

  Wogan lifted a cup of wine to his mouth. “And what might I find in Hutton’s Leap?”

  “Oh, anything the lord king’s governor wants, I should imagine.” She smiled. “Jugglers, fine embroidery needles, and the most delicious ham pasties. And a…shop”—she stumbled very slightly over the word—“called Thistle, I believe, with a proprietress from the south of France who I suspect has many layers. Tell her I sent you.”

  Over the rim of his cup, Wogan watched her a moment, then smiled.

  Within half an hour, the English army was wheeling out of the valley, leaving only bird calls behind them as the sun set.

  Epilogue

  Winter, Scotland, 1295 A.D.

  Will de Valery stood before Robert the Bruce. A pithy Scottish winter sunset had come and gone before they finished the wine in their wooden cups.

  “I think we’re safe from the threat for now,” Will said.

  The Bruce looked at him thoughtfully. “No secret weapons for Longshanks, then?”

  A fireplace roared in the far wall, but most of the heat went sailing up the chimney or into the stone walls. Both men wore fur pelts, even inside.

  Will shook his head. “Legends. That is all the Wishmés are.”

  And, really, Will had decided, that was all anyone needed to know. Senna was the only person on earth who could craft the deadly dyes, and she insisted she had no interest in doing so.

  “Perhaps the children,” she allowed when he’d demanded to know her plans. “But I will neither insist nor deny, Will. All I will do is explain. Never fear,” she’d added when he’d opened his mouth to protest that his concern was neither of those things, “I will always be here, so nothing, ever, will go unseen.”

  And that, he decided, was perhaps better than a spy network. Senna being watchful could bring down a kingdom, if she wished it. Or save one.

  And even so, Will thought, what benefit could come from a king of Scotland knowing about the thing?

  The Wishmés had been lost for centuries, until their mother and father had resurrected them. For good cause, perhaps, but all that could come of them was evil. Scotland had enough perils facing her, without the dubious advantage of the Wishmés added to her strain.

  “You told King Edward they were more than rumors,” The Bruce said, watching Will closely. “You told him Rardove had the dyes, that they were real, that they were weapons, and that he’d better hie himself over there right quick.”

  Will gave one of his calculated shrugs. “I tell King Edward many things. ’Twas necessary to bring him hammering on Rardove’s door.”

  Being a double agent for Scotland’s cause required saying many things to many people for many different purposes. The trouble came only in trying to remember it all.

  “And why did we want him hammering on Rardove’s door?” The Bruce asked, his regard watchful.

  “We did not, my lord. I did. My sister was there, and in danger.”

  The Bruce lifted a cup in a mock toast. “I did not realize my spies used their contacts for personal good.”

  “Then you are not very wise, my lord.” Will poured himself a cup of wine. “But I still think you ought be king.”

  Robert laughed. “As do I.”

  Will drank. He only thought The Bruce should be king because he could be king. ’Twas possible for this nobleman to rule the beautiful, scarred land of his heart, the country his mother and father had loved so well. But it was Scotland go braugh, not Bruce go braugh. Never for a man.

  They were so fallible.

  “And I do believe it benefited Scotland,” Will added quietly. “Edward turned his eye elsewhere for a few months. We might have been saved an invasion before we were ready.”

  “And now, we are ready,” The Bruce said. He pushed open a shutter. The sound of sleigh runners hushed into the courtyard outside. Winter had come, cold and white and bright. “So, what of your sister?” The Bruce asked.

  Will waved the parchment in his hand, the latest missive from Senna. “Rardove’s lands were taken back into the king’s hands, of course. And, oddly, deeded to a commune.”

  Robert the Bruce raised his eyebrows. “Truly? A business commune?”<
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  “So she says. I can hardly make it out,” he added, bending over the missive for perhaps the tenth time. He walked to the window and held the parchment under the spill of cold winter sunlight pouring into the room, but still it was hard to be sure he was reading it rightly. “A commune of…bellas? Can that be right?”

  The next king of Scotland shrugged, but he was grinning while he did it. His beard gleamed brown and red. “I do not know, de Valery, but I would surely like to visit a commune of pretties.”

  “Aye,” Will said absently. “An Italian word, is it not?”

  The Bruce nodded. “Or Southern France, perhaps.”

  “Indeed,” Will said, as baffled as ever. “Senna reports Wogan, the Irish justiciar, put in a word to Longshanks to give it over.” He shrugged and set the letter on the table. “No mind. I will go when I can, and figure it out.”

  “Good. Because right now, we have an invasion to plan.”

  Will nodded as they opened the door and strode to their horses. “And I must return to the king, ere he wonders why his spy is taking so long to reconnoiter the northern borders.”

  Finian put his arm around Senna’s shoulder and pulled her closer to his side. They stood on a stone embrasure on the walls surrounding Castle O’Fáil; the day, while brilliantly sunny, was windy and chill. The O’Fáil, down in the bailey, glanced up and lifted his hand. Finian returned the gesture before bending to place a kiss on Senna’s head.

  After two months among the Irish, Senna had almost memorized the array of names and faces and lineages stretching back far too long.

  “Sooth, Finian, why do we need to know about poets from the fourth century?” she had asked in a fit of irritation earlier that afternoon, which is why he’d finally led her out to the walls, to stare down at the sea below and calm herself. They’d done this several times since they’d returned to O’Fáil lands and realized Senna was no longer quickening.