Already the house of Tyr-owen was scattered and fallen, as the greater house of Tyr-connall had been before it, for when the last earl had fled from the land, there had been only the younger branch to hold the sept together. Owen Ruadh was the final glory of that branch, and now Brian entertained the vision of transplanting the Red Hand and of making his rule strong in the west.
But other men had entertained the same vision before him, and it had remained a vision, and no more; and the high hopes of Brian himself were fated to be driven upon the rocks of destiny before many days had passed over.
With the afternoon the little party stood on the lower slopes of the Stone Mountain itself, and Turlough drew the shape of the place in the snow with his pike-haft.
“Here are we,” he explained, “on the southern slopes. A half-mile ahead of us is a valley with a small and fast-rushing water, where we shall make camp this night if the Dark Master be not before us. And if he is not, then he will be on the northern side, where there are two well-sheltered valleys with water running, fit for the meeting-place and camp of men. Here is the easternmost, but, as I remember it, the snow fills the valley somewhat in winter. The other holds a small lake called the Dubh Linn, or Black Tarn, and in one of these we shall find the Dark Master, unless he is here before us.”
“Well, let us ride on and see to that,” said Brian, and they did so.
However, they found the valley deserted and empty, and picked a place for camp, sending back a horseman to bring up the force. They could make out no smoke rising from the mountain, nor dared they light fires until after dark for fear of alarming O’Donnell; but when the force came up, Brian sent out scouts to bring in what word might be had.
“Where got you such knowledge of this wilderness?” he asked Turlough that night when the fires were blazing and the men were warmed and fed. The old man narrowed his gray eyes and chuckled a little.
“I have been in many armies, master, though I have fought not; and I have been outlawed twice by the English, in the old days. This was always a good place to flee to.”
Brian laughed and said no more. That night the men rested well, and Brian himself got sleep which sent strength into him and served him well in the days to come, for it was long before he was to sleep again, save as he rode, nodding in the saddle.
Not until nearly dawn did the last of the scouts straggle in. None of these bore any news, and all agreed that no signs could they find of any large band of men, nor of any men at all. Turlough heard their reports, letting Brian sleep, and only when the last man came in were any tidings brought. This man bore a strip of sheepskin, which, he said, an old woman had given him to bear to his master.
“A woman!” exclaimed Turlough, scanning the written words on the sheepskin, but unable to read them. “What is she like? It is a strange thing if women bide on Slieve Clochaun! Was there any stead near by?”
“None,” replied the man, who trembled with something more than cold. “M’anam go’n Dhia! She was a witch woman, or worse, Turlough Wolf. She leaped out of the snow in my path, told me to bear that skin to Yellow Brian, and vanished in a burst of fire. How could she not have been a devil?”
“Nonsense!” grunted Turlough, though he suddenly laid the strip of skin down. “You are overwarm with uisquebagh, man. What was this woman like? Was she clad all in black?”
“Faith, I did not stop to see,” grinned the man sheepishly.
Turlough stroked his beard, while the men went off to eat and sleep. He gazed at the strip of skin, and twice stretched out his hand toward it, with his eye on the fire, but each time drew back. Then he glanced around craftily, found he was alone, and took from under his cloak a small, brass crucifix. With this he touched the skin, found that nothing happened, and rose with a nod. The dawn was just breaking in the east.
“There is no sorcery in it, at least,” he muttered; “but I think it bodes no great good to us. Ho, Brian!”
Brian woke and sprang up. Turlough handed him the strip of skin, saying no word, and when Brian had held it to the light of the embers, he looked up suddenly.
“Whence came this?”
“What does it say first?” returned Turlough uneasily.
“News!” cried Brian, his blue eyes aflame with eagerness. “It says that O’Donnell bides alone by the Black Tarn, and that his horsemen from the north are camped two miles beyond the mountain, waiting for him, and that he has made pact with the Millhaven pirates and they have left for their stronghold. Answer me—whence came this? It is written in good English writing, man!”
Then Turlough told of what had chanced, and when he had done, Brian stared into his gray eyes with a great wonder. Twice he tried to speak, but his lips were dry.
“The Black Woman!” he muttered thickly. “Can it be, Turlough? Who is she?”
“That was my thought, master,” said Turlough. “Who she is none know save herself; but she deals with no good. This may be a trap; let us ride south again, and at once, lest evil come upon us.”
“South? Not I,” laughed Brian, though his face was pale. “To horse, men!”
And at his ringing shout the camp awoke, and Brian saw his vengeance drawing near.
CHAPTER XV
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TARN
It had been long, indeed, since Brian had given thought to his meeting with the Black Woman on the other side of Ireland. In that brief meeting, the Black Woman had spoken of seeing the old earl, his grandfather, in his youth. Yet it was forty years since the two earls, O’Donnell and O’Neill, had fled together from Ireland, and even then Tyr-owen had been an old man. Unless this Black Woman was close on a hundred years of age, Brian could not see how she had known Hugh O’Neill in his youth.
The mere fact that she had recognized him there in the moonlight was proof of her true speaking, however. Brian could no longer hide from himself that her words had some strange prophecy in them. She had foretold his meeting with Cathbarr and with the Bird Daughter, though, indeed, she might have been attempting only to guide him on the path which he had afterward followed.
While the men were saddling, Brian called Turlough and told of the hag’s word that she would meet him again “on a black day for him.”
“Now, what think you she meant by that, Turlough? Is this the meeting?”
“No, master, for it is no meeting. It may be as you think, and that she was but trying to lead you into the west; yet, for my part, I call it sorcery,” and the old man crossed himself, for, like better men than himself, Turlough ascribed all he could not fathom to magic. “It seems to me that she is some witch who is hanging on your tracks, and that when—”
“Oh, nonsense!” laughed Brian, flinging the matter from his mind. “At any rate, she has served me well this time. Now, what rede shall we follow in this matter, and shall we capture and slay the Dark Master first, or fall on his men first, or both together?”
“It is ill to sunder a force of men, master,” quoth Turlough. “If those horsemen of O’Donnell’s are encamped in a valley two miles to the north, it is a vale of which I know well. But we must mind this—if O’Donnell gets safe into Galway again with either these horsemen or those Millhaven pirates of his clan, he will drive hard against Bertragh.”
“The Dark Master shall come no more to Galway,” said Brian grimly, fingering his ax. “Now finish, and quickly.”
“I have a plan in my mind, master; but unless we slay the Dark Master, it is like to fail us. Let us send a hundred of the men around to the north, for I will tell them how to ride, so that by this night they can fall upon those men of his and scatter them in the darkness, and drive them south where we can slay them utterly at our wills. If we drove them back whence they came, there would be little craft in it, and it is to my liking to do a thing well or not at all.”
“A true word there,” nodded Brian, his eyes gleaming. “I think those men are as good as dead now, Turlough. Speak on.”
“With fifty men, master, you and I can reach the valley of t
he Dubh Linn. We cannot do it with horses, unless we ride around to the north, and in that there would be danger of striking on the Dark Master’s scouts. But while our hundred are circling far around, we with fifty can go over the mountain by valleys and paths I know of, so that by this evening we will come to the Black Tarn and strike the Dark Master as our hundred men fall on his camp. That is my—”
“Good!” cried Brian, leaping up eagerly. “Then we—”
“Hold, master!” And Turlough caught his arm, quickly staying him. When Brian looked down he read a sudden fear in the old man’s gray eyes. “That was my first rede, Yellow Brian, and you would do well to hear my second also.”
“Say it,” said Brian, and glanced at the brightening sky.
“My second rede is this. That message might be a trap to ensnare us, though I have two minds about this Black Woman. But if we fail to slay the Dark Master at the Black Tarn, we are like to have an ill time.”
“Why so?” asked Brian, for he could see no likelihood of that. “I said that we would slay him.”
“Master, do you hold the lives of men in your keeping?” In the gray eyes leaped a swift horror that amazed Brian. “I tell you that if the Dark Master escapes from our hand, and his men are driven past our fifty into the south, he will ride hard before us into Galway. I see evil in that first rede of mine, Yellow Brian. I see evil in it—”
He broke off, staring past Brian with fixed and unseeing eyes, his face rigid.
“Turlough, are you mad?” Brian seized the other’s shoulder, shaking him harshly. The old man shivered a little, and sanity came back into his eyes as they met the icy blue of Brian’s. “What daftness is upon you, man?”
“I know not, master,” whimpered old Turlough feebly. “Do as you will.”
“Then I will to follow your rede, divide my men as you say, and when we have slain the Dark Master, we will cut off the last of these O’Donnells of his, ride to Millhaven and take that hold, and send word to the Bird Daughter that she may keep Bertragh Castle and send Cathbarr north to me. Now go, and tell a hundred of the men how to ride around this mountain; then be ready to guide me over it to the Black Tarn.”
“You are a hard man, Yellow Brian,” said Turlough, and turned him about and did as Brian had ordered.
None the less, Brian gave some thought to that second rede of Turlough’s. He saw clearly enough that with the northern horsemen driven past, scattered though they might be, they could be cut off to a man if the Dark Master were slain. But if O’Donnell should escape by some trick of fate, he could gather up his men and drive south.
“If he does that, there will be slaying between Sligo and Galway,” swore Brian quickly. “But I cannot see that he will escape me here. When another day breaks, I shall have won my Spanish blade again—and then ho! for the Red Hand of Tyr-owen!”
So Brian laughed and donned his jack and back-piece, while Turlough drew plans in the snow and showed the leaders of the hundred how to sweep around without discovery so that they might fall on the northern horsemen at eve.
Brian had grown into an older and grimmer man since the day he had stood beside the bed of Owen Ruadh O’Neill, short though the time had been. Youth was still in his face when he smiled out, but suffering had deepened his eyes and sunk his cheeks and drawn the skin tighter over that powerful jaw of his. When he had armed, he stood in thought for a little, with hand on jaw in his instinctive gesture, and wakened suddenly to find old Turlough bending the knee before him.
“Now I know of what blood you come, Yellow Brian,” said the old man softly. “I saw Hugh O’Neill, the great earl, standing even as you stand now, on the morning when we slew the English at the Yellow Ford.”
“Man, man!” exclaimed Brian in wonder; “that battle was fought fifty years ago, and yet you say that you were there?”
“I was the earl’s horse-boy, master.” And Brian saw tears on the old man’s beard. “I loved him, and I was at the flight of the earls ten years after, going with Tyr-owen to Italy, and it was these hands laid him in his grave, master; master, have faith in me—”
Brian put down his hands to those of Turlough, his heart strangely softened.
“He was my grandfather,” he said simply, and Turlough broke down and wept like a child.
When they left their horses and the camp behind, Brian followed Turlough, feeling like a new man. He had lightened his heart of a great load, and he wished that he had talked of these things with Turlough Wolf long before this. Now he understood why the old man had offered him service as he stood in that attitude on the battlements of O’Reilly’s castle after leaving Owen Ruadh, and he understood the love that Turlough bore him, and the silence the old man had kept on the matter, though it must have ever been deep in his heart to speak out.
No more words passed between them, nor did Brian tell Turlough more of his story until long after; but of this there was no need. As they climbed higher on the mountain they could see the hundred horsemen filing off to the eastward; but soon these were lost sight of as Turlough led Brian and the fifty through the valleys and deep openings, which were drifted deep in snow, making progress slow and wearisome.
Indeed, Brian thought afterward that this hard traveling might have been responsible for what chanced on the other side of the mountain.
On the higher crests and ridges there was little snow, however, and Turlough seemed to know every inch of the place by heart, though more than once Brian gave himself up for lost in the maze of smaller peaks and the twisted paths they followed. Most of the fifty Turlough had chosen from those hillmen who had joined Brian by Lough Conn, so that they were not unused to such climbing, and remained with spirits unshaken by the vast loneliness that surrounded them, and to which other men might have succumbed somewhat.
Brian himself was no little awed by the desolate grandeur of the Stone Mountain, but he only wrapped his cloak more closely about him, and swore that the Dark Master should yield up the Spanish blade before many more hours.
And so indeed it was done, though not as Brian looked for.
Until long after noon the band wended their way with great toil and pain over the flanks of the mountain, until Turlough led Brian out to a point of black rock and motioned toward the valleys below them.
“There to the left,” he said, “is the valley of the Black Tarn. Do you see that smoke, Brian, and that dark spot between the trees and the lake?”
Brian looked, squinting because of the snow-glare. Leading down from the side of the mountain itself was a valley—long, and widening gradually to the plain, where a dark wood swallowed it up. Almost under his feet, as it were, was a small, round lake deep in the rock, with a small, frozen-over outlet that was lost in the snow.
But farther down the valley-slopes there were trees, and among them horses tethered and a fire strewing smoke on the air close beside. Between this little wood and the tarn itself there stood a low house of thatch with smoke also rising from it, and from the other fire among the trees came a sheen of steel caps and jacks, where were men.
But to Brian all these things were very small and hard to make out distinctly, as if he were looking at some carven mimicry, such as children are wont to use in play.
“Now come,” said Turlough Wolf. “It is no easy task getting there without being discovered, and the way is long.”
Brian found, indeed, that to avoid being seen from below they must needs take a roundabout way; but when the afternoon was far spent they had come to a snow-filled hollow among the rocks which Turlough declared was just over the edge of that valley-slope where stood the low house. Turlough said that in his day that house had not stood there, and he knew nothing of it.
Since there could be no talk of lighting a fire, Brian’s men huddled together in the hollow, and ate and drank cheerlessly. Brian was minded to meet the Dark Master and win his Spanish blade with his own hand, so he ordered that his men pass on after dark and make ready to fall upon those men who were camped at the wood, but to hol
d off until he and Turlough had smitten the Dark Master in that little thatched house, where he was most like to be found. Turlough yeasaid this plan, for he trusted greatly to Brian’s strength.
At length they set out under the cold stars, and Brian’s men were very weary, but promised to do all as he had commanded. He and Turlough set off alone over the hill, and when they had come to the hill-crest after much toiling through the snow they looked down and found the house a hundred yards below them.
“Let us go down cautiously,” said Turlough, “for I think we can peer through the thatch and plan our stroke well.”
So they struck down openly across the hill-slope, and found that there was none on guard. The door of the house was fast shut, but Turlough strode cautiously in the trampled snow around the house, where, at the side, a spark of firelight glittered through the loose thatch. To this he led Brian, and Brian stooped down and looked through the cranny, while Turlough went farther and fared as well.
There was but one room in the hut, and it was well lighted by the fire that glittered merrily on the hearth. Sitting not far away, but with his back to Brian, was a man; he sat on a stool, and there seemed to be a wide earthenware bowl of water or some dark liquid on the floor between his feet into which he was staring. In his bent-down position his rounded shoulders stood up stark against the fire, and Brian knew this was the Dark Master.
His hand went to the pistol in his belt, but since there was no other man in the hut, he thought it shame to murder O’Donnell as he sat, and made up his mind to go around to the door and burst in. He saw his own great sword slung across the Dark Master’s back, but even as he stirred to rise, O’Donnell’s voice came to him, low and vibrant, so that he bode where he was and listened.
“I cannot make out the figures,” muttered the Dark Master, still staring down into the bowl of dark water. “The man has the face of Yellow Brian, yet he is swart; the woman I sure never saw before. Corp na diaoul! What is the meaning of this? Who stands in my way?”
The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 72
