Morrighan's Champion

by C.S. Fanning

can cut through that” his father said pointing, “we can flood them out.”

  Minutes later, a rope tied around his waist, Aeden was cutting deep grooves through the solid stone. Despite the fact that his sword cut through the stone as easily as the wind passes through an open window, it was a slow and tedious task. He had to cut great hunks from the stone and stop to clear the rubble frequently. He was beginning to doubt the plan when he heard the first crack. It was deep and sounded like distant thunder beneath his feet. A cacophony of clattering stones and a slight tremor ran beneath him. He could feel the rope tighten as Fianna and his father took of the slack, but the stone face held.

  The crack was the first promising sign that his father’s mad plan might actually work. With renewed vigor he took up his sword and cut mighty gouges in the stone all along the exposed bridge. He was halfway back, cutting a second row of deep gouges when the ground beneath him gave way with a roar like an angry dragon.

  Aeden found himself clinging tightly to the rope that was all that prevented him from falling into the newly opened abyss with one hand while clutching his sword in the other. As he felt the pull of the two above hoisting him up he concentrated on the sword. “I think I will name you Caladbolg” he said, the name meaning “hard cleft” in the ancient language of the Gaels.

  “Now what?” Fianna asked, mirroring the thought that Aeden was still too winded to express.

  “Now we ride upstream and find ourselves a siege machine!” Gareth announced, excited by his own plan, though still he had not shared all the details with Aeden and Fianna. As he mounted up once more and headed west into the growing darkness Aeden and Fianna looked at one another and shrugged. The circumstances of his success so far made them more willing to follow him without yet knowing the fullness of his plan.

  As they rode they had to veer farther and farther away from the river’s natural course as the waters had begun to rise rapidly. By the time they drew abreast of Longford, the water was beginning to run over the levies constructed for normal spring floods. Very soon the garrison’s denizens would be scrambling to deal the rising water.

  A half mile upstream, Aeden’s father dismounted at a wide shallow point in the river. Tying off their horses he explained what he needed of them and their role in the rescue. He didn’t say much about his own role, except to say that he would provide a distraction. Aeden was ready to accept that answer at face value but Fianna was troubled.

  Before they sat out to prepare for their part in the plan, Gareth had Aeden cut down and trim up five huge logs, which Fianna pulled to the water’s edge using the horses. Hugging both of them tightly, he bid them farewell. “Off you go now, and wait, for my signal. Take care of each other” he said, turning to study the logs he’d tied together at the water’s edge.

  At the appointed hour Fianna and Aeden were in position. They had stolen the ferry just above the town, though stolen might have been a strong term considering that the ferryman’s cottage was already knee deep in the steadily rising water, and he and his family were gone. Tying the large barge to their horses they drug it behind them until they were only a hundred yards or so from the stockade where the people of Bretharc were being held. They tied the craft up in the shallows that only hours before had been clear cut grazing land, and waited upon Gareth’s diversion.

  As they watched, they could see soldiers scrambling everywhere around the garrison, which was now almost chest deep in the rising water. They were trying to move equipment and supplies to higher ground. There was also a group of perhaps twenty soldiers formed up and headed east, presumably to investigate the cause of the flood. If they were away before the diversion occurred it would mean that many less soldiers to deal with.

  As far as they could tell, only two guards in the tower still watched the prisoners, and if there were more, they must be inside, for the water was lapping at the wall of the stockade, and the flickering light of the torches on the walls showed no one on watch below. The water was rising still, and the plan seemed to be working almost too well, as the flood waters showed no sign of cresting, and the people of Longford appeared to be abandoning the town, if the line of torches travelling east along the low ridge, that was now about the only dry spot in town, was any indication. The soldiers marching east passed the slower moving refugees and in short order were out of sight as they sloshed down the muddy and swampy road toward the east. They wouldn’t go far that way Aeden thought; unless they were prepared to swim.

  Suddenly, a cry went up from the tower. Something was approaching from up river. Aeden and Fianna could see nothing but an intense light rising over the trees that blocked the source from their view. They didn’t have long to wait however, as the light was rapidly moving down river toward the town. It was moving far faster than the now sluggish river current.

  All eyes were on the light as it came into view from where Aeden and Fianna were waiting. They were nearly as stunned as the garrison soldiers to see Aeden’s father riding at a full gallop, spear held high, through the shallows approaching the garrison. A rope tied fast to his big horse was affixed to the barge he had made of the logs Aeden had cut. The light was coming from a huge pile of drift wood and brush that he had piled upon the barge, which now blazed in an ever growing inferno that was nearly twenty feet high.

  Aeden stood transfixed by this spectacle until Fianna’s elbow reminded him that they had a job of their own to do. Quickly and quietly they pushed the ferry off from the shore and Aeden used their horses to pull it slowly toward the stockade. They were clearly visible now but the soldiers were fixated on the apparent madman on a suicide mission racing toward their post. Fianna was on the ferry, prepared to eliminate the guards in the tower. She was glad there were only two, any more and it would have been difficult to eliminate them without sounding an alarm. With just the two, it was likely they would perish before either could cry out, assuming she didn’t miss. Sticking two arrows into the soft wooden rails of the ferry, she knocked a third and drew her bow.

  One of the guards turned to look east, having no way to know what a fatal mistake that would be. He was dead before the barbed tip of the arrow exploded from between his eyes, and Fianna had knocked her second arrow before his now limp form pitched over the rail to fall into the murky water below. The other guard had not even noticed the absence of his fellow when he was rendered speechless, an arrow through his throat.

  Aeden had been watching his father’s mad ride with a growing sense of trepidation. He could see how this distraction would pull attention away from them, but how would make good his own escape? As the water grew deeper, Gareth’s horse began to falter, and he turned aside, cutting the rope and setting the burning barge on a collision course with the walls of the garrison itself. Rather than turn and ride toward the stockade he ran his horse toward the river, drawing fire from those few archers still attentive on the walls. His horse screamed as an arrow pierced its flank, falling and throwing him into the swirling water.

  Aeden watched in terror as the horse, kicking and flailing, rose from the water and was swept past the garrison and down the river, but there was no sign of his father in the turbulent waters. Aeden’s search for his father was abruptly cut short as the brilliance of Gareth’s distraction came to fruition. The combined weight of the log barge and its burning cargo was considerably more than the average battering ram and propelled by the big horse’s gallop combined with the current, it continued along its path straight toward the garrison. It smashed thought the outer barricades without slowing and seconds later it struck the wall. The garrison wall was already strained by the rising waters, and when the barge struck it the massive logs pierced the compromised wall easily, but not before the groaning impact hurled burning debris in every direction, threatening to start more fires in a hundred places where the burning brands landed above the rising waters.

  “Cut us a way in” Fianna whispered fiercely, shaking him to get
his attention. Roused from the spectacle of the burning garrison Aeden noticed that the ferry was drawn up against the stockade. Leaping from his horse, he drew his sword and with a few quick strokes opened a hole through the stockade wall. As he jumped through the opening the hairs on the back of his neck prickled in alarm and he only just had time to raise his sword before the flames engulfed him.

  Though fire surrounded him on all sides and the heat was growing intolerable, he did not burn and the sword seemed to devour the flames that otherwise would have burned him to a crisp. Based on the sheer power, he knew that he was facing the leader of this group of invaders. At least two more of the dark mages were likely to be in here with him, and if they flanked him, as had happened in Bretharc, he was in trouble.

  Outside, Fianna couldn’t get through the flames that now shot from the opening that Aeden had cut in the wall. She was growing desperate; knowing that Aeden was facing the sorcerers, and perhaps soldiers as well, alone just on the other side of the wall. She was pacing back and forth, trying to think of a way to get to Aeden, when she noticed the movement at the garrison. The doors