“We’re looking at a slaughter.” Robbie moved forward to the edge of the trees where a moment ago the attackers had been standing, and stared towards the fort.
Although no men had been on the wall-walk a moment ago, an O’Reilly was still alive, because he appeared above one of the ladders and swung an axe at the head of the lead man coming up it. Unfortunately, the defender was all alone and had no one to guard his back. Even as he brought down his axe, he was stabbed from behind by another attacker, who’d come up an adjacent ladder.
William gasped, but none of the young men looked away. No alarm had yet sounded inside the fort, implying that William was right. The O’Reillys had been betrayed by some of their own. Then, finally, a bell tolled, the sound barely distinguishable at this distance.
“What do we do?” Robbie’s sword was in his hand.
James drew his own. “What we must. We go in after Christopher.”
Chapter Eight
Drumconrath
Christopher
After eating, Christopher had been directed to a pallet laid against the back wall, about as far from the warm fire as it was possible to get and still be inside the hall. The men around Gilla stayed up around the table, talking. Actually, most of the time—at least ninety percent of the time—it was Gilla talking and everyone else listening. It was his right as the lord of the hall, and his men seemed to be used to it, waiting for a break in his monologue before speaking their minds. When they did so, Gilla listened attentively, and then launched into another long story, in Gaelic, of course.
Christopher wished he could understand what everyone was saying. He even wished, in a way, he could participate. It wasn’t hard to recall the number of times he’d had conversations with medieval people before tonight. Apart from his growing friendship with William, Robbie, and Huw, he could count them on one hand. He’d naturally gravitated to the twenty-firsters, having most in common with them, or so he’d thought. But it was they who treated him like a little brother who wasn’t quite grown up.
In contrast, when he talked to medieval people, the conversations hadn’t been terribly dissimilar in terms of tone from his conversation with Gilla. Christopher himself had felt useless and unworthy, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that was his fault. Nobody had treated him badly. He’d assumed that everybody was talking to him only because he was the Hero of Westminster and David’s cousin. Instead, medieval people took for granted that he had something worthwhile to say and treated him with respect, talking to him, as Gilla had, as if he was a fully functional adult rather than a kid.
He leaned his aching head against the wall, wishing he could go back and revisit some of the people and places he’d seen in the last nine months. But before he could beat himself up further, he heard a noise behind the wall he was leaning against, something that didn’t sound right. He’d been almost asleep, so at first he wasn’t sure if he had dreamt the thunk and shout that had been abruptly cut off. He turned his head and pressed his ear to the wall. The rain had stopped, but water was still drip-drip-dripping close by. He plugged his other ear with his finger so he could hear through the wall better, and the voices became clearer, though he couldn’t make out what any of them were saying. Their words sounded urgent enough, however, that he rose to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Aine had been walking by Christopher, still awake even after the other women had gone to bed, having continued to serve wine and food to her father and his men. Christopher didn’t think it was because she couldn’t sleep, but because she liked being part of the action and had taken on the task of serving maid so as not to be consigned to the women’s quarters.
Christopher put a finger to his lips while at the same time waving her closer with his other hand. “Listen.”
Still with a carafe in one hand and a tray with a loaf of bread on it in the other, Aine pressed her ear to the wall beside Christopher. She frowned for a second, and then her eyes widened. “They’re speaking English.” She spun around. “Ionsaí! Ionsaí!”
Christopher had no idea what onsee meant, but it had the desired effect because men leapt instantly to their feet. Then he felt stupid because, if the men were English, they could be here for him. Still, he grabbed the knife from Aine’s tray and held it in a tight grip.
Aine’s father was on his feet as quickly as the others and directed his men to defensive positions at the doors. Feet pounded along the second floor walkway, but Gilla waved his hand at the men who’d been running, and they slowed. Everybody listened, trying to be as quiet as possible. Waiting.
Christopher found himself holding his breath, and he forced himself to breathe deeply. The last thing he wanted to do was pass out. He had never felt this tense in his life, not even when he’d woken up a few hours ago upside down. He thought again of something David had said to him in the aftermath of Westminster: the stakes here are always so damn high!
Then the big doors at both ends of the hall burst open, and men surged into the room. Christopher wrapped an arm around Aine’s waist and pulled her against him, so they were both hugging the wall in the darkness underneath the loft.
Until Aine’s warning shout, the O’Reillys hadn’t been prepared for an attack, but it seemed that most of the men had slept in their clothes, and those who hadn’t worn their boots to bed had had time to put them on. Before Christopher had gone to his pallet, he’d retrieved his armor, padding, and cloak, all of which had dried before the fire, and he’d never taken off his boots. At the time, he’d dressed again just in case, without a real target for his concern. Christopher knew only that if Gilla O’Reilly changed his mind about him, he didn’t want to be caught without them.
More enemy soldiers swarmed into the hall. There seemed to be a hundred of them. Aine swallowed a scream as one of her father’s men was killed ten feet away, and Christopher belatedly stepped in front of her so if anyone turned their way, she was protected, even hidden. The man who died had been braced at the bottom of the flight of stairs, attempting to block the attackers from going up it. As he fell, the man who killed him leapt over the body and raced up the steps.
Christopher’s hiding place in the darkness under the loft was proving to be a good one, and since he hadn’t leapt to the attack along with the rest of Gilla’s men, nobody had noticed him and Aine yet. Meanwhile, women and children screamed in terror from the walkway directly over Christopher’s head.
From behind him, Aine moaned and said, “That’s Auliffe O’Rourke.” The man’s first name came out Ow-leave.
“Which one?”
Aine drew his attention to a tall, blond man, who looked more like a Viking than a Celt. His sword was oversized too, but he was strong enough to wield it with one hand. Christopher and Aine shrank back farther into the shadows, still invisible to the attackers, but it had to be only matter of time until they were caught. He eyed the rear doorway, ten paces to his right. The door itself was lying flat on the floor, having come off its hinges, and at the moment the path to it was clear. He wanted to go through it, but he was afraid to.
He looked to Gilla O’Reilly, who’d leapt onto the table in the center of the room and was fighting off all comers, though even as he skewered an O’Rourke fighter, the battle was drawing down. Most of Gilla’s defenders had fallen. Another minute passed and Gilla was alone on the table, sword held out, keeping twenty men at bay all by himself. He spun on his heel, and what he saw of the hall couldn’t have been giving him any kind of hope.
One of the attackers started jeering at Gilla, and then his fellows joined the mocking, reaching in one after another to poke Gilla with their weapons, like he was a caged bear at a village fair. Christopher had seen that once and had turned away sickened. He clenched his jaw, knowing that if he didn’t get Aine out of here, she would be taken prisoner, and then God knew what might happen to her. He might be a naïve twenty-firster, but these men were looking at Gilla like he was an animal, and Christopher didn’t want any of them coming anywh
ere near this girl.
“Hold!” A man strode through the broken front doors of the house, and such was the power of his bellow that everyone did, in fact, stop moving. Christopher had never seen the man before, but again, Aine knew who he was.
“Thomas de Clare.”
Christopher’s eyes widened. The night had become a disaster for Gilla, but for Christopher, it was suddenly catastrophic. Thomas was Gilbert de Clare’s brother and the last person in Ireland Christopher wanted to meet. “This isn’t good,” he said, in total understatement. “We have to get out of here.”
Aine had been holding his left arm, but now she gripped it tighter. “He can’t be here for you. How could he know that my father’s men had taken you and brought you here?”
“I don’t know, but even if this attack is for totally different reasons, I’m dead the second he finds out my name.” How an alliance between the O’Rourkes and the Clares had come about, and what their plan was, Christopher couldn’t begin to guess, though clearly they were willing to kill all of Gilla’s men in pursuit of it.
“Come with me.” Christopher began to edge along the wall towards the rear door.
Aine didn’t move, and he looked back at her. She was shaking her head jerkily, saying no, though she didn’t speak.
He could understand her not wanting to leave her father to his fate, but staying wasn’t going to help. He mouthed, “We have to get out of here!” And he held out his hand to her.
She hesitated for another two seconds, still obviously reluctant, but then reached out and took his hand. Fortunately, by this time, with the fighting stopped, most of the invaders had moved into the circle around Gilla to watch the drama being played out between him and Clare. The last man standing by the back door took one more step forward, putting him a good six feet in front of the opening. Christopher’s heart was in his throat as he continued along the wall, praying that his slow movements and the soldier’s focus meant that he and Aine could stay out of his peripheral vision.
Meanwhile, Gilla O’Reilly, who’d faced Clare as he’d come in, spun slowly on one heel in a survey his hall. For two seconds, his back was to Clare, who was still near the front door, and he was facing Christopher and Aine, who’d just reached the frame of the open rear door. For a single heartbeat, Gilla’s eyes met Christopher’s over the heads of Clare’s men, who stood between them. He didn’t nod or wink—or say a word to give Christopher away—but Christopher knew that he’d seen him, and even though Christopher was trying to shield Aine with his body, that he’d seen her too.
Gilla threw out his hands in an expansive gesture and swung back around to face Thomas de Clare. “How dare you defile the sanctity of my home?” The words thundered throughout the hall.
Even someone as inexperienced with intrigue as Christopher could tell that it was a deliberate distraction. Thus, without waiting to hear what mocking thing Gilla had to say to Thomas, he took the last step to the door, Aine in tow. He ducked around the doorframe—and ran straight into one of Clare’s soldiers. They literally bounced off one another, recoiling in their surprise and uncertainty. But it was Christopher who had the advantage because he knew he had no allies outside the hall, while the soldier had to take a moment to decide if Christopher was friend or foe.
Christopher still held the knife in his hand, so he didn’t think. He didn’t even take the time to breathe. His left hand went to the man’s shoulder to pull him closer in the same instant that he jammed the point of the knife into the man’s midsection, just as Bevyn had trained him to do. The soldier wasn’t wearing mail armor, and the sharp point went right through leather, fabric, and tissue.
For a second, Christopher looked straight into the soldier’s eyes, but then he let go of the knife handle and stepped back. The man fell to his knees, his hands scrabbling for the hilt. As long as he lived, Christopher would never forget the stunned surprise on the man’s face before he fell forwards into the muddy courtyard.
Aine grabbed Christopher’s upper arm and tugged. “Come on! You’ve done it. We have to go before anyone realizes what’s happened!”
Christopher bent to pick up the man’s sword, which had fallen from his hand. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Then, Aine’s hand again in his, Christopher headed for the palisade. When he’d arrived at the fort earlier that evening, he hadn’t gotten a good look at any part of the bailey but the front, but he’d assumed correctly that there was a back gate. That couldn’t be a way out for them now, however. While he’d acquired a sword, he wasn’t skilled enough in its use to defeat a soldier who was ready for him, and certainly not the one he could just make out, standing underneath the gatehouse.
Instead, he and Aine climbed the wooden stairs up to the wall-walk, taking the steps two at a time, with Aine hiking up her skirts so her feet could move freely. Since the fort had already been taken, nobody was on the wall-walk anymore, or at least not this part of it, and Christopher ran along the palisade, looking for a way out. They were twenty feet up in the air. Without a rope, they could kill themselves by jumping—or at the very least break an ankle. His head was pounding, and he felt like puking—whether from fear, loathing at what he’d done, or his concussion, he wasn’t entirely sure.
“Christopher! Here!” Aine had been running behind him, but as she called to him, he turned back. She’d stopped and was looking at the ground on the other side.
Christopher hustled back to her and almost cheered to see the ladder propped up against the outside wall. Immediately, he boosted Aine up over the top of the palisade. It was a precarious move in a skirt, but she balanced for a second and then managed to get her feet on the second rung of the ladder.
“Stop them!”
If the cry had been in Gaelic, Christopher might not have known that the warning was about him, but since it had been in clear English, he turned to see a man hovering over the body of the soldier Christopher had killed. A second man, the one who’d shouted, stood beside him, pointing up at Christopher. Because of it, the men at the rear gatehouse were looking too, and everyone moved at once to the stair.
Aine was already halfway down the ladder. Christopher had intended to wait until she was on the ground before he started down it so his weight didn’t overbalance the ladder while she was still on it, but he didn’t have time for that now. He sheathed his new sword so his hands would be free, put his left hand on one of the top points of the palisade and used his arm as a lever to swing himself over the top of the wall.
Unfortunately, he mistimed the jump so that only one foot landed on the top rung of the ladder and then instantly slid off it because it was wet. Aine gave a little shriek as he hung there for a second, one arm outstretched and his hand gripping the top point of the palisade. He had a terrified few seconds while he swung back and forth, his feet scrabbling for purchase on one of the rungs and his right arm reaching for anything at all to hold onto. Finally, he managed to grasp the right rail of the ladder with his right hand and his right foot found one of the rungs, about six feet down from the top of the wall. Then he steadied himself and climbed down, though it turned out to be less like climbing and more like sliding as quickly as he could.
By the time he reached the bottom, his breath was coming in gasps, though he was surprised to discover that he wasn’t actually trembling. It was dark on the ground outside the fort, even more as he’d ended up in a steep ditch. Regardless, he grabbed the sides of the ladder and heaved it away from the wall. It was only a temporary solution to being chased, since there were other ladders, but at least nobody would be coming down this one.
Then he looked wildly around for Aine, whom he’d lost sight of in his efforts—only to find his arm grasped by a strong hand. Christopher had sheathed his sword, so he resisted with the only weapon available to him, swinging a punch upward. But then a second man grasped his forearm halfway through the motion. “Christopher, stop! It’s me! James!”
Christopher managed to pull the punch enough that it only deliv
ered a glancing blow to Huw’s jaw. “Sorry! Sorry!” He took in a deep, shuddering breath and bent forward to put his hands on his knees.
James put his hand on Christopher’s back between his shoulder blades. “You’re safe for the moment.”
Christopher glanced upwards again. “We were seen. We need to get away from the wall.”
He finally spied Aine scrambling over the rampart in front of the ditch. Christopher shrugged off James’s hand and went after her, though by the time he slid down the other side of the rampart she was halfway to the woods. With her wet skirt and shorter legs, she couldn’t run as fast as he could, and he caught up with her two steps into the trees.
She flung out an arm. “Get away from me!” She was gasping and sobbing at the same time.
He reached for her again, grasping both her upper arms. “It’s okay! It’s okay! They’re my friends!”
She gaped at him, her breath still coming in gasps. “Christopher! I thought you were captured!”
“I’m sorry.” He pulled her into a hug and held her until they could both breathe again.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” she said. “My father—”
“I know.”
At that point, James and the others ran up to them.
Huw was rubbing his jaw. “That’s the thanks I get for coming to rescue you?”
Christopher put out a hand to him in another apology. He’d learned to fight since coming to the Middle Ages but, like horseback riding, it was one of the things that had come more easily, and the punch had been pretty decent. The ache of fear in Christopher’s stomach eased a little, and he released Aine enough so that he could introduce her to his friends. “This is Aine, Gilla O’Reilly’s daughter.”
“We need to keep moving. There’s nobody following yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.” James set off at a brisk pace deeper into the woods.
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