The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack

by H. Bedford-Jones

  “Stop that wailing,” interrupted Brian sternly, for the old man was lashing himself into a frenzy of grief. “Put spurs to that horse of yours, Turlough, for we must reach Cathbarr’s tower by noon if possible in order to start the men off over the hills. It’ll be a long night’s march, and I’ve no time to be idling here on the road.”

  Upon which he dug in his spurs and urged his steed into a gallop, and in order to keep up, Turlough Wolf had to give over his laments and do likewise. Brian forced himself to bend all his energies toward carrying out his final desperate plan, but he silently vowed that the old woman who had so foully been cut down by the O’Donnells should not die unavenged.

  On they galloped without pause, gained the head of Bertraghboy Bay, and swung to the east on the last stretch of the trip. The storm which had arisen so inopportunely was now dying away, and the sun was breaking through the gray clouds; when they turned out from the main track into the hill-paths that led to Cathbarr’s tower, the rough ground made them slow their pace. When they were still three miles from the tower, however, Brian gave a shout.

  “Men, Turlough! Cathbarr has sent out men to meet us!”

  So, indeed, it proved, and five minutes later a dozen men met them with yells of delighted welcome. From these overjoyed fellows Brian quickly learned that Cathbarr was at the tower and that Nuala O’Malley had just arrived there.

  So, leaving them to follow, he and Turlough went on at their best speed, and twenty minutes later they topped that same long rise from which Brian had first gazed down on the little promontory where stood Cathbarr’s tower. But now, as he saw what lay beneath, he drew up with a shout of amazement.

  For around the tower and at the base at the neck of land were camped a goodly force of men, while at anchor near the tower lay—not Nuala’s two ships alone, but also those other two of her kinsmen!

  “Those two O’Malleys have returned from the south,” exclaimed Turlough in wild delight. “That means more men and ships, master—we will cut off those Millhaven pirates to a man!”

  Brian sent out a long shout, but his arrival had already been noted. As he rode down the slope, men poured from the camp and tower, and ahead of them all came Cathbarr of the Ax, with Nuala and Lame Art and Shaun the Little behind him.

  “Welcome!” bellowed the giant with a huge laugh, pulling Brian from his horse with a great hug of delight. “Welcome, brother!”

  Brian escaped from his grip and bowed over the Bird Daughter’s hand. As he rose, he saw that her face had lost its ruddy hue, and that her eyes were ringed with darkness. Before he could speak she smiled and gripped his hand.

  “The birds came safe, and we know all. Yesterday arrived these kinsmen of mine, and their force is joined to our own, Yellow Brian—”

  Brian held up his hand, halting her suddenly, and silence fell on the men who had crowded around. For a moment he gazed into her deep eyes, then flung up his head and his voice rang clear and stern in the stillness.

  “Lady Nuala,” he said quietly, “I promised you that when I slew the Dark Master I would tell you my name. Before another day has passed I shall have slain him; and now I tell you and your kinsmen that I renounce all fealty to you.”

  At this the Bird Daughter started, staring in amazement, while an abrupt oath burst from Lame Art. Brian went on calmly.

  “This I do because it is not meet that The O’Neill should give fealty to any, Lady Nuala. I am Brian O’Neill, of right The O’Neill and Earl of Tyr-owen, though these are empty titles. And this night you and I shall fall on Bertragh together, Bird Daughter, and when we have won it again it shall be yours as of old.”

  And amid a great roar of shouts welling up around him Brian bowed to Nuala.

  “Then, Brian O’Neill,” she said, quieting the tumult a little, “am I to understand that you wish to make pact with me, and to receive no reward?”

  For a moment he gazed openly and frankly into her eyes, and under his look the red crept into her cheeks again; yet her own eyes did not flinch.

  Brian laughed out.

  “Yes, lady! It may be that I shall have a reward to ask of you, but that may not be until I have won back what I have lost for you.”

  “And what if the reward be too great?”

  “Why, that shall be for you to say!” and Brian laughed again. “Is it agreed, Bird Daughter?”

  For an instant he thought she meant to refuse, as she drew herself up and met his level eyes; the men around held their breaths, and the O’Malley chiefs glanced at each other in puzzled wonder. Then her quick laugh rippled out and she gave him her hand.

  “Agreed, Brian—and I hope that you can shave that yellow beard of yours by to-morrow!”

  And the great yell that went up from the men drowned all else in Brian’s ears.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE STORM BURSTS

  “Now, the first thing is to see what force of men we have,” said Brian, after the midday meal. They were all gathered in Cathbarr’s tower before a log fire, and were preparing the plan of campaign.

  “I have my hundred and eighty men,” said Nuala. “When that last pigeon came from you I set out at once. With the hundred men under Cathbarr, we have close to three hundred. You can take them all, for my kinsmen here have enough and to spare to handle my two ships as well as theirs.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Brian, as the two O’Malleys nodded. “I think that by striking at dawn we shall find most of the O’Donnells ashore or in the castle, and if you time your sailing to strike on their four ships at the same time we may easily take castle, camp, and ships at one blow.”

  “If all went as men planned we would not need to pray Heaven for aid,” quoth Shaun the Little sententiously. Brian glanced at him.

  “Eh? What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” returned the wide-shouldered seaman with a shrug. “Except that there may be more to it than we think, Brian.”

  “The Dark Master will not suspect your return so suddenly,” spoke up Nuala. “Pay no heed to Shaun, Brian—he was ever a croaker. When think you we had best start?”

  “I am no seaman,” laughed Brian. “Get there at dawn, that is all. I will send on my men at once, then; since we have only two horses, Cathbarr and I will ride after them later and catch them up. Will you take the men, Turlough, or bide here out of danger?”

  “I think it will be safest with the Lady Nuala,” hesitated the old man craftily.

  “Little you know her, then,” roared Lame Art, his cousin joining in the laugh.

  So Turlough had decided, however, and he stuck to it. Brian then described closely how the four pirate ships lay in the bay under Bertragh, while Shaun went out to arrange the distribution of his men on Nuala’s ships.

  The arrangements having been perfected, Brian saw his three hundred men troop off on their march over the hills, after which he told Nuala at greater length all that had taken place in the castle since his parting with her at sea. Bitter and unrestrained were the curses of the O’Malleys as they heard of how his men had been poisoned, while Nuala’s eyes flamed forth anger.

  “There shall be no quarter to these O’Donnells,” she cried hotly. “Those whom we take shall hang, and the Scots with them—”

  “Not the Scots,” exclaimed Brian quickly. “They are honest men enough, Nuala, and may serve us well as recruits. If we find them in the castle, as I think we shall, we may leave them there until we have finished the Millhaven men; however, it is possible that my men will find the castle almost unguarded, and so take it at the first blow. However that turns out, the Dark Master shall not escape us this time.”

  During the afternoon, when the two O’Malleys were busily getting their ships in order for the coming fray, Brian sat in the tower with Nuala. He told her freely of himself, and although neither of them referred to that reward of which he had spoken at their meeting, Brian knew well that he would claim it.

  He did not conceal from himself that the Black Woman had guided him to more tha
n conquest by sword. The Bird Daughter was such a woman as he had dreamed of, but had never found at the Spanish court, and he knew that whether there was love in her heart or not, his own soul was in her keeping.

  Perhaps he was not the only one who knew this, for as Lame Art rowed out with his cousin, the latter nodded back at the tower.

  “What think you of this ally, Art Bocagh? Could he be truly the Earl’s grandson?”

  “I know not,” grunted the other. “But I do not care whether he be Brian Buidh or Brian O’Neill or Brian the devil—he is such a man as I would fain see sitting in Gorumna Castle, Shaun!”

  And Shaun the Little nodded with a grin.

  When the sun began its westering, Brian and Cathbarr rode back from the tower with food and weapons at their saddle-bows, and they paused at the hill-crest to watch the four ships weigh anchor and up sail, then went on into the hills. They were to meet their men at that valley where the Dark Master had been defeated and broken in the first siege, and jogged along slowly, resting as they rode.

  “Brother,” said Cathbarr suddenly, fingering the haft of his ax and looking at Brian, “do you remember my telling you, that night after we had bearded the Dark Master and got the loan of those two-score men, how an old witch-woman had predicted my fate?”

  “Yes,” returned Brian, with a sharp glance. In the giant’s face there was only a simple good-humor, however, mingled with a childlike confidence in all things. “And I told you that you were not bound to my service.”

  “No, but I am bound to your friendship,” laughed Cathbarr rumblingly. “I can well understand how I might die in a cause not mine own, since I am fighting for you; but I cannot see how death is to come upon me through water and fire, brother!”

  “Nonsense,” smiled Brian. “Death is far from your heels, brother, unless you are seeking it.”

  “Not I, Brian. I neither seek nor avoid if the time comes. Only I wish that witch-woman had told me a little more—”

  “Keep your mind off it, Cathbarr,” said Brian. “In Spain the Moriscoes say that the fate of man is written on his forehead, and God is just.”

  “What the devil do I care about that?” bellowed Cathbarr. “I care not when I die, brother—but I want to strike a blow or two first, and how can that be done if death comes by water and fire?”

  “Well, take heart,” laughed Brian, seeing the cause of the other’s anxiety. “You are not like to die from that cause to-night, and I promise you blows enough and to spare.”

  Cathbarr grunted and said no more. The last of the storm had fled away, and the two men rode through a glittering sunset and a clear, cold evening that promised well for the morrow.

  They traveled easily, and it was hard on midnight when a sentry stopped them half a mile from the hollow where the men were resting. Brian noted with approval that no fires had been lighted, and he and Cathbarr at once lay down to get an hour’s sleep among the men.

  Two hours before daybreak the camp was astir, and Brian gathered his lieutenants to arrange the attack. Thinking that the Dark Master would be in the castle, he and Cathbarr took a hundred men for that attack, ordering the rest to get as close to the camp as might be, but not to attack until he had struck on the castle, and to cut off the O’Donnells from their ships. Then, assured that the plan was understood, he and Cathbarr loaded their pistols and set out with the hundred.

  Brian ordered his men to give quarter to all the Scots who would accept it, if they got inside the castle, and as they marched forward through the darkness he found to his delight that O’Donnell seemed to have no sentries out.

  “We have caught the black fox this time,” muttered Cathbarr, after they had passed the camp-fires without discovery and the black mass of the castle loomed up ahead. “They will hardly have repaired those gates by now, brother.”

  Brian nodded, and ordered his men to rest, barely a hundred paces from the castle. Since there was no need of attacking before dawn, in order to let Nuala come up the bay, he went forward with Cathbarr to look at the gates.

  These, as nearly as he could tell, were still shattered in; there were fires in the courtyard, and sentries were on the wall, but their watch was lax and the two below were not discovered. They rejoined the hundred, and Brian bade Cathbarr follow him through the hall to that chamber he himself had occupied in the tower, where O’Donnell was most likely to be found.

  “Well, no use of delaying further,” he said, when at length the grayness of dawn began to dull the starlight. Since to light matches would have meant discovery, he had brought with him those hundred Kerry pikemen Nuala had recruited after the dark Master’s defeat, and he passed on the word to follow.

  The mass of men gained the moat before a challenge rang out from above, and with that Brian leaped forward at the gates. A musket roared out, and another, but Brian and Cathbarr were in the courtyard before the Scots awakened. A startled group barred their way to the hall, then Brian thrust once, the huge ax crashed down, and they were through.

  Other men were sleeping in the hall, but Brian did not stop to battle here, running through before the half-awakened figures sensed what was forward. A great din of clashing steel and yells was rising from the court; then he and Cathbarr gained the seaward battlements and rushed at the Dark Master’s chamber. The door was open—it was empty.

  For a moment the two stared at each other in blank dismay. With a yell, a half-dozen Scots swirled down on them, but Brian threw up his hand.

  “The castle is mine,” he shouted. “You shall have quarter!”

  The Scots halted, and when two or three of the Kerry pikemen dashed up with news that the rest of the garrison had been cut down or given quarter, they surrendered.

  Brian’s first question was as to O’Donnell.

  “Either at the camp or aboard one of his kinsmen’s ships,” returned one of the prisoners. “They were carousing all last evening.”

  At the same instant Cathbarr caught Brian’s arm and whirled him about.

  “Listen, brother!”

  So swift had been Brian’s attack that the castle had been won in a scant three minutes. Now, as he listened, there came a ragged roar of musketry, pierced by yells, and he knew that the camp was attacked.

  With that, a sudden fear came on him that he would again be outwitted. There was a thin mist driving in from the sea which would be dissipated with the daybreak, and if the Dark Master was on one of the ships he might get away before Nuala’s caracks could arrive. Brian had been so certain that he would find O’Donnell in the castle that the disappointment was a bitter one, but he knew that there was no time to lose.

  “Come,” he ordered Cathbarr quickly, “get a score of the men and to the camp. Leave the others here to hold the castle if need be.”

  As he strode through the courtyard and the sullen groups of Scots prisoners, he directed the Kerry men to load the bastards on the walls and give what help might be in destroying the pirate ships. Then, with Cathbarr and twenty eager men at his back, he set off for the camp at a run, fearful that he might yet be too late.

  The day was brightening fast, and from the camp rose a mighty din of shouts and steel and musketry. Brian’s men had charged after one hasty volley, but their leader gave a groan of dismay as he saw that instead of attacking from the seaward side as he had ordered, they were pouring into the camp from the land side.

  O’Donnell must have landed the greater part of his men, for Brian’s force was being held in check, though they had swept in among the brush huts. Over the tumult Brian heard the piercing voice of the Dark Master, and with a flame of rage hot in his mind he sped forward and found himself confronted by a yelling mass of O’Donnells.

  Then fell a sterner battle than any Brian had waged. In the lessening obscurity it was hard to tell friend from foe, since the mist was swirling in off the water and holding down the powder-smoke. Brian saved his pistols, and, with Cathbarr at his side, struck into the wild, shaggy-haired northern men; they were armed with ax and
sword and skean, and Brian soon found himself hard beset despite the pikemen behind.

  The Spanish blade licked in and out like a tongue of steel, and Brian’s skill stood him in good stead that morn. Ax and broadsword crashed at him, and as he wore no armor save a steel cap, he more than once gave himself up for lost. But ever his thin, five-foot steel drove home to the mark, and ever Cathbarr’s great ax hammered and clove at his side, so that the fight surged back and forth among the huts, as it was surging on the other side where was the Dark Master, holding off the main attack.

  Little by little the mist eddied away, however, and the day began to break. A fresh surge of the wild O’Donnells bore down on Brian’s party, and as they did so a man rose up from among the wounded and stabbed at Brian with his skean. Brian kicked the arm aside, but slipped in blood and snow and went down; as a yell shrilled up from the pirates, Cathbarr leaped forward over him, swinging his ax mightily. With the blunt end he caught one man full in the face, then drove down his sharp edge and clove another head to waist. For an instant he was unable to get out his ax, but Brian thrust up and drove death to a third, then stood on his feet again.

  At the same instant there came a roar from across the camp where his main body of men were engaged, and Brian thrilled to the sound. As he afterward found, it was done by Turlough’s cunning word; but up over the din of battle rose the great shout that struck dismay to the pirates and heartened Brian himself to new efforts.

  “Tyr-owen! Tyr-owen!”

  With a bellow of “Tyr-owen!” Cathbarr went at the foe, and Brian joined him with his own battle-cry on his lips for the first time in his life. The shout swelled louder and louder, and among the huts Brian got a glimpse of the Dark Master. In vain he tried to break through the Millhaven men, however; they stood like a wall, dying as they fought, but giving no ground until the ax and the sword had cloven a way, although the remnant of the twenty pikemen were fighting like fiends.