Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [274]
They’d caught them by surprise all right; but the business wasn’t going to be so easy. The terrain was uneven. His horse had already nearly stumbled. The torch he carried gave light, but it also used his free hand. After a few moments, Harold pulled up and looked around. He heard Walsh’s voice approaching from behind. He could see the running forms of the men on foot, but where were the horsemen? While the torch illuminated everything that was close, it was hard to see far beyond its bright light. A little way ahead, though, he thought he could make out the vague shapes of mounted men. With a single, sweeping motion of his arm, he hurled the torch into the air, in a high arc towards the shapes ahead.
The first flicker had come just before midnight. A tiny pinpoint, a glimmer across the water. A candle in a glass-fronted box—modest but effective. The light came from the tip of Dalkey island. Almost at once, an answering light came from the first of the three ships. Another light shone out now, from the boat anchored just past the last of the rocks. They were useful, these glass-fronted lamps. Nobody in Dalkey possessed such a thing; they’d been supplied from Dublin. Two more lights appeared now, from the other ships. So deep was the night that, had it not been for these little intimations across the water, their silent shapes would scarcely have been seen in the blackness. There was just enough breeze to bring the ships into the anchorage under sail. As they came in, the boats from the shore came swiftly to their sides. Ropes were thrown; more lamps appeared. Voices called out softly. On the shore, carts were waiting. The whole town of Dalkey was up and busy that night; for the hours of darkness were brief and there was much work to be done.
Walsh rode beside Harold. The riders all kept close together. Their torches had gone out, but the sky overhead had cleared and the stars gave enough light to see the track.
In the first dash out of Carrickmines, O’Byrne had managed to pull away from them; but he had not been able to increase his lead. As they followed the track up towards the Wicklow Mountains, he was occasionally out of sight, but never for long. Sometimes Walsh would hear the sound of the hoofbeats ahead, sometimes not. At first he had supposed that the Irish riders would scatter in order to lose them; but they had kept to the track instead, and it soon became clear that they intended to use the bridges over the two rivers they had to cross before they could reach the wild high ground beyond.
And that was what had happened. Nearly an hour had passed since they had clattered over the second bridge, and here they were riding amongst the hilltops, under the gleaming stars, on the great plateau that stretched all the way to Glendalough. The stars were making a faint sheen on the dark heath as the two parties of ghostly horsemen passed across it. For the most part they rode in silence, but after they had been riding across the plateau for some time Walsh remarked, “There are woods farther on. They’ll probably scatter and try to lose us there.”
“We’ll run them down first,” Harold replied.
Walsh was not so sure. There was an implacable force in Harold that he could not help admiring; but that didn’t mean that he was going to catch the clever Irishman. He had already noticed that whenever they increased their pace, O’Byrne did the same, and when they had to walk to rest their horses, the Irishman did likewise. If O’Byrne let them keep in sight, he never let them get close. He might have been caught by surprise down at Carrickmines, but ever since, he had been coolly calculating. Indeed, Walsh thought uneasily, it was almost as if O’Byrne was playing a game with them.
This uncomfortable idea had been with him for some time, and he had considered carefully, before he spoke again.
“I think he’s leading