Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [346]
Darkness had fallen. The moon gave a soft light on the road as it wound between the trees. If she had left the castle at nightfall, assuming the party rode at a reasonable speed, he had estimated when they should get there; but the time passed and there was still no sign of them. He waited patiently all the same. The Walsh woman had seemed clear enough. They might have been delayed. An hour passed, and he was beginning to have doubts, when he heard something. Footfalls. Quite a number of them. That was strange. He’d assumed the party would be on horseback. He hissed to his men to be ready. He could hear them mounting. He felt his own body tense in expectancy. Then in the moonlight he saw the party coming round the bend.
There were only two riders: MacGowan and the woman rode in front. Behind them, however, marched twenty men on foot. They were a mixed collection: armed townsmen, regular soldiers; even Brennan, armed with a long pike, had been brought in from Doyle’s new estate. But it was the eight men marching at the front who caught O’Byrne’s attention. He stared in disbelief. Gallowglasses. Their huge axes and swords were carried sloped over their shoulders.
MacGowan must have hired them. He cursed under his breath and hesitated.
Should they still attack? Their numbers might be roughly even, but the gallowglasses were each worth two or three of his own untrained men. He didn’t like the risk.
He felt a nudge at his side. Fintan.
“Aren’t we going?” the boy whispered.
“Gallowglasses,” he hissed back.
“But they’re on foot. We can ride in and out and they’ll never catch us.” It sounded so reasonable. He saw exactly what his son was thinking. But Fintan didn’t understand. He shook his head.
“No.”
“But, Father …” There was a hint not just of disappointment but even of reproach. How could his father be such a coward? “Watch.”
Sean couldn’t believe it. Fintan was kicking his horse forward, breaking out of their cover, racing towards the soldiers in the moonlight. Thinking the signal had been given, Seamus and the rest of his men were racing out, too. MacGowan and the woman had stopped. The gallowglasses were moving swiftly round them in a protective ring. It was too late now. There was nothing he could do but go forward himself. He dashed towards the gallowglasses to help his son. Perhaps, after all, the boy was right.
It had only been hours ago, yet already, such is the strangeness of battle, their fight with the gallowglasses seemed an age away, as if it had taken place in another world. It was not even the fight that he remembered but, just after he had knocked MacGowan off his horse, the sight of Fintan reaching out his arms to try and grasp the Doyle woman, and then the feel of the boy brushing close beside him as they all raced away. They’d left four men on the road with the gallowglasses, but that couldn’t be helped. Even in the moonlight he could see from their wounds that they were dead or dying already. He remembered the dash up the slope with the voices of the gallowglasses hurling curses from far behind, and then Seamus coming beside him and laughing in a friendly way at Fintan for the boy’s wild bravery. Then Fintan fainting.
The stars were beginning to fade as they left the dark outlines of the mountaintops behind them and began the slow descent towards Rathconan.
And the sun was already rising over the eastern sea, its fierce light flashing up the slopes and into the crevices of the Wicklow Mountains, when Sean O’Byrne and his party came in sight of the house. Long before they reached it, Eva and Maurice and old Father Donal were coming out to meet them, their faces smiling broadly until they saw that they brought with them no trophy, no captive, but only their burden, wrapped tightly in a blanket and tied to his horse: Fintan, who had bled to death on the mountainside from the huge wound, which Sean had failed to see, made as it happened, not by the great two-handed sword of a gallowglass, but by Brennan’s long spear which, like a