The Irish Warrior (6 page)

They threw themselves against a wall, barely breathing. The soldier walked by, striding on a path perpendicular to them. Senna held her breath. He kept walking, never looking over, and finally disappeared behind another building. She rolled her head to the side and looked at Finian.

“I think—” she whispered, so quietly she could barely hear herself.

He shook his head sharply. Another five minutes of silence, then another soldier came by. Senna pushed the back of her head into the wall and focused on looking like a pile of refuse. The guard passed.

Ten more minutes and no more soldiers came. Finian let his body relax off the wall. Senna followed suit. She opened her mouth. Swiftly, and in utter silence, he cupped the back of her neck and pulled her forward.

“Patience and silence, lady,” he murmured. “For God's and my sake, patience. And silence.”

Now, why on earth did her body warm up at his words?

Nodding curtly, she swung away, leading them to a corroded section of the inner bailey wall, an easy ascent of some eight feet. Gripping the loose, crumbling footholds, she scrambled up. A small stream of rubble broke loose, and she went sliding halfway back down the wall.

Finian stopped her with his shoulders and arms. They froze, holding their breaths, completely still, his hands firm and warm on her ribs, her buttocks resting on one of his shoulders. She tried to ignore the startling rush of heat his touch brought to her face and other, less moonlit regions of her body. Nothing moved in the night. She looked down, he looked up, then he cupped her bottom with both hands and pushed her the rest of the way up the wall.

Flinging herself to the top, she spun and crouched down, hand extended. Finian leapt up without effort and without touching her hand. He smiled as he came up, just the slightest all-knowing, roguish lift to the corner of his mouth.
That
was about how he'd touched her when he hoisted her up the wall. She ignored it and turned, still in a crouch, to peer over the other side.

He crouched beside her, his body hot and strong. Ten feet below was a small pile of clippings from the castle garden. Ten feet was nigh on two of her.

“'Tis a long way down,” she whispered tautly.

He turned in her direction. His face was shadowed. “Not so far, lass.”

“Far enough.” Could he hear panic in her voice? It had frozen her fingers to the lip of the wall.

He nodded slowly. “It seems far.”

“I don't think I can.” Shameful, shameful fear. Was she to crouch here on the bailey wall then, until someone spotted them?

“Would it help if I pushed ye?”

She almost laughed. “Aye, that would help immen—”

He put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her off the wall. She didn't have time to scream or even feel scared, before she landed with a soft bump on the mound of rotting flora. She scrambled to her feet just as he dropped down beside her.

“You've lost your wits,” she hissed.

In a flash, he towered above her. The heat from his powerful torso shimmered between them, hovering at the edges of her tunic. Senna threw her head back, startled.

“Mistress, I'm fairly certain ye're a few stones shy of a full load yerself.” He lightly touched her upper arm for emphasis. “Now, hush.”

She shivered at the rush of
something
his fingers created. She could not rip her eyes from the sight of him, so close. His torso was long and lean but sturdy, wide shoulders tapered in clean, muscular lines to trim hips and powerful thighs. Corded muscles in his neck and arms were defined by the moonlight, and tangled black hair spilled down past his shoulders. His face was carved in moonlit angles, his chin square and firm. The growth of hair on his face made him appear rough-hewn and wild, but then there was that heart-stopping smile.

The Irishman was sinfully handsome.

Her breathing grew shallow, but the rush of heat to her face was simply a result of the drama of the escape. Surely.

It was the rush of heat to her loins that was so bewildering.

His dark eyes flicked back to hers in question. “Which way?”

She looked around. The castle grounds, while tumbling into disrepair, were enormous, built over the years into a veritable village within the castle walls, filled with twisting turns and dead ends. Keeping an eye on the buttressed main gate was only minimally helpful, because they could not take a straight path toward it, across the wide-open training fields. They must keep to shadows and corners.

A series of low, thatched buildings ran in a fairly straight line away from them just now, and would provide some concealment. But beyond that dubious shelter, there could be anything. Guards, swords, battle.

“This way,” she said firmly, starting off, then hesitated. “I think.”

His eyes gleamed in the moonlit dark. “As ye say.”

“But I am not certain—”

“Ye've a better sense of the keep than I,” he said shortly. “Do not doubt yerself.”

She marched off. “You'd best be alert, Irishman, for I've no idea to what end I lead us.”

“I am ever alert. There is no need to caution me in that.” His soft voice wafted through her hair, and her skin prickled in unwelcome response.

Soon the main gate loomed before them, black and bone-like. Finian gripped her arm and, to ensure her silence, put his finger over her lips. She inhaled sharply at the touch. His eyes darted to hers. He shook his head in silent warning. Her head dipped in a nod.

He disappeared for a few moments, then his hunched form reemerged out of the darkness. “The sloth of the guards is inconsistent. The gate is occupied, although perhaps not guarded too well.” She looked at him. “There is a fine argument brewing. Something about gambling. And a woman. They are drinking.”

“A fight and liquor will bring even more puppets to the gatehouse,” she predicted glumly.

“Well, then,” he murmured, “let us have a hope they are all as inept as their lord.”

That was a dim hope. These were the baron's men, fed on his evil, and while they might not be bright, they did not need to be particularly accomplished in their wits to notice two people slinking around the castle gates long after Lauds had rung. Especially not when one was a six-foot Irishman who was supposed to be shackled in the baron's prisons.

The cloud of gloom beginning to billow over her must have been noticeable even through the darkness, because Finian considered her a moment, then leaned close.

“Courage,” he murmured.

“I haven't a bit of it,” she whispered in reply.

“Ye're made of it.”

She almost laughed. “Hardly. What I am is reckless and headstrong and I don't listen particularly well—”

His arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I don't need to be told those things, lass,” he whispered directly into her ear. “Ye're the candle at night, nothing to hide. Ye also talk a great deal, and were ye to find it in yer heart to save a poor Irishman's life, please do so now by shutting yer lush mouth a few moments.”

Her tongue was nailed to the roof of her mouth as she stared into the dark Irish eyes inches from her own.

Just then the outline of the two patrolling soldiers walked by in a circuit around the castle walls. Finian froze. The weight of his muscular arm, slung over her shoulders, was oddly comforting. They heard a rough laugh, then there was silence.

Senna inhaled a shaky breath and her life slowed to the pace of a languid breath of air on a hot summer day. She wanted to stand just as they were for a very long time. She wanted his hand to dangle, just as it was, barely brushing against nipples grown tingling hard.

How odd and strange everything was. Here she was, in a foreign land, fleeing a man who wanted to force her into marriage. Here she stood, shivering outside a prison wall, tucked under the arm of an Irish warrior, her body behaving as it never had before.

Strangest of all, this didn't seem strange.

He removed his arm. She shivered, suddenly noticing the chill. They started for the gate, only to hurl themselves against the side of a building a moment later when a clamor of shouts and curses rang out. The two guards ran back to the guard tower, now ablaze with lights. Out on the rampart stood several dark figures.

“Bollocks,” came a hushed, almost reverent whisper, at odds with the crude curse. The penitent was bowed almost in half over the edge of the stone tower, gazing into the shadows below.

“By your balls indeed,” another agreed, his harsh voice bouncing down the ramparts to them. “The pricker threw Dalton right over the battlement!”

The shouts grew louder. Finian and Senna looked at each other.

“Break it up,” one voice broke through the mêlée. Balffe, the huge captain of the guard, waded through the mess evident at the top of the tower and stared over the wall. “Christ Almighty, Molyneux, you've killed him dead.” He looked back up and glared at the perpetrator. Hairy forearms folded over his chest as he waited for the pathetic explanation.

His patience was not tested. “He lost the wager and wouldn't pay up.” The murderer's voice lifted and fell unevenly, clear evidence of his overindulgence.

“And you've got more balls than wits or not enough of either, and I'll not be paying for it. Go get him,” Balffe ordered, unfolding his beefy arms and striding forward, a mountain in motion.

“What?” The guard hooted and staggered backward out of the captain's reach. “And be made into mutton by the Irish who stalk the castle walls?”

“Which would make you a sheep, you bastard.” The mountain took a step closer. “I don't care if the godforsaken Saracens have left the Holy Lands and landed in Ireland.” He took another step forward. “I don't care of they're sharpening their scimitars and grinning at you, you rotting piece of dung—you're going out there.”

Grabbing the man's gambeson and mail covering between his thick fingers, Balffe hauled him up to eye level, a not average feat of strength. “You drag his body back inside,
now,
or I'll hang you by your balls.” He flung the hapless guard down and pointed to several others. “You, and you, and you,” he ordered, “go with him.”

Muted curses followed the reluctant volunteers down the winding staircase.

“Come,” Finian whispered in her ear.

He gripped her wrist and tugged her to hover in the shadows by the crenellated barbican tower as the monstrous portcullis was raised. Creaking chains sounded and a dog barked. The men hauling the gate up grumbled contentiously—night duty was supposed to carry its own rewards, most notably an absence of tasks requiring attention.

The iron grate was finally high enough for the four men to pass under it and over the lowered wooden draw. What with their grumbling and cursing, and the gory interest in their morbid task from those above, neither the soldiers nor the watchers from atop the tower noticed the two hunched and hooded figures who glided out behind them. Nor did they espy the shadowy shapes as they turned away and dropped into a dry but remarkably noisome defensive ditch.

Senna felt Finian's hand on the back of her head, pushing her down the side of the drop-off. She fell flat on her stomach. He dropped on top, covering her body with his.

“Hummphh,” she groaned as all the air was pressed out of her.

“Silence,” came his hissed reply.

“I can be nothing but, as you are lying on top of me—”

His hand snaked under her, sliding over parts of her body in the most startling ways, and came up by her mouth, which he overlaid with a broad palm.

She lay quietly as, above them, the soldiers grumbled in their efforts to retrieve the dead man. Grasping an extremity in hand, the foursome carted the mangled body over the draw and into the castle. The creak of heavy chains sounded again, and the barred gate clanged back into place. Silence descended.

“Up. Now, before their attention turns back.” Finian knelt between her legs and looked down at her flattened body, half submerged in the dirt. He pulled her out and turned her over.

Her face was covered with a fine film of dirt, her nose and cheeks red and creased. She was so covered with grime that the front of her tunic was barely distinguishable from the ground beneath her.

“That was close,” she whispered.

Finian held out his hand to help her rise. “Quite.”

He stood beneath, pushing her up over the side of the ditch. She finally curled her body over the lip. “Next time, all I ask is that I be on top.”

Finian, with one thigh thrown over the top, his arms flexed to support his weight, froze. An enormous grin spread over his features as he hauled himself up.

“As ye wish it, angel.”

Their hunched figures were but small, dark spots on the darker landscape as they crawled away from the castle. Finian led her to the edge of the road and they sped away into the night, disappearing into the vast Irish wildside.

They halted briefly an hour later beside a wide, rushing stream, a tributary of a larger, more riotous river flowing some fifty steps away, behind a long, narrow copse of trees.

Finian knelt at the water's edge and adjusted his tunic. His arms burned from the effort of lifting them overhead. By chance, his eye caught Senna. She was staring, her lips slightly parted.

“Ye might want to turn away, lass,” he suggested quietly.

She spun so quickly her braid lifted in the air, then thumped against her back. The curls poking out at the bottom bounced in small, ruddy ringlets at the dip of her spine. He looked at them a moment, then turned back to the river.

“I'll need but a trice.”

“Take all the time you need. And I've seen men before,” she added sharply.

“Umm.”

He tore off his
léine,
the traditional knee-length tunic, and tossed it over the boulder beside him, then waded into the frigid stream. Kneeling, he gave his body a rough but thorough scrub with the small, sand-like pebbles that covered the riverbed, washing away the stink of the prisons. His skin rippled prickly-hot at the freezing temperatures, and he dunked his head under the water. Coming up again, he shook himself like a dog, spraying water droplets. With the palm of his hand, he flipped his hair off his forehead and turned.

A tunic and pair of leggings came sailing over and landed on his face. He dragged them off. Senna's back was still conspicuously toward the river, as if she were aiming it at him. But her head was turned in his direction slightly, so that her chin sat on her shoulder.

“You'll want something clean and English-looking to put on,” she mumbled.

“My thanks.”

“And in any event, I didn't have one of”—her hand waved vaguely in the direction of his hips—“those.”

Even from this distance, even through the moonlight, he could see her cheeks flush pink. And he did not have to see anything at all to know this was due the fact she was not fully turned away. She'd been watching him.

He pulled the tunic over his head. Once his leggings were on and laced, she turned. Her gaze didn't quite meet his.

“Are we quite ready?” she asked in an imperious voice.

“I am ever ready, Senna. Why don't you take off yer skirts?”

Her jaw dropped. Everything about her shone in the moonlight. Her bright, wide eyes, her lower lip, now wet as her tongue slipped along its fullness. That long, chestnut brown braid, which trapped the wild, rampant curls.

“M—my gown?”

He stepped closer. “Ye have leggings on under? And a short tunic? Aye. Then, off with it.”

Her cheeks flushed so brightly he could see it through the moonlight, but she was already pulling it over her head, huffing something incomprehensible while under its folds. He took it and threw it away, next to his
léine,
halfway behind a large rock on the streambed. It looked as if the clothes had been hidden, but poorly.

Quickly he took a head-to-toe appraisal of her—it was impossible not to, with leggings that skimmed her thighs so snugly—then he turned away and shouldered his pack again. But in the time it took to make the visual sweep of her body, he heard a small, quick breath slip out from between her parted lips.

“Let's go, then,” he said.

She spun on her heel, took her very pink cheeks, and stalked away down the path they'd been following for the past hour.

“This way, Senna,” he called out softly, turning back the way they'd come.

Stones crunched as she spun. “Back that way? Why?”

“I've a mad notion to throw them off our scent.” He rubbed his palm across the back of his neck. “We've a long way to go, lass, and I haven't the time to explain myself to ye.”

She stepped up beside him with an impatient stride. “Then we walk. Can you not walk and talk at the same time?”

He looked down coolly. “Not so well as you.”

As they hiked quickly back up the creek side, he gave a brief synopsis of their next few days. “We have two rivers to cross—”

“A river?” She sounded deeply shocked.

“Two.”

“Two rivers?” she clarified, as if his meaning had somehow been unclear.

“Then a town, and—”

“Friendly?”

“Hostile.”

“Hostile?”

“Then leagues of open land before we reach safety.”

She walked silently and seemed to be figuring, determining which was the most important thing to focus on just now. “You mean Dublin,” she finally said. “We're making for Dublin.”

He grunted. No, he did not mean Dublin.

He meant Hutton's Leap. That was the most important thing right now: getting to the town of Hutton's Leap before Rardove figured out what the Irish were up to, and went there himself.

The mission had been two pronged from the start. Finian's task was to probe Rardove's cunning, as well as take on the hazardous job of providing a distraction while another Irish warrior was sent to Hutton's Leap to retrieve the dangerous, coveted dye manual that contained the secret of the Wishmés.

Finian now knew that warrior's head was being sent to The O'Fáil in a box.

No time for grief or rage. Just focus on the mission. Someone had to retrieve that dye manual before it fell into the wrong hands. Rardove's hands.

Finian was the only one who knew the mission had failed. Therefore it had just become his mission.

Senna, of course, did not know this, as she had no idea they were actually
on
a mission.

“Is that…is that one of the rivers?” she asked, her words tentative.

A slim, pale finger pointed at the sparse tree cover that separated this tributary from the main rushing river, perhaps forty paces off, as the slip of land they were on slowly narrowed until it became but a diving board into the raging river.

“Aye. That one.”

“And how wide is this riv—
what was that?
”

A low howl rose up through the dark air, like the nighttime was haunting itself. Another howl came, filling the darkness with its mournful sound. She looked at Finian, her eyes wide and frightened.

“A wolf,” he explained gently.

“We haven't many of them in England anymore,” she whispered back.

Another low howl came and Senna tripped backward, until her back was pressed to his chest. A startlingly attention-getting maneuver. He was vaguely impressed such an unconscious move should imbue such sensuality. “Are they close?”

“Aye.” It was always harder to detect panic within a whisper, but Finian was fairly certain the telltale tremble was there. “Are ye ready to go now, lass?”

“Quite.”

They didn't say much as they retraced their steps to the banks of
Bhean's
River. Woman's River. It was well named, for it was wild and stunning in its beauty and ferocity. Dangerous, with wicked currents. Deep, an onrushing power to it.

It was autumn, though, and the summer had been dry. While the farmers lamented the fact of it, tonight Finian gave thanks to all the gods he could think of, old and new, because it meant they could cross without needing the bridge at
Bhean's
Crossing, which was only half a mile from Rardove Keep.

Still, the
Bhean
was deep. Deep enough to warrant caution. Deep enough to drown in. Especially if one cracked his skull on the rocks when he fell. Or she fell.

He stopped at the edge. The moon was bright. “How are ye with rocks, Senna?”

Confusion marked her face until she followed his pointing finger. It cleared, into fear. A jagged row of boulders of various sizes zigzagged across the river like huge stepping stones.

“Finian. You cannot be in earnest.” She considered him suspiciously. Then she looked back at the river. “You're asking us to jump those?
Those
rocks? Those rocks.”

Nothing had changed about his original query, but her voice became more flatly incredulous. “Why, Finian, some are as widely spaced as my body is tall. The force required…” Her voice trailed off. “And the rate of the current…” She trailed off again, looking across at the dark, rushing river.

She was probably reckoning rate and velocity at this very moment, he realized dimly.

“If ye're too frightened, Senna—”

“I'm not frightened,” she snapped. “I'm never
frightened.
I'm…figuring.”

“Ah.” He held his breath. If she said she couldn't do it…

Her chin came up. “I can do it,” she said, rather loudly. “I used to climb them all the time, you know.”

He smiled as a little warmth flared in his chest. “I didn't know, Senna,” he murmured, shifting the pack on his shoulders. “But I'm glad of it. Now, do as I do, just as I do it.”

He hopped onto the closest rock. It had a low, broad surface. He quickly hopped to the next one, not two feet away, and turned. “Now yerself, Senna.”

She closed her eyes and leapt. Finian lifted a hand in protest, but by then she'd already landed, knees bent. She opened her eyes and looked up triumphantly.

“Well done,” he said, giving her the congratulations her self-satisfied, never-climbed-a-rock-before smile required. After which he added, “Never do that again. Eyes open, always.”

He turned to the next boulder. Fifteen. Fifteen to cross. Not so many, except that they kept getting higher and more steeply pitched as you went, until the last one towered like an armored sentinel on the river's western edge.

“Do they seem to get bigger as we go?” she suddenly asked.

“Not a bit of it. 'Tis the moonlight. Tricks the eye.”

“Oh.”

He pushed off, propelling himself to the next boulder. This one wasn't far at all, but it had a steeply sloped top, like a barn roof. He landed, one foot on either side of the pitch. Arms out, swaying, aware of every whipped muscle in his legs and back, he balanced himself. He blew out a long breath and leapt again, leaving the boulder free for Senna.

Behind him, he heard a small sound over the quiet rush of water. A prayer, spoken in a whispered, feminine voice. “Please, dear Lord.”

He turned just as she jumped. For a moment she hung in space, both legs bent, as if running in midair, then landed with a thump, knees sharply bent, but with a foot planted firmly on either side of the rock.

Standing atop two boulders, in the moonlight, their eyes met. Finian nodded firmly. Senna, panting just a little, from exertion or fear or both, gave a small smile. Almost as if
she
were encouraging
him.

A corner of his mouth curved up. He turned to the next one.

And so they made their leaping, slipping, flying way across the boulders of
Bhean's
River. Until the last.

A full four feet away, and easily a foot higher than the one Finian stood upon, it required a running leap. Which they had no room for.

“Come, Senna.” He gestured with his hand, stepping to the side to give her room to land beside him on his boulder. He grabbed her hand as she landed, pulling her up beside him.

The rising moon lit up the currents of the river below like small, steely gray snakes. On either side of the water lay low, flat land. To the west stretched the perils of the king's highway, but beyond that, the safety of hills Finian had known since his youth. To the east flowed English lands. North, lay Rardove. And four feet away hunkered the biggest boulder on
Bhean's
River, renowned for its sentinel-like granite edifice.

He could tell Senna's face had paled, even through the moonlight. “Do ye think ye can jump it?”

“Of course.”

“Senna.”

She started to protest, then shook her head slowly. Silver, moon-cast glints gleamed in her eyes. “I don't know, Finian. 'Tis a long way. I cannot say for certes.”

He nodded. “Then I'm going to throw ye.”

Her mouth fell open. “What?”

“What's yer other plan?” he asked sharply.

“I—” She shook her head. “I haven't one.”

He didn't even pause. He swept a boot behind her, shifting to stand sidewise, facing her. Her lithe body trembled. Small, fast pants shot out of her mouth. Finian spread his legs wide, crouched down, grabbed under her arm, and slid his other hand between her legs, lifting to her crotch.

“Don't try to help,” he ordered. “Do not push off. Don't move. All ye have to do is land on yer feet. Aye?”

The contours of her profile were frozen. “Aye.”

“Ready, girl?”

“Jésu, Finian,” she whispered. “I'm ready.”

He focused all his attention and, tensing his already wearied legs and arms and shoulders, and tightening every muscle along the length of his burning back, he flung her across the churning water straight at the boulder.