The Last Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (6 page)

Fallon stepped through the wide doorway and looked around, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. There were usually benches running across the hall but these had been pushed out to the walls. It was an open space, with a fire at one end, mud walls, stamped earth floor and a low roof. Half a dozen villagers were sitting nervously down one end, while Sean and Seamus sat on a bench close to the door, arms around each other and laughing, and two strangers stood in the center of the room, daring others to fight. Both were big men, as tall as Gallagher and nearly the size of Brendan. Fallon wondered why it was never the small ones who decided to get angry in his village.

“You’re all as weak as piss!” the taller of the two said.

“You can go any time you want – you just have to get past us,” the shorter, fatter one added.

“Where’s the bogging blacksmith? You said he was worth a fight!” the taller shouted. “I’m here to show these boggers that no man from Baltimore can beat a man from Killarney.”

Fallon breathed a sigh of relief he had not brought Brendan. They would have challenged him and then Brendan would have either had to fight, which he hated, or walk away, which would have been impossible to live down.

“That’s it, lads. You’ve had some fun: now’s time to finish,” he said, firmly but calmly. There was still a chance this was not going to end in violence.

The two challengers whirled around, one of them staggering a little with all the ale he had drunk. “About time! But are you really the best in Baltimore? This bogging village must be even more piss-weak than we thought,” the fatter one declared.

“That’s right. You two are the greatest warriors in Lunster. But even great warriors need to go to bed,” Fallon said, his voice still even. “There’s men that need to be up before dawn, and children along this street who need their sleep.”

“Sleep? They need waking up! They need to see how bogging useless their fathers are and how great we are,” the taller one said. “Bring them here and let all bow down before us.”

“You’ve had your fun. Time to finish now,” Fallon said, glancing over towards the two local brothers. He knew them well, as he knew all the men in Baltimore well. These two were lazy, not just with work but useless when it came to the fyrd. And as for paying their taxes on time – it was as if Fallon was asking for their right hands.

“Sounds like it’s just beginning,” Sean said, raising his jug of ale in an ironic salute.

That was it. Fallon exploded into action, darting across to where the brothers sat, clinking their jugs of ale together, toasting their own cleverness. He punched the end of the shillelagh out, once, twice, smashing both clay jugs, so that the remaining beer cascaded over the pair of them.

As they spluttered and gasped in protest, he turned to face the cousins, knowing they would be coming. The taller one was the first to attack, aiming a punch at Fallon’s head. From the way they had been staggering, Fallon had expected it to be a lumbering roundhouse punch, a typical blow from a drunken man, but this one was straight and powerful. The ale had slowed it just enough so that Fallon could step inside and jab with his shillelagh, striking the man’s inner elbow and flicking the blow away. The man howled as his arm instantly went numb and dropped by his side.

Fallon left him clutching at his elbow and moved on to the fat one, who was lumbering into the attack, fist drawn back and face twisted in anger. Fallon danced away from the slow charge and drove the end of his staff into the man’s swollen belly. The expression on the cousin’s face was almost laughable as the hardened tip sunk deep. He dropped to his knees and the ale he had guzzled that afternoon exploded across the floor as he vomited it all up. The huge pool of puke made his brother step cautiously around as he aimed a huge kick at Fallon. Fallon skipped aside then slid his hands down smoothly to change his grip, flicked the shillelagh out to hook the man’s other foot and flip him up in the air, so he landed with a bone-jarring thud in his brother’s vomit.

Ignoring the groans coming from the two cousins, Fallon sprang at Sean and Seamus, who were only now coming to their feet, hands held out to ask for mercy. But he was not in the mood any more. He shifted his grip on the shillelagh again so he held it in the center and punched first one end, then the other, into their stomachs, knocking the wind and the ale out of them, so they too ended on their knees, retching painfully.

Fallon stepped back, staff at the ready, but there was no more fight in the four of them. “The rest of you, get home now,” he said, his voice flat and hard.

There was a rush as men slipped around the mess in the middle and then a crush at the door as they fought to get out and away.

“What are we going to do with this sorry bunch of boggers?” Gallagher asked.

“We’ll tie them to the benches and they can sleep here for the night. In the morning, we’ll get them to clean their mess up,” Fallon decided.

Gallagher took down ropes from the back wall and swiftly fastened the four of them to the same bench, tying their hands and the knots surely and tightly, around the back of the bench where they could not reach it. “They won’t be getting out of there in a hurry,” he said, stepping carefully around the puddles of vomit.

“Nice work.” Fallon smiled.

“Good work yourself. Although this place will stink for days because of these four idiots.”

“Might stop the drinkers coming back for a bit.” Fallon gave one last glance at the disheveled foursome, one of them still retching a little, as they sat in their own vomit. “I think we proved we’re ready for anything,” he told Gallagher as they walked out.

“Bit of a difference between knocking down a few drunks and taking on whoever did that to the Duke,” Gallagher said.

“No difference at all.”

Outside a small crowd had gathered, a mix of men from the meeting hall and their families. Most clapped and cheered as Fallon walked past them, several stepping forwards to shake his hand or pat him on the back. He acknowledged them with a smile.

“See, they think you are a hero already,” Gallagher whispered to him.

“Not quite the same thing,” Fallon said out of the side of his mouth. “Thanks for watching my back. Now get some rest and I’ll see you tomorrow when I get back from Lunster, tell you all about what happened there.”

Gallagher looked as if he wanted to say something more but merely nodded and walked away.

Fallon turned for home but he felt as though he had so much energy inside him, he was ready to burst. He could not simply go inside like this. He would end up fighting with Bridgit, when that was the last thing he wanted to do. It wasn’t Kerrin’s fault his mother was so protective of him. But he should have done something about it before now. He pictured talking to Bridgit about it and shuddered. That would not be an easy conversation. He and Bridgit had lost so many babies over the years. Kerrin was the only one to make it past a few moons. Of course she was going to be protective of the lad. Because of Kerrin, Fallon had turned down two offers to go and serve the Duke in Lunster. Disease stalked the towns of Gaelland and few were the children who made it to adulthood. Kerrin was always prone to winter coughs as it was.

He had taken the role in Baltimore because it made him a sergeant and put him in line for further promotion. He had come here with such ambitions but, over time, they seemed to vanish like the morning mist, so all that was left was the memory. He had been so caught up in their struggles to have children and keep Kerrin safe that the years had flown by. Then, six moons back, his old friend Hagen had been made Captain of the Duke’s guards and all those half-forgotten ambitions had come flooding back. His father had raised him on tales of legendary heroes but had died young, killed by a falling tree. Fallon had vowed to impress the shade of his father and had joined the Duke’s guards to make his father’s bedtime tales become reality. He loved life here in Baltimore yet he could never be anything more than a humble sergeant in the village. Only in Lunster could he rise further. One day they would go there, Bridgit said, when the boy was strong enough. But Fallon could feel age catching up to him. He was beginning to fear he would never get the chance to be a hero. Now it was here and he was not going to give it up. He just had to work out how to tell that to Bridgit.

Instead he went around the back, where he had his sword posts. Years earlier he had sunk these deep into the earth, and now they were almost worn away by sword strokes. Putting down the shillelagh and taking an old sword from a chest against the back wall of his home he stretched, then went through the basic cuts and strokes that he had learned many years earlier in the castle courtyard at Lunster, when he was a new guard. He had practiced them every day since, although he had never used them for real. There were few swords in the county and few men willing to use them. But still he practiced. High cuts against the top of the post, low cuts against the base, side to side just underneath the crossbars and then straight thrusts into the straw-filled bag at the center, feeling the shock of each one run up his arm until the sweat was pouring off him and he could feel the ache in his whole arm, shoulder and chest.

“Fallon, what are you doing?”

He was about to try one final thrust but stopped and spun, to see Bridgit advancing on him, mouth locked in a thin line.

“What I always do – practicing,” he said.

“Very funny! You need to come inside. Kerrin thinks a pack of selkies could come swarming ashore at any time to drag us all away and until you are there to reassure him, he’s not going to eat, let alone sleep!”

Fallon dropped his sword and walked across to her. The sword training had done its job and he knew what he needed to say to her now. “I’ll be right in.” He raised her left hand to kiss it. “But is it Kerrin who’s afraid, or you?”

She sighed. “Both of us,” she said in a soft voice.

“There are no selkies. And there was nothing on that ship.”

“But you still went onboard first. If there had been, you would have been the first to be killed. How do you think that makes me feel? And what would I tell Kerrin?”

“You would tell him his father died trying to protect you both. And what else was I supposed to do? You know as well as I that it’s my job.’’

“No, your job is to sort out a few poachers and drunks, not selkies. Aroaril knows I don’t like that you sit out at night and hunt poachers as it is but at least they are human. Maybe you should think of something else you can do. You spend enough time on Devlin’s farm: you could work for him.”

Fallon ignored that, as he had ignored a dozen similar hints over the last few moons. He hated farming only slightly more than he hated fishing. “Well, if any selkies had been there, you would have given them such an earful they would have run straight back home to their mothers.”

“Don’t be funny. What would we do without you?”

Fallon enfolded her in his arms. “I think you would surprise yourself,” he said, his voice muffled by her hair. “There is a strength in you that would come out. I pray we never need to find it, but I know it is there.”

She pulled away from him a little. “Is this going to be one of your jokes?”

“Funnily enough no.” He smiled, then looked straight into her beautiful eyes. “But I really think I need to train Kerrin.”

“No,” she said instantly.

Fallon dropped his arms away. “It would be better if I did. As you said, he’s got this idea about the selkies coming for us now. And he’ll have us both awake every night with dreams about them if we don’t give him something. Remember when those chickens were going missing? He had nightmares about foxes the size of ponies coming for him for a whole moon. Aroaril knows what he’ll be dreaming about with half the village trembling about selkies.”

She looked at him critically. “And this is not more of your blarney? You’ll stop when this selkie nonsense is forgotten?”

“Well, it would be good to strengthen him up. Knowing how to do something and making a living from it are two different things.”

“Oh, really? Like what?”

He stepped in closer and reached around her again, his hands slipping down her back. “Why don’t I show you tonight?” he whispered in her ear.

She grabbed his hands as they slipped lower and stepped back with the ease of long practice.

“That’s quite enough of that for now,” she said, but there was a half-smile on her face.

“It would be good for him.” Fallon changed the subject quickly, knowing he had to. “If he was stronger and fitter it would help his chest and maybe stop some of those coughs.”

“We’ll see,” was all she said. “Now, what’s this I hear about you using my father to help you search the ship?”

Fallon shrugged. “We needed to check if magic had been used there. And he was a real help. I never knew he practiced magic in Berry.”

Her jaw dropped. “He talked about that? Every time I asked him he would start drinking, so I soon learned to keep my mouth shut. What did he say?”

“Just that it all went wrong. But to hear him talk about magic – he sounded like a different man.”

Bridgit sighed. “It’s hard to imagine looking at him now, but he was a real wizard once.”

“So what happened?”

“He’ll never say. And I don’t think we should ask, either. Now, wash up and come in for dinner.”

Fallon stripped off his tunic and scooped water out of the rain barrel, splashing it over himself and shivering. He used his tunic to dry off and then walked inside, looking around his home with pleasure. A pair of windows cut into the wooden walls gave light during a day but were blocked off with a fur-covered frame now the cold of night was drawing in, so illumination came from the big fire in the mud-brick chimney. Three comfortable chairs sat by the fire, while three wooden ones waited around the big table in the center of the floor. The floor itself was wooden, and scattered with Kerrin’s toys. These were little figures that had been carved for him from left-over firewood. Some were farm animals but most were little warriors. Fallon had tried to make them but his looked ridiculous. Gallagher, on the other hand, was brilliant at them, and Brendan had even made the lad a few out of metal. Fallon was sick of treading on them late at night or early in the morning but Bridgit let Kerrin fight elaborate battles with them across the floor every night and he was not about to stop that.