Both of them turned toward the door.
A second strike followed. Urgent.
Whatever fragile thing had begun between them vanished beneath the harder shape of duty.
Donal reached for his sword.
Aingeal was already moving.
Chapter ten
The rider came through the gate with his horse half-lathered and steaming in the cold. Mud streaked the man’s cloak and spattered the animal’s flanks. Before he had fully reined in, the bell above the gate clanged a third time, raw and wrong enough to make every man in the yard go still.
Seamus reached him first.
Reginald followed, the old alertness rising in him so completely that thought and movement became one.
“Smoke on the western ridge,” the runner gasped. “O’Ruadh’s holding burned. Tracks from the east. Two dozen at least. They took stock. Left children by the road.”
A hard, cold anger turned in Reginald’s gut. Children made into messengers. He forced the feeling down. Anger had its uses, but not at the beginning. The beginning demanded thought. “Which way?” he asked.
“Low ford. Marsh path. Toward the lane by the old ash. They moved light.”
Reginald turned to Seamus. “Four scouts. Quiet men. Double the watchers at the ford. Send riders east and make them readthe ground, not the smoke. If they try to vanish through the marsh, we need men who know the reeds better than they know their own beds.”
Seamus nodded. “I’ll take Cormac and two riders.”
“No. You hold here.”
Seamus’s mouth tightened, but he listened.
“I ride the east lane. Cormac takes the cut-off force and seals the ford. If they mean to turn south, we stop them there.”
Aingeal entered the courtyard with her cloak open and lifting in the wind. Yet the moment she stepped into the yard, the place seemed to steady around her. Like a banner fixed against a wall. She came straight to his side. “Smoke?”
“Confirmed.”
Her gaze moved over the rider, Seamus, the men gathering, the horses, the open gate. She took everything in almost at once. When the rider repeated the part about the child, something changed in her face. A tightening at the mouth.
Reginald saw it. And because he saw it, something in him softened despite the urgency. He knew enough now to recognize that recoil, the quick shadow that crossed her when harm to the helpless was a possibility.
“If this is a test,” she said, “then they are watching as much as striking. They want panic. Or retaliation without thought. We give them neither.”
He respected again, the clean edge of her judgment. “No rash retribution,” he said. “We gather first. Then answer. If they posture, we show them a line they cannot break. If they press, we teach them the cost.”
Tomas arrived with the map. He spread it over a barrel top while men crowded close. “The eastern lane can be held in two places,” he said. “Here, by the old ash. And here, at the ford. If they circle back, the marsh forces them narrow.”
Reginald traced the route with one finger. “Cormac holds the cut-off force here. I ride with the scouts to read the line before it vanishes.”
Aingeal’s gaze sharpened on him. “Do not make this a chance for glory. Take care for the people first.”
He met her eyes. “I will.”
They rode out within minutes.
The line was small and quick: Reginald at the front, Cormac to one side, two scouts slipping ahead and behind like shadows. Cold bit hard at their faces. Wet leaves clung to the horses’ legs where ash trees overhung the lane. The ground spoke if a man knew how to hear it. Reginald read bent turf, the sheen of a hoof-slide, the pressure of disciplined turns, the difference between panic and purpose written into mud.
This was not broad plunder. Too few tracks. Too tidy. Too measured.
