A test.
They reached O’Ruadh’s holding while smoke still rose in bitter gray ribbons. The cottage sagged on one side, thatch blackened and collapsing inward. The smell struck first: wet ash, burned wood.
Near the lane, a child sat wrapped in a shawl far too large for her. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears. A scrap of paper had been tied to her cuff with thorn-twine.
Reginald dismounted at once. He approached slowly, hands open. Nothing in him wanted to make this worse. “Child,” he said quietly. “Tell me what happened.”
She looked at him with a fierce little face. “They came. Took the cows. Burned the roof. Tied the paper.”
Reginald knelt and removed the scrap from her sleeve with care that felt too clumsy. A crude threat. A neighboring clan’s mark. Words meant less to communicate than to prove boldness.
He folded the paper and tucked it beneath his gauntlet before turning to the other men. “This was meant to be seen. They want to know how we answer.”
Cormac spat into the mud. “Then let us answer in kind.”
“Heat will get men killed,” Reginald said. “We secure what’s left. We protect the hamlets. We do not chase blindly through marsh because some fool wants us angry enough to make mistakes.”
He turned to one of the riders. “Take the child back to the castle.”
As the man lifted her carefully to the saddle, Reginald felt something constrict in his throat. Not because children suffered; he had seen enough war to know innocence shielded no one for long, but because now the faces were no longer abstract.
He mounted again. “Cormac, double the patrols south. Send word to the neighboring holdings. Ask who saw movement, but keep our answer measured. We were struck but not shaken. Let them hear that.”
They turned back toward the marsh.
They had not gone far when the reeds shivered. Birds burst upward in a ragged black scatter. Men exploded out of the marsh, lean and masked, leather and turf tied over their faces, horses narrow and hard-muscled beneath them. They struck the flanks first, not the center.
Testing for weakness and panic.
Reginald’s sword was in his hand before he felt himself draw it. “Form!”
The word cracked across the lane.
Men turned. Cormac hit the first rider like a dropped hammer, hauling him half from the saddle. One scout cried out as steel tore through his thigh. A horse reared, shrieking.
Reginald met the next man with his blade angled. The rider came low, looking for the flank. Reginald turned just enough,redirected the force, and let the attacker’s own momentum betray him. Horse and man went down hard in the mud.
His body knew the work too well.
A second rider broke toward the gap near the reeds. Reginald crossed into him before the man could exploit it, striking short and clean, snapping the line apart. Another came from the left. Reginald dropped his weight, twisted, and used the man’s own saddle height against him.
The skirmish was sharp, ugly, and brief.
“Close!”
“Left!”
“Hold!”
Reginald’s voice moved through the men like iron driven into shape. They answered with their bodies, tightening ranks, yielding ground only where ordered, striking only where it mattered. He moved among them with cold precision. He saw openings and closed them. Saw panic and cut it down before it spread.
And beneath the order, something darker lived too.
He ended men as if ending them were another craft learned long ago and never forgotten.
Aingeal saw the last of it from the battlements.
Seamus had tried to keep her below.
