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Finian shifted slightly, trying to ease away from the rock gouging into his thigh. The guard’s heel pressed down harder, and he stilled.
Rardove’s voice drifted in from his right. “And Senna de Valery knows nothing of it, coming as she does from England.”
Finian spared another brief thought for the woman. To the slaughter.
Scuffed leather boots paced an inch in front of his face then stopped, folding into thick leather wrinkles as the baron crouched beside him.
“I shall have to devise an educational welcome for her, don’t you agree, Lord Finian? Perhaps a few Irish rebels dangling from the end of a rope?” He put his mouth close by Finian’s ear. “I’ll save you for the last.”
Rage surged through him, red-hot and dangerous. He shoved his hips off the ground. The guard whose foot had been planted on his spine went somersaulting into the air. Finian swung around and kicked out with a boot, catching Rardove around his ankles. He went down hard. Finian leapt on top.
Four soldiers hauled him off and sent him flying through the air. He smashed into the wall, the back of his head hitting first. A knee in his stomach guaranteed he wouldn’t rise again anytime soon, and one to his groin made him never want to anyhow.
The soldiers dragged him back to his feet. He stood, fighting the swaying tug of unconsciousness, his boots planted wide. Summoning what ebbing strength he could, he lifted his head and shook away the blood dripping into his eyes.
“Christ,” Rardove snarled, his breath coming hard. “You’re all savages.” He jerked his head to the soldiers. “Make him pay for his insolence.”
They did, and later, as the light from torches carried by the retreating guards faded to nothing, Finian lay spread-eagled on the floor of his cell, barely breathing. But he was thinking hard.
The Englishry were a plague, an infestation of stark naughts, Rardove being the best example of their descent into hell. Finian would not ally with them were he offered the lordship of Tír na nÓg in return. He hadn’t wanted to come and even feign parley, but The O’Fáil wanted it done, and Finian could not refuse.
But now, even a feigned agreement with the worm would do nothing to save his men, only himself. Which was unacceptable. They would all leave, or none.
But either way, Rardove had best look to his back, for the Irish tribes were going to come down from the hills and besiege his castle from Lent until Yuletide. Then Finian himself would burn it to the ground, if he had to drag his bones out of the grave to do so.
Chapter 2
“This shouldn’t take long,” Senna de Valery murmured as she passed under the gates of Rardove Keep as the sun went down. It was four days after her ship had dropped anchor in Dublin and left her to her fate.
It had been a slow, long ride and Senna held her silence for most of its length, listening to the sounds of her new world: the host of riders accompanying her, creaking saddles, muffled voices, wind sighing over the Irish earth. Most of her time, though, was spent calculating how much money this business alliance would provide, if it came to fruition.
It was fresh hope, and that was practically priceless.
Forty sheep followed somewhere behind, the first installment of her bleating business proposition. Atop their sharp little hooves, her sheep carried the softest, most absorbent wool west of the Levant, a strain Senna had been perfecting for ten years, ever since she took over operations of the business from her father.
Wool was highly lucrative business. The fate of a dozen lesser crafts and a few minor princedoms rested on its commerce. Entire fairs in France were dedicated to the trade, sending coveted wool from England through the rich southern markets, straight to Jerusalem and beyond.
Senna wanted to nudge her way in to this market. If the wool being moved through the trade halls now fomented merchants’ enthusiasm, Senna’s strain would make them salivate. It was more absorbent, more silklike, more lightweight than any other wool out there, and required little mordanting to make dyes take.
She knew she had something special with her stinky, furry little sheep. She was simply running out of coin.
Rardove could give it to her. He had money that could save the business, the one Senna had spent the last ten years building up, while her father recklessly, relentlessly, inexhaustibly, gambled it away.
She stared hard ahead, trying to pierce the evening mists, eager for her first glance of Rardove Keep. Such purposeful peering had the added benefit of distracting her from the stench rising from her escort of burly, damp, leather-clad riders.
“Are the mists always so thick?” she asked the closest rider, pinching her nostrils as she moved closer to hear his reply.
He grunted and snorted back a sneeze. Or perhaps he said, “Most there’s ’bout.” Either reply was equally illuminating.
Senna lifted her eyebrows and said “Ahh,” in a bright, cheerful voice, then reined a few paces upwind.
She could feel the eyes of the burliest soldier boring into her back. Balffe was his name, the captain of Rardove’s guard. A block-chested warrior with a face like old sin, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her for two days. And it wasn’t leering, either; it was more like loathing, which was ridiculous, because she’d done nothing to him.
Yet. She passed him an evil glare over her shoulder. He glared back.
Never mind the soldiers. She turned forward. Lord Rardove was the only one who mattered. It was of no account that she’d heard he was lordly in his manner or fair as an angel in his face, because she wasn’t in the market for a husband. She was in the market for a market.
As they drew near Rardove Castle, wraithlike villages began revealing themselves through the fog, first as pale splotches through the mist, then as dark splotches upon the earth. Small, huddling huts and waterlogged fields bespoke poverty, as did the thin villagers who stared sullenly as they passed.
