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Aodh stopped short and spun, clapping Ré on his shoulder. “Never, my friend.”
“Please, my friend,” was all Ré said, his voice tight and low. It echoed off the stone of the gatehouse they’d just entered. “They need you here.”
“They need her.”
“They need you both.”
“Very well. But if there can only be one, ’tis better she than I. You know this is true. She has been here longer than I. She loves it more than I. I brought brief glory and war, but for nigh on a decade, she ensured peace and safety.”
Ré said in a furious, low voice, “We shall have you both. We will work something out…come up with some plan…”
“There is no time.” He turned into the gatehouse. It was cool and dark. His boots echoed as he clattered down the stairs.
Ré grabbed his shoulder and spun him back around. “Aodh, it cannot end like this.”
Aodh’s gaze searched his, then he smiled faintly. “God’s truth, Ré, who said this is an end?”
Ré’s angry eyes met his. “If not an end, then what? What are you doing?”
“I’m going to get Rardove back.”
“You’re going to get killed.” Hanged, disemboweled, beheaded.
“Katarina is Rardove, Ré. I’m going to get her back.”
His soldiers stared as he passed them by, clattering down the inner stairway, patting them on the shoulder as he passed. He reached the bottom and pushed the door open.
Golden sunlight poured inside. In the distance, like little poking sticks, the army waited.
Aodh glanced back at Ré’s ashen face. “Do not let Cormac have St. George.”
“Goddammit,” Ré muttered, his voice cracking.
He stepped out into the sunshine.
Chapter Forty-One
“YOU COULD HAVE BEEN spared all that is to come, my lady,” Ludthorpe said to Katarina as he pulled her down off the cannon.
She felt the cold, in her chest, down her belly, great folds of it, like a frozen leine was being wrapped around her.
“How?” she whispered, staring at the castle. Aodh’s figure was no longer on the walls. He must be coming. Coming for her. Coming for his death.
“You are English. It did not need to be this way.”
She looked over. Her neck seemed to have stiffened, her arms and shoulders too, so it took some time for her to turn. “I am Irish, my lord, to the marrow of my bones. And you cannot take it from me, nor me from it, without tearing out my very bones.”
“Then tear them out we shall.”
“You cannot grind them so small that it will disappear.”
He looked at her a moment, his nostrils quivering. “Then I am sorry for you.”
“No, sir,” she said coldly. “You are afraid of me.” Then she saw the gatehouse door open, and her heart stopped beating.
Aodh’s tall, unmistakable figure appeared, coming down the hill. From a thousand yards away, she would have known it was him.
“No!” she screamed, jerking against the ropes and Bertrand’s constraining hand. “Go back!”
