Forbidden Warrior (Midsummer Knights)

“I don’t think so.”

It was at this moment Máel reflected, not for the last time, that it would have been a good plan to bring his blood-brothers Fáelán and Rowan along on this mission.

But he rarely planned. He simply acted, often in anger, always with extreme force. In consequence, the English had paid great sums of money for his services and his small band of outlaw blood-brothers had grown quite rich.

This particular situation did not look as if it would result in riches.

The skies opened and rain began sheeting down.

The baron snapped his fingers.

Máel spun, reaching for his sword, but not fast enough. There were three more soldiers in the shadows behind him, and they grabbed him and locked his arms behind his back.

He met d’Argent’s eyes as the rain beat down on them. “You don’t want to make an enemy of me,” he warned.

D’Argent stepped closer. “If you are dead, what does it matter?”

Excellent point.

The torch-wielding soldier looked uneasy at the news they were about to kill him. “But…he is a messenger, my lord.”

Máel nodded. “Aye. You don’t want to break the social code now, do you?”

This, to a man who’d hired Máel to deliver treasonous messages to the Highlands of Scotland, seeking an alliance with the rebels who were conspiring to overthrow King Richard. And then to return with even more treasonous messages agreeing to the alliance, and proposing a meeting at a tournament in the north of England come midsummer.

Fáelán had always said being able to read had its advantages.

“If you kill me,” Máel pointed out, “who will deliver your treasonous messages?”

He didn’t expect any success from the argument, but it was not meant to persuade. It was meant to buy time as he assessed the avenues of escape and weaknesses of the men holding his arms behind his back.

Unfortunately, he found none.

Again, d’Argent stepped closer. “I will simply find another outlaw, Irish. For that is all you are: an Irish criminal. I can find a dozen like you with a snap of my fingers. The only special thing about you is that sword.” His gaze slid to Moralltach. “It has some legend about it, doesn’t it?”

Máel twisted in the embrace of the guards and dropped low to escape, but d’Argent snapped his fingers again and stepped back to watch his soldiers beat Máel halfway to hell.

Two of them held him while the other two rained a hail of punches across his body, matching the rain pouring down from the skies. Then they dropped him to the ground and kicked him a few times for good measure. The fifth, torch-bearing soldier looked on doubtfully, which was no help at all.

Then they dragged him into the shadows beside the Goat and Hound and dropped him facedown in the muck.

He heard the baron say, “Is he dead?”

“He is, sir.”

“Ensure it,” the baron ordered just as the tavern door opened. A stream of drunken men staggered out. The tavern keeper poked his head out, shouting at them to move along or he would call the town watch.

“No one could have lived through that, my lord,” muttered one of his guards.

Silence, then the baron said, “Let’s go. Wait… Take the sword.”

They slid the sword from his belt and walked off.

Máel could do nothing but lay in the mud as cold rain fell on him and think about all the things that had been taken from him over the years by men like Baron Ware.

His family. His home. His lands, and the title that went with them. No one in his family would ever again be Lord of Tir na Fraoch.

But despite their best efforts, the English had not been able to strip him entirely bare. They had not taken his sword. And his father’s sword. And his father’s father’s, and so on, back into the mists of legend.