Oh, God, she was so frightened, it was possible she might dissolve from it.
The king reached up and took her hand, gave it a squeeze. “Balffe has been spotted on the riverbank not half an hour ago. If we leave you there, he’ll be on you in minutes.”
She nodded, since terror had snaked around her throat and made speech impossible. She shook free of it. “What will you tell Finian?” The world was spinning. Nothing that was happening seemed possible. How had she gone from tending sheep to saving Scotland and Ireland?
The king nodded to the riders. The horses started out of the stables. Clop, clop, over the packed dirt earth, into the glittering night.
“I will tell him,” the king’s words came drifting to her back, “that you are much like your mother.”
“No.” They were outside the stable. She didn’t turn back, just raised her voice, expecting it to be wobbling and broken. It wasn’t. It came out strong. “Tell him he is wrought of stronger steel than other people’s errors. Tell him he will make a masterful king. And tell him I realize we were both in error. I did not need him a’tall. I simply chose him.”
The Irish warriors dropped her, as arranged, at the base of a fat hillock. Less than half a mile off, the dark thread of a river could be seen, trees scattered around its shores like ashes.
The Irishmen waited as she slunk away into the darkness. She glanced back once to see them sitting motionless on their horses, dark silhouettes, watching her go. Clouds were piling up on the horizon.
The scouts had said Balffe was barely half a mile away, but Senna could feel him already, his enmity weaving like warp and woof through the dark night air.
Chapter 51
Finian came back into the chamber with a mug of ale and stopped short. The two servants in his wake, bearing trays of food and more drink, almost ran up his heels. The king was sitting exactly where he’d been before, but Senna was gone.
Finian set the mug down carefully. “Where is she?”
The king shook his head.
He turned on his heel, went to his bedchamber and started throwing on his armor.
The O’Fáil came in behind him a few minutes later without speaking. The news spread, and soon more and more men crowded into the chamber, to protest Finian’s headlong pursuit of the Englishwoman.
“Ye should just let her go,” ventured Brian, his sleepy eyes grown sharp with anger when, alerted by the shouting voices, he, too, had stumbled into the room. Already ten or so men were standing around the small space, bumping knees and arguing.
“And ye should watch yer tongue,” Finian suggested, his words muffled by the hauberk he was tugging over his head.
Brian shook his head, rubbed at his eyes, and took the mug of ale a sleepy servant was passing around the impromptu council meeting. “We’ll be better off without her troublesome meddling. I don’t know why ye’re going after her.”
“And I don’t know why I don’t kill ye,” Finian retorted amiably, bending to tug on his riding boots. Alane elbowed his way into the room, already dressed in armor and a grim smile when he saw the men crowded in the room.
Brian scowled and sat down on a small bench by the wall. “So ye’re to start sniffing at bent grass blades, while the rest of us march to war?”
Finian ignored him, his hands taking unconscious inventory of the arsenal of blades strapped across his body as he strode toward the door.
Brian snorted before tipping the mug into the air. “I say good riddance.”
Alane kicked the leg out from Brian’s bench as he passed by. The bench overturned and the ale spilled. Brian sprawled on the ground a moment, then got to his feet, scowling.
Alane dropped onto another bench and swung his heels up on the small table, his gaze trained on the shadowy young warrior. Finian snatched up his gauntlets and headed to the door. “I’m off.”
Ten heads dropped into twenty cupped palms.
“And the men?” someone shouted after. “The muster?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Ye cannot go without the king’s leave,” complained Felim. He was dressed in a long tunic whose hem was lifted by errant drafts surging through the darkened tower room.
“Who said ’tis without his leave?” retorted Finian. But he didn’t look at the king. “And,” he added as he elbowed through the men, pausing as he passed Alane, who, for all Finian knew, thought him as mad as everyone else did, “ye’ll have Alane’s gracious good company until then, so I don’t know what ye’re all complaining about.”
“Och, they’ll not have me,” Alane demurred, still sitting with his boots up on the table.