Chapter Fifty-Four
S eldom had Fearghal set out with such a sizeable force. That evening before sunset, every chariot rolled out. Each and every warrior, including some men well past the accepted age of fighting, who had thought they would never march out again.
The rest—aged, young, wounded, and the women who had trained with Ardahl, stayed back to guard the settlement. They had already seen what could happen in the absence of their men.
Ardahl and Liadan had only one moment of parting at the hut, after leaving Tamald. He drew her around the side where so often she’d remained with him while he washed. And he kissed her for what might be the last time.
The parting from his mam proved equally hard. And he knew both women stood watching while he walked off. He would not let himself look back. He must now become a warrior and nothing more. He must devote himself to protecting his chief, without distractions.
Not even those of the heart.
The first person he saw when he arrived back at the field was Cathair. His height and fair hair made him visible even among the milling men.
Ardahl experienced a tightening in his gut—a flood of anger he could not stem. Fiercely he told himself he could not allow even that to distract him, and he turned his gaze away from Cathair as he went to Fearghal’s side.
There, he discovered Dornach had assigned him a new charioteer, a seasoned warrior called Kell who had been laid up with an injury for some time. Ardahl knew him, to be sure, from practice on the field—a big, rawboned man with a crop of dark hair and a beard streaked with gray.
“We are to go first,” Kell told Ardahl after Dornach left them. “Even ahead of the chief.”
Ardahl nodded without conceit. If he had been designated the head of the spear, he would not argue it. The whole point of this was for him to protect Fearghal in any way he could.
Even if he could not keep his heart from yearning for those he left behind.
“Any word of fighting at Brioc?” he asked as he leaped aboard the chariot and Kell took up the reins.
“No’ yet, though I do not doubt they are at it hard. Dacha is no’ the man to hold his sword arm, is he, when it comes to revenge?”
“He is not.”
Kell hesitated a moment. “I know fine there are rumors and tales about ye, Ardahl MacCormac. That ye murdered your sword brother. That ye’ve been touched by the gods, for how well ye fight. The greatest warrior ever among the tribe, so it will be declared in the great hall.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “If we ever again can boast a great hall.”
“The first, no’ true,” Ardahl told him. he considered. “Neither is true.”
“Aye, well, that does no’ concern me now. I do no’ doubt we are going to die together. And I wish to say, ’twill be an honor to fight and die in your company.”
He thrust out his hand. Ardahl grasped it, forearm to forearm. Some of the terrible tension inside him faded. It felt well, having such a strong man at his side. Not Conall, but a braw man nonetheless.
“We are to be the point o’ the spear,” he shared with Kell as calmly as he could. “If we are to have one aim beyond protecting our chief, it must be to kill Dacha. For I do not believe this madness will end till he is slain.”
Kell nodded. “Let us go to it, then.”
Those were the last words they exchanged for some time. The chariots rolled out through the night, not quite silent as the dark deepened all around them. Neither were the men who followed silent. Their booted feet made contact with the earth. They coughed, they breathed, they whispered to one another. Yet the night remained quiet enough that they heard the conflict ahead long before they reached the place.
The clashing of weapons. The cries of men, sounding spectral from the distance. The hairs rose all over Ardahl’s body—he had never heard such a sound. Kell’s hands faltered on the reins and the team pulled up.
“Master Dornach?” Ardahl called back.
Dornach’s driver directed their chariot up alongside. Ardahl could not see the war chief’s face clearly in the dark but heard him catch his breath.
“How far ahead, master?” Kell asked.
“No’ far. Brihan has fallen back fro’ his settlement toward our shared border. The gods only know what has happened to his folk.”
“We are well come, then,” Fearghal called. “We can throw our might against Dacha.”
“Aye.”
Fearghal turned in his chariot and addressed his men, all of whom had now heard the din and knew full well what awaited them.
“We go in hard, men, and we spare no one of Dacha’s blood. May all o’ ye fight well for those ye love.”
That was the heart of it, was it not? In the end, they did not fight for land, for revenge, or even for honor. If they could stop Dacha here, they would protect those they loved.
“May the gods go wi’ us,” Kell said as he took up the reins and urged their team forward. “And if we spend our blood, Ardahl MacCormac, I wish ye a swift journey to Tír na nóg .”
The sounds of that battle grew as they wheeled toward it. Ardahl, standing braced on the floor of the cart with his sword in his hand, tried to take it in all at once, to choose a target before one chose him, as Dornach had long ago taught him to do.
Kell took them straight into the heart of the melee. Others of their chariots, so he knew, would spread out to the flanks, but aye, he was the head of the spear.
The battle, fierce as it was, must have been raging for some time. Dead and dying lay everywhere. The hooves of their ponies and the wheels of their chariot bounced over one—Ardahl could only hope already dead. But he could not think of that. He could focus on nothing but fighting. One opponent at a time.
A momentary check in the battle occurred as they came crashing in, attackers and defenders alike taken unawares by their arrival. Ardahl got a single glimpse of Chief Brihan fighting in a knot of his men directly ahead, before the first of the enemy swords engaged him. And then it was all about killing and survival.
Kell proved a good charioteer—not so good as Ardahl’s own da, perhaps, but good enough. He kept control of the ponies during the confusion of the battle, got Ardahl in close and away again after an opponent fell.
In a curious way, Ardahl saw everything at once, even while he saw only his opponents and the various blades coming at him. Saw the path he and Kell opened up with their chariot. Saw Fearghal dart in with Dornach’s cart close behind, trying to reach Brihan. Saw the whole ebb and flow of the battle from his perch in the wicker cart, which rocked beneath him like a curragh at sea.
He and Kell were in deep. Half Dacha’s army lay ahead and before them. He could see the man himself just ahead, fighting on foot, with a crashed cart at his back, face twisted in a rictus of fury and strain.
Dacha knew as well as Ardahl how deadly earnest was this fight. The achievement of all his ambitions, or the end.
“There he is!” he bellowed at Kell. “Take me in farther. Farther!”
Kell looked at him with half-crazed eyes. “We go in farther, we will be cut off.”
Aye, so they would. Beyond reach, quite likely, of their men.
Which meant they would most certainly die here.
For the briefest instant, grief touched him, a wild, raw longing for Liadan and the life they would never have together.
Aye, Kell and he would die. Just so long as they killed Dacha first.
He made a savage slash in the air with his blade, and Kell took them in. The surging, seething bodies closed behind them.
I love ye, lass, Ardahl thought. I love ye forevermore .
Then he thought of naught save life and death.