26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter twenty-six
Reginald slept badly and rose before dawn.
He stared out through the slit window. He could see only a strip of paling sky and the black line of the wall. He was not Donal O’Raida now. Not bridegroom. Not the man seated at Aingeal’s right hand while the castle slowly accepted him as part of its life.
He was a man under watch in a chamber that had once belonged to some lesser cousin of the house, with one narrow bed, one chair, and two guards outside the door.
The fire in the small hearth had burned down to ash. The room smelled of damp wool and cold stone. Rain had stopped sometime in the night, but the air still carried the washed, sharp chill that came after hard weather.
He dressed in silence. No sword waited for him.
That absence should not have felt as intimate as it did.
A man accustomed to steel missed its weight the way another man might miss a hand.
He had been stripped of more than a weapon.
He had been stripped of usefulness, and there was a particular cruelty in standing idle while the castle around him moved on in daily life.
He had offered to leave, but Aingeal had not let him.
That memory sat bitter in him. The council sat worse.
Aingeal at the head of the table, pale and steady by force, speaking of border need and wounded pride as though she were not bleeding from the heart at that very moment.
He had watched her choose duty over pain and had wanted, absurdly, impossibly, to go to his knees before her and tell her that all of it was true.
The lie. The blood. The leaving. The love.
Love. He had not let himself use the word even alone until it was too late.
He stood at the window and looked at the thin line of morning, telling himself what he had told himself all night. When the second hour after dawn came, if the castle endured one more morning without disaster, Aingeal would decide again whether he stayed, went, or was put in irons.
He heard the first shout, faint through stone. Then sharper.
Then the heavy, unmistakable clang of alarm from the yard.
Reginald did not think. He moved.
The nearer guard was already on his feet when Reginald opened the door. “Stay here,” the man barked, more from habit than confidence.
Smoke touched the corridor air. Fire.
Another shout rose from below. Then Seamus’s voice, loud and savage, calling for men at the gate.
The second guard swore and half turned toward the stair.
Reginald said, his voice flat with certainty, “If that is from one of the outer holdings, the lower road will choke with carts before your riders are mounted.”
The nearer guard looked at him, torn between duty and terror.
Another bell began, the sharper one kept for attack.
Reginald shouldered past him and took the stair at a run.
The yard below had already dissolved into motion. Men crossed it in every direction, some half-armed, some pulling on belts as they ran. One horse reared near the stables, eyes rolling white. Smoke climbed beyond the far wall in a dark, ugly column.
The fire was not inside the castle. It was farther out. One of the outer holdings, perhaps more than one.
The smell hit Reginald as he reached the bottom of the stair: wet ash, burning thatch, pine, fear.
Aingeal stood in the middle of the yard with Brennach at one side and Tomas at the other, giving orders faster than the men around her could carry them.
Her hair was half braided and half loose, as though she had dressed while moving.
She wore no veil, only a dark cloak thrown over a wool gown belted close.
Her face was pale, hard, and wholly commanding.
Reginald stopped at the edge of the confusion, weaponless, watched by two guards who plainly did not know whether to seize him or use him.
“North ridge!” Seamus shouted as he came at speed from the gate. “Fintan’s lower holding. Barn fired, cattle driven, three men down, and more missing. They came fast and split before the watch reached them.”
The lie had broken. The alliance had shattered. Weakness had a scent, and enemies always smelled it first.
Tomas said, “They struck sooner than expected.”
Brennach swung on him. “Do not waste breath on surprise.”
Aingeal had not moved. “How many?”
“Couldn’t count cleanly in the dark,” Seamus said. “Enough to burn and be gone if we answer slowly. Enough to take the road if we answer badly.”
Reginald saw the shape of the attack at once.
A test, yes, but more than that. They were pressing the bruise.
Seeing whether the castle would flinch. If the answer was hesitation, they would come harder.
If the answer was confusion, they would not stop at a barn next time.
They would take the whole holding and slaughter what remained.
He stepped forward before anyone called for him. “Seamus.”
Every head within earshot turned. The yard went silent for one hard beat.
Aingeal looked at him. Not only startled but wary. Wounded still.
“The lower road will be watched,” Reginald said.
“If they split before the watch reached them, they expect pursuit through the obvious line. Send one troop hard north through the ash stand and another wide east to cut the retreat toward the marsh. If they are driving cattle, they will lose speed before the ridge.”
Seamus stared at him, plainly deciding whether to listen or curse him to hell.
Brennach asked, “And who leads what?”
“The faster riders take the ash stand,” Reginald said. “The heavier men swing east and force inward if the raiders break. Leave ten here. If this is feint work and the real strike comes after the gate empties, you will need them.”
Tomas already saw it. Reginald knew that look in him now.
Aingeal saw it too. And because she saw it, the whole yard saw within a breath that he was right.
Brennach looked at her. So did Seamus. So did the men close enough to hear.
Aingeal’s voice cut through the pause. “Who rides where?”
Reginald answered only because time was burning with the barn. “Seamus takes the ash stand. Cormac takes the eastern swing. Keep the center line ready to answer whichever side breaks first.”
Brennach grunted. “And you?”
Reginald looked at Aingeal. He had every reason now to take a horse and flee.
The yard was in chaos. The gates were open.
A blade could be stolen from the armory or torn from some startled boy’s belt.
He could be beyond the north ridge before they had finished deciding whether he still counted as danger or asset.
The thought barely formed before he killed it.
He had already lied to her under a dead man’s name.
He would not now leave her standing in smoke and confusion with his absence added to the debt.
“I ride where the fighting is worst,” he said.
Seamus gave a disbelieving, angry sound. “With what? Your bare hands?”
Reginald never looked away from Aingeal. “Give me a horse and a blade. Cast me out after, if you still mean to. But let me keep them alive first.”
The whole yard seemed to lean toward her answer.
Aingeal’s face closed over itself like a drawn gate.
For one heartbeat, Reginald thought she would refuse him. Refusal would spare them both the sight of needing one another yet again.
Then she said, “Arm him.”
Seamus swore softly.
Brennach said nothing.
Tomas let out one breath through his nose, as if a tension he had expected had finally broken into action.
Aingeal did not look at Reginald as she continued, her voice all command. “Not Donal O’Raida. Reginald FitzUrse rides under my authority and under watch.” Her gaze moved to Seamus. “If he turns from the field, kill him.”
The words struck like cold iron. Reginald bowed his head once. “As you command.”
A sword was brought. Then a horse. Not his own, but a rangy black gelding with more temper than beauty and enough wind left in him to matter.
Reginald buckled the sword on with hands that felt suddenly too calm.
Not because he was untroubled, but because action had always entered him cleanly, even when conscience had not.
He swung into the saddle while men mounted around him. Seamus barked names. Cormac cursed one lagging rider into motion. Tomas called for waterskins and extra bowstrings. Overhead, the bells had stopped. Smoke still climbed thick and black beyond the wall.
As Reginald gathered the reins, Aingeal stepped closer, close enough that her next words would not carry.
Rainwater still darkened the hem of her cloak from the yard stones. Her face was pale. Her eyes were bright with pain she did not have the luxury to yield to.
“If you mean to run,” she said, “do it now. I will not have you vanish under my orders and send my men chasing a coward while my people burn.”
He looked down at her.
There was no softness in that moment. Only hurt. Authority. And the deep, raw thing still alive between them despite every reason it should have died.
“I will come back,” he promised.
Her mouth tightened. At the promise, perhaps. At the memory of promises already broken. She gave one small nod and stepped away.
The gates opened.
Cold air rushed in, full of wet earth, smoke, and distance.
Horses plunged forward. Men shouted. Seamus drove toward the ash road at speed.
Cormac swung east with his riders. Reginald held the center line for fifty yards, then cut hard north where the ground lifted, and the wind carried the fire’s breath clearer into his face.
The holding came into view half a mile on.
One barn was fully lit, roof already beginning to fall inward in bursts of red.
Two smaller outbuildings smoked. Cattle bawled and shoved against broken pens.
Men ran, small and frantic, against the flame.
Beyond them, darker figures moved fast toward the north track, driving what stock they could seize before pursuit closed.
“Three with me!” Reginald shouted. Four came. They cut left through the muddy ditch line, using the smoke for cover, then rose hard onto the north track where the raiders least expected mounted resistance.
The first man turned too late. Reginald’s blade took him under the shoulder and drove him from the saddle. The second broke right; one of Seamus’s riders dropped him with an arrow before he found open ground.
Then the rest became noise and hooves and shouts and the old, terrible clarity of violence.
Reginald fought as himself. Not Donal. That name had burned away. Not FitzUrse the king’s man either, because no king stood behind him here.
Only the man at the center of the choice, with smoke in his lungs and Aingeal’s people in danger, and no excuse left between him and the work of keeping them alive.
A raider struck high. Reginald turned the blow and cut low across the thigh. Another wheeled behind him and lost nerve when Cormac’s men surged from the eastern flank exactly where Reginald had known they would.
Cattle scattered. One barn roof fell in with a roar of sparks. Someone screamed for water. Someone else screamed for his brother.
By the time the last of the attackers broke toward the marsh, two lay dead, three were wounded, and the rest were scattered badly enough that Seamus’s riders could hunt them after they put out the flames.
Reginald hauled the gelding around hard, breathing smoke, rain, and blood. The outbuilding nearest the lane still burned. He heard it. A child crying.
He dismounted before the horse had fully stopped and ran through the mud to the half-fallen fence, where one of Fintan’s men was trying to drag a beam clear with one useless arm.
“Inside?” Reginald shouted.
The man coughed black and hard. “Girl… back room…”
Reginald dropped the sword into the mud and raced into the smoke.
Later, he would remember heat more than sight. The taste of ash. A broken hinge under his hand. A small body curled against the far wall with both hands over her head, as though that might keep fire from choosing her.
He wrapped her in his cloak and carried her out, coughing and twisting weakly. When he thrust her into her father’s arms, the man stared at him with stunned disbelief, as if trying to reconcile rescuer and scandal into one shape.
Reginald did not wait for thanks.
By the time the fire was checked and the wounded counted, the black gelding stood trembling beneath him again, sides flecked white, one ear bloodied from some near miss Reginald had not felt in the press of things.
Seamus rode up through mud and smoke with two men behind him. His face was black with soot, his beard wet with rain. “They’re gone to ground,” he said. “We’ll not catch the last.”
“No,” Reginald answered. “But they’ll carry word back.”
Seamus looked at him hard.
“Let them,” Reginald said. He knew what word would be carried. Not that Donal O’Raida had come north. Not that a southern alliance still held.
That Reginald FitzUrse had ridden under his own name and cut them off at the ridge. Perhaps that would draw worse men. Perhaps nothing good at all.
But it was the first honest thing his name had carried in years.
He turned the horse toward the castle at last, smoke still rising behind him and rain beginning again in a fine, bitter sheet.
He might still be cast out by tomorrow night. The council might still decide one act of service could not balance weeks of deception. Aingeal might still look at him and see only the man who had made himself dear under another man’s name.
He rode toward the castle anyway.