“A raid!” Chief Fearghal cried. Only when he spoke did Ardahl realize he was livid with rage. “They came to take back the chief’s brother that we held prisoner.”
“And got him,” Dornach announced. “All who guarded the man, dead.”
“Then they fired the hall and battled to provide a distraction, and get him away.”
“How many dead?” a breathless Cathair asked, and corrected himself. “How many o’ ours dead?”
Fearghal shook his head. “Too soon to tell. We will take count when the sun comes up.”
“They will be back,” Dornach said in a growl. “Ye know that, d’ye, my chief? They ha’ hurt us, and will return wi’ a larger force.”
The chief grunted. “Let them but try. We will be more than ready for them.”
Chapter Nineteen
The sound ofweeping filled the stand of trees where Liadan and her party had come to rest. They were supposed to keep silent, yet Liadan did not suppose a group of displaced women, many with children and guarded only by old men who shared but a few weapons, could hold their tears.
They had bunched up in small groups high on the flank of the hill. Up any higher, they would lose the cover of the trees. Terror gripped them all, and as the sun came up it was joined by grief.
Below them, the settlement lay in ruins, great gouts of smoke trailing up like desperate prayers. Here and there flames still leaped. Liadan could see distant figures rushing about. Trying to put the fires out?
She did not know who remained alive down there. Who lay dead. Indeed, the women around her spoke of nothing else. Whispers of “My man.” “My son.” The old men spoke instead of the attack, pondering how and why it had come about.
Liadan, having the two most dear to her in all the world at her side, was fortunate. She had only to worry for friends. For cousins.
For Ardahl MacCormac.
She should not worry for him, the serpent. But her last sight of him, Conall’s sword in hand, covered in wounds and racing into the fray, had burned into her mind.
He might even now lie dead. What would it mean to her, and hers, if he did?
They would be free of him. Free of his presence in the hut. In their lives.
With no one to look out for them. Stand for them.
He it was who had got them safe away, neglecting his own mother to do so.
She looked at her mam, who had come awake and sat miraculously quiet at Flanna’s side. No draughts here. Liadan did not know if the healers had survived. If the druids had. The chief and his family.
“’Tis no’ over, this,” said one of the old men who stood in a group near Liadan, Flanna, and their mother. “Dacha will have come to take back his brother. If he has not got him, he will come again. If he has taken him, they will return to destroy us.”
Destroy?
Liadan tipped up her head and regarded the beautiful morning. The clear blue sky. The sparkling stream below them—the same that meandered around the foot of the hill and eventually formed the boundary of their lands. The sweet light flowing over the hills.
She had never known any place but this, and she loved it dearly. How might it be destroyed?
Yet she’d learned, had she not, that the things one loved most could be lost. Her da. And Conall.
Och, Conall. I wish ye were here.
Flanna put her arm around Mam and drew her closer. It seemed as strange for Mam to be quiet as had her endless lamenting, and she had a hollow look in her eyes. One shared by the other women.
Liadan learned toward the both of them. “Mam, are ye—”
“Someone is coming,” one of the lads, no more than thirteen or so, called out.
Everyone stared down the slope. A party of three men had broken from the edge of the settlement and jogged toward them.
