CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“You’re moving better.”

Talfryn lowered himself to the ground beside Conor, where he ate his morning porridge. This time the extras were a few mushy bits of stone fruit, probably too overripe to be eaten by the settlement. Conor didn’t care. It was food —extra energy —and at least it gave flavor to the otherwise tasteless gruel.

Conor ran his fingers over his healing ribs. His short altercation with Dyllan had reminded him how far he had to go before he was fully healed, but at least it no longer hurt to breathe or walk.

“A few more weeks,” he said as he shoved the last of his breakfast into his mouth with his fingers.

“You may not have a few weeks. I don’t like the way the guards look at you. They know the last messages asking after your wife have come back, and now they know you’re well enough to fight. They’re waiting for you to make your move.”

“Then they will continue waiting. My work is not done here yet.”

Talfryn looked at their guard to see if their conversation had been noticed. “You owe them nothing. You owe Haldor nothing. Are you prepared to die here as a matter of honor?”

Talfryn was right, but Conor couldn’t bring himself to betray Haldor’s trust. He had asked a few more questions about Conor’s beliefs —not anything significant —but it was obvious the Sofarende leader was trying to reconcile Conor’s actions with his own expectations. He seemed to think, like Talfryn, that Conor was going to make his move any minute.

And if you’re smart, you will. Aine could still be out there somewhere. If she’s alive, she could be alone. Or she could be waiting for you in Aron. Are you going to languish in a Sofarende prison until Haldor tires of you?

Yet something in his spirit told him to stay.

“You must make a decision, Conor. Time is growing short.”

“Time for what?”

Talfryn just shook his head. “Be ready. Soon.”

Conor rose and took his bowl to the trough, where he rinsed it under close supervision and placed it in the bucket beside it, his mind spinning. Did Talfryn plan on making his escape and taking Conor with him? What could he possibly be planning? His chances alone were no better than Conor’s. Even if they overcame their guards, they’d be captured before they could ever breach the wall. The defenses the Sofarende had built against the Gwynn just as effectively kept the prisoners in.

Except Conor knew from his sleepless nights that there was a point when the guard changed and only one man stood watch over their hut. The walls were wicker and clay. It would be easy enough to break out, kill the single guard, and take his weapon before fading into the compound’s shadows. They would have perhaps ten minutes before the body was discovered —ten minutes to find a way out through the heavily guarded gate.

Conor shook his head, drawing a suspicious glance from the guard. It would never work. He was hardly at his best. He had no weapons. If he were caught, he would certainly be killed. What would Haldor make of an escape attempt after all the talk about honor and oaths before Comdiu?

Did you really mean it? Or were you just buying time?

The bonds seemed to chafe more than usual as a different guard walked him to Haldor’s longhouse and let him inside. Conor prepared the tablets distractedly, etching several verses without thinking about what he was writing.

Hear me, O Lord, defender of the meek.

I am beset by my enemies.

Raise Your sword in my defense,

And protect Your sons who are defenseless.

Conor stared at the verse he had just written. It was barely familiar, as if he had read it long ago but forgotten it until this minute. Why had he chosen those lines? Was he trying to justify his own conflicted thoughts? Or was this a direct message from Comdiu?

“It is hard, doing nothing, is it not?”

Haldor startled him from his thoughts. Conor set the tablet aside and tried to make his expression blank. “Pardon me?”

“You are accustomed to being useful, not hobbled like a horse in a pasture.” Haldor jerked his head toward Conor’s bonds. He hadn’t even noticed that the guard had forgotten to take them off, he’d become so accustomed to them. He shuddered at the significance.

“Men are not allowed to be idle at Ard Dhaimhin, no matter their role in the brotherhood. Our elders scrub floors and carry water, the same as the novices. Since Comdiu sees men as equals, so does the brotherhood.”

“These thoughts of yours are very strange. You say all men are equals, yet you have kings.”

Conor thought back to what Riordan had said to him when he first came to Ard Dhaimhin. “Leadership is a privilege and a responsibility, not a right. Those who are trusted with much are expected to do much.”

“As I said, strange.” But Haldor smiled. “I do not wish to practice your language today. Tell me about your brotherhood.”

So now they came down to it. “What do you wish to know?”

“You are warriors, aye?”

Conor nodded his head once.

“But you do not make war.”

“Not unless the war comes to us.”

“Who would be foolish enough to bring war against men who do nothing but learn to fight and use magic?”

“Men who fight with darker magic.”

Haldor’s eyes burned suddenly bright. “Tell me about this magic.”

Conor considered. The northerner could be trying to learn about the one thing the Fíréin feared, but Haldor’s tension, his intense interest, told Conor it was much more personal. But where to begin?

At the beginning, he supposed. “Balians believe in one God above all, who created both men and the beings we call the Companions. At the beginning of time, one of the Companions named Arkiel rebelled against Comdiu. He lost and was cast out of heaven with those who stood with him. Arkiel and the fallen, those our people call the sidhe, are allowed to influence the earth. Yet when Balus came to die for mankind, He gave the gifts of magic to help counteract the sidhe’s influence. To bind their power. Many of our brothers possess these gifts.”

Haldor nodded thoughtfully, and Conor could see him fitting together all the pieces Conor had given him in the last several weeks. “It is the sidhe that your brotherhood fights against.”

“In a sense. There are druids, like priests, who serve the Adversary and commune with the sidhe. Even if we don’t understand the full extent of their powers, what might they do if the gifts of Balus did not hold them back?”

Haldor just stared through him, unseeing.

A possibility surfaced in Conor’s mind. “Haldor, why did your people leave your homeland?”

The Sofarende leader turned to him, and Conor knew. These incidents were not just limited to Seare. Perhaps the situation was different, but there was none of the surprise or disbelief he had expected to see in Haldor’s face. He had seen such things himself.

“You may go now, Conor.”

On the way back to his prison, Conor realized it was the first time Haldor had ever used his given name.

That night, Conor tossed and turned on his mat, the glare of the moon through the gaps in the hut’s mortared walls interrupting his sleep. As if he could have slept anyway. Haldor understood the oppression of which Conor spoke; he was sure of it. Was that why he was meant to be here? To show Haldor the weapon —belief in the one true God —that could combat the evil that had overrun his northern home as it now swept over Seare?

Shouts rang out in the compound outside the hut. Conor jerked straight up on his mat. Talfryn crouched beside him, his teeth gleaming in the dim light. “Are you ready?”

The sounds of horses, men’s shouts, and clashes of steel grew louder, shuddering through Conor with sickening familiarity. The village was under attack. Talfryn crept to the door, but rather than try to open it, he threw his shoulder against a cracked section of the wall again and again. The plaster crumbled, the wicker frame splintering under the impact. Finally, with one last thrust, a section of the wall collapsed completely, spilling torchlight and moonlight inside.

At once, the prisoners rushed for the hole, stumbling over each other in their haste. Talfryn and Conor pressed back out of the way, waiting. A cry pierced the air as one of the prisoners was taken by the guard, followed by a Norin curse as the other men fell upon him. Talfryn tapped Conor’s arm and gestured toward the now-quieter exterior of the hut.

Men on powerful stallions rampaged through the village with swords and spears, killing all in their path. Across the planked thoroughfare, Conor glimpsed Haldor in his elaborately decorated helmet, ivory-hilted sword in hand. He cut down one of the horses and fell upon its rider before turning to face another warrior.

“Go!” Talfryn shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

Conor’s feet remained rooted in place.

“Your freedom awaits you! Run!”

Stay.

Conor’s blood thrummed in his ears, dulling the sound of battle. This could be his one and only chance for escape. After this attack, vigilance would be doubled. He would never get another opportunity.

Stay.

In front of him, a Norin warrior fought a man on foot, their swords clashing for a second. Conor realized in shock that it was Ulaf. The other man, whom Conor assumed to be Gwynn, fought with a smaller, lighter sword than the Sofarende’s heavy broad weapon, and he wielded it with a facility that most Fíréin would envy. One quick feint, which Ulaf was slow to parry, and the sword slid into the northerner’s middle.

Ulaf collapsed. Conor rushed to the warrior’s side and pressed his hands to the gushing wound.

“Go,” Conor gritted out to Talfryn. His insides twisted at the thought of what he was giving up. “Escape while you can.”

“Conor, don’t be stupid! He’s the enemy. You can’t save him.”

Conor looked at the blood seeping through his fingers and knew the words to be true. But something, that quiet hand on his spirit, would not let him stand up and walk away.

“It’s Comdiu’s will that I stay. Now go, quickly, before your chance is lost too.”

Talfryn looked stricken, but he turned and ran, taking up a sword from a fallen Gwynn warrior as he went.

Ulaf choked on a breath, blood bubbling from his lips and splattering his bleached beard. Conor cast around desperately until his eyes fell on a woman, brandishing a club as fearlessly as the men.

“You! Here! Your apron!”

The woman gawked at Conor, and he realized he had shouted in his own language. He repeated the command in Norin, and after a hesitation, she came to his side, pulling her apron from the front of her dress.

“Press here,” he told her, bunching up the linen to staunch the wound. Almost immediately, it turned crimson. “More pressure.”

“He’s already dead.”

He looked at the warrior’s face. Ulaf’s eyes stared sightlessly to the sky. Conor sat back in the dirt, unable to understand the sudden flood of despair. This man was his enemy. He had spewed the vilest imaginings, detailed terrible acts, yet Conor was struck by a pang of grief at the knowledge that Ulaf’s spirit was gone.

He sent the Lord of heaven as sacrifice, so that none need be lost.

Conor bowed his head beneath the weight of sudden understanding. He had said it himself only hours ago: Comdiu saw men as equals. Not as enemies fighting over land and resources, but as sinners who were lost. To Him, Ulaf was no different than Conor except that Conor had accepted the sacrifice made for him.

“You’re still here.”

Conor looked up. Haldor stood over him, holding a dripping battle-ax, his face, hands, and clothing spattered with blood. He looked like a Norin god, bent on vengeance.

“I made an oath before Comdiu to you. I will not go back on it.”

Haldor stared at him while the fighting dwindled around them. He looked at Ulaf and then the blood on Conor’s hands and arms. He shook his head. “I do not know you, stranger. Leave this place.”

He said it in the common tongue.

Conor watched him walk away, almost too shocked to react. The woman looked between him and Haldor, just as surprised. Conor reached down and eased Ulaf’s broadsword from his limp fingers, cast one last look at Haldor’s departing back, and melted effortlessly into the darkness.

Conor escaped the settlement without difficulty, staying close to the walls and concealing himself in the shadows. The front gate lay open, splintered, evidence of the battering ram used to break in. This was no hasty raid, but it wasn’t a full-scale assault either. Only a few of the Gwynn horsemen remained, fighting their way out, not in. Surely that meant they had accomplished their goal. Had they come to rescue Talfryn? Who was he to justify an attack on the Sofarende settlement?

Conor kept his eyes peeled for any signs of him, but the man had disappeared as quickly and quietly as Conor. Did the Gwynn have powers of concealment beyond changing his appearance, ones that Conor’s perception couldn’t penetrate?

The man —and the horsemen who had created the diversion —were surely his greatest chance for safety. The full moon illuminated the churned earth, scarred from the horse’s hooves. He followed the tracks northeast around the village and up a nearby rise, still concentrating on remaining unseen. He propped the flat of the heavy Norin blade against his shoulder. His arms, shoulders, and back ached as they had his first days at Ard Dhaimhin, and as his breathing became increasingly labored, pain stabbed through his ribs. He gave a mental prayer of thanks when he reached the top and slumped forward to catch his breath.

Warning prickled the back of his neck. He barely managed to raise the sword in time to block the oncoming strike.

“Halt! I’m a friend!” Conor circled to meet a second blow from the cloaked figure.

“Enough.”

A voice, laden with authority, cut through the fight, and his attacker disengaged. Conor glanced up to where several dozen horsemen waited. A man cloaked in a fur mantle moved toward him. Talfryn.

Conor didn’t lower his sword until the other warrior sheathed his weapon. Talfryn nodded to the man, who gave a deep bow before backing away. “My lord.”

Talfryn’s entire demeanor had changed. No longer was he the cringing, unassuming man pretending to be a house slave. He stood now with an air of command, armed with a sword that even in the dim light, Conor could see was inlaid with gold and precious gems.

“You escaped after all,” Talfryn said. “What changed your mind?”

“My lord,” one of the warriors called. “Forgive me, but we must be away to Cwmmaen before the Norin decide to give pursuit.”

Cwmmaen? Conor sifted the half-forgotten details of Gwynn genealogy in his mind. King Llewellyn had three sons, the second of which was —

“Prince Talfryn?”

A smile stretched Talfryn’s face. “Indeed, I am. I’m impressed, Seareann. Where does a common warrior learn the details of foreign succession? Unless you are not as common as you pretend. Didn’t King Galbraith have a son named Conor who was killed tragically young?”

Conor grinned. “Aye, he did. But you shouldn’t believe every report you hear.”

“Then, Conor with no clan name, let us be away. You ride?”

Conor followed Talfryn to where two riderless mounts waited. A man offered him the reins. “This was planned? I don’t understand.”

“I will explain. But not now.”

Conor looked down at the leather saddle with its hanging loops. Apparently Gwynn did not ride bareback like Seareanns. He thrust his foot into the loop and swung his leg over the gelding’s back. Convenient. This was a custom he wouldn’t mind bringing back to Seare.

He settled the reins in one hand and rested the sword against his shoulder once more.

“Can you use that thing?”

Conor glanced at Talfryn. “Aye. Though I’m better with a short sword.”

“Good. Because as soon as my wife learns you’re the reason for my captivity, she’ll likely try to separate your head from your shoulders.”

“I’m the reason for your captivity? You were there before I was!”

“Comdiu sent me to wait for you.” Talfryn grinned at Conor. “I suppose it could be worse. Hyledd will forgive me since the mission was successful. If I came back without you, I would never hear the end of it.”