“I thought we’re leaving at dawn,” Donal said with a groan. “The sun’s not up yet.”

Niall shifted his end of disassembled tent boards to a shoulder and pointed to the golden tops of the forest behind them.

“Sun’s up; we’re late.”

Finn returned from the Carrowmanaddy and handed each person a filled water skin.

“You pulled it from the flowing river itself?” Niall asked. “Not some bog puddle?”

Finn wrinkled his face and pulled his head back.

“Of course I did,” he said. “Right until the river ran out of water. I had to fill yours up from the pool of water that formed in my muddy footprint.”

“Shut your bake, and help them finish loading,” Niall said.

Niall shook his head and looked at Donal as they slid the boards into the wagon.

“Your brother can be a bit of a dose sometimes.”

“Sure, but it just makes you all appreciate me more.”

“Does it, now?” Niall said.

Siobhan dumped dirty water from the two small wash buckets on the fire. Maeve checked the horses one last time.

“Are we ready?” Niall asked. “No jokes.”

“Ready,” Siobhan said.

“We’ll walk with the horses while we’re in the forest and out of the sun,” Niall said.

He cast an eye to the sky, then looked at the brothers.

“Put on your mantles if you haven’t yet done so.”

“I left them back home,” Donal said. “Murrough told me to pack for a few days. It’s been five days since. I’m not cold anyway.”

“That’s not the point of it,” said Niall.

Niall nodded to Siobhan. She reached into one of her larger bags and pulled out two long green cloaks trimmed in black and threw one at each of the brothers.

“Green?” said Finn. “I thought your family colors were red and yellow. That’s what your mam wears.”

“Those aren’t MacSweeney colors. She was an O’Donnell before she was a MacSweeney,” Siobhan said. “Between us, I think she still wears her family’s colors because she likes how she looks in red.”

Donal noticed her smile fade as she turned away.

“Fine,” said Niall. “Can we go now?”

They walked south into the forest. Within ten minutes the trees around them stretched thirty to forty feet above their heads. Sunlight found its way to the forest floor with only moderate resistance from the oaks and Scots pines interspersed among the slender white trunks of aspen and birch. The stagnant smell of the bog gave way to the scent of pine and damp dirt.

The road ahead rose to meet a saddle between two hills. Worried of the unseen descent, Niall opted for a smaller trail on level ground. The trail circumnavigated the eastern hill and rejoined the main road on the other side.

The sun was more than an hour from midday and retreating behind light clouds as murky as soapy water. The trees around them leaned away from the darker skies approaching from the right.

“Mount up,” Niall said. “Maeve, you trail.”

Maeve climbed Scáth and held her in place until Siobhan led the wagon past. The forest retreated from the left side of the road behind a cemetery. Roofs of several homes peaked over the trees in the distance.

“Cashelmore,” Niall said. “We’d have to leave the main road to get there.”

The group pulled their hoods forward as heavy droplets of rain slowly thumped around them.

“Any more of the fear gortas?” Maeve asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Niall said.

Four men approached from the other side of the cemetery. All of them wore hauberks. The lead man wore spaulders on his broad shoulders and a Norman helmet that covered the bridge of his nose, the straightness of the nasal guard betraying the misalignment of a previous break. His greatsword was unsheathed and he held it over his right shoulder behind his head.

The two men that flanked him wore spangenhelms with leather straps over their ears. Their short swords were sheathed, and the stronger of the two held the opening of a bag he had flung over his back.

“Howya, fellas?” Niall asked as they approached.

None of them said a word or even looked at Donal’s group. The front three men marched in step without pause.

The fourth man tucked himself behind the wedge created by his comrades. The hauberk he wore hung lower than the rest. He carried no weapons and wore no helmet. Donal suspected the rain wasn’t the reason his hood was pulled forward.

As the wagon pulled even with the group, the last man raised his head and stared straight at Donal. The thick hair that hung between his hood and his head was black and curly. His long, gaunt face ended in a pronounced chin.

An unknown force grabbed Donal’s stomach from inside his body. The longer that the man held Donal’s gaze, the more his stomach was squeezed, twisted and pulled. With each pull the green in the man’s irises pulsed with more color.

A tap on the shoulder broke the connection. Donal turned to his brother.

“You can’t be staring at people,” Finn said.

“I swear to you that he started it,” Donal said. “Do us a favor, don’t prod him on that, though. The man seems off, and his friends seem ready for a fight.”

Donal and Finn looked at the men walking away. Green Eyes looked forward as if Donal was never there.

Their mantles were fairly ornate: a muted violet color with black trim. The three more traditional-looking warriors had a patch sewn onto the middle of their cloak with an image of a yellow lion with goat horns. The cloak worn by Green Eyes had the horned lion depiction embroidered directly onto his mantle.

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Niall stopped the group once they reached the next crossing.

“Did you see those shapers?” Niall asked.

“They were hard to miss,” Maeve said.

“What do you mean?” Donal asked.

“The state of ‘em, walking in formation between towns in full chainmail and helmets, yer man holding that sword on his shoulder as if he’s off to battle.”

“Maybe he was,” Donal said. “Maybe they’re off to fight the fear gortas?”

“They might run into ‘em, and they may fight ‘em, but that bit back there felt more like they were putting on a show for us and anyone else they see on the road.”

“Donal mentioned the smaller one hiding in the back was a bit off,” Finn said. “I’m inclined to agree.”

“Between the creatures and those men, I’d say a lot of things are off,” Niall said. “Let’s head into Cashelmore and ask around. Maybe we’ll eat, too.”

“Did we bring money?” Donal asked.

Donal couldn’t remember the last meal he ate that wasn’t in his or a friend’s house. With all they had packed, he assumed it would be campfire meals most of the way.

Niall pointed to Siobhan.

“We each brought our own funds. That’s all you need to know and more than you need to tell anyone else.”

They turned east and stopped in front of a building at the first main crossing in town. It was the largest in its vicinity. In addition to two horse stalls, there had been two separate attempts to expand the structure, judging by the color and age of the wood used.

Niall and Maeve rode their horses up to the front door and tied them to a beam next to the building. Siobhan maneuvered Gála down the street and brought the wagon to the building in a more favorable position where she tied the horse up as well.

“I’ll hang back with the horses to see how the locals respond before I come in,” said Maeve. “Who knows? Maybe they’re the talkative kind.”

Donal followed Finn through the front door. It resembled a giant house with none of the coziness. Four large tables were set up in the common room, all empty at the moment. A pot of perpetual stew hung over the fire.

“It’s a little early to be needing a bed,” the innkeeper said. “Food, is it?”

“Five bowls, please,” Siobhan said as she handed the grey-haired man some coin.

“There are four of you. One of you eatin’ twice?”

“Our other friend will join us soon.”

The innkeeper grabbed a stack of five bowls from a chest near the kitchen and limped to the fireplace. Finn followed him.

“Would you like any help with that, Mr.?”

“O’Doherty. I’ll be fine, go sit at one of the boards and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Thank you, I will.”

“Is this place yours?” Niall asked.

“Not anymore. It’s my son’s now. He’s working the fields at his own house. He’ll be in later this evening.”

“You’ve been here a while, yeah?”

“I have,” Mr. O’Doherty said.

He sat the first two bowls down in front of Siobhan and Donal.

“Have you seen anything unusual lately?” Finn asked.

The old man hesitated on his way back to the fireplace before he reached for another bowl to fill.

“That depends on what you mean by ‘unusual’ and ‘recent,’ lad.”

“Say the last six months or so,” Finn said. “Any talk of odd things happening north of town? Or even in town?”

“At a place like this? I hear a lot of odd things every night. Most of them are exaggerations brought on by the ale, but as of late travelers from the south talk about horses and cows going missing, even a few people.”

“Did you say from the south?” Siobhan asked.

“Creeslough, Tearmann, those places,” the old man said.

“But no reports from the north?” she asked.

“Not particularly,” Mr. O’Doherty said.

The old man set down the next two bowls and turned to fill the final order.

“Well, you have one now,” Niall said. “Anyone going up toward Portnablagh needs to travel carefully and in numbers.”

“And with a fair amount of food,” Finn said.

Niall pursed his lips at Finn and shook his head.

“I’ll… keep that in mind,” the old man said.

“Say, as we were coming into town we passed some men,” Niall said. “Purple cloaks, an odd lion with horns in the middle of ‘em. Know anything about these men?”

The old man froze again, this time short of their table. He looked at the front door as if a bandit just kicked it down.

“I’m not sure I can help you,” he said.

Siobhan dropped some more coin on the table.

“I don’t know who you’re afraid of, but we mean you no harm,” she said

He eyed Siobhan for a few seconds. With another glance at the door, he sat down next to the group and leaned in.

“I’ve seen them outside the church lately,” Mr. O’Doherty said in a hushed voice. “I think they’re stirring up trouble. They got this lad, Brady, and he’s telling people around there that our farming problems are because we’re straying from the Norman and Catholic ways.”

Niall and Siobhan shared a confused look.

“Brady—Could his name be Breaslin?” Niall asked.

“That’s the name,” the old man said.

“Do you believe what they are saying about the blight?”

“I’ve been around a long time,” Mr. O’Doherty said. “I’ve seen good and bad harvests, and I’ve seen people trying to attach all manner of causes between the two. We’ve been ‘straying’ from the Norman ways for a hundred years or so. I don’t why it would come to a head at this particular moment. It’s just too convenient.”

Niall flipped a coin of his own to Mr. O’Doherty.

“Good man,” Niall said. “Don’t forget about what we said about going north from here.”

The old man smiled.

“Your friend’s still waiting outside, right? Would you like me to take this bowl out to them?”

“Not as much as she would,” Niall said.

The innkeeper nodded and carried the bowl out the front door.

“I don’t understand,” Finn said. “Breaslin’s Fomori, right? At least half-Fomori, that is. What does he have to gain by turning the Normans and Christians against his own Gaelic people?”

“You’re assuming that he considers all Gaelic people ‘his own,’” Siobhan said.

“The more people he gets to fight amongst each other, the less people there are to pay attention to what he’s actually doing,” Niall said.

“Which is?” Finn asked.

“Something we hope to find out when we get down to Gartan,” Niall said. “We should get going soon. Sounds like we have to be careful where we set up camp tonight.”

“And why can’t we get rooms here?” Donal asked. “A straw bed is better than sleeping on grass or in a wagon.”

“We have more control over our surroundings,” said Niall. “I suspect as we go further south we may run into more of our purple friends. I don’t want to put us in a position of guessing which locals we can trust.”

“It also gives us space—and privacy—to train. Maybe townspeople won’t bat an eye at Donal and I sparring on the green, but you two practicing spells in public is another matter. You two could become the symbol of that nonsense Breaslin is spreading.”

The old man returned to the common room holding the bowl meant for Maeve, his eyes wide and eyebrows raised.

“What’s wrong?” Donal asked. “Did Maeve refuse your food?”

“Our apologies,” Siobhan said. “Sometimes when we’re on the road she can get a bit curt.”

“It’s not that at all,” Mr. O’Doherty said.

He turned the bowl to show the table.

“She just tipped the bowl back and ate the stew in two passes,” the old man said.

“I suppose we’re late, then,” said Niall. “Let’s all finish up so we don’t keep her waiting too long.”