She froze.

“Finian,” she muttered, barely moving her lips. His back was to her as he heaved their packs and the last sack of hides over the side of the boat, onto the grass. Then he turned and froze, too.

“Shite,” she heard him mutter. He came to shore, shaking water off himself.

“They have quite a range, don’t they?” she said, trying to keep her voice light, panic at bay. Truly, this was not what she’d been about when she agreed to come to Ireland. How had it gone so wrong? Seasickness or terror, she was going to vomit from one thing or the other before the day was through.

Seeing as they were now off the boat, that left just the one option.

Finian’s eyes never left the soldiers’ helmed, featureless figures. He moved about, tossing Senna her pack, picking up one of the sacks and resting it on his shoulder. He squeezed the slack neck of the other sack in a wide palm and, bending slightly, sailed it up onto his other shoulder.

“I wouldn’t suggest trying yer previous trick here,” he said. “They might insist on seeing the whole show.”

She shivered. The sun was hot and she was freezing. “What do we do?”

“Act like a poacher.” He started walking.

She hurried behind, lugging the heavy sack. They crossed the meadow at an angle. The soldiers made their way to intercept, getting closer. She could see their eyes beneath their helms, their unsmiling faces and sharp swords. Hear the creak of leather and the hard thud of wooden bootheels on the earth.

Finian finally stopped and dumped his bag to the ground, waiting for them. “How are ye feeling, lass?”

She jerked her gaze over. He looked like he was waiting for mass to begin.

“How are ye feeling?” he said again.

Terrified. “Fine.”

“That’s my girl.”

Four grim-faced soldiers stopped in front of them and fanned around to form a perimeter circle. Silence descended, then one of them, obviously the leader, spoke.

“What are you about, on this fine day?”

“Walking.”

He poked at the packs with the tip of his sword. “What’s in the sacks?”

“Otter hides,” Finian said.

She wasn’t surprised that Finian didn’t break gaze with the leader. She wasn’t surprised he could act so calm in the face of such danger. But she was stunned to hear a West Country accent come out of his very Irish mouth.

The soldier looked up sharply, too. Finian was dressed like an Englishman, as that’s what she’d grabbed for him from Rardove. But nothing about him bespoke the civilizing influence of the most predatory English. Long dark hair, sloping Celtic bones, those ever-blue eyes, his tall, muscular body, less accustomed to wearing mailed armor than to wielding a huge blade, or running for hours on end, or cutting peat out of the earth for winter fires.

Finian was as wild an Irishry as they could ever want to destroy. Even the young soldiers up the riverbank had known that.

But, just now, he sounded like an Englishman from Shropshire.

“You’re English,” said the soldier. Suspicion hung from his words like moss.

Finian nodded.

“You don’t look like it.”

Finian shrugged. “Would you? Out there with them, trapping?”

This was a convincing argument, apparently. The soldier grunted in what she supposed was approval. Men grunted a lot. His eyes slid to Senna.

“And her?”

“She’s mine.”

“She’s pretty.”

“She’s pregnant.”

The leader’s brow took on a suspicious winkling above the eyes. “And she was out there, trapping with you?”

Finian’s jaw set. “I just got back.”

The soldier stared, then lifted his gaze over Finian’s shoulder, to his men.

Finian shifted slightly, a small, unprovoking action, but Senna realized he widened his stance as he did so. He was getting ready to fight. And if she noticed it, they surely would, too. She felt the potency of the masculine posturing vibrate through the air, like she was in a room with a wave.

“Richard?” she said softy, touching Finian’s arm. “Why don’t we just let the good king’s men lighten our load, and be on our way?”

He ripped his arm away and looked at her derisively. “And give the lot of ’em an entire winter’s worth of work?” He glared at the soldier, who was eyeing the sacks.

“They look familiar, Jacks,” muttered one of the soldiers. “That green stamp on the sack.”

“Aye,” agreed the leader. “They do at that.”

“O’Mallery’s,” replied Finian in a tight voice.

Cold chills ripped up and down Senna’s chest, like invisible, saw-edged stripes. This was going to end badly.

“Gaugin’s,” countered the soldier, looking at Finian slowly. A corner of his mouth curled up. “The fur trader in Coledove. Them’s his sacks. And he don’t lend ’em out.”

“And that’s just where we’re headed,” Finian retorted. The tension spiraled thicker.

“Take them,” Senna said hurriedly. Panic jabbed at her belly with cold, stabbing pokes. She pushed her toe into the sack she’d dropped to the ground. “Take them to Gaugin for us, why don’t you?”

The leader looked at her, then back at Finian ever more slowly. “I think we’ll take you instead.” A brief pause. “O’Melaghlin.”

Finian knew a moment where his heart stopped beating, for the first time in a dozen years. He didn’t pause to consider ‘why now?’

He kicked out his boot and stepped in front of Senna, unslung his sword and, before the leader could even lift his own sword, Finian had sliced his through the soldier’s belly. Below the jutting iron nasal of his helm, his face looked surprised, then he toppled over, dead.

Finian spun to deal with the others with deft, rapid sweeps of his blade. His mind closed down during the battle, as always; it was all silence inside, narrowing attention and the feel of the earth under his boots.

But, in complete opposition to ‘always,’ he was for the first time aware of a person who wasn’t about to bring a blade down on his skull. Senna’s lithe form bobbed just outside their ring of battle, in danger, handling…was that a knife?

God save them.

He snapped his attention back and, with grim focus, absolutely overpowered the wiry young Englishmen, taking them down with quick, merciful strokes. And when the four of them lay like downed scarecrows around him, he held his sword hanging by his side, breathing rapidly.

Blood surged through his limbs, wicked fast pounding, urging him on, go, go, get more, now. Climb the side of a cliff, swim to the Aran Islands. It was at these times he knew he was an animal first, whatever God intended for his soul.

Gradually his breathing slowed. When his hearing returned, too, he looked over at Senna.

She was standing, mouth open, as if to make a very important point. Her chest was heaving, her breath short and swift. In her right hand she held a blade by its carved hilt, still hovering at shoulder height, as if she were about to throw it.

“I—I. Y—you. But, th—they…”

She was babbling.

“Ye’re all right,” he murmured, keeping his speech low and calm, to bring her back from the fringes of panic. “We’re well. ’Tis over.”

Her gaze was locked on him, wide, staring. She still held the blade, shivering, near her ear. He reached out and slowly pushed it down.

“Ye didn’t have to use it,” he said quietly, calmly. “Ye’re a’right.”

“I would have,” she whispered, vehement. Her voice shook. “I would have used it. I just didn’t want to…strike you. By accident.”

“My thanks.” He looked down at the soldiers, scattered in a semicircle, bleeding in the sun. Rardove’s men. Soon, someone would find the bodies. They had a day now, maybe half again, until the baron knew they were not headed north, but south.

Would he figure out they were going to Hutton’s Leap? Had Turlough, his captured kinsman, finally broken and revealed their mission to retrieve the dye manual? No way to know. And it didn’t matter. Nothing would stop him.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They left the sacks of skins. Someone would be along. And whomever it was, Finian had no desire to meet them.