Finian came back into the chamber with a mug of ale and stopped short. The two servants in his wake, bearing trays of food and more drink, almost ran up his heels. The king was sitting exactly where he’d been before, but Senna was gone.

Finian set the mug down carefully. “Where is she?”

The king shook his head.

He turned on his heel, went to his bedchamber and started throwing on his armor.

The O’Fáil came in behind him a few minutes later without speaking. The news spread, and soon more and more men crowded into the chamber, to protest Finian’s headlong pursuit of the Englishwoman.

“Ye should just let her go,” ventured Brian, his sleepy eyes grown sharp with anger when, alerted by the shouting voices, he, too, had stumbled into the room. Already ten or so men were standing around the small space, bumping knees and arguing.

“And ye should watch yer tongue,” Finian suggested, his words muffled by the hauberk he was tugging over his head.

Brian shook his head, rubbed at his eyes, and took the mug of ale a sleepy servant was passing around the impromptu council meeting. “We’ll be better off without her troublesome meddling. I don’t know why ye’re going after her.”

“And I don’t know why I don’t kill ye,” Finian retorted amiably, bending to tug on his riding boots. Alane elbowed his way into the room, already dressed in armor and a grim smile when he saw the men crowded in the room.

Brian scowled and sat down on a small bench by the wall. “So ye’re to start sniffing at bent grass blades, while the rest of us march to war?”

Finian ignored him, his hands taking unconscious inventory of the arsenal of blades strapped across his body as he strode toward the door.

Brian snorted before tipping the mug into the air. “I say good riddance.”

Alane kicked the leg out from Brian’s bench as he passed by. The bench overturned and the ale spilled. Brian sprawled on the ground a moment, then got to his feet, scowling.

Alane dropped onto another bench and swung his heels up on the small table, his gaze trained on the shadowy young warrior. Finian snatched up his gauntlets and headed to the door. “I’m off.”

Ten heads dropped into twenty cupped palms.

“And the men?” someone shouted after. “The muster?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Ye cannot go without the king’s leave,” complained Felim. He was dressed in a long tunic whose hem was lifted by errant drafts surging through the darkened tower room.

“Who said ’tis without his leave?” retorted Finian. But he didn’t look at the king. “And,” he added as he elbowed through the men, pausing as he passed Alane, who, for all Finian knew, thought him as mad as everyone else did, “ye’ll have Alane’s gracious good company until then, so I don’t know what ye’re all complaining about.”

“Och, they’ll not have me,” Alane demurred, still sitting with his boots up on the table.

“And why not?” Finian asked, glancing down at his lounging friend. “Ye’re going to be real busy, are ye, these next few days?”

“I am.”

“With what?”

“Guarding your sorry arse. Again.” He started getting to his feet. Finian clasped his forearm and dragged him the rest of the way up, relief and gratitude rushing into all the cold hollow places that had formed when he realized Senna was out there alone, on her way to Rardove.

“My thanks, friend,” he said in a low voice.

“You’ve saved my sorry arse a few times, friend, for much less noble reasons than rescuing an innocent. And anyhow,” he said, nodding to the king, “The O’Fáil will no’ let me leave you.”

The king watched them but didn’t say a word.

Amid the cries of their countrymen, they strode out of the room.

The O’Fáil tracked him and Alane down the stairs, past the flickering circles of torchlight and down into the darkness. When they reached the doorway to the bailey, he put a hand on Finian’s arm. Alane ducked out the door.

“She said to say you would make a fine king.”

Finian was running his hand over the various hilts and blades one last time, checking. He glanced up. “Ye told her?”

“Listen to me, Finian, ere you risk your life and the outcome of this war over a woman. You’ve been waiting for this moment for years.”

Finian lifted his gaze from the hand wrapped tightly around his forearm. Long hair hung over the king’s shoulders, but there were strands of gray shot throughout. Careworn wrinkles lined his face, and there was a light tinge of bluish haze in the eyes regarding him. In the dim, wayward light, his foster father looked old for the first time.

“You cannot go after her.”

“I can, and I am.”

The O’Fáil’s voice dropped to a baritone whisper. “Finian, I’m asking you as a father.”

The whetted edge of despair sliced a thin sliver off the surface of Finian’s heart. Throwing up his chin he clamped a palm on the king’s shoulder.

“Don’t, then,” he said thickly. “She’s my debt.”

“You haven’t a bigger one than her?”

Finian’s fingers tightened on the king’s shoulder. “Would ye have me dead?”

“I’d have you recall your loyalties, Finian. She chose this. Let it be.”

“And I choose this.” He said it loudly, hearing the belligerence in his words. It blanketed the anguish.

“Finian,” The O’Fáil said sadly. “You could be a king.”

Silence boomed through the small antechamber.

“So we’re losing you for a woman,” he said bitterly, when it was clear Finian had already given his answer. “Who did I raise you to be?”

“Ye didn’t raise me to abandon women, sir.”

Darkness turned The O’Fáil’s shaking head into a purpling transition of shadows, but there was no mistaking the warning in his next words: “I could stop you. Call up the guard, cut you down where you stand.”

Finian turned and kicked open the door.

“She said she did not need you,” the king called after.

“Aye, well, I need her.” He leapt down the small set of stairs and started across the bailey.

Alane, who had paused outside the door, said in a low voice, “I’ll watch out for him, my lord.”

The O’Fáil turned dully. “It hardly matters now, does it?”

“We’ll catch up with the slogad at the muster,” Finian called over his shoulder.

“You will not,” The O’Fáil said. He didn’t bother shouting.

Finian was already halfway across the bailey and didn’t stop. “I will.”

Senna made her way toward the sound of running water. The thunder of the powerful watercourse grew loud, drowning out everything else. She picked her way amid the wet rocks, slippery with moss, intent on the ground lest she slip and tumble into the frigid water.

She did not note the shadowy figure tracking her. Kneeling on a boulder, she did not notice it creep up behind. They stifled her scream when they seized her from behind, a wide palm slapped over her mouth, the other sweeping her legs off the earth.

They lifted her over the large boulders that formed a makeshift bridge across the river and carted her away under the pines.