Bass shook his head. He was getting nowhere fast with this so-called Righ of Airgialla. He wondered how such a ball-less wonder had ever gotten chosen to be a Righ to begin with. Where every other Irishman he had met in this world was seemingly hung up on wars and fighting, this one could think of little save planning feasts and entertainments. He was damned lucky that he had an old warhorse like the Ard-Righ for patron; otherwise he would not have lasted any longer as a Righ than a wet snowball in hell.
He nodded once. “All right, Your Majesty, forget your fucking feast. Me and mine will only be here long enough to collect our baggage still in Ard Macha and march on south, toward Tara.
“Your Ulaid border now is safe; Righ Roberto seems to have no designs upon any portions of Airgialla. Ard-Righ Brian’s orders to you—yes, I unsealed and read that letter, then resealed it, call me and my action what you wish— were to supply all the needs of me and my troops, make good any losses of horses, and pay us. upon completion of our service to you, at the rate of one ounce of gold per trooper, five ounces per officer, and ten ounces per belted knight, plus twenty ounces for me, their captain. I’ll expect payment in full of your treasurer, this day. Your Majesty.
“Don’t even consider trying to stiff me in some way. Your Majesty. As ill-defended as this place is, I own sufficient force to raze both your palace and your capital to the ground . . . and I am just sufficiently angry and disgusted with you to do just that given even the slightest of incentive or motive.
“Another thing. As much as I worried and sweated in your absence, I think I deserve a bonus atop the twenty ounces of gold. No, I don’t want more of your bullion, I’ll be taking the girl, Ita. with me.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the seated girl.
“But … but …” stuttered Righ Ronan. “But she is a most valuable slave. She’s thirteen, almost fourteen years old. a well-trained concubine for either men or women and, before you took her flower, a virgin. I had intended to soon send her for sale in Spain or in Egypt; so fair a girl will bring a very high price in such markets, even more if I have her first revirginized.”
Bass fought to control a rage that might well end in him striking the Righ’s too-pretty face with the knife-sharp edge of his Tara-Steel sword a few times, and the fat would really be in the fire should he do that: he might well then just have to sack and burn this place after all, in order to get him and his squadron out alive.
His jaws clenched so tightly together that he half feared his teeth might crack under the pressure, he grated. “You sad excuse for a man, you! You sent a helpless slave girl, a thirteen-year-old child, to bed with a barely known foreign mercenary almost four times her age, not even caring for her terror or for what he might do to her? My Turkish seamen have told me of one of Sultan Omar’s favored means of execution, and I had never before this moment imagined any crime deserving of so horribly protracted a death … but. now, you Righ of pimps and slavers, I think I have; if any living man or woman fully deserves impalement upon a dulled oaken stake, it is assuredly you!
“Nugai!” The tone of his voice brought the half-armored Kalmyk to his side in an eyeblink of time. “Nugai, take Ita out of this palace immediately. You and Yueh take her into the town and see that she has all that she needs for a journey down to Tara with us. Should anyone ask to be paid for the goods, tell them that Righ Ronan will pay. The same applies to a horse and a horse car of sufficient size to carry her, a driver, and her effects. Have Sir Conn there explain to her that she no longer is the property of this thing who calls himself a man or anyone else, that she may stay with me as long as she wishes to do so and that I will provide her needs, but that I do not own her. Now, take her and get out of this den of slavers!”
They moved out of Ard Macha just after the noon hour, all waggons groaning with heavy loads of supplies, several new waggons loaded with munitions from the royal armory, twenty-three head of spare troop horses, eight head of decently bred coursers, one of Bass’s warchests now heavier by nearly a hundred pounds of gold. Screaming, gesticulating, cursing merchants of many sorts and standings, some of them in tears at the thought of lost profits and of having to try to collect from Righ Ronan, flanked and trailed the column as it wound through the narrow, crooked streets. But none of them got or stayed too close, for—sensing the current mood of their captain—the grim galloglaiches and black-faced Kalymks had already and publicly done painful violence upon more than one merchant who had committed the cardinal error of protesting too much the otherwise-bloodless near-sacking of Ard Macha.
They camped that night only ten miles from Ard Macha and. not sure just what Righ Ronan might essay, maintained tight security. But they were already again on the march the next morning before a guardsman on a well-bred black courser gelding overtook them. A curt order to halt and the sight of some drawn pistols allowed Bass to relieve the same young knight who had offered, through Nugai, to bed with him of a folded, waxed, and sealed—and heavily perfumed—missive addressed to Ard-Righ Brian VIII. It was written in French, and so Baron Melchoro translated it.
“Bass, my friend, that puling wretch back there has herein laid at your door the blame for every crime save only regicide, incest, and public sodomy … but then, seeing him, this messenger girl of his, and some others I well recall of his court, I would imagine that sodomy, either public or private, is no crime at all within his domains.
“He seems unusually anxious to get back that slave girl of his; indeed, he mentions her thrice and the gold only twice.”
“Well.” Bass smiled as he shredded the vellum with his dagger. “I think we need not see the Ard-Righ waste his valuable time reading such fantasies.”
“What of him?” growled Sir Conn, hooking a thumb at the wide-eyed, sputtering Airgialla knight. “May I kill him. Your Grace?”
“No,” said Bass, “from what little I know of him and his habits, you’d dishonor your steel with his blood. Tell your galloglaiches to take his horse and anything else of his they fancy and to chase him well away from the road.”
A second galloper, bearing an even more slanderous message, overtook them during the next day’s march and was afforded equal treatment. That gave Bass two more decent coursers to add to his remuda and some of his galloglaiches a few bits of unexpected loot.
Bass was not exactly sure just what he could or would do with Ita. Since learning her true, very tender age, his guilt at having used her to his gratification and pleasure that night had so affected him that sex was now the farthest thing from his mind when he looked at or conversed with her through a translator. But one thing that he did know was that there was no way in hell or creation that he would see her ever taken back to her shameful enslavement in Airgialla, not if he had to kill half the adult male population of Ireland to keep her free.
“But how to be certain that she does stay free, that is the most pressing question,” he thought to himself as his courser maintained the slow, unhurried pace of the southbound column. “Brian is tricky, sneaky, sly. and set on his own ends, and anything that will advance those ends. I assume that he will next send me back north to see the Ui Neills and get their Jewel away from them by hook or by crook or by main force, if need be. I’ve stopped two of Ronan’s messengers, but another one is bound to get through to Brian eventually, and then Brian just might decide, with me in the Held, to ship Ita back to his bunghole buddy in Airgialla.
“I could take her down to Dublin and put her aboard Revenge—she’d be safe from Brian and Ronan there—but a warship that might go into action at any minute is simply no place for a young girl to live for who knows how long.
“No, I think the only thing to do is to send her over to England. That’s it, I’ll send her to Hal, along with a letter detailing some of her story and asking him to care for her until I get back from here. Now, who to send with her? Hmmm . . . Nugai … but I can’t send him alone. An Englishman would be best. I know, that man I knighted