The sound of wood on metal shook Finn from his thoughts.

  The road from the Red Tower ceased at a crossroads immediately in front of Uargal’s only gate. Garrisoned warriors slammed a large wooden board into the brackets behind the doors. The wall was just seven feet tall and offset the tower by ten feet, its sole purpose to protecting horses, wagons and any other equipment that could not fit into the tower.

  The captain, a young-faced man named Cronan, emerged from the tower and walked straight to Goll. “Do they mean to besiege us?”

  Goll scratched his temple just above the cloth band that covered his eye. “I cannot say.” He pointed at Maeve. “We’re not the ones they’re after.”

  Maeve remained in the back of wagon, kneeling, her hand flat against spot where her friend had drawn his final breath ten minutes earlier. A grey light had spread over Fergal’s body moments later, rising from his body in small tongues of cold flame. His body didn’t burn or smolder. He simply faded through the bottom of the wagon, leaving no trace of his presence behind.

  Niall rested a silver forearm on the side of the wagon. “Lass?”

  “What am I going to tell her?” Maeve muttered. “I don’t even have a body anymore.”

  “Just one moment,” Finn said to Rory.

  Rory cleared their throat. “They’d be foolish to attempt a seige, sir,” they said. “Maeve’s and Goll’s people had whittled their numbers down by a third by the time we reached them."

  Cronan raised his eyes to the narrow arched windows on the second floor of the tower. Three men leaned forward, their noses and chin now lit by the morning sun. “Do not wait on my word, and do not wait for a neogiation,” Cronan told them. “If they put a wet foot within your range, you pin it to the ground with an arrow. You’ll be fine enough where you stand.” The trio grunted in acknowledgment and withdrew their heads back into the tower.

  Everything about Uargal was smaller in scale than the keep at Norroway. It stood one floor shorter and was narrower by nearly a full room. No tents or outbuildings housed the soldiers between the tower and the curtain wall. The tufts of grass near the gate waved unbowed in the breeze. Finn took it as a sign that the gates rarely swung closed.

  The breeze also carried the sound of Fomori feet pounding the earth.

  “Maeve, look,” Finn said, pointing to the top floor. “It’s built like Norroway. You can let fly your arrows in any direction you please.” He rested his hand on the one she still pressed to the wagon bed and pointed his other thumb over his shoulder. “Though I’d prefer it if they flew in that direction.”

  She raised her head and looked back down the road without meeting Finn’s eyes. He squeezed her hand to get her attention. “Brigid will understand—”

  “—finish that sentence at your own peril, MacLaughlin,” she said. Her gaze sharpened and her expression darkened. “Let’s go.”

  Maeve kicked her legs forward and slid past Finn out of the wagon. “Goll!” she said. “Finn and I are going up top. He’ll need the space for his magic.”

  Niall grabbed her upper arm before she reached the door. “Maeve, wait.”

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  “You hear ‘em coming,” Maeve said. She pulled herself forward. “It can wait.”

  Niall held his grip, jabbed his sword into the turf and shifted his weight for another tug. “Lass, please.”

  Maeve took a step backward and turned only her head to him.

  “There will be time to reflect,” he said, resting his natural hand on her cheek. “Before you unleash all that merciless anger on yourself, we need you to give them who deserve it a heavy dose. Hai?”

  She swallowed hard and nodded her head by fractions of an inch.

  “That’s grand, then,” he said, his right eye now glassy. He released her and the two parted without another word.

  Uargal was better organized and maintained than Norroway; given its reduced space, it had to be. Finn and Maeve climbed past the supplies and storage on the first level. Maeve paused on the second floor. Three beds extended perpendicularly from the west wall, two did so from the east wall. A small table between them blocked the view of a cold fireplace.

  “Oi!” Maeve said to the waiting archers. “Why aren’t you doing this from upstairs?”

  The archer closest to them pointed out the window. “Look at ‘em,” he said. “They’re only coming from one direction.”

  She scoffed. “What happens when they get here?”

  “We stick ‘em full of arrows,” the archer said.

  “That’s not—nevermind.” She headed up the stairs. “Pure donkeys,” she muttered.

  Maeve set her gear on the table in the middle of the top level and examined the condition of her equipment. “When the time comes,” she said, “you’ll have to fetch those eejits from below. I don’t care if you pull them by the ear.”

  Finn looked over the wall. The invaders had not cleared the final bend before Uargal. “When the time comes, I’ll get them up here.”

  Finn tallied their forces. Five men garrisoned at the tower. Rory’s nine. Four Aos Sí. And now just three sílrad from Tyrconnell. “Twenty-one of us,” Finn said. “Unless they’ve brought more, I like our chances of holding this place.”

  “Well, that’s… just so lovely to hear, MacLaughlin,” Maeve said, her tone dripping with venom.

  Finn turned away from the window. “Sorry?”

  Maeve’s eyes remained on the arrows she had laid across the table. “I’m glad you think we can still hold this place with twenty-one people instead of twenty-two.”

  “That’s not at all what I meant and you bleedin’ know it.”

  She paused and leaned her hands on the table surface. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I understand. You have to know—”

  “—I’m not Donal. Stop trying to soothe my head. I don’t need it!”

  “What I’m seeing and hearing tells me otherwise,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at the road out of the tower. “We’ve little time. What happened was no more your fault that it was mine. Or Niall’s.”

  “They warned me. Back at Norraway, they told me this would happen.”

  “They did indeed. And what did you rightly point out?”

  “Finn—”

  “—Maeve?”

  She nodded. “And I was right. He would have forced his way along.”

  “None of us came here without acknowledging the risks. As we did last year. We nearly lost Niall, in case you forgot.”

  “Of course I didn’t, you self-righteous arse. This time is different.”

  “Because Niall survived last time?”

  “Because this time I was in charge!” she said. “Because that coward in the trees named me as the target.”

  “They’re coming!” yelled a voice from below.

  Nearly two dozen men rounded the bend into view. Half a dozen brutes followed close behind.

  Finn turned back to Maeve. “You let one of those eejits below us notice it before you did.”

  “Ah, here—”

  “—it was a miserable joke. Here’s where we have to leave things. You know me. The next time we talk about this, I’m going to give you several convincing arguments proving that you can’t beat yourself up any more than the rest of us. Until that time, can you simply trust that I have them?”

  “I’ll trust that you think they’re convincing arguments,” Maeve said, “and I’ll thank you for the trying.”

  “Grand,” Finn said. “Get you ready.”

  Finn surveyed the approach below. The raiders had not stepped within range. “I could prepare the field,” he said. “There’s only one way in. Lay fire upon the road.”

  Maeve looked up from the table, over Finn’s shoulder. “You’d split them wide and thin. The archers below would have a harder go of it.” Her eyebrows dropped. “What if you set the fires on either side of the road? Truly box them in.”

  “It could spread into the forest,” Finn said. “I’d become the mortal that burned the land within a week of—behind you!”

  A circle of grey light expanded behind Maeve. An ebony-haired woman of roughly Mrs. MacSweeney’s age stepped through the grey light with a single hand raised. “Calm yourselves,” she said.

  “Sure look, that’s easy to say when you’re the one opening a doorway behind a person,” Maeve said.

  The woman shook her head and cinched the left side of her mouth. “That’s what I told Herself only minutes ago.”

  Finn waved a thumb over his shoulder to the front of the tower. “Not to sound rude, but we’re in the middle of some ogeous handling right now and we’ve already lost one dear comrade. What’s your business here?”

  The woman’s umber eyes shifted to the approaching mass of invaders. “Aren’t I just in time, then?” she asked. “I’ll need you and any other mortals scurrying about to come with me. Right now?”

  “And why would we do that?” Maeve asked.

  “Because I need my sister to give my head some peace.”