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Updated: June 11, 2025
"No; your men," laughed Brian, liking this huge, merry giant on the instant. "I am come from O'Donnell Dubh to reduce you and fetch you to him." The smile froze on the giant's face. "I am sorry for that, yellow one! I like your face and your thews, and to find that you serve the black traitor of Bertragh is an ill thing." "I serve no man," answered Brian easily. "I need men.
Nuala had nigh three hundred men in her castle, and he felt that all was not yet lost, even should he have to yield Bertragh. The Dark Master would hardly have a large force with him, and he would know nothing of those hundred men Brian had loaned Nuala; so Brian reckoned that if he could get away, O'Donnell would think him a broken man who could do no further against him.
The axmen had gathered most of their loot and buried what was of value, for Brian had determined to return here from Bertragh and make use of the tower until he had heard from Turlough's errand. So now, at the head of thirty men, he rode across the narrow causeway with Cathbarr of the Ax at his side for friend and guide.
As Murrough had reckoned Brian's swoop on the convoy had given him some notoriety, and more than once Brian himself remembered Cathbarr's dark presage after he had let the ten Scots go free to Ennis; Colonel Vere was anxious to carry him back to Galway for an example to other freebooters, and he was quite content to bide at Bertragh Castle until his prisoner could travel.
Now, after a scant three days beyond Lough Corrib, he had twined his fate with that of other men, had set his heart upon winning Bertragh Castle, and had won both a stout friend and a stout enemy. For he counted O'Donnell as a foe, in which he was not far wrong. However, there was no time to be wasted, for fodder was exceeding scanty, and Brian himself had no heart for idleness.
If the Dark Master reached Galway town in safety, those O'Donnells from Millhaven would be around by sea to meet him, and the royalists would lend him men and guns to go against Bertragh in their cause. "Is there any likelihood that the Dark Master will miss those scattered men of his?" he asked Turlough, who rode on his right hand. "Little, master.
However, he had been promised some help, provided he could gather any force of his own and would hold Bertragh for the Royalists. Cromwell had been driven back at Waterford, but Cork had risen for him, and his men had entered there.
The Bertragh hold was built on a cliff that rose from the plain on the one hand, and sloped down to the water on the other; had the Dark Master not fallen into Turlough's trap, he might have turned out the pikemen to shift for themselves and have held the castle with his own men for as long as he wished.
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