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Updated: June 14, 2025
Turlough eyed them keenly, heard how the fight had gone, and then suddenly comprehended what manner of man this huge, bearded fellow was. His face cleared, and without a word he clasped Cathbarr's hand, and asked Brian for orders. "How far from here is Bertragh Castle?" questioned Brian. "It overlooks Bertraghboy Bay," answered the giant.
With him were two of Cathbarr's axmen, and they led him to the hold occupied by Murrough O'Flaherty of the Kine, where Brian stayed half a day. He concluded a friendship with the mountaineers, promising them powder in exchange for cattle, and they promised, in turn, that within three weeks they would fetch a hundred kine down to Castle Bertragh.
Brian had some two hundred men to house and horses to feed; he had good store of provision and powder, but Cathbarr's little tower was utterly useless to house the tenth of them all, while the stores would have to be sheltered. Then O'Donnell might fling his men on them at any moment, which would mean disaster in their present position.
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.
"There lies the tower, if I mistake not." Drawing rein, Brian saw at once why he had been sent on this errand. Cathbarr's tower was an old ruin at the end of a long and narrow headland indeed, at high tide most of the headland would be covered, for it was low and yet beyond shot of the cliffs.
Now Brian's heart filled with new hope, and after no long discussion they decided to adopt the plan. Nuala was of the opinion that a short cruise would do Brian great good, so they decided to set off that evening in her two ships, leaving Turlough to keep the castle against Cathbarr's return.
As he was to find shortly, O'Donnell's quick brain had already grasped at what lay behind Cathbarr's coming, or something of it, and he had formed the devilish scheme on the instant that scheme which was to result in many things then undreamed of.
"Said I not that you were a master of men?" he chuckled quietly, as he turned to follow into Cathbarr's tower. "But it is easier to master men than women, Brian. I bear you a bitter rede from the Bird Daughter, master." "Hard words fare ill on empty stomachs," quoth Brian. "Keep it till I have eaten."
In that case he would be at Cathbarr's tower before evening came, and he told Nuala to have all her men landed there at once, since she could hope to do nothing by sea against the pirate ships. When the writing was bound to the pigeon's wing he loosed the bird through the seaward casement, and bade Turlough blow out their flickering oil-light.
His men were like himself in this respect, and after they had fraternized with Brian's men they began to feel the same unbounded surety in Yellow Brian as Cathbarr expressed. Their axes were the usual splay-bladed affairs that their grandfathers had used under Red Hugh at the Yellow Ford, nor indeed in all his life had Brian ever seen another ax like to that of Cathbarr's.
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