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Updated: May 5, 2025
One of the long, back-curving blades had been rubbed down with files, so that it was very tapering and thin like an ordinary ax-blade, while the other was still the blunt, heavy thing it had always been. Brian read the cunning of Turlough Wolf in that handiwork, and in fact the great ax was thus rendered tenfold more deadly.
Nuala found instantly that there was meat in the plan, and as they were rowing out to meet one of her caracks, promised to send in the galley with word to Turlough when they got aboard the larger ship. This they were no great while in doing. Brian knew nothing of it, for upon the Bird Daughter's word he had dropped away into a faint once more.
Take my service and you will not regret it." Brian hesitated. After all, he considered, the thing came close to being uncanny. The Black Woman by Dee water; Owen Ruadh himself, and now this Ulysseslike Turlough Wolf whither was fate driving him? Was he really to meet such persons as the Bird Daughter and Cathbarr of the Ax, or were they only the figment of a crazed old woman's brain?
Of course, old Turlough swore that he had never breathed his name of Bird Daughter to a living soul, and that it was but a name he had used in his own mind for the slim girl who had fetched powder from the south. Brian chuckled, guessing that Turlough was not the only one who had seen carrier pigeons used, and who had ascribed the thing to higher powers.
So Turlough had decided, however, and he stuck to it. Brian then described closely how the four pirate ships lay in the bay under Bertragh, while Shaun went out to arrange the distribution of his men on Nuala's ships.
"Well?" asked Brian again, but a dull flush crossed his cheeks. "I gave you my rede," said Turlough sullenly. "I said to stand alone, receiving aid from neither man nor faction. Now there is mischief to be repaired." "Then my sword shall repair it," said Brian, and ordered the men to swing in after him. "Guide us to this tower of Cathbarr's, for my honor is in my own keeping."
Cathbarr watched in awe, never having seen this done before, so that Brian and Turlough had great fun with him. All his life the giant had lived in the mountains and he knew no more than his ax had taught him; though he had seen men smoke before, he had ever accounted it sorcery of some kind, nor could Brian get him to as much as touch the pipe with his finger.
Also, he had always thought of fate as coming to him suddenly and swiftly in battle or foray; and to be deliberately done to death in cold blood by hanging or otherwise was not as he would have wished. "At least," he thought without any great comfort, "Cathbarr and Turlough will avenge me on the Dark Master though I had liefer be living when that was done!"
Most of the fifty Turlough had chosen from those hillmen who had joined Brian by Lough Conn, so that they were not unused to such climbing, and remained with spirits unshaken by the vast loneliness that surrounded them, and to which other men might have succumbed somewhat.
If the Dark Master attacked suddenly, as he was like to do, brains would be more needed than brawn. On the other hand, he counted on Cathbarr's open face removing the evident suspicion that the smooth-tongued Turlough had raised in Gorumna Isle. It had been a mistake, he saw plainly, to send such an emissary on his mission.
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