The pain in his thigh was excruciating, but he could bear it. He had born worse and lived to tell about it. But the loss of so much blood was affecting his concentration. He was getting dizzy, and he knew that if the wound was allowed to bleed unchecked much longer, he would pass out. Only grim determination had kept him conscious this long. To lose consciousness would be to sentence both himself and Caitlyn to death, and probably the others as well. He doubted that they would leave him without a fight.
He was concentrating so hard on staying in the saddle that it was a few seconds before he became aware that Caitlyn was not behind him. Slowly, as if the information was filtered through dense fog it came to him that he had heard her gasp.
Sluing his head around, he saw that he was alone on Fharannain. Behind him, perhaps a furlong or so back, the dragoons were coming over the wall that Fharannain had cleared with ease moments earlier. A slight figure almost covered by a black cape lay crumpled on the ground just beyond the ditch. Though it was not much more than a darker shadow amidst all the other shadows that the night had made of rain-wet ground and ditch and wall, Connor knew it was Caitlyn. His heart lurched. She lay without moving, her posture so awkward that he felt a sudden, driving fear that she was already dead. The pursuit was clustering around her. If she was not dead, she was taken.
"No!" he screamed, though the cry emerged as a hoarse whisper. He was growing dangerously weak. But he had to hold on, he had to! He had to go back for her. Hauling savagely on Fharannain's reins, he tried to turn the big animal about. A wave of dizziness engulfed him. Fharannain reared, confused and frightened by the unaccustomed pain in his mouth. It was all Connor could do to stay in the saddle. He slumped over the horse's neck as the animal came down again on all fours. Liam appeared beside him, snatching Fharannain's reins out of his weakened hand, pulling them over the horse's head as he spurred Thunderer away from the shadowy riders clustering about Caitlyn's fallen form. Cormac, coming up on his other side, made a daring leap from Kildare's saddle to Fharannain's rump, wrapping his arms around Connor's waist as he grabbed his brother's pommel. Cormac's arms served as a barrier to keep him in the saddle. Rory was leading the riderless Kildare, just as Liam was leading Fharannain. With Mickeen in the lead, they galloped frantically for safety.
"Caitlyn…" Connor managed to groan through the blackness that was threatening to claim him. The pain in his leg was white-hot agony cutting through the descending darkness; the pain in his heart was worse.
"We can't help her now, Conn," Cormac said in his ear, his voice rough with grief. "There aren't enough of us. You're shot, maybe bleeding to death. Tis going to take all of us to get you home safe. We can't go back for her. If we do, we'll all be taken, or worse. Maybe we can rescue her later, help her escape from wherever she's taken. But now we've got to get you home."
"I'll not leave her," Connor muttered, but he could hold the darkness at bay no longer. It descended on him like a rung-down curtain, sheltering him from physical pain and heartbreak alike. He slumped over Fharannain's neck, his arms dangling limply along the animal's sleek black sides. Cormac's arms were the only things that kept him in the saddle.
With their pursuers distracted and appeased by Caitlyn's fall, the rest of them made it home to Donoughmore without further mishap. As soon as they emerged safely from the tunnel into the stable, Cormac eased Connor's limp body down to Rory and Liam, who between them just managed to carry him into the house and up to his room. The hole in his leg was hideous, the blood loss immense. But they all knew that when their brother awoke, what would hurt him most would be the pain in his heart.
Grim-faced, they worked frantically for a quarter of an hour trying to stanch the blood. At last the flow slowed to a sluggish trickle, then stopped altogether. As Liam tied the bandage in place, Cormac spoke, his voice loud in the tense stillness.
"I'm going to go find out what I can about Caitlyn."
Liam looked at him, his hands pausing for an instant in the act of knotting the bandage around Connor's leg. "Is that wise?"
Mickeen made as if to spit, remembered where he was, and swallowed it. " 'Twill be no help to the lassie if you go getting yourself taken too."
"I'll be careful. There's a pub in Naas-they'll know something there."
"I'll come with you," Rory said, and without further objections from the others, the two left the room.
When they returned hours later as dawn broke over the sky, Mickeen was waiting for them in the stable. He was sitting on an overturned bucket, his hands clasped between his knees, his head lowered. As they entered he looked up, his face as colorless as theirs.
"Is aught amiss with Connor?" Rory asked sharply, swinging down from Balladeer.
Mickeen stood up and took the reins from Rory. When he was upset, they knew he liked to calm himself by caring for horses. He'd started life as a groom, and in times of stress he reverted to his earliest habits.
' 'His lordship's awake and asking for her. He don't-he don't remember what happened, exactly. He's burning up with the fever. Liam's had to tie him to the bed to keep him from getting up to look for her. He knows something's amiss, but he don't know quite what. He's fashing himself something awful."
"Oh, Jesus." Dismounting wearily, Cormac said the words as much as a prayer as a sigh. He tied Kildare to a ring, knowing that in his present mood Mickeen would see to him as well as Balladeer and be glad of the work.
"What of the lass?" Mickeen asked.
Cormac's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "She's dead," he said unevenly, then drew a deep breath. "Killed outright, they said. And how we're to tell Connor, I don't know."
But tell him they did, later that day when they thought he could bear it. Liam gave him the news. Connor refused at first to believe. At last, when he did, the cry of grief that rose from his throat was a piercing and mournful as a wolfs howl at the moon.
And thus, for Connor, began the period that forever afterward he was to think of as the black night of his soul.