It was stranger still that on that night I did not care whom I hurt. Conor’s face was white and drawn; he bore not just the burden of what had happened to his sister, the guilt of not being there to stop it, for they all felt that, but he knew at first hand my every feeling. He was tuned to my wordless curses and silent screams, my anguished sense of betrayal. You weren’t there. I needed you and you weren’t there. Such was the flood of emotion that there was no holding it back. My mind overflowed with pain and he took it all and never once spoke of it. But it could be read on his face. The worst of it was that I didn’t care anymore. My brother was a man too. Perhaps it was just that he should share the damage that men had done.

I must have dozed off briefly, for I remember waking with a start as Liam drove a bloodstained dagger into the earth by the fire and wiped his hands on his cloak. The three of them had returned. Diarmid’s face was a mask of fury, Liam’s tightly controlled. Finbar sat apart, and he held his hands to the sides of his head, as if his thoughts threatened to burst it apart. His hands were dark with blood. At home, the Armsmaster Donal had drilled them with iron discipline. Even I knew a weapon must always be scrupulously cleaned straight after use; cleaned and oiled and put away safely. Tonight it was different. Their three daggers stood in the soil around the fire, and its gentle flicker showed the bright metal encrusted with their quarry’s life blood. It had been a hunt, not a battle. A swift, violent meting out of justice. I did not care how many they had killed, two or three. I did not weep for the innocent caught up in something beyond his understanding. It was late, too late. My body ached, and I was scared, and even with my six brothers around me, I was all alone.

“Oonagh will pay for this in blood,” said Diarmid, his voice thick with fury. His thirst for retribution had not been slaked by the killings. “I will draw the knife across her throat myself, if no other will do it.”

“She bears responsibility for this, though maybe not directly,” agreed Liam. “But this is not the time. We have done what we had to. Now we must look to Sorcha. She must go from this place, and straightaway. How soon can she be moved, Conor?”

They discussed me as if I were a piece in their game of strategy; a prized one, but still just an object to be maneuvered to best advantage. I lay there unblinking, silent in the darkness. My body was throbbing with pain, my mind endlessly replaying the thing that had been done to me. I didn’t seem to be able to stop this happening, and I almost wished I had taken enough of the herb to blot it out for a time with a drugged sleep, nightmares or not. My mind would not be still; I could not focus my thoughts on a story, or count the stars, or take in properly what my brothers were saying.