Karen Robards - Dark of the Moon

"You! O'Malley! Stop 'em! T\im 'em!" They were all shouting at her as three other sheep whirled and pounded after the ringleader. Sure enough, the stupid creature in the lead was still heading at a gallop straight toward where Caitlyn stood transfixed just inside the whitewashed pickets of the closed front gate. But this was not a fleecy little white lambkin. It looked enormous, and furious, and it had horns.

Enough was enough. She was not risking life and limb to herd some murderous sheep. As it bore down on her, head lowered and baa-ing louder than Gabriel's horn, she scrambled to get out of the way. Her foot slipped in the mud where the sheep had already apparently churned up the moist earth, and she slid face first into thick ooze. The shock of it as she lay facedown in muck took her breath for a moment. Then what felt like a thousand-ton weight slammed into her left shoulder, and she realized that the bloody stupid sheep had run right over her. Her mouth opened at the pain of it. Black mud immediately filled her mouth.

When she surfaced, spitting mud, it was to find the four would-be sheepherders bent double with laughter. She glared, feeling fury start to heat in her toes before boiling up toward her head. They were laughing at her, Caitlyn O'Malley. Even the bloody sheep, bunched now with its three followers in the bloody corner, seemed to be laughing as it shook its horned head at her.

"So you think to make sport of me, do you?" She got to her feet, shaking her hands to send mud flinging from them, wiping her fingers down her face with no more success than to spread the mud around. From head to toe she was covered with malodorous black ooze. Inside, her temper was raging. She was filled with a desire to kill the guffawing foursome on the other side of the garden plot. Roaring inarticulately, she charged, fists clenched and murder in her eyes.

"l-ook out! Beware!" Still laughing, they scattered be- fore her assault, the one whom Cormac had called Rory leaping straight up to balance on top of the gray stone wall. Making sounds of inarticulate rage, Caitlyn chatted after Cormac, who was laughing the loudest. He ran, zag- ging this way and that as laughter shook him. Launching herself off the ground, she tackled him, catching him around the waist and knocking him on his side in the ooze. Laughing so that he was almost helpless, he rolled onto his belly, lifting both arms to shield his head as she straddled him, battering his head and back and whatever else of him she could reach with her fists.

"Here now, O'Malley, stop!" Cormac managed to get out between gusts of laughter. Lean as he was, he was still far bigger than she. But the laughter he could not seem to control weakened him, and Caitlyn's years on the street had made her tough. Add to that the fact that she was ragingly angry, and the blows she landed were damaging. Still, all he did to defend himself was block the blows aimed at his head, and laugh. Which only fueled her fury to greater heights.

Mickeen was scurrying toward them, stick in hand. "You there! O'Malley! Stop! Stop now, do you ken?"

Caitlyn knew she was in for a thrashing when he reached her, but she didn't care. The urge to kill burned strong inside her. From his place up on the wall, Rory was laughing even harder at his brother's comeuppance, while Willie, in the far corner of the garden across from the sheep, looked suddenly scared. His eyes went wide.

"What in the name of all the Saints is going on here?" The roar made even Caitlyn start and look around. There, on the other side of the gate which Caitlyn had recently abandoned to escape the charging sheep, stood Connor d'Arcy, Earl of Iveagh, giving off anger like a peat fire gives off heat.

You!" he bellowed, pointing at Caitlyn. "Get off my numbskull brother. And you… and you…" He pointed at Cormac, who was no longer laughing but merely grinning as he lay under Caitlyn, his arms still shielding his head even as he looked at his older brother; and at Rory, who was already jumping down from the fence. "Get over here and explain to me how you've come to make such a bloody mess of a garden that was just planted a week since!"

"Get off, you little monkey!" Cormac hissed, bucking Caitlyn off his back into the mud again as he got to his feet. He was as muddy as she, and wiped himself down with as much success as she'd had as he approached his brother. Rory, black-haired and thin like Cormac but a year or so older, squished through the mud at the same time, reaching the gate just before Cormac. Caitlyn, struggling to her feet, watched the three d'Arcys with hate- filled eyes.

"Well?"

The two younger d'Arcys attempted to explain, until Connor silenced them with a growl.

"I don't want to hear it. I want the garden replanted by tomorrow. Tonight we've got supplies to get in, but that'll have to wait until the gang of you has a bath. You smell like sheep dung, and I can tell you now Mrs. McFee won't have it brought in the house. You can use the horse trough to bathe. If you want to eat, you'll move fast."

"But, Connor, we-"

"Move!" he roared. "And take those two bairns with you!"

Connor turned on his heel and strode toward the house. Cormac and Rory turned back to the trio in the garden, their expressions wry.

"We'd best get this muck off," Rory said. "Conn's right. Mrs. McFee won't let us in the house like this."

Mickeen looked at the pair of them gloomily as they came toward where he stood with Caitlyn and Willie, the one fuming and coveied with mud, the other white and scared-looking. "His lordship's proper fashed with the lot of us, and no mistake."

"He'll be over it by the time supper's on the table," Rory said philosophically. "You know Connor."

"We never wanted to be sheep farmers anyhow," Cormac added. "I hate bloody sheep. But there's no talking to Connor about it. He says impoverished Irish nobility should be glad to have sheep to tend to."

"Farming's a good, respectable occupation," both brothers chimed together as if repeating something they'd heard many times, and grinned. Caitlyn scowled at them. Though they appeared to have put the contretemps from their minds, she was not quite so willing to let bygones be bygones. But with Connor still within probable hearing range, she was loath to take up where she and Cormac had left off. There'd be time and more to get back at him.

"That's enough sass out of the two of you. His lord- ship'll be wroth indeed if you're late for the meal on top of this." Mickeen urged them in the direction of the bam. Gesturing to Caitlyn and Willie to fall in, he trudged after Rory and Cormac. Once they were out of the garden, the ground was firm beneath their feet, but they squished anyway. They even had mud in their shoes.

Rory stopped in front of a wide wooden watering trough, climbed in, and sat down, clothes and all. Though he was not near as filthy as his brother or Caitlyn, still he was liberally spattered with mud. Like Cormac, he was dressed in a loose shirt and breeches, with wool stockings and sturdy buckled shoes. He didn't even bother to remove the shoes.

"Hey, brother, who said you could go first? You'll get the water dirty!" Cormac jumped in after him, and a good- natured wrestling match sloshed most of the water out of the trough. What was left was brown with mud.

"They're a pair, they are," Mickeen grunted to no one in particular, though Caitlyn and Willie listened avidly. Even Caitlyn, grudgingly, was beginning to find the d'Arcys fascinating. Never in her life had she met anyone like them. She didn't know what to make of them, and she guessed Willie did not either. "Always sportin' around and plaguing his lordship. It's a wonder he don't knock their heads together sometimes. But he's real patient."

"Conn, patient?" Cormac hooted, overhearing this remark as Rory briefly released his head from under the water. "Go on with you, Mickeen!"