The Sassanacha were fools to climb up into An Corrshliabh after a long day’s march. Brian Og O’Rourke’s and Aodh Rhu McDomhnall were warned and waiting on either side of the bog by Bohar-Buidhe.
The bastard O’Rourke and McDomhnall despise each other but it must be supposed that they hate the Sassanacha more, for here they all wait, hidden in the woods and thickets as the Sassanacha plod through the pass, oblivious to the loaded muskets, knocked arrows and poised javelins.
With his chin, Seán grazes the Spaniard’s relic his mother gave him when he left Baile Easa Dara. He would kiss it if he could but the bow is half bent, his arrow snug against the bowstring. He feels excitement’s turmoil in his gut. He could burst out laughing in a moment. Give the game away with his hilarity. His eyes reach out to Seumas for support in his silence but Seumas is shaking too.
When the signal comes, he shrieks with laughter, launching one arrow after the next, each whizzing through the air to descend upon the Sassanacha. Muskets squirt acrid smoke into the air. In moments, he cannot see the enemy but he has their range as they struggle on the few slabs that mark the road then sprawl into the bog at either side.
When his quiver is empty, he ducks beneath his targe as English missiles loom out of the gunsmoke, fending off whatever he can until he hears the shout behind him and Sean and his companions scramble left while Brian Og’s McLeoid gallowglasses charge towards the Sassanacha, their mail-coats and axes glinting in the sun. He listens to the crash of steel, the whinnying of rearing horses, the low groan of a rout.
“Am bogadh,”Seumas says.[1]
And suddenly it is not so hilarious. Suddenly Seán’s legs won’t lift him from the grass.
“Bog!”[2]
Half-sword in hand, Seán runs, barefoot, behind the gallowglasses’ charge. In the bog below, Sassancha, McLeoid’s Hebridean gallowglasses and McDomhnall’s ceithrenn hack and stab at one another, slippery in the shough. They trample severed limbs and entrails in the melee. Disoriented Sassanacha who want to run, who swither, cringe and slither in the peat. Seán’s sword point pierces jack and muscles, again and again. His blade grates on bone. Men scream into his face.
Above him, one Sassana officer, hobbled by the mud, takes a bullet in his chest and falls. More horsemen charge into the swamp, their horses wading and turning, their riders beating down on the lightly armoured ceithrenn until Seán scrambles from the bog, pausing to catch his breath amidst the trees, wet and blood-soaked.
“Tá siad briste,”[3] someone says.
The musketeers are firing again, their bullets spitting like raindrops into the whirlpool of Sassana soldiery. The gallowglasses are moving. Hungry, Seán and Seumas join the slow march after the Sassanacha as they flee towards Boyle. O’Rourke’s musketeers march in good order, harrying and massacring the Sassanacha they catch. Someone has hacked the Sassana commander’s head from his shoulders to present it to Brian Og.
“Atá,” says Seumas. “Is fearr a fheiceáil cad atá fágtha.”[4]
Then, all at once, it is a hot summer evening. Quiet but for the flies buzzing on the spilt blood and shit of the Sassanacha. Marrow oozes from bones shattered by claymores and axes. Ravens arrive to feast on the piled corpses, tearing bloody trophies from eye-sockets, pecking at tongues that spoke a few hours ago. Soon the wolves will come. Seán shoos a brute of a crow off a Sassana’s face with the tip of his plundered broadsword.
It is best to plunder a body above the waist, they say. Take the jack or corselet, sark and whatever coin or decoration the hapless Sassana wore. Shoes, of course. But the jack and shoes he tries on feel odd on his body so he confines himself to coin and trinkets, bullets and powder but only what he can safely carry, for they know they will be on the march back to Colooney soon enough.
©John Bolland 2026
[1] “Time to move,” Seumas says.
[2] “Move!”
[3] “They’re broken,”
[4] “Ah well,” says Seumas. “Best see what’s left.”