Lord of the Isles (Coronet Books) (2 page)

The newcomer swept up in fine style, scarcely slackening speed until almost alongside and then pulling up in a few lengths with back-watering sweeps in masterly precision and timing, great sail crashing down at the exact moment and the helmsman bearing on his long steering-oar to swing the craft round on to the other stationary ship only a few yards from its prow, all in a flourish of dramatic seamanship. Saor Sleat MacNeil was like that.

A shout, part bark, part crow, part laugh, spanned the water-gap. “No shipping, no Norsemen, Somerled! Only a few fishing-cobles at Mingary and Kilchoan. And some dotards and old wives. We have it all to ourselves, man.”

The fair-headed young man had risen. “That is well,” he called back. “But why, then, half-slay your crew? In your return? I need these men for better work than as playthings for your vanity, Saor MacNeil! Mind it!”

“Yes, lord,” the other acknowledged, grinning.

“Take heed, Saor—or you will find it difficult to laugh, hereafter! Even you.” That was quietly said but with a sibilant hiss in the Highland voice.

Considering those actual few words, the impact of them was rather extraordinary, quite transforming the scene. Where all had been relaxed, all but somnolent, in tune with the warm May afternoon, abruptly in those ships there was a tension. Men sat upright on the rowing-benches. Saor MacNeil himself stood stiff, grin gone. The quiet sounds of lapping water and crooning eiders seemed suddenly loud. Somerled MacGillebride MacGilladmnan MacFergus, roused, could frighten other men strangely, possessed of a violent shattering force supremely at odds with both his years and normal pleasing appearance and habit. That none knew just what could be expected to rouse him, was part of the difficulty.

For long moments this pause lasted. Then Somerled jerked a beckoning hand. “Come you aboard,” he commanded, but mildly enough now.

Saor MacNeil wasted no time. He flung an order to his oarsmen on the starboard side, who dipped in their sweeps in a single controlled motion which slewed the galley’s fierce prow round to leeward through a ninety-degree arc, to close the gap with the other vessel, whilst he himself leapt down from the stern-platform, ran lightly along the narrow gangway between the two sets of rowing-benches, sprang up onto the bow-platform and so was in position to jump the yard or two of space as the two prows came together, an agile, exactly-timed performance, like so much of what that man essayed—for he liked to impress.

Somerled smiled, less than impressed. And as the dark man leapt, so, as exactly timed, the fair man’s fist flashed out, to take the leaper on the shoulder and spin him round and backwards. Balance gone, agile precision likewise, arms waving wildly, MacNeil toppled and fell, outboard. He hit the water with a splash and shouted curse.

A howl of mirth rose from the packed benches on both craft.

Stooping unhurriedly, Somerled picked up a rope and tossed it over to the flailing swimmer, to draw him up and aid his streaming person back and over the side. Then, as MacNeil panted and glared and spewed out salt water, the other clapped him on the wet shoulder with a blow which almost felled him, and burst into a shout of laughter.

“Ardour cooled?” he demanded.

For a second or two the dark man’s eyes flashed dangerously; but meeting the amused but cool and piercing gaze of the other, he swallowed and shrugged and the grin reappeared in some fashion on his dripping, trim-bearded features. After all, Somerled was his foster-brother.

“Yes, lord,” he said again, but in a different tone from last time.

“Yes, then—so be it.” The Lord Somerled waved forward two others to the prow-platform, Conn Ironhand MacMahon, the steersman, and Dermot Flatnose Maguire, captain of gallowglasses, both Irishmen from Fermanagh, as were all save the pair already forward. When these came up, he at once reverted to the quietly businesslike, turning to face the south and the islands. He pointed. “This is the back-door to Morvern. Our rear, we hear, is safe from Ardnamurchan meantime. And we are hidden from Mull. No sail is in sight. God willing, this will serve. We beach the galleys behind this Oronsay, eat, and then march. March by night.”

“March?” Dermot Flatnose said. “My lads are seamen, see you—not bog-trotters!” He spoke with the Erse brogue, so different from the lilting soft Hebridean tongue of Somerled which was so genial and so deceptive.

“They will march, nevertheless, my friend—march far and fast. And as like as not fight at the end of it. Or I will know the reason why!”

Maguire held his tongue.

“There may be as many as ten miles to cover, at a guess. I have not been here since I was a lad, mind. Up yonder glen, by Loch Teacuis and through the hills beyond to the Aline River, then down to Kinlochaline. The clachan there is where we make for, the principal place of this Morvern, where my father used to have a house. And where the Norse are like to be. For whosoever holds Loch Aline, if they have ships, holds the Sound of Mull and the key to the Firth of Lorn.”

“Why march by night, lord?” Conn Ironhand asked. “If the men must march and fight, will they not be fighting better rested and in God’s good daylight?”

“Perhaps. But the only way we may succeed here is by surprise. We have less than two hundred men, leaving some few with the ships. Even if they are all heroes, two hundred will not take Morvern from a thousand Vikings and more. There must be no warning. The local folk, these MacInneses, are much cowed, we know, lack spirit after all these years under the Norsemen’s heavy hand. We cannot rely on them for help. And some might even warn of our presence in their hills. We march by night.”

“The gallowglasses will not like it.”

“I do not ask them to like it—only to march.”

Saor MacNeil hooted. “And Mary Mother of God help them!” he said. He had stripped off his hide jerkin, ragged shirt and kilt and was wringing them out, standing naked and by no means ashamed or hiding himself.

The two Irishmen exchanged glances.

“See you to it, then,” Somerled told them. “We row in behind this Oronsay. The passage is narrow and opens only towards the west. At the east it shallows and dries out at low-water. In there is a creek where we hide the galleys. Back to your ship, Saor, and follow me in. To your helm, Conn.”

Gathering up his clothes in his arms and laughing, MacNeil the exhibitionist beckoned his own galley’s bows closer and, naked as he was, leapt the gap once more, already shouting orders to his crew, who commented in frankest fashion. Somerled, watching, smiled. He was fond of that odd character, but well recognised the need to keep him in some control.

Quickly the two galleys were on the move again, wheeling about, first westwards then south round that promontory of Oronsay and in eastwards thereafter between the island and the mainland of Morvern by a channel little more than two hundred yards wide, and shallow—but not too much so for the shallow-draught galleys, provided that they kept to the centre, although they could see the waving weeds of the rocky bottom in the clear water below them. It was half-tide. Half-a-mile of narrows and the channel widened out to an almost landlocked lagoon a mile long and half that in width. The south or Morvern shore was open woodland sloping upwards; but to the north Oronsay itself was cut up here, like the rest, with narrow probing inlets. Into the central of these Somerled manoeuvred his galley, and cautiously, for there was barely space for the long oars to work, to beach his craft almost half-a-mile deep into the rocky isle, MacNeil close behind. A more secret and secure hidingplace would have been hard to find on all the intricate thousand-mile coastline of Argyll—but no place to get out of in a hurry.

“A death-trap!” Conn MacMahon called, critically, and a growl of assent rose from the rowing-benches.

“Just that,” Somerled agreed. “If we are for dying, hereafter, as well here as anywhere! But matters will be in a bad way, whatever, if we need to fight our way out of here.”

Unconvinced to say the least, the galley crews shipped their oars, gathered their gear and arms and made their way ashore.

There was wood about the place, a little scrub-oak and birch, also dry driftwood above the tidemark, and the Irish were for lighting fires and boiling a porridge of oats and roasting the venison, brought from the Isle of Rhum where they had left Thane Gillebride, Somerled’s father, and the other half of the expedition. But Somerled would not allow it, however welcome would have been a cooked meal as against raw venison or old smoked beef and oatmeal mixed with cold water, shipboard diet. He had not gone to all this trouble to hide their arrival in Morvern, to give their presence away by the smoke of camp-fires. But, since they had time enough, and it was necessary to keep these Irishry in as good a temper as was possible, he offered them a diversion. No doubt they all had seen a number of wild-goats on the small cliffs of Oronsay, as they waited? Those who felt so inclined could go goat-hunting for an hour or two and stretch their legs after the constriction of the galleys—provided always that they kept to the north side of the island where they would not be seen from the mainland. Not that Morvern was populous—indeed it was the least populated area of all Argyll and this north-western corner in especial had always been empty, but there could be cattle-herders out at the start of the summer shieling season or egg-gatherers on the mainland cliffs. Young goat’s flesh was sweet enough; and the warm fresh blood mixed with the oatmeal was better than water. Some small sport would do no harm.

So they awaited the evening. Somerled did not announce to the gallowglasses just how far they had to march. He was only too well aware of the problems of his situation, as to men as well as to task. These Irishmen were not his own, nor even his father’s, only lent to them by the MacMahon, chief of Clann Cholla, at the behest of the High King of Ireland—approximately four hundred men and four galleys. MacMahon was Somerled’s father-in-law and it was probably as much for his late daughter’s sake as in sympathy with the former Thane of Argyll that he agreed to provide these gallowglasses for an attempt to win back at least some part of Gillebride’s lordship, wrested from him more than a dozen years before by the all-conquering Norsemen, who now controlled all the Hebrides as well as much of the West Highland mainland of Scotland as they did Man, Dublin and some of the east of Ireland. It was all Somerled’s idea and project, his father less than hopeful—but then, the Lord Gillebride had never been an optimist and having waited a dozen years was quite prepared to wait longer. After sailing from Donegal Bay they had voyaged to the little-inhabited Isle of Rhum in the Inner Hebrides, where Somerled had left his father, unenthusiastic, with half the force, to make an attempt on the islands of Tiree, Islay and Jura, whilst the son essayed this hardly hopeful assault on mainland Morvern with his handful of doubtful Ulstermen, bonny fighters no doubt but here lacking involvement and conviction. He was going to require all his powers of leadership and control.

In due course the hunters straggled back, with three goats, none of them young and tender but made much of as symbols of prowess. Thereafter, Somerled informed all that they were going walking and by night, for their own safety. They would move as soon as the dusk came down.

There were grumblings and questionings but nothing sufficiently serious for drastic measures.

An hour after sundown they started off, leaving a dozen of the older men with the galleys, enough to get them afloat again at high-water if absolutely necessary. It was low-water now and they were able to cross to the mainland on wet sand and shingle at the east end of the island—Oronsay meaning half-tide island—and thereafter to turn away south-eastwards into the shadowy hills.

For the first four miles or so their route followed the boggy south shore of Loch Teacuis, a long and narrow arm of the sea, its mouth all but stoppered by the lumpish Isle of Carna. The gallowglasses were scarcely nimble walkers and it took two hours to get that far, with resentment beginning to become all too vocal. Somerled coaxed and jollied them on for another mile or more, then recognised that something more was required if he was to get his company the remaining four or five miles to Kinlochaline. There were many complainers, but one in especial, a heavy-built surly oaf whom his companions called Cathal Frog, was loudest, announcing that he was an oarsman and sword-fighter not a landloper or a night-prowler, and he had blisters on his feet. With others making a chorus of it, Somerled called a halt, but quite genially, and strolled back to the chief vocalist.

“Your feet, friend, pain you—as your voice pains me!” he said. “Let me see them.”

“Eh . . .?” Cathal Frog blinked.

“These feet, man. That pain you. Show me.”

The man drew back, doubtfully.

“Saor—I wish to consider these painful feet. See to it.”

Grinning, MacNeil acted swiftly. He slipped behind Cathal Frog, flung an arm around his neck and with an expert explosion of strength heaved him backwards off his feet. As the man sprawled, Somerled stepped forward, stooped and jerked off first one filthy rawhide brogan, then the other, and tossed them to Conn MacMahon, then grabbed up both ankles high so that the gallowglass, for all his burly weight, hung like a sagging hammock between the two Scots. “So—feet of a sort, yes! Faugh—how they stink!” He peered close, in the half-light. “I see corns, the dirt of ages, scabs—but no blisters. Still, far be it from me to disbelieve an honest man. This sufferer shall ride. Lest he should hold up men with better feet. Saor—on my back with him. Up, I say!” And he dropped the legs and turned round, arms wide.

MacNeil promptly hoisted the protesting man to his feet, stamped on the bare toes by way of warning, and heaved. Somehow he got him on to the other’s back, and Somerled reached round to grasp the legs firmly, and then started forward.

“Come!” he shouted, into the noisy laughter of the company. “Now we shall make the better time.”

Cathal Frog struggled, of course, causing his lordly bearer to stagger. But the grip on him was strong. Moreover, Saor MacNeil’s drawn dirk was a potent reminder of realities.