Lord of the Isles (Coronet Books) (5 page)

He was all vigilance, for this was, as it were, the main highway of the southern Inner Hebrides, or Sudreys as the Norse called them, as well as of much of the fretted mainland coast, the most favoured and sheltered navigation route through a sea notorious for its hazards equally with its beauty, of sudden storms and cross-winds, of overfalls and whirlpools, littered with a myriad of skerries, islets and reefs. It had been busy indeed before the Vikings came; but their devastations and massacres had depopulated the land and driven peaceful shipping from the sea-lanes. Nevertheless, the Norse themselves would use these waters inevitably, to a great extent, and it behoved wise men to sail warily—although, to be sure the sails of all three ships bore the black spread-winged raven device of the Norse and so would not be assumed to be dangerous.

Only two or three more fishing-boats dotted the sparkling waters.

A little less speedily, for the wind was now abeam not behind them, they beat up the long eastern coast of Morvern, close inshore to be the less conspicuous. They could see all often miles ahead here, but there was no sign of the escaped vessel. Somerled grew anxious that they had guessed amiss. He had hoped to have seen it in the distance. But to turn back now would be profitless; for if the escaper had in fact made for Mull, to Aros or one of the other havens therein, by now it would be too late, the Mull Norsemen would be roused, and they might find themselves confronted and outnumbered. They had to go on.

Past the northern tip of the eleven-mile-long Lismore they still had some four miles to go, the fishermen told them, before Loch a’ Choire opened. The Morvern shore was steep, bare and fairly featureless here, so that the loch-mouth should have been evident—but was not. Apparently it was round a small headland which itself was not obvious. The loch was not large, they were informed, more like an elongated bay one-and-a-half miles deep, with Kingairloch at its head.

Despite this warning, they were surprised when they came on the loch-mouth, a bare quarter-mile across and hidden until the last moment. But more than that surprised them. For as they approached it, out of the jaws of it sailed a single longship, directly before them, its sail showing the same black raven as their own.

“Save us—who is this?” Somerled exclaimed. “One. Alone. A Norseman. Could it be . . .?”

“Undermanned!” his helmsman, Dermot Maguire, pointed out. “Look—only four oars each side . . .”

“Aye—it is, by all that’s wonderful! Our escaper, coming out! And alone. Then—the chances are, the ones he came to warn are not here. At Kingairloch. Flown the nest! So we are not endangered . . .”

“This Viking is!” Maguire declared grimly.

That was clear to all but the newcomer, who recognised his late companion-craft and came on.

“He obliges us! Let us take him—and increase our knowledge.” Somerled, from his stern-platform, waved his other two craft into an encircling movement.

Perhaps it was the beginnings of that movement to surround him that aroused the Norseman’s suspicions. Perhaps he was keen-sighted enough to see that the crews of these ships were nearly all dark-haired and dark-bearded. At any rate he took fright, swung his vessel round almost in its own length, and set course northwards.

He had no chance, of course, with only four oars on either side against the other’s sixteen each. Hand-over-hand the three made up on him.

“Heave to!” Somerled hailed, in Norn—his mother’s tongue—as they came close. “Heave to, I say! Or I cut down your oars.” That was a dire threat, one of the worst fates which could befall a longship or galley—to have its oars at one side sheered off by the prow of an attacker, splintering the shafts and making bloody havoc of the oarsmen. The only escape, for the slower vessel, was to raise its long sweeps high, upright with consequent failure of propulsion. That the Norseman did, with little choice.

As Saor MacNeil came close on the other side, Somerled, sword in hand, leapt lightly from one craft to the other, followed by a stream of his Irish. He had seen that there were only about a score of men aboard, sixteen at the oars.

“Yield you!” he shouted. “I have ten times your numbers. Yield, and your lives will be spared. Resist and you are all dead men!”

The squat, bull-necked, villainous-looking individual with a cast in one eye, standing beside the steersman, scowled, shrugged, and then threw down his sword and took off his pinion-decked helmet, as token of submission. He uttered no word. His crew, one by one, tossed aside their weapons.

“You are men of some sense,” Somerled commended. “Dermot—you will take over this ship,” he shouted. “A dozen men from each of the other craft.” He turned back to the surrendered shipmaster. “Your name, Norseman?”

“Ketil. Ketil Svensson.”

“Then, Ketil Svensson, I am Somerled MacGillebride MacFergus. And I require information. Where were you heading just now? Are your people gone from Kingairloch? And where is the nearest Norse settlement of size?”

The other eyed him levelly from one eye and kept his mouth shut.

“Ha—so that is the way of it! I require an answer, Ketil Svensson—and will have it. I promised you your lives and I am a man of my word. I shall not take them. But you could lose other cherished faculties. Your nose, now, is bent anyway—so you would scarce miss that. But your ears? An eye, now, or even two? Your tongue—which you seem little to value, anyway! Or even lower down—can you spare these?” That was all said loudly, for all to hear, the Norse crewmen in especial.

Silence still from the shipmaster, although Somerled’s own people made ample comment and suggestion.

He sheathed his sword but drew his dirk, and turned to the watching oarsmen. “My offer applies to you, each and all. We shall start with this Ketil. But come to the rest of you, until we gain our information. Simple questions to which you will all know the answers. Are your friends gone from Kingairloch? Where were you going? And where is the nearest Norse settlement of size? It would be best for all if one of you answered now, would it not?”

When there was still no response, verbal at any rate, Somerled turned to MacNeil, who had joined him on the ship.

“Saor—see you that pimpled youth there? Who scratches and mouths. You start with him, whilst I deal with this Ketil. Two at a time will be quicker . . .”

“No, lord—no!” the youngest member of the crew cried, little more than a boy. “Not that! I . . . I . . . it is Ardgour. The place they call the Sallachan of Ardgour. Where we go. Where are many men and ships. We sail there.”

“You do? How do I know that this is true? Ketil Svensson—is this so?”

But although that man maintained his glowering silence, others of his men, now that responsibility was not theirs, nodded confirmation.

Raising voice, Somerled shouted in the Gaelic back to his own craft, asking their fishermen of this Ardgour—Sallachan of Ardgour.

“Yes, lord,” the answer came. “It is to the north. Some dozen more miles. Where Loch Linnhe narrows to the Corran kyle. A township and haven. Of fishers. We have heard that there are Norse there.”

“Good! Then we know our course. Dermot—if any of these bold Vikings will, for keep and feed, serve you as oarsmen, so use them, kindly. If not, put them ashore somewhere uncomfortable—and unarmed. Then follow us northwards towards this Ardgour. You have it?”

Somerled returned to his own vessel, ordered sail to be hoisted again but the oars to be shipped meantime. There was no great haste now and his men deserved and required rest. Also he had to have time to consider and plan. Twelve miles or so, and he must have his decisions made, in some sort.

As they tacked their less speedy way up great Loch Linnhe, he consulted the two fishermen. They were able to tell him something about the Ardgour area, if little as to the Norse strength therein—although they thought that there might indeed be many of them, for Ardgour commanded the very strategic and constricted Kyle of Corran, where Linnhe abruptly and dramatically narrowed in from nearly three miles of width to a bare quarter-mile, before opening again for another ten miles northwards, probing into the fertile heart of populous Lochaber. So Ardgour was the key to Lochaber, waterwise, where there would be fine pickings for Viking raiders. The district itself was mountainous and little populated. But Sallachan Point, just before the narrows, formed a shallow bay with low-lying shores and some level land, where shipping could be drawn up and where people could live. There would be the Norse base.

Somerled could be bold, but he was not foolhardy. Without a deal more information than this he could not risk any headlong confrontation, however much aided by possible surprise. He had four longships, but all undermanned. Until he knew approximately how many ships and men he might be facing, and in what conditions, he must go warily.

So, as they sailed northwards, he was all eyes, ready for swiftest action, possible flight. Particularly he eyed the nearby Morvern coast, which they hugged, looking for some break in the rugged, steep and ironbound shoreline which would provide the cover and hiding-place he required. But, mile after mile, the hillsides continued to rise almost sheer from the water, with neither coves nor beaches nor offshore islets to break the front, only cliffs, boiling skerries and the white aprons of waterfalls.

He was getting seriously worried, with the low dark line of what must be Sallachan Point beginning to be evident ahead three or four miles, and was contemplating a dash across the loch to the east shore, where a large bay opened on the Appin side—only, that would carry its own risk of his ships being very obvious from Sallachan as they crossed the open water—when one of the fishermen touched his arm and pointed.

“I had forgotten, lord. That peaked hill reminds me. There is a strange narrow bay below it, this side, the outfall of the Sanda River. Inversanda. There is not much of it, but it winds in. Enough to hide these four ships.”

“You say so? How far from Sallachan?”

“Three miles, no more.”

“That must serve, then. As well you remembered, friend. I do not see it.”

“It is this side of the hill. Behind yonder small headland, I think.”

Heading in and round a rocky spur, sure enough there opened the winding estuary of a modest river which seemed to issue out of a deep divide of the mountains, hitherto unseen. It was small, narrow and S-shaped—and could turn into a trap indeed. But beggars could not be choosers on this coast and Somerled decided that if they were to backwater, to move in stern-first, all four ships could just hide themselves therein. Getting out in a hurry would be the problem. He ordered the others in before him, so that his vessel might be first out.

Once round behind the first bend, he took stock of the situation. The great steep-sided valley, which the fishermen called Glen Tarbert and which they said divided Morvern proper from the Ardgour area, stretched away westwards. To the north was just rocky hillside, the flank of the peaked hill which had acted as landmark. Behind that could be glimpsed part of another hill, higher, which must bring them almost to Sallachan.

Leaving MacNeil to post a guard and then let the others sleep, he took only the younger fisherman, named Murdoch, jumped down into the shallows, waded to the shingle and made for the foot of that peaked hill. They were going to flex their muscles.

Tired as he was from lack of sleep, Somerled was glad enough of the exercise. Of a restless nature, he found the constrictions of shipboard cramping. And he liked hillclimbing.

He set a strong pace, lifting himself with an easy-seeming regular motion, slightly bent forward, using the sides of his feet to grip the slope, and with an instinctive eye for the surest route. Soon he had the fisherman panting. But steadily the little estuary and the ships dwindled below them. They did not make for the top of the hill, which turned out to be’a long and narrow ridge of which the peak was only the eastern scarp, but traversed the seaward shoulder, to find a steep valley on the other side, before the second mountain. There was nothing for it but to descend and climb again. It was high noon now and warm, and that second climb was a trial and weariness. Nevertheless, when at length they reached the crest, Somerled had no doubts that it was worth the effort. For spread before them now was a vast panorama of hill and loch, river and valley, seemingly to all infinity. But it was not infinity which they considered, only the foreground thereto.

Directly below them to the north lay a wide bay, almost a mile across, created by a curving headland shaped like a sickle, and backed by a level plain containing a small freshwater loch and dotted with cothouses and the poles for drying nets. And at the root of the headland itself was another of the sail-cloth tented encampments, but much larger than that at Achranich, fully a dozen of the shelters. As though there was one per vessel, twelve longships lay in the curve of the bay.

Somerled let out his breath in a soundless whistle. “So-o-o! Our young Viking was right about Ardgour. But—so many! There could be a thousand men there.”

“Aye, lord. Too many!”

“M’mm.” The other gazed, eyes narrowed.

Long they stood there, surveying the farflung scene—and the longer they stood the further sank the man Murdoch’s heart. For most clearly his companion did not see it all as he did, was most evidently assessing and calculating, obviously planning to do something quite other than to flee the scene, as merest sanity demanded. This Somerled MacGillebride MacFergus was surely less than sane unfortunately—and his madness was of the sort which could cost blood, much blood.

The other spoke only once during that survey. “Lochan. Wood. Marsh. Cattle.” And he jabbed a pointing finger as he enunciated each word. Then he nodded and turned to consider the wider scene, to west and south-west, the mountains and valleys there. At length he said “Come!” and turned to retrace his steps.

By the time that they got back to the ships, Somerled had made up his mind. There had been no alarms, and save for the sentries, all were sleeping. He summoned Saor, Conn and Dermot to a council-of-war—although there was little of council about it.