Lord of the Isles (Coronet Books) (6 page)

“There are twelve longships there,” he told them. “As many as one thousand men, therefore. Too many to take by surprise at night, with our numbers. We might slay some, but the rest would be roused and able to overwhelm us. So it must be otherwise.”

They waited, expressions varied.

“We must make the land fight for us. And it is good land for it. There is woodland, a lochan, bog and a slender hook of headland. Aye, and cattle. Enough to serve us, I say.”

“Against a thousand?” Conn wondered.

“Used aright, the land could be worth many hundreds. The difficulty will be to get our two hundred to where the land is our ally. These gallowglasses will never cross these steep hills, as I have done, and be in a state to fight after. And there is no way round the shore. So they must be taken in the ships.”

“Which means by night,” MacNeil declared.

“Yes. There is no way that we can win past this Sallachan in daylight without being challenged. As we need. But a night attack will not do, this time. Dawn, it will have to be. They must see, be able to
see
, what is against them.”

The others stared.

“I tell you, the land will fight for us—and must be seen to do so. But—more of that later. Meantime we wait here. I am tired and must sleep. We shall sail at the darkest, between midnight and dawn. Keep you watch . . .”

So, fed and rested, a move was made by the company at about three in the morning. It was certainly dark enough for their requirements, so dark that getting the longships out by that narrow, twisting channel was no easy task, involving much cursing by oarsmen. But at length they were all in open water and sailing well out into the pale glimmer of Loch Linnhe.

They had to judge when they had gone some four miles, for the land offered no detail, only a darker line in the prevailing mirk. In fact, they calculated fairly accurately, for when they turned in again to the western shore, they made their landfall just beyond the far side of the Sallachan headland, which they were able to distinguish looming on their left.

Running their ships’ prows up on to the shingle here, they disembarked, with strict orders for silence, since Somerled reckoned that they were less than a mile from the Norse encampment. Then he called the men to gather round a little marram-grass mound, from which he addressed them, keeping his voice low but distinct.

“This time, we are going to have to fight, my friends, not just slay!” he told them. “And not in darkness. Such night as is left, we shall use to get into position—
our
chosen positions. But we need light to defeat these people as they must be defeated. To do that, we must use our wits as well as our swords and dirks. And use the land. For there are many more here than at the last camp. But we shall have them, never fear.”

He allowed that to sink in, as men muttered and questioned.

“Here is how we shall do it. We must split up their numbers. Which means that we must also divide ourselves. But heedfully. Our four ships must play their part. Each with only a very few men—we can spare no more than ten to each. These will make a seeming attack on the Norse craft beached in the bay behind yonder headland. A dozen of them, there are. Damage some if it can be done—but that is not the main intention. It is to draw some fair number of the Vikings away. This will have to be done with care. You cannot outsail the Norsemen, with their full crews. So you cannot go far before they would catch up. The wind is south-west, so you must sail off north-eastwards, up through the Kyle of Corran narrows and beyond that, quickly head for the east shore of Loch Linnhe, the Lochaber shore, beach your craft and bolt inland. The Norse will not follow you far on land, that I swear. They will recapture the four ships, but that is not important. We shall have plenty of shipping in the end—or else be dead men! You have it? The task of these forty men is to lure away four hundred, for long enough for us to defeat the rest. I foresee no fighting for these.”

As he had anticipated, that produced a deal of talk and squabble, which he allowed to continue for a while—although he commanded that voices be kept low. Some saw that no-fighting role as to their taste, most the reverse; some saw themselves as missing the main excitement and loot, as mere decoys, others well content.

“We shall decide who goes where hereafter,” Somerled went on. “Another small party will light fires. Ten will serve. Behind the Norse camp is woodland and a small loch. Not far. That wood is to be lit. The south-west wind will drive the smoke and heat down on the camp. Rouse them. They will see our ships assailing theirs. Then our main force will make a flourish, a noise, on the flank, on two flanks. There is marsh as well as this lochan. We choose our ground. They will be much confused and confined, wasting their numbers on profitless sallies. We shall use the bog and loch and fire—and we shall smite them. Is it understood?”

Dermot Maguire spoke. “It is still one-hundred-and-forty men against many times that number, lord. They will see it, in time. Even in the smoke and confusion.”

“Perhaps. But I have a device or two which we may use. Cattle. There are many cattle grazing beyond the loch. Also there are the folk here, in the township. They must be used, if only to make a noise, a show. Now—we have two hours, no more. Until daylight. And much to do. Does any wish to speak?”

“Who takes the ships?” Conn Ironhand asked.

“Not you. Nor Dermot. Nor Saor. I need you here. Choose four men, to lead. And nine others, for each craft. From those who prefer to sail. Little rowing will be possible, with these few. When they see the fires, they are to stand in and make some assault on the Norse shipping. But to be off again when the enemy come down to the shore. The Vikings will never let their longships be damaged, if they can help it. But—enough talk. To work, my friends . . .”

Two hours later, with the sky beginning to lighten beyond the mainland mountains across Loch Linnhe, men were wiping their bloodstained dirks and hands on the grass and moving down from the trees to the edge of the lochan to wash themselves and slake their thirst. Rounding-up and killing can be thirsty work, as well as messy. It was not, however, Norse blood which they were disposing of but that of cattle. More than fifty beasts lay dead there just within the cover of the trees, all the township’s precious stock which the Vikings had left to them. Somerled regretted this; but it could be assessed as the price the local people had to pay for their release from bondage. The knot of cottagers, rudely roused, who had been forced to help in the process, stood nearby in agitation and looked unappreciative.

The meat would no doubt be very useful hereafter, for a celebratory feast—assuming that there were sufficient of them left alive to do justice to it all. It was not for their meat that those beasts had died, however, but for their hides. All had been flayed, not always expertly, and the skins cut in halves. These now lay piled in smelly heaps, eyed rather askance by all.

Somerled was straining his eyes to see if there was any sign of their four ships. But in the half-light it was impossible to disinguish anything beyond the vague collection of hulls and masts which represented the mass of the Norse craft. It was a dull and cloudy dawn. He reckoned that there would have to be at least another half-hour before it would be light enough for action.

He ordered the half-hides to be laid out in neat rows for easy availability. He went to speak to the villagers. He checked that his leaders knew exactly what to do—at least in the early stages. He sent men to gather dry tinder, wood, dead branches and the like, to aid the fire-raisers, but also other material less combustible but more liable to smoke, old leaves, bracken fronds and broom foliage, separately. Then he could only wait.

At last he gave the signal for the fires to be lit. Quickly along the eastern half of the wood the flames sprang up and began to run together into a blazing wall, fanned by the quite strong morning breeze. Soon a great pall of smoke, luridly tinged with red, went rolling down across part of the lochan and marshland and pasture towards the Norse encampment.

After that, reaction was swift. Half-a-mile away, figures could be seen emerging from the sailcloth awnings, to stare. Shouting could be heard, growing in intensity. Within a minute or two, sails of their own ships began to appear around the spur of the point.

Somerled had to restrain his people who would have rushed down, there and then, using the smoke as screen, crossed the marshy levels below the lochan and hurled themselves upon the sleep-bemused and disorganised enemy. He did allow them to shout, however—and a mighty and sustained din they made, which could not fail to be heard at the camp.

The alarm and indecision there was very evident, men milling about. But priorities and discipline were not long in beginning to assert themselves—especially when new smoke began to arise from two of their beached longships. Crews began to stream away down to the shore.

“More! More!” Somerled exclaimed, through the hubbub.

“They see only the four attacking craft,” MacNeil pointed out.

“But cannot know how thinly they are manned. I had hoped . . . ah, there are more going. That is better. And more—another crew. Five crews. Or six. Now you see why I would have no revealing of numbers here, yet. I want as many away after our craft as may be—not all holding back here to face us. We wait awhile longer.”

Their four decoys did not linger. Well before the first Norse crewmen were pushing out and boarding their vessels, the attackers had turned tail and were tacking out of the bay—but not before the gallowglasses had tossed many of the enemy oars into the water and rent furled sails with their dirks, to give them a fair start.

It was a little while, in the circumstances, before the Vikings were able to get their ships ready and off in pursuit, six of them, half the total, and in much of a straggle. Restraining his own impatience now, Somerled let them round Sallachan Point and out-of-sight, before at last he gave the orders that his men awaited and ran to put himself at their head.

He had said that the land must fight for them. A small, low spur of the same high hill, Beinn Leamhain the local folk called it, from whose crest he had viewed all the day before, projected in a broom-clad knoll at the end of their wood. Behind this, away from the flame and smoke, Somerled took his one-hundred-and-forty, plus some of the local men, out-of-sight of the camp. Rounding the far side, they did come into view again, although even at this side the smoke formed a thin screen. Taking half the men, he led them, leaping and brandishing swords and battleaxes, along the front or northern flank of the knoll, amongst the broom-bushes, a yelling horde which the enemy could not fail to see. When they reached the wood again, and cover, each man grabbed up one of the half cattle-hides and went racing back round the far side of the hillock once more—whilst meantime the second section performed the same manoeuvre. Back at the starting-point, they slung the slimy hides, hair out, like tloaks over their shoulders and went bounding along the front of the knoll again, shouting louder than ever, their comrades repeating the crazy spectacle. A third time they all went through the exercise, on this occasion with the hides turned hair inwards. Finally, panting, they did it once more, hides discarded, before sinking down exhausted in the shelter of the trees, feeling fools but hopeful that the Norse would have seen, at half-mile range, no fewer than eight companies of over seventy each, all differently clad, hurrying from that hillside to the cover of the woodland, the part which was not burning.

How would this affect the enemy tactics? Gasping for breath, Somerled watched.

The Norsemen took their time, evidently somewhat at a loss. But presently they made a move. Two columns issued from the encampment, each of perhaps two hundred men, heading somewhat warily towards the smoking woodland, one round the east side of the loch, one round the west.

Somerled heaved a sigh of relief and thankfulness. “We have them!” he declared, “Or else we are poor fighters! We have them well divided. Those west of the lochan will be here first—for the ground is firm above the water, with only the burn to cross. But below it is marshy, soft and will take them time. We attack on the west first. Saor, Conn—ready your men. Dermot—make smoke, much more smoke. All the leaves and brackens we have gathered. We have to fight in it—but at least
we
are prepared. Let them well into the trees before we strike. When I blow the horn, leave off, to turn on the others. Do no delaying, then. You understand? Break off, whatever. So—God be with us!”

The fight in the woodland was a horror, by any standards, a ghastly mêlée in smoke and gloom and chaos. There could be no front, no line nor any unified direction or control, on either side, amongst trees and bushes and shadows, nothing but innumerable individual encounters or duels battled out over a wide area. Yet duels would give a wrong impression, since it might imply an equality and there was little equality here. For though the Norsemen were as fierce fighters and expert swordsmen as the Irish, they were at a grievous disadvantage from the first. Somerled’s tactics were for his gallowglasses to fight in pairs, to strive to make the clashes two-to-one where it was possible—and since the Vikings entered the wood just as they reached it, raggedly and in no order, this device was the more effective. Also one side knew the approximate numbers of the enemy and the other did not—always a great advantage. Again, the Irish, even though their eyes streamed and smarted, were by now more inured to the smoke. Moreover they had chosen the battleground, were prepared for its problems and likewise advantages and were not suffering from the shock of being rudely awakened from sleep and hurled into battle on empty stomachs. All of which told.

Somerled himself fought vehemently, almost joyfully, yet his attention was not wholly on what he was doing—which was dangerous. Part of his mind was busy in calculating how far the other wing of the Norse assault would have reached, across the marshland beyond the lochan. Deliberately he had had the dead leaves and bracken fires lit at this western end of the main blaze so that the denser clouds of brown smoke would billow down between this first battle and the rest, preventing the latter from seeing what went on here—but equally of course,
he
could not see in the other direction, and in the prevailing noise could not hear either. He had to guess at timing and to judge what the others would do when they reached the trees. They would presumably not plunge into the fiercely blazing woodland itself, so must swerve left or right. The chances were that they would swing right, to link up with their fellows. That must not be allowed to happen. When, having felled his third Norseman and, slow in withdrawing his sword from the man’s rib-cage, he was assailed by another, with a battleaxe, and only saved by the swift intervention of one of his Irish, he recognised that this would not do and that his duty was otherwise. Extricating himself from the struggle he made his way over to his right, towards the smoke-fires—but was able to aid a hard-pressed gallowglass in the by-going. On the whole this battle appeared to be going well, he decided.