They had then fought running battles in and around the steep glens and forests until, cut to shreds by disease and half-starved, they had fallen in with men barely clothed never mind armoured, with slings and short spears and long knives.
A lot of Herdmanston men had thrown up their hands then and Hal had sent them away, back to whatever life they could make round the ruin of his old tower, or at Roslin. There was no such possibility for him – and, besides, he needed to find out if Isabel had escaped the Earl of Ross’ wrath, or had been taken with the Queen; in the sinking stone that was his heart these days, he was sure he knew the truth.
Now himself, the ague-trembling Sim, Dog Boy and the grim Chirnside Rowan were what was left, living more and more like animals with these hillmen, who spoke in their own way and knew little or no other tongue. It wasn’t until Neil Campbell turned up, with as much easy command of French as he did the Gaelic, that Hal caught up with the news.
It was grim enough – the King had escaped from Dunaverty and was gone, almost certes out of the Kingdom and probably for good. Isabel was taken. The King’s brother, Niall, was dead. Even the Earl of Atholl was dead.
Yet the Campbells and MacDonalds, as much fighting against old enemies the MacDougalls as the Invaders, had at least a thousand bare-footed, bare-arsed fighting men, which was a feat considering the time of year and the fact that they had been at war since the summer. No harvest had been gathered and the families of these men hungered – though that seemed the lot of these people, Hal saw.
Here, though, there were barely a hundred, the leaders and what passed for a mesnie, met to try and sort out what to do now that their king seemed to have vanished, as if taken by Faerie. They gathered in a circle round the fires, the flames dangerously close and unheeded at their own cloaks, passing a jug of something harsh as burned wine and glaring at each other, for old tribal grievances lurked just under the surface of them all.
Not that it mattered much to Hal, now that his worst fears were confirmed; all he wanted was to find the King and plead for whatever help he could raise on Isabel’s behalf.
Neil Campbell, big and splendid and grinning, raised the jug, drank deep, smacked his lips and began the matter by raising the oak branch he held in one hand. At once someone rose and took it from him and the others subsided, growling and waiting for him to finish having his say.
The man spoke Gaelic and Neil Campbell waited, then translated it for the benefit of Hal and his handful of men; the wild men glowered impatiently and the speaker curled a hairy lip. He had braided hair and missing teeth, a Lennox man Hal recalled vaguely, from some wild cleft above Loch Lomond.
‘I have heard,’ the translation said, ‘that the siege at Dunaverty has failed to locate our King Robert. Yet the Invaders are still there and so we must be after deciding – do we fight them, or go home.’
No-one spoke. No-one passed the jug to Hal, whose grin turned feral and snarling at this rudeness. This was a farce, he thought. These men had no choice but to fight, since anything else returned the English raids to their pathetic little lives. He almost said so, but chewed on it, thinking of Sim Craw lying, sweating and groaning in a thick fever and needing their care.
‘The power of hills and isles will destroy them in the end,’ Neil Campbell translated, as a man took the stick and spoke. It was Grann, a MacDonald islesman Hal had been fighting with for several weeks, a black-avowed killer with a tangle of hair and beard who gralloched captives like stags in case they had swallowed their coin and trinkets.
According to Neil Campbell, Grann came from some island to the north and west and thought himself something because of that and the fact that he had a fine weapon, a sword, taken from some old Viking pirate, with a tarnished and worn-smooth silver cross set in a fat pommel. It did not make Grann any less of a heathen.
‘Only the power of the arm will halt them,’ Hal growled, unable to stop himself. ‘Our arm, with steel in it.’
There was a silence, for some were chilled by the teeth-grinding delivery and others embarrassed that Hal had dared to speak without the stick, or dared to at all, for he was a southerner with so few men that he was of no account.
Neil Campbell translated for those who had no Southron, glancing at the dark scowl of this Lord of Herdmanston, but showing nothing in his face as he did so.
He saw the corded sinews and old scars on the back of the man’s hands, the tangle of grizzling hair and beard, the whole of him hung about with tattered links and old leather. Somewhere in these hills, he thought to himself, this Lothian lord has become like darker, older folk, even older than the one in Ma-ruibhe’s sacred oak grove, like the ones who had blood-sacrificed to gods. He reached for the oak stick and held it up.
‘The Lord of Herdmanston is correct,’ he said, in English and Gaelic, and that brought heads up.