by Leigh Barker
his sword had they come for John. And he would have taken them on, the whole English army, right there. His clansmen would have stood over his grave and said how brave he was. And how dead.
“They are scouts.” It wasn’t a question. “Then get them to their scouting duties at once, Captain.”
Angus nodded without taking his eyes off Calum. “Yes, sir. At once.”
York wrenched his horse’s head around again and stopped. “And Captain…”
“Sir?”
“Have them flogged first.” He rode away through the men on the road.
Angus squinted at Calum. “With pleasure, sir.” He dismounted.
Calum smiled at him and put out his hand.
“What the devil are you doing here, Calum?”
“You look pretty in your nice new kilt,” said Calum, pointing at the Black Watch tartan.
Angus sighed heavily. “You forget, I am to have you flogged.”
“Aye, pity about the hanging, though.” Calum looked up at the sky. “Nice day for a hanging. Not too much wind.”
Angus closed his eyes for a moment, then put his foot on the log and leaned forward as Calum sat back down. “Why are you here?”
Calum shrugged. “Anne asked me to come and bring you home.”
“What!” said Angus, his foot slipping off the log. “Have you lost your mind? You canna just ride up to the English army and say, can we have our chief back?”
Calum smiled again. “Lady Anne sent us, Angus.”
Angus started to protest, but then just nodded. He looked back at the road teaming with redcoats. “Well, you canna stay here. There’s a battle coming.”
“Aye,” said Calum, standing up. “And there’ll be a good number of Mackintosh on the wrong end of yon cannon.”
Angus glanced back over his shoulder. “Aye,” he said quietly, “which is why I have to make sure they take a short cut across that field.” He pointed to a waterlogged field a little way along the road, turned, and swung up onto his black horse. “We’ll talk more on this later. Now get yourselves out of the way. Can you do that?”
Calum pointed at the two horses hitched to the end of the fallen tree. “We have horses.”
Angus sighed. “Where the devil did you steal those?”
John stood up stiffly and brushed off his kilt. “Dinnae steal them.” He stepped up to one of the mounts and patted its rump. “They’re yours.” He led his horse away.
Angus looked quickly back at Calum. “Not the thoroughbreds?”
Calum gave him a big smile, unhitched the chestnut thoroughbred, and followed his friend up the long hill and away from all that noise.
Calum and John were once again sitting, but this time on boulders at the top of the long hill overlooking the battlefield where the highlander army stretched across the moor in two long columns about two hundred yards apart. In front of the highlanders, a little over half a mile ahead, the royalists were also in two columns, but these were straight and a colourful mix of bright red from the redcoated English and a clash of different tartans worn by the clans who had chosen to stand with the English against their countrymen, for money and land, or for some misplaced sense of loyalty to a king who despised them.
John nudged Calum’s arm and pointed down the hill to where the English cannon were complexly bogged down in the muddy field.
Calum sniffed. “Angus never was much of a guide.”
John laughed. “I’d say he guided them pretty much where he wanted them to be.”
“Aye, they do seem a wee bit muddy.”
Both men laughed and turned back to watch the moor and the prelude to the battle that was building like a violent storm.
The royal dragoons suddenly charged forward, galloping their big cavalry horses across the moor, the mud and water spraying up around them, until the commander wheeled left and they swung back towards their army, this time riding a little more slowly. It was an unsubtle manoeuvre, but it had worked before. The lines of highlanders rippled a little in expectation and excitement, but their officers, running along in front of them, stopped any hot-headed pursuit of the retreating English.
John walked to the hilltop overlooking the highlanders and watched them advance slowly, while Calum strolled over and watched the royalists waiting patiently to slaughter their countrymen.
As the highlanders started to advance slowly, their lines seemed to waver as the slower men walked faster to catch up, then slowed down again. After a hundred yards, the lines were as straight as they were going to get, and the royalists braced for the charge, but without any apparent command, the leading highland divisions suddenly broke right and ran straight towards the hill from which Calum and John were watching the fun.
A shout went up from the royalists, and a troop of dragoons broke out at full gallop, determined to deny the highlanders the advantage of the high ground.
Calum took one look at the dragoons galloping for the hill and turned quickly to get John. They almost collided as John ran up behind him.
“We need to get out of here,” said Calum. “The cavalry is coming up this way.”
John pointed back over his shoulder. “And the clans are coming up that way.”
They ran back across the top of the hill, away from the race, because whoever won would assume the two men were enemy lookouts and hack them down. They reached the cover of a broken dry stone wall as the two armies cheered their runners with a roar like a distant sea.
The dragoons thundered up the side of the hill, their horses at a dead run with the riders leaning forward over their mounts’ necks. While on the other side of the hill the Macdonalds outpaced the other clans, pounding up the steep hill with barely a change of speed, their kilts flying and their hands full of broadsword and musket.
The dragoons should have won; a horse will outpace a man every time, except somebody should have told the Macdonalds, because they crested the hill at the same moment as the mounted cavalry.
Both armies let out a cheer as they saw their men get to the high ground first.
The Macdonalds dived, jumped, or just flopped behind a scrub-grass ridge and fired a withering volley at the dragoons as they fought to control their horses. Gasping for breath they might have been, but the Macdonalds were still in better shape than the cavalry, who were out in the open on winded horses that were screaming and shying away from the musket fire and billowing black-powder smoke.
Men and horses fell together under the uneven volley of lead balls, adding to the confusion and shock. One by one at first, then in a jostling mass, the dragoons broke and raced back down the hill just as the rest of the clans reached the top and opened fire and without a pause pursued them back down the hill.
It was the signal for the highland army to charge.
The royalists responded and advanced steadily, led by two regiments of dragoons advancing at full gallop towards the clans, who they fully expected to break and run, but the clans continued to sweep forward. The cavalry thundered on, the water and mud spraying out once again. Fifty yards. Twenty.
The highlanders kept coming, calm and steady, until their commanders raised their swords to signal them to stop, raise their muskets, and fire a massive volley. The effect was devastating. The men and horses leading the charge stumbled and crashed to the muddy ground under the withering fire.
General Cobham had trained his dragoons well, and they rode over the dead and wounded, regained the charge, and slammed into the first ranks of highlanders at full gallop, sending bodies flying and pounding bloody flesh under metal-shod hooves.
Once again, the highlanders stood when they were expected to run. The men, scattered and bloodied by the charge, stabbed at the horses’ bellies with their dirks, slashed the riders’ legs, and dragged them from their mounts to hack them to death in the mud.
The cavalry was going to die, or it was going to run. They ran, galloping back towards their lines as fast as they had c
ome, with the highlanders in screaming pursuit right on their heels.
The highland officers tried to stop the mad charge but were knocked down by the mass of men whose blood was well and truly up. They instinctively formed up on the run, with the biggest men first, shoulder to shoulder in a wedge of screaming men and flying tartan.
The redcoats tried to brace themselves, but the wedge hit them at full run, throwing them aside and streaming into the ranks. The clansmen were among them, broadswords swinging and hacking flesh, dirks ripping left and right, and muskets spewing death all around.
Nobody would stay and face such a charge if they had a choice. The redcoats broke and ran, followed a moment later by the whole royalist army, as the rest of the highlanders arrived in a whirl of slashing swords.
Calum jumped down from the stone wall and dusted off his kilt. “That was a bonnie wee fight.”
“Aye,” said John, jumping down, “it’s enough to give a man a thirst.”
“Aye,” echoed Calum, “it’s all that running and screaming.”
“It is that.”
“Let’s go get Angus, and we’ll be away from all this fuss and bother,” said Calum, setting off for the stand of trees where they’d secured their borrowed horses.
“And how do you intend to find him in all this?” asked John, pointing out at the battlefield with its dead men and mutilated horses and the wounded trying to drag themselves away, while the jubilant highlanders streamed back off the moor.
Calum nodded towards the retreating redcoats. “They’re away to Tranent.” He smiled back at his friend. “And there’s