“Wait!”
She sighed. “What is it now?!”
He began kicking off his shoes and went to dig into his overnight bag. His jeans he shed and dropped on the ground, then his T-shirt and jockey shorts. He strapped on his sgian dubh, pulled on the sark and his baldric with the empty scabbard, then strapped his leggings on with Brigid in her accustomed place. His new rubber-soled suede boots went back on, then he stood facing Sinann. “Ready.” Then, “Oh, wait!” He dug through the bag again and came back with the plastic bag filled with cinnamon jawbreakers and the bottle of aspirin he’d brought, which he patted flat and secured under the straps of his left legging. “Now.”
Sinann fluttered down to him. She gazed at him a moment, and he could see her heart breaking. “You’re my Cuchulain, Dylan Robert Matheson, my hero. I care for you more than you can know.” She laid a hand aside his cheek. “Goodbye forever, brave one.” Sinann raised her hand again, and a tiny smile curled the corners of her mouth. “And say hello to myself, would ye?”
“I will.”
“I know.” She waved her hand, and the world began to go dark. She burst into tears, then was gone.
When the light returned, once again he found himself on the battlefield of Sheriffmuir, standing where he’d been the moment he was wounded. The battle raged around him, and he picked his sword off the ground to defend himself against an English dragoon that swept down on him. One quick parry and thrust, and the red-coated soldier died, stabbed in the throat. Sinann was there, gawking like she was seeing a ghost.
“You’re alive! Did I do that?” she asked, astonished.
“Nae, ye did not.” Dylan, overjoyed to see her, scabbarded his sword, took her face between his hands, and kissed her forehead. Grinning, he shouted over the battle around them, “But yourself says hello.” Then he took her by the waist and lifted her into the air. “Fly!” He threw her skyward and she flew. “It’s not safe down here!”
Dylan drew the sword again, looked around, and realized no time had passed since his wounding. Horses screamed and wounded men cried out among the trampled heather. Blood was everywhere, and Dylan’s new shoes slipped in it on the rocky, muddy ground. For one horrifying moment he realized the puddle in the stone he stood on was his own blood, but he shook that from his mind and turned to engage another dragoon who rode down on him with sword cocked for attack.
The Jacobites were still retreating, scattered hopelessly among the low hills, and Dylan fell back before the English horse, almost to the river, protecting his back but otherwise accomplishing nothing. By the time the English began to lay off, the Jacobite ranks were torn to shreds. It was plain Mar’s troops were beaten.
Dylan, not recovered enough from surgery for stamina, gasped and pressed his hand to his aching side. He needed to find Mar, but couldn’t see where the battle commander had gone. Then, at the top of the distant muir, Mar appeared with a large contingent of men that had been separated from the units that now had their backs to the river. The Hanoverians, when they saw the approach of Jacobites behind, were called off to face the group on the hill. The Jacobite men below waited, breathless, expecting Mar to charge so their own remnants could harass from behind, but the command never came. The Hanoverians were allowed to regroup and face the Jacobites above.
Dylan then knew this was Mar’s fatal mistake. If the Earl would attack Argyll just then, he had a chance to beat the Hanoverians and gain a victory that would have galvanized the uprising. Dylan knew this, and so must have many men there that day. But there was no way for Dylan to urge the attack, even if Mar would listen. Argyll’s troops stood between him and the man Dylan would need to convince in order to change the outcome of the battle. He stood and stared at the bewigged, aristocrat Mar, willing him to see his error, but knew it was no use. He couldn’t change anything because even his presence wasn’t change. He’d always been a part of this history.
The beaten Jacobite forces by the river lay, exhausted and bloody, while Mar’s relatively fresh troops retained the hill. Dylan watched the standoff, cursing Mar under his breath. Darkness fell, swiftly as it did this time of year, and Mar quit the hill, moving off the muir, letting Argyll have the battlefield and leaving the exhausted men by the river to make their own way to safety.
The battle was over. The uprising was as good as over. Across the bloodied ground Argyll’s men were plundering the dead and murdering wounded Jacobites with their bayonets. Dylan spat, frustrated and angry, and knew it was time to get the hell out and tend to his own business in Edinburgh. Many of the men around him felt the same way and began to disperse to the north, across the river. Dylan spotted a stray English cavalry horse nearby, grazing idly in the twilight, and took a run toward it. He hauled himself into the saddle in a single motion, picked up the reins, and wheeled toward the hills where Argyll’s men were now going through the Highlanders’ kilts and sporrans.
A shout came from the MacGregors behind him, a familiar voice. “A Dhilein Dubh nan Chlaidheimh! ”
Dylan stopped and wheeled back. Black Dylan of the Sword. He was not surprised. He’d known sooner or later he’d be named for his coloring. He recognized the voice. “Seumas!” He peered into the thickening dusk at a figure that had just topped a low rise.
“Where are you going?” Seumas Glas was a large, dark shadow. The MacGregor reinforcements had arrived, but far too late.
“A Chaitrionagh! ” shouted Dylan. With that, he wheeled once more and charged toward the muir which happened to stand between himself and Hanoverian-occupied Edinburgh. Hovering, Sinann zoomed up behind him and followed.
Over the next rise, he found the Sassunaich going through the thousands of kilts and sporrans left on the ground by the Jacobite army, and finding little more than threadbare wool and sacks of oatmeal. He reined in, and his anger surged at the sight of the English thieves rummaging for money and valuables. One Redcoat in the midst of them was removing a black sporran from a reddish-brown-and-black kilt. The belt and a length of plaid dangled from the bundle, the belt buckled into a loop. Dylan crouched over his horse’s neck and urged it into a gallop, straight for the Sassunach, blowing past one surprised dragoon after another. In passing the man with his kilt, he reached down to yank kilt and sporran by plaid and belt from the astonished Englishman’s hands.
He was almost to the muir when a shout finally went up. Gunfire popped, and musket balls whizzed past his head like bumblebees from hell. He urged his horse to greater speed, holding his kilt aloft, the end of the long plaid flapping behind him like a Highland flag, and defiant laughter burst from him. He made a level spot on a rise just below the muir, reined in, and wheeled to face the Redcoats. Holding his kilt over his head, he shouted to the English with every shred of his soul, “Alba gu brath!” Scotland forever! Then he threw back his head and uttered a blood-curdling Rebel Yell. As the Sassunaich took aim for another volley, Black Dylan wheeled again and bolted for Edinburgh and Cait.
POSTSCRIPT
The events in this story happened. Except, of course, for the bits I made up. Though many of these incidents were not uncommon in the place and period, the fictional characters are not based on actual people. Glen Ciorram does not, and never did, exist (“ciorram” means “disaster” or “maiming” in Scots Gaelic), and none of the Mathesons nor Bedfords in this story are meant to represent historical members of Clan Matheson nor the Bedford family.
However, the characters that were drawn from history are as true as possible to what is known about them. They are: Rob Roy MacGregor and his sons; Iain Glas Campbell of Breadalbane; Alasdair Roy; Alasdair MacGregor of Balhaldie; James Graham, fourth Marquis of Montrose; John Erskine, sixth Earl of Mar; John Campbell, second Duke of Argyll; Alexander Gordon of Auchintoul; John Dalrymple, Scotland Secretary of State; Queen Anne of England; King George I of England; King James VIII of Scotland; Cuchulain of Muirthemne; Sinann Eire, granddaughter of the sea god, Lir.
On spelling: In the early eighteenth century, spelling was a dodg
y affair any way one looks at it. Standardized spelling in English didn’t come along for another century at least, and for Gaelic it didn’t happen until the latter part of the twentieth century. The spellings for Gaelic words in this book are from the MacLennan dictionary, which tends to the archaic and therefore lends itself to the period. All other words are either English or dialect words used by English-speaking Scots, and for the sake of internal consistency are spelled according to American usage.
Email J. Ardian Lee at [email protected], or visit the newsgroup news://news.sff.net/sff.people.ardian.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Son of the Sword Page 37