The darkness deepened as they descended, and Martin realised that he was trying to walk in the exact centre of the path, as far from both sets of trees as he was able to get. But there was no movement in the shadow, no sign that they were being followed.
At the foot of the hill the stream widened out and slowed, its noise no more than a murmur so that Martin suddenly became aware of the silence. So much so that he almost let out a yelp when Campbell ran off to one side.
“Missed it.” Campbell said, returning, “A nice big coney that would have made us a fine supper. Never mind, there’ll be more. Come on. Shelter is just ahead.”
It was almost full dark by now. The path widened here, and Martin was aware of dark heavy shadows looming over them on either side, their shape too regular to be trees, but looking oddly broken and askew if they were the houses that Martin guessed them to be.
They moved up an alley of these shapes before Campbell stopped them in front of a tall building. Martin looked up to see the outline of a cross against the sky as Campbell led him forward into the ruined church.
In some ways it looked like the church had been vacated only yesterday. A white cloth still hung over the altar, and the sepulchral silence that Martin associated with these places still rang in the air, but when Campbell lit a candle taken from the vestibule, it was apparent that the building had seen better days.
Pigeon droppings littered the floor and mingled with the rotted straw and mud that had collected there. Above the altar, a huge figure of Christ on the cross was badly disfigured, his face hacked away, leaving only a deep black hole that swelled and shrank in the shadows and followed their every move.
“This is a Catholic church?” Martin asked.
“Aye. It was at one time. Some people preferred to take their chances with the Others rather than conform to the Old Protector’s view of Christianity, and some of them ended up here, nearly ninety years ago.”
Campbell looked around him and shook his head sadly.
“And they nearly made it too—but the Boy King found them during his first attempt at insurrection, and by 1665, all that were left here were the bats and the memories.”
He knelt by the altar and crossed himself, muttering a prayer under his breath.
Martin was shocked.
“You are a papist?”
Campbell laughed, the echoes booming around them.
“By upbringing but not by choice. It is a long time since my last confession, and I do believe it would now take too long for me to tell. I was just trying to do something to remember the brave people who died here. You have no need to fear: I’m not going to sprout horns—or fangs for that matter. Besides, I prefer the term Catholic.”
Martin looked up at the image of Christ above him, then immediately away again. The portrayal of suffering, combined with the black emptiness of the face, said nothing to him of the Christ he knew. He turned his back on the image.
“Start getting together some wood and get a fire going,” Campbell said. “I’ll see if I can catch us some supper.”
Once more Campbell rummaged in his backpack, and came up with some long sections of thin cord.
“My snares,” he said. “They served me well two nights ago, and the land then was less promising than this. Let’s hope they do as well tonight.”
He left, and the silence fell heavily on Martin. He busied himself collecting dry wood and straw and, once the fire was going, he sat and stared deeply into the flames, trying to ignore the flickering features of the face which loomed over him.
His body was all aches and pains, not the least in his legs where the muscles had knotted and twisted and were as hard as nuts under the skin. He bent to massage them, only to bring a new, flaring, pain to his left arm.
“Shot at, wounded, fell down a gorge, soaked to the skin and being followed by I don’t know what, and it is only the first day,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what delights await me tomorrow?”
He lifted his arm and studied the bandage under his shirt. The whole thing was stained red again, made darker by the flickering firelight. Tearing another piece off the tail of his shirt, he rebound the arm, noticing with approval that the moss Campbell had put there was doing its job and the wound was still clean.
Shadows flickered at the edges of his vision, and he jumped at every small movement. He had re-stoked the fire twice before Campbell finally returned with a brace of skinned and gutted coneys.
“Fresh water and wild coney. A feast fit for a king—or two travelling gentlemen, at least.” He held the rabbits up “I cleaned them outside and dumped the rest far downstream—we don’t want any unwanted guests snuffling around during the night.”
He placed the coneys on makeshift spits over the fire and sat down opposite Martin.
“And how do you like my homeland?” the Scotsman said.
Martin shrugged.
“I don’t know what I expected. Maybe dark lords in high castles, shrieking hordes of Others screaming through the night. Certainly not this—it is almost idyllic.”
Campbell snorted.
“There are still things abroad in the night, and we must always be on our guard. But if it’s dark lords in high castles you want, there are plenty of them further to the north, but you had better pray you never get to see them—they are not places for Christian men.”
The smell of roasting coney was making Martin’s belly rumble and complain, but it would be a while yet before they were cooked.
“Tell me the tale of Bannockburn,” he said. “It will stop the hunger from gnawing at me for a while.”
Campbell looked into the flames.
“It is a dark tale, and the start of all our woes. Possibly you have heard of the Bruce?” Duncan said, and the mischief was back in his eyes.
“We are not completely ignorant,” Martin replied, but Campbell was already continuing.
“He wanted to be king, to rule Scotland, but Edward of England had other ideas. There were many battles, over many years. Wallace showed the Bruce the way, and was cruelly tortured and killed for his troubles. Maybe if he had lived things would have gone otherwise with the Bruce. We will never know.
“It all came down to one final battle, the lines drawn on a field beneath the old castle at Stirling, next to a small river—the Bannock Burn. Edward was confident—his armoured horsemen would surely be more than a match for the kilted horde of foot-soldiers that Bruce had amassed. But Bruce was a tactician and had led Edward’s army into the trap—a deep mire in which the horses floundered and the armoured troops were unable to stand.
“Even then things were not going Bruce’s way, for Edward’s force were disciplined and well trained, whereas the Scots fought in small, clan-based groups with little cohesion or tactics. The English archers merely had to stand off and fire flight after flight into the mass hordes of the clans. Many of my ancestors died that day, as did many heads of other clans. In reality, it was to be the last day of the old ways. And while the arrows fell, it looked like the day would be Edward’s.
“But as dusk fell, Bruce played his master-stroke, the result of a pact he had made three nights before.
“Some say that he stood upright in his stirrups, his face terrible to behold, as he took the choice between the devil he knew and the king he would not bow to, but I believe he knew all along what the result of his action would be. It didn’t matter to him. He would be king, and his subjects would be just that—subject to his will, or whim.
“They came from the hills, only thirty of them, but their eyes blazed red and their horses were like creatures from hell itself, their iron clad hooves sparking fire off the rocks as they fell on their enemies. They were like shadows from hell, a black cloud that swept all before it. And where they passed, they left a bloody swathe of terror, a carpet of dead, dying and those about to be reborn. And men fled from the sight of the dark demons, the demons who carried a red cross on their white tunics.
“Templars they had been, but it is
said they had made a bloody pact with devils under the Temple in the Holy City, a pact that gave them dominion and power. And power they had, for two centuries and more, but they over-reached themselves in France, and the king there expelled them and the Pope declared a holy war against them. Bruce gave them sanctuary, in return they gave him aid against Edward and protection from his enemies.
“And even as the dark horde was sweeping down on him, Edward would have stood his ground, but the sight that sent him and his army fleeing the field of battle was that of his soldiers, his dead soldiers, arising from the dead and marching down that hill towards their former allies.
“Edward and his army returned south to reinforce the wall, and an English army was not seen in Scotland again until the Protector came north after Charles Stuart more than three hundred years later.
“As for the Bruce, he took the thirty Templars into his court, and named them Stewards, and the dark bloodline of the Stuart family was founded and their bloody reign of terror began. Within two years the Bruce was dead, and William, the high Steward and keeper of the bloodline, was crowned High King. The Others began their systematic take-over of the country, and many of the old clans, mine included, were banished to the islands to scrape a living on those barren rocks.
“There is more,” Campbell said. “Much more, about how the bloodline began, how it is perpetuated, and how Charles Stuart came to claim the throne of England in the name of his mother Mary, Queen of Scots, but it will have to wait—these coneys are ready for eating.”
Campbell passed Martin a spitted coney, its flesh blackened and charred by the fire, the meat sweet and gamy underneath. As they ate they tossed the bones back on the fire, watching the sparks rise up into the eaves of the church.
“How do you know these tales when they have been long forgotten in Milecastle?” Martin asked, tearing a hot strip of meat from the coney’s flank, and almost choking as the heat of it hit the roof of his mouth.
“It is a matter of culture. The clans have tales which have been told since the old kings came over from Ireland, and new deeds are always added to the tradition by the bards who sing in our halls. We grow up with the songs, and they never leave us.” Campbell said, then returned to devouring his coney.
Martin could see the escaping grease glistening as it ran through the Scotsman’s beard, and reminded himself that he must bathe in the river in the morning before he started smelling too rank.
After eating, Martin lay back and stared at the high vaulting ceiling, its broad beams looking as if a boat had been upturned and placed on top of the building. Red and black shadows ran across the structure, and in them Martin fancied he could see pictures: of battles in a field of mud, of dark horses charging down a hillside, fire belching from their mouths and nostrils, and of ancient skeletons in threadbare robes standing beside a king, their smiles widening as they bent towards the man.
Campbell started to sing, a low, mournful lay in a language Martin did not understand, but it spoke to him of loss of home, and of wandering in far lands. The song went on for a long time, and even after it had finished the echoes of it rang around the church for long seconds.
“My mother used to sing that one. She taught it to Mary, in the year before she died,” Campbell said. There was a tremor in his voice, and Martin could see tears glistening at his eyes.
The Scotsman turned his back on Martin and stood. Suddenly he really looked like an old man as he shuffled away, towards the altar.
“You get some sleep. I’ll wake you for your watch later,” he said.
The shadows began to darken on the roof and, sometime later, Martin slept.
He woke with a start, the echoes of some unheard noise still reverberating in the church. Thin watery daylight was washing through the remains of the stained glass window to his left, laying multicoloured patterns across the floor.
The noise came again, a scraping, as of someone dragging something heavy across the floor. He reached a hand for his sword, just as there was a small noise to his left. He turned that way, and found himself staring into a pair of deep green eyes, eyes which focused sharply on him as their owner sighted over a bow, the arrow aimed directly at his heart.
Chapter 4
28th OCTOBER, 1745 NEWCASTLETON
“Don’t move, laddie,” Campbell’s voice said to his right. “He’s friendly enough, but a mite edgy because he doesn’t know you.”
Martin let his grip fall away from the hilt of his sword, and opened his hands, palms up. He even attempted a smile, and was rewarded when the green-eyed bowman lowered the bow—only by a couple of inches, but enough to let Martin start to breathe again.
“I wouldn’t make any sudden moves,” Campbell said. “I’ve seen them bring down a deer at fifty paces, so I don’t think he’d miss from there.”
Martin studied his would-be attacker.
He was short. Martin reckoned he was only about five feet tall, but lithe with it, full of a nervous energy like a deer startled on a woodland path. The muscles on his arms stood out proud from the strain of holding the bow drawn, but he was as still as a statue. There was no tremor in his limbs, and he looked like he was capable of holding the position all day if necessary.
He was dressed all in green, a roughly woven tunic of heavy wool which reached his knees. His legs were bare and his feet were clad in a pair of soft boots made of animal hide, also dyed the colour of grass. The bow was short, no more than three feet long, but thick and supple, and there was a small forest of arrows stored in a quiver slung across his back.
His arms were also bare, and traced with a patchwork of finely crafted tattoo work in reds and blacks—scenes of hunting, animals running through woodland, arrows bristling in their flanks, and tall columns of stone standing proud against open skies.
Martin’s first impressions had been right: the eyes were green, a deep emerald sunk beneath a high brow, almost hidden completely by a fringe of jet black hair that hung loosely against his shoulders. He was clean-shaven, with only the merest hint of a fine downy beard and moustache. The features were fine, high cheekbones, a chin that almost came to a point, a thin, aquiline nose and a small, thin-lipped mouth which opened in a smile to show near-perfect white teeth. Martin got the impression of something wild and feral, something barely tamed. There was something about this man that reminded him of Sean.
“I am with Campbell,” Martin said, and was dismayed to hear the tremor in his voice. “Friend?” he said, and stretched out a hand.
“I am pleased to meet a friend of Cam-Bell,” the woodsman said, but didn’t yet drop the bow. He spoke with an accent Martin did not recognise, a soft lilt that was more like singing than speech, but there was a halting nature, as if English were not a language he spoke often.
“The men of the forest bring you food and wish you welcome. Feed your bellies and empty your souls.” he said, and motioned at something behind Martin.
Martin turned, and saw the source of the noise which had woken him.
A small deer lay on the church floor, the flights of two arrows standing proud from its chest. There was little sign of blood, and a long line dragged in the dust on the floor showed that it had been brought in from the doorway.
“Thank you for the gift of food,” Martin said, and the bowman’s face lit up in a smile and he bowed his head twice before looking back up at Martin.
“Lennan wishes you well of it. May your soul be empty and your belly full.”
This sounded like a formal greeting, but Martin was stumped as to how to answer—such a meeting was way beyond anything in his etiquette lessons. He decided to keep it simple.
“I am Martin,” he said, and reached out his hand again.
The other man finally dropped the bow and unstrung it in one smooth motion. The arrow and bow were both put in the quiver and the string rolled around his wrist while Martin was still moving. The woodsman leaned forward and clasped Martin on the forearm. His grip was strong— there was a power in his arms t
hat belied his stature.
“And I am Lennan. Well met, brother.”
The woodsman looked deep into Martin’s eyes, clasping his arm in an ever-tighter grip. Finally he seemed to see something that satisfied him. With a nod he released the grip and stepped back.
“He turned up about half an hour ago,” Campbell said. “And insisted we take the deer. Though what we’re going to do with it, I don’t know.”
The woodsman spoke, but it was nothing that Martin understood. Campbell seemed to follow it, though, and there was a long discussion before Lennan turned back to the deer and, taking a narrow knife from beneath his tunic, began to disembowel and clean it.
“Does he have to do that in here?” Martin asked, and Campbell smiled.
“He thinks this is our holy place. They always eat in their holy places. I wouldn’t bother about it—from what I’ve seen of his people, they waste nothing, and leave no trace of their movements, whatever they do.”
“But who, or rather, what, is he?”
“I do not rightly know,” said Campbell. “But I think he, and his people, are the last remnants of the old Picts, the ones who were here before all of us. The coming of the Others has almost been a boon to them—we were slowly overtaking them and by the time of the Bruce we had cleared most of their forests. But now we have gone again, and the trees have come back. My grandmother told me of them—the little people of the forest—but I had thought they were only a part of children’s stories until I met them, two nights since, about ten miles from here.”
“But what about the Others? Are they in league with them?” Martin asked.
He didn’t see the woodsman move, but he suddenly felt the prick of a knife at his throat as he looked down into the flaring, staring green eyes.
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