The Good Hawk

by Joseph Elliott

  “Because the clan isn’t expecting us back until morning.”

  “I don’t want to sleep on a boat,” she says.

  “Neither do I! Trust me, it’s the last place in the world I want to sleep, but we don’t have a choice. Maybe you should have thought about that before sneaking on board.”

  “I was only t-trying to — help,” she says.

  I take a deep breath. “Look, you’ll be fine sleeping here with us, I promise. Then we’ll decide how to smuggle you back in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay, J-Jaime.”

  She sits on one of the wooden benches opposite Lileas and starts combing her hair with her hands. Lileas edges away from her. I rummage through the supplies and find a tangle of blankets, which I fashion into three makeshift beds. When they’re ready, we all lie down. As soon as I’m on my back, some of the tension leaks out of me; it’s a lot easier to imagine we’re not on water when I’m not staring straight at it. Agatha is on one side of me and Lileas is on the other. Lileas closes her eyes and pretends to be asleep. I have no idea what she’s making of all this. I should have talked to her more, reassured her somehow. I still could. I’ll do it in the morning. Everything will be better then.

  Agatha is staring at the stars. The shine has been drained out of them. I pull the edges of the blanket over my ears and tight into my sides. My eyelids are so heavy they hurt. For once, the gentle rocking of the boat is a comfort, and before long I am fast asleep.

  A CACOPHONY OF CHIMES WAKES ME. I SIT UP, LICKING salt from my dry lips. It is not yet dawn, and a thin mist lies over the sea like a frail blanket. It takes a few moments to remember where I am and why. The chiming is coming from the enclave, which is now much farther away than it was before. We’ve drifted during the night. Dammit! I forgot to drop the anchor. How could I be so stupid? I glance at the water and immediately regret it. It is so deep. My breathing becomes erratic.

  It’s okay. I’m okay. I am Clann-a-Tuath. We don’t feel fear.

  My ears tune back in to the chimes, which remind me that the depth of the water is not my only problem right now.

  “Agatha, wake up. Something’s happening.”

  Agatha’s eyes spring open.

  “That’s the Fourth,” she says. “Something’s — wrong.”

  She’s right — it is the Fourth. It’s the one chime we are all taught to listen out for. All of the Fourths — from all around the wall — are being struck over and over again; I’ve never heard them all ringing at the same time before.

  “We need to get back. Help me row,” I say.

  I pick up a set of oars and hand them to Agatha, but she doesn’t take them. She is standing with her mouth open, looking over my shoulder.

  “Oh, no . . .” she murmurs.

  I turn around and see them at once. Eight longboats, each dominated by the figurehead of an ugly serpent, making straight for the Northern Gate. The enemy raises their weapons, which glint with hostility.

  “What’s happening?” asks Lileas, standing up beside me.

  The words fall from my mouth, and I can scarcely believe that they are true.

  “I think we’re under attack.”

  “WE NEED TO BE F-FASTER,” I SAY TO JAIME AGAIN. WE ARE rowing fast. I am tired, but we are not going fast enough. We need to get back and we need to help.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” says Jaime. “You’re not rowing properly. I keep telling you: row in time with me.”

  “I am. It’s you who’s not — rowing in time with — me,” I say. “Why isn’t she helping?”

  The girl is at the back of the boat doing nothing.

  “I can help,” she says. She always speaks quiet.

  “It’s okay,” says Jaime. “We only have two sets of oars.”

  “I want water,” I say, and I do not say it nice because I do not like her. She made Jaime marry her even though he didn’t want to and now she’s not helping. She looks at me like she doesn’t understand. “Water,” I say to her again.

  She brings me some and I drink it quick so I can keep doing the rowing. I do not say thank you because why should I. Milkwort is spinning around in circles in my pocket. He wants me to get him out but I can’t. The girl goes back to the end of the boat and is looking through all the things which she shouldn’t do because they are not hers. I am watching in case she tries to steal something and I’ll know.

  We are close to the Western Gate now, but it is closed. Jaime stops rowing and starts waving his hands. “Open the gate!” he says. “Open the gate!”

  The gate does not open. There is no one on the wall. Where are all the Hawks? They should be there and they are not.

  “What’s happening, Jaime?” I ask to him.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know.”

  Inside I can hear shouting. We have to get inside. We have to help. “Go next to the g-gate,” I say, and I point. There is a secret way and I know it because I am a Hawk. Jaime moves the boat until it is close. I try to find the rock. There is a special one that comes out and I need to find it. Lenox showed it to me before one time. All the Hawks have to know it for the emergencies and this is the emergencies right now.

  I find the stone. It comes out and there is a handle and I pull it. It is stiff so I use two hands and pull it hard and harder. It comes down and the metal bars come out of the wall. This is the secret way to get up the wall.

  “We can climb — up from here,” I say to Jaime.

  “Good job, Aggie,” he says, which means I was very clever to find the handle and to pull it.

  I climb up first. The metal bars are cold but it is easy for me because I am good at climbing. Jaime climbs up second.

  “Stay in the boat,” he says to the girl. “We’ll open the gate from the other side.”

  I get to the top and look over. No one is on the wall. People in the enclave are running all over and some are still asleep. How can they be asleep when the chimes are clanging so loud in my ears? They need to wake up. What is happening? What —? The Northern Gate is open — it should not be open — and enemy people are coming through. Why is the gate open? Where are all the Hawks? The enemy people are like one hundred ants all bursting out of the ground. They are deamhain, I know it. This is bad bad so bad the worst. I have never seen a deamhan before but I know it because of the red-and-blue tattoos all over their faces. They are the worst ones. They are shouting from their dark blue mouths all horrible horrible sounds and they have axes and swords and they’re swinging them and they’re shouting and my clan our home my —

  I push myself up onto the wall. Jaime grabs me and pulls me down again.

  “Let go!” I say. “We have to — help!”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he says.

  “We have to do — something!” I say. We need a clever plan but I can’t think of one. I look at Jaime to see if he can think of one but he is staring wide eyes. “Jaime!” I say. “Jaime!” He doesn’t say anything or even look at me.

  People are running all over everywhere. An ax flies through the air and nearly — Two deamhain use their swords and they’re hacking at — The goats are running loose and don’t know where to — Shouting and screaming and shouting and — The ground is covered and trampled in — All bodies are broken and pleading and —

  There is an arrow that goes fast from a crossbow. It is Maistreas Eilionoir. She is on the roof of a bothan and she is firing at the deamhain. Yes! You can do it. She hits one and then another one and keeps firing even though it is hard for her to load the arrows because she is old. She is doing good aiming and getting them. Other people have weapons now too. My clan is fighting back and we can do this. We will win because we are Clann-a-Tuath and we are the best.

  I can help too. I know a plan. If I go to one of the launchers I can turn it around and use it to fight. I am not afraid. I push myself up on the wall again. I need to help them. I can do it.

  “No, Aggie — look,” Jaime says.

  Everyone has stop
ped. No one is fighting anymore. Everyone is still and watching.

  “Why have they stopped?” I say. Did we win already?

  Then I see it. The deamhain have Maighstir Ross. Let him go! They walk with him through the Gathering. It is hard for Maighstir Ross to walk. He is hurt very bad. The largest deamhan is pushing him. He is an ugly deamhan with a scar on his face that goes all through his tattoos from his mouth to his ear. He has an ax and he is holding it at Maighstir Ross’s throat. He kicks the back of Maighstir Ross’s leg and there is a crack because it breaks. Maighstir Ross does not show that it hurts even though I know it hurts a very lot. He goes down on his knees.

  “Vér as sigrade!” shouts the deamhan with the scar. It is their language so I do not know what it means. “Nå ævi ykar fulgja vid Øden.”

  The deamhan lifts the ax above his head.

  “Forgive me, old friend,” shouts Maistreas Eilionoir from the roof where she is. She fires one more arrow and it hits Maighstir Ross in his heart.

  His body falls forward.

  We have lost.

  JAIME IS PULLING ME. “WE NEED TO GET BACK TO THE boat!” he says.

  “No! Let me go!” It is not right what they did. I want to hurt them all.

  “There are deamhain coming. They’re on the wall.”

  I look and he’s right. There are two deamhain running toward us. I go back over onto the metal bars. I don’t think they saw me. Jaime is already going down. I go down too.

  “What’s happening?” says the girl who is still in the boat.

  “We need to get away. Agatha, quickly.”

  I am trying to be quickly. Climbing down is not as easy as the climbing up. I fall into the boat and Jaime starts rowing again away from the wall. I pick up the other oars and help him. The deamhain are near us now on the wall and they stop. Both of them have axes with the long handles. They have their backs to us so they cannot see us but if they turn around they will see us. Please don’t let them turn around and see us. Water from the oars is flying into the boat all around. The deamhain start walking again and go away farther on the wall. They didn’t see us and that is the biggest phew ever.

  “Where are we going?” I ask to Jaime.

  “I don’t know,” says Jaime, and then he says it again. “I don’t know. Away from the wall, away from everything.”

  We try to get farther away, but we are going around as well because the water makes us and it is pushing us to the Northern Gate. That is bad because that is where the deamhan boats are.

  “Row harder,” says Jaime. “You need to put both oars in at the same time.”

  I’m rowing as hard as I can. My hands are all sore and red from as hard as I can. And it is too hard to do both oars at the same time.

  “Look,” says the girl. “They’re leaving.”

  I turn around and squint and she is right. First one then another of the boats is going away from the gate and is leaving.

  “Why? Why are they leaving already?” says Jaime.

  “I found this,” says the girl. She is holding something and hands it to Jaime. It is a spyglass.

  “Good job,” he says, which I do not like. He takes it and looks through it for a long time and his head is shaking and then he shouts, “No. No!” and his mouth is open big.

  I take the spyglass from him and look into it. I see the boats and I see the deamhain. Closer they are even worse. All of their skin is blue-and-red tattoos, even on their eyes and arms and necks. Their hair is all braided with bits in it and so are their beards. They are pushing people onto the boats and it is my clan. They are all tied together. Flora is there who is my friend and Lenox and other Hawks and everyone. This is bad bad bad.

  Then I see who is on the wall. They are not all of them deamhain. Why are they —? The chiefs of Raasay are there — I know them from the Ceremony. They are talking to the deamhain on the wall and watching our clan and they are not stopping it. I turn to Jaime to ask him but he shakes his head and nods at the girl. This means he does not want her to know, but I do not care about that. She is from Raasay so she knows already. She helped them to do it.

  “What have you done?” I scream at her. I am all hot inside. I jump over one bench and push past Jaime and then over another bench to reach her. She looks scared but she is pretending and I need to hit her because she did this. It is her fault. I grab her by the hair and I shake her and she screams.

  “What have you done?” I say. “You did this. You knew they were coming!”

  Jaime is trying to pull me off, but I am too strong and I will not stop until she tells me the truth and I hit her.

  “I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything. I don’t know —” she is saying, but it is a lie.

  “Let her go; stop it,” Jaime says.

  I have hurt the girl which is good but I stop because she is crying. Crying is not dùth, doesn’t she know that? She shouldn’t do it. Jaime is holding her and I hate that. The crying makes me think that maybe she didn’t know. Otherwise why would she do it? I go back to the front of the boat. I do not say sorry. Jaime tells the girl what we saw.

  “I didn’t know, I promise. I didn’t know,” she says.

  “I believe you,” he says. “But what do you want to do now? Your parents are still on Skye. You could swim back to them if you want to?”

  “I’ll go wherever you go,” says the girl.

  Stupid girl. I want her to go away. I look through the spyglass again. Another two boats are leaving.

  “We have to — follow them,” I say. “We can catch them and get on the boats and help.”

  “That’s a terrible plan, Aggie. How would we get on board? They’d see us before we got close. And there’s hundreds of them and only three of us —”

  “We h-have to do something! We have to — try.”

  “Okay, okay. I just need to think. Let me think.”

  Jaime thinks for a long time and then he says that we can’t catch the longboats but we can follow them to see where they go, so that is what we do. All the time I try to think of a plan that is a better one. We pass the Northern Gate from far away. None of the longboats are there now but it is too dangerous to go close because there is still the chiefs of Raasay on the wall. Jaime says the waves will hide us because our boat is small. The gate is still open. Jaime stops rowing. He picks up the spyglass and looks through it at the gate. His breathing starts to get faster and then louder as well. Something is wrong with him. His hands go tight and one of them hits himself in his chest. Then he drops the spyglass and goes down on the floor of the boat and he’s making sounds like hurting. The girl moves toward him.

  “Stay away!” I say to her. Then I say, “Jaime.” And I say it again, “Jaime. What’s wrong?” He can’t talk to me. His breathing is so loud and he’s sucking in the air like he can’t get enough inside.

  “He’s having an attack,” says the girl. “My father gets them. I can help.”

  I look at her and I don’t know if she is a good person or an enemy person. The chiefs of Raasay are an enemy but maybe she is a good person, and Jaime needs help and I don’t know what to do.

  “Okay,” I say, “but if you hurt him I will — hurt you more.”

  She kneels next to him and puts her hand on his shoulder. Then she picks up one of his hands and puts it on her chest.

  “Look at me,” she says in a quiet voice, and Jaime looks at her.

  She breathes slow and she is squeezing his hand. Jaime tries to copy her breathing and after a while his breathing is slower too like hers. Then he says, “Thank you,” which comes out with lots of breath.

  “What was it, Jaime? What — happened?”

  He points to the gate. It’s still hard for him to speak I think.

  I pick up the spyglass and look through it. I wish I didn’t do that. Inside the gate there are only dead people on the ground. So many of them. Some have tattoo faces and are deamhain. All the other ones are not. All dead people and broken and horrible and blood.


  And then I look up and what I see is even worse. Seven faces are above the Northern Gate. The first I see is Maistreas Sorcha, then Maighstir Clyde and Maighstir Ross. It is all of the elders. They do not have bodies anymore. They are heads hanging from chains that are dangling.

  All of the elders are dead.

  I’VE BEEN ROWING FOR SO LONG THE RHYTHM OF THE oars feels like a second heartbeat. Lift, stretch, pull. Lift, stretch, pull. Lift, stretch, pull. I grit my teeth to prevent tiredness from closing my eyes. My pathetic arms feel ready to snap. The repetitive motion has worn away the skin on my fingers, leaving raw patches that throb with every stroke. The pain is good. It helps keep me focused, helps prevent the panic from taking over again. I don’t know what happened before, but I can’t let it happen again. I have to keep going. I have to be strong.

  We’re no longer following the boats. They disappeared from the horizon long ago, leaving us deserted on the open sea. Was it yesterday? Or maybe the day before? I’ve lost track. I don’t even know if we’re going in the right direction. We could be going around in circles, or heading back toward Skye. And who knows what we’d find back there? The whole of Raasay could have taken over the enclave by now. They betrayed us, that much is clear. They must have made a deal with the deamhain to get us drunk and open our gates. Which means the whole marriage was a sham. All the torment I felt in the weeks leading up to it is almost laughable now. The thought of those spineless meirlich living in our enclave, our home . . . If I ever see them again, I’ll — Well, I don’t know what I’ll do. What can I do? Nothing. Except row. Endless, endless, pointless rowing.

  At least I’m doing something. Unlike before, when we were on the wall, watching it all happen. Agatha was desperate to climb over and help, but I kept stopping her. Was it to protect her? Or was it because I knew that if she went, I would have to go too?

  Unwanted images keep swamping my mind: visions from the battle, the grass soaked red, the heads of the elders spinning on their chains, their years of wise counsel reduced to nothing but hollow faces and empty eyes.