by Jenn Lees
“Slainte Mhor!” Echoed around the circle, then they all drank once more.
The smooth whisky warmed Siobhan’s throat. She glanced at Rory. His mouth formed a tight smile as his gaze rested on her and then he swallowed the last of his whisky.
“A Highland single malt. The best Scotch.” Rory sat back next to her.
“But you’ve poured it out on the ground.” His libation in honour of the fallen somewhat of a mystery to her.
Rory stared at the silver hipflask he held. His broad shoulders rose with a pensive breath.
“It’s no’ a sacrifice if it cost me nothing.” His intense blue gaze connected with hers.
Yes, Rory knew what that truly meant, and had almost sacrificed his all to save others—people he didn’t even know—to ensure the safety of Scotland. Angus had taken the task from him, without his consent. Siobhan fought with waves of emotion. Sadness mixed with guilt at feeling so grateful Angus had prevented Rory from fulfilling the role he believed was his—almost a birth-right.
Callum walked to his tent with Kendra and returned soon after. Callum held a whistle and Kendra a small bodhran. The music started, Callum sang and Rory’s crew and others from Siobhan’s team who knew the songs, joined in. Rory sang softly next to her, his deep masculine tones following the melody tunefully. Callum’s voice was just as masculine but held more musicality.
The evening passed with music and singing. Most of the lyrics eluded Siobhan but some tunes were familiar, as they had played them in the Bunker. After a time, people’s voices required a rest, so Callum played his whistle for a few musical pieces, its haunting low-pitched notes echoed around the campfire and flew off into the night. Then Kendra sang, her female voice lilted and breathed through the lyrics in the Gaelic tongue.
Siobhan’s chest warmed. They were singing Scotland. The whistle was the wind through the Highlands. The bodhran the steady beat of the mountains, the continuation of the season’s cycle, year in and year out. Vocals singing in the Gaelic belonged to the animals—the deer, the grouse, the osprey, the sea otter. The lyrics themselves were the lives and thoughts of the people who have inhabited the Highlands for millennia, for generations and generations—some of them her ancestors.
The music spoke to her very soul—touched it. The scene around the campfire blurred.
“The human soul responds to music. You’re made that way, aye?” Rory’s deep voice was gentle in her ear. “The one who made all sings to us through the wind, the forest, the animals of his world. Each life is a song to sing. You hear the lives of those who have gone before you in the music.”
“How?” Siobhan wiped away her tears as she frowned at him.
“You’re a scientist. You ken you carry the genes of your parents and their parents, and so on. You’re no’ just you. You’re part of everyone who came afore you. You are a flesh and blood part of everything that is, and which only has its being through the one who made us.”
“You believe that?” She was seeing yet another side to this man.
Rory didn’t answer, only returned his gaze to the fire. The music continued to surround them and flowed to fill the loch to her left and the forest behind her.
“You hear the lives of the ones who have gone afore you,” Rory said at last.
“I do?” Her tone was as incredulous as the idea was to her.
“Aye, you do. When ye asked me how I time travelled,” he whispered close. “You did nae doubt the possibility but mentioned portal as a way o’ doing it. That’s no’ scientific, is it? Yet you asked me if it was a method I used. A portal to travel through time is something your ancestors would have believed in, lass.”
She squinted her eyes at him. He raised his brows at her.
“So, if not a portal, then you have access to a time machine or a wormhole,” she whispered hoarsely into his ear. “Though the latter seems most unlikely.”
“Och, no, I’ve said too much already. Conversation over.”
Chapter 28
Rory spent the night covered in a blanket beside the fire with his arms wrapped around Siobhan. Her hair smelled of her flowers mixed with beech and rowan smoke. He held her tight as the morning light awoke him. She stayed asleep for a while.
They would be back at the Compound today.
And then what?
The cold of metal touched his right cheek. Rory remained immobile.
“What do you want?” he asked the tall, masculine shadow which hovered over him and Siobhan. She woke, eyes wide. He gave her a sharp squeeze, ordering her to stillness.
“I want you and all yoor people to wake up and stand over there.” The man whistled as he removed the gun from Rory’s face. “And do not make any sudden moves or I’ll ruin the face of the exceptionally beautiful woman you have been holding in your arms all night, laddie.”
Rory stood very slowly and indicated for Siobhan to do the same.
“I’ll just order my people before they get jumpy, aye?” Rory asked his quietly spoken, calm aggressor.
The older man nodded. He wore a long coat over brown-grey trousers and a homespun jumper. His tanned, weather beaten face had dirt ingrained in his wrinkles. His voice wasn’t one of the old man he appeared to be.
How had this man got past the night watch?
And it was daylight now. No, it wasn’t the fault of the one on watch. Rory himself had encouraged festivities. He’d only wanted to celebrate being alive. And being with Siobhan.
He’d let them drink...and drop their guard.
It was his fault, and his fault alone.
People materialised from behind the camp. They bore the marks of living rough in the wilds of Scotland with untidy clothes and unwashed bodies. They walked from the forest with purpose toward the camp. Each held a knife or carried a firearm pointed and ready. A group headed for the horses, others strode to the tents where his crew and Siobhan’s Government people emerged.
So many?
“Everyone stay calm now and do what these people ask, okay?” Rory used his commanding voice. In the entrance to his tent, Callum reached for his Barretta. “No, Callum.” Callum dropped it. Kendra placed something back in her tent.
They stepped to the line drawn in the pine-needle covered ground, which the man had made with the heel of his boot.
“Hmm. Interesting. You have captives.” The man tilted his head toward Antony and McPherson.
“Those people are under arrest and we will take them to be tried,” Rory explained.
The man raised his eyebrows and said nothing. He turned to his people.
“Horses, weapons and some food would be nice.”
Three of his men untied the horses’ reins from the line Rory’s crew had secured them to for the night. They whinnied and nickered nervously as the strangers led them toward the far end of the camp. Rory’s chest tightened as they led Boy past him. The tall black horse let out a neigh, reared, and pulled against the man leading him as he passed. Rory swallowed.
The women of the group rummaged through their food supplies, taking what they could hold in the empty cooking pans.
“There isn’t much o’ the roast rabbit left, Webster.” A salt-and-pepper grey-haired woman with dark eyeliner, wearing faded black clothing, walked toward the leader, her kohl-outlined gaze fixed on Rory. Webster stood near him.
“So, now we are all lined up. Who do we have here?” Webster turned and faced Rory and Siobhan, who stood in the middle of the line-up. They remained quiet.
“You know we have been following yoo since you made your way to Loch Ewe?”
Rory raised his head. He must have missed their tail on their forward journey. Too busy with McPherson’s clan.
“And we saw the trouble you and yours gave them.” Webster walked to McPherson and bent low to look into McPherson’s down-turned face. “Then we saw all the hoo ha around the submarine. And earlier today, a sonic boom!” His hands mimicked an explosion as he returned to Rory and Siobhan.
“So, who are you?”
Webster’s face was inches from Rory’s. His foul breath wafted into Rory’s face.
“My name is Siobhan Kensington-Wallace and I am from the Scottish Government.”
Rory turned his head and glared at Siobhan for breaking the silence. She looked straight ahead.
“I’m Rory Campbell from the Invercharing Community and these are my people. We’re on our way home from dealing with the nuclear issue caused by the submarine.”
“Aye, nuclear issue. The sonic boom.” Webster did it again, his wide-open eyes accompanied the hand actions.
He then stepped closer to Siobhan.
“The Scottish Government. For an independent Scotland, I presume. A noble notion.” His voice held sarcasm. “Wouldn’t we Scots love that?” Webster nodded to his compatriots. They smiled back while McPherson lifted his head. “But the Government, and I use the term in quotation marks, has not been heard from for years.” Webster sounded educated and spoke with an Edinburgh accent.
“That will change.” Siobhan said with conviction. Her well-spoken English seemed devoid of any Scot’s accent at this moment. “We wish to have a meaningful dialogue with the people of Scotland.”
“Meaningful dialogue. Another grand notion, lassie. And how are you going to do that?”
“We will meet with the people who run communities ... and others.”
“Oh, and we are the others, aye?”
“Yes, sir. We’d be very glad to meet with yourself and any other leaders of the different groups who are—”
“Siobhan! Stop making promises we can’t keep!” Antony yelled from the far end of the line-up.
Siobhan tensed beside Rory. She sucked in air and turned to Antony.
“Would someone please gag that man? He does not speak for the Scottish Government!” Siobhan turned back to Webster, visibly calming herself. “I promise you, Mr Webster, if you wish a voice, we will grant you one. The Government is planning to exert its powers and fulfil its responsibilities to its people. Soon we will function as a government should, and we wish all those concerned citizens who want to be part of it, to join us in getting Scotland back on its feet.”
“Very noble and grand sentiments, Ms Siobhan Kensington-Wallace. But I’m sorry to admit, I have lost all faith in a government who runs into its rabbit hole at the first sign of real trouble and decides it’s time to pop out its wee bunny head forty years later. Sorry lassie, t’is nae good enough. And we dinnae want anything to do with it.” He grinned tightly at Siobhan.
Siobhan held her head higher.
Rory’s heart beat for her. Siobhan was a nuclear physicist, not a politician. She spoke well, but not well enough for the tough heart standing in front of her. The educated tough heart who lived with several people who, this incident aside, Rory was reluctant to call bandits.
“Who are you then, sir?” Rory looked the man straight in his grey eyes.
The man chewed his lip and squinted his stare back to Rory. “Let’s just say we are a group of people who don’t wish to be part of Community life and definitely want nothing to do with formal government. You could say we are nomads and scavengers.”
Rory would definitely call them scavengers.
“I ken you.” The woman with the greying hair and dark outlined eyes pointed at Rory. “Rory Campbell, did ye say?” Her accent was broad Highland.
Rory turned to her and nodded mutely.
“I kenned your faither, Scott Campbell. Och, he was a man.” She smiled to herself. “And ye have nae done too badly from his siring, either laddie.” Her eyes traced a journey from his head to his toe and back again as she spoke. She turned to Webster. “His faither was a good yin. He wiped ‘oot that mob o’ slavers near Fort William a few years back, ken? Well, a good few years back, aye.” She looked at Webster and tilted her head at him.
“What?”
She flicked her head toward Rory. “Give the lad back his horse. Fur the sake of his faither’s memory. The man died riddin’ us o’ them slavers, ken.”
Webster’s shoulder’s slumped. “Och!” He looked resigned. “Women!” He turned and lifted his chin in the direction of the man who held Boy.
Rory whistled, the horse broke free and trotted to him and he grabbed the reins.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Rory said to the strange woman.
She smiled and tilted her head in the direction they would head home. “Ye live in Invercharing, ye say?”
“Aye.”
“But yoor faither and his funny wee wifey lived in Glencoe, aye?”
“Aye.” Boy nudged Rory’s back. Rory wouldn’t say more in case he triggered her memory of himself in another time, looking exactly as he did today. Rory remembered her—the black market pharmacist.
“Ye ken that old farm hoose lines up with the stone over yonder?” She tilted her head toward the top end of the loch; the direction of the standing stone Siobhan had noticed yesterday.
Rory pushed his eyebrows together, wondering where she was going with her information.
“Well, they’re on a Ley line, ken? It’s the summer solstice tha day, aye. Be careful. Ye never ken what may happen.”
“That’s enough of your old druid talk, Deidra. Let them go if they must. Aye, on ye all go. The rest o’ your things are ours. Away with yoo.” Webster dismissed them with a flick of his hand.
Rory waved his people to start walking and helped Callum and Xian hitch the bodies onto Boy’s back. They marched away, empty-handed.
Not for long.
First thing he would do on his return, after seeing the Government off, would be a mission to retrieve their goods. He wouldn’t let wild people like this man, no matter how well spoken, have the horses and weapons he’d commandeered from them. And they had his father’s rifle.
Chapter 29
Invercharing Community
The Compound was a welcome sight after their day’s journey. Rory sighed. It had been a long walk. They’d tied Sundeep and Sanjay’s bodies over Boy’s back and periodically stopped to take them from the saddle and place them in a chilly burn to keep them from deteriorating too quickly. The odour of dead human was obvious, and Boy’s unsettled nickering became more frequent the closer they got to home.
George stood waiting at the gate. Having surrendered their CB radios to their early morning guests, Rory had no way of informing him of their soon arrival. The lookout in the watchtower would have told George of their approach—and their lack of horses.
Bullet holes pock-marked the walls of the compound’s buildings. They’d have to patch them up before winter. The smell of baking bread permeated the air. It was always the aroma of home. Government personnel walked between their vehicles carrying the large boxes that stored their gear. Vehicle doors were open and Government staff loaded the equipment into them.
Packing up already? They would’ve felt the reverberations of the underwater blast from here and decided their mission was completed.
“You look like you have a story to tell.” George stepped toward Rory, eyeing those who walked behind him, crumpled and dusty, dragging their feet and most looking up as they smelled the bread and sensed their hunger.
Rory nodded wordlessly. George looked past him, noting the bodies on Boy and the two restrained men, one of them Antony.
A tall man in camouflage gear walked toward them, followed by Brendan, Mandy and Christine, who had come out of the front building and now strode past him. Brendan approached Rory, and he grabbed his little brother in a tight hug.
“Ow, Rory. Good to have ye back, but dinnae break mine, aye?”
“Here, this is for you.” Rory handed Brendan the folded piece of paper Murdo had given him. “Memorise it, then eat it.” Rory said.
“What?” Brendan laughed.
“No seriously. Memorise it.” He nodded at his wee brother as a smile tugged at his cheek. Brendan frowned and unfolded the paper.
“It’s just numbers.”
“Aye, memorise. Eat.” Rory mimed putting food in his mo
uth.
“You’re weird,” Brendan said through a laugh.
Behind Rory, Kendra and Callum hugged their women. Every journey out posed the question of return, and every reunion was like a resurrection.
“Ms Kensington-Wallace, we are packing ready to return to the Bunker. We thought you wouldn’t want to delay once you arrived. Well done, everyone, on your successful mission.” The Government man lifted his head and directed his congratulations to them. Rory read his name badge. William MacIntosh.
“Thank you, Bill. As you see, we have less than we left with.” Siobhan’s gaze flicked to Boy. “We lost Sanjay and Sundeep.” Her voice broke. Rory placed his arm around her shoulder.
MacIntosh stiffened. Rory sensed the man’s displeasure at his open affection to Siobhan. They’d yet to inform those in the Compound and the Government of their relationship. What would be the political fallout from that?
George peered behind him, his eyes squinted over his glasses. MacIntosh followed his gaze.
“Yes, it is me,” McLellan stated from the back of the group.
“Well, you can remain quiet!” Siobhan had composed herself. “Major Antony McLellan is under arrest. Mr Stobbart, would you please find a place to keep Major McLellan and Mr McPherson detained?”
“Aye, Miss,” George answered Siobhan and then looked questioningly at Rory.
“I’ll fill you in, George.”
“And I will fill you in, Bill.” Siobhan said to her now second in-command. “But please may we all have a rest and a freshen up before we attend to those unpleasant tasks?” Siobhan watched Antony and McPherson as they walked past, escorted by Militia to a secure place.
“Ms Kensington-Wallace, may we leave as soon as possible? It’s barely midday and we would make it home to the Bunker before dark. It’s midsummer’s day and we’ll have plenty of daylight.” MacIntosh stood in front of Siobhan, as if to bar her way.
“Ms Kensington-Wallace needs time to recover from her journey, Mr MacIntosh.” Rory held Siobhan’s arm and ushered her past the large man. “What’s his hurry?” he whispered into Siobhan’s ear as he walked her into the main building.