The Chessmen l-3

by Peter May

  Within minutes he had totally lost his sense of direction. Visibility was zero. He could see only in those brief moments when the lightning came. And then he stumbled forward with a memory of the next few yards held briefly in his mind, until his confidence wavered and he stopped, waiting for the next explosion of light.

  Very quickly he realized that he was going up rather than down. But when he turned towards the descent he had no belief that it was taking him in the right direction.

  The rain whipped relentlessly into his face, finding its way beneath his jacket at the cuffs and neck. He wasn’t wearing waterproof overtrousers, so his jeans were quickly sodden and heavy. His feet, in their well-worn hiking boots, were wet and already starting to grow cold.

  He crouched down and took off his rucksack, delving inside it to find his flashlight and a compass on the end of a loop of ribbon that he could hang around his neck. He clutched the torch, but before his fingers had closed around the compass, his rucksack filled with air from a blast of wind that nearly knocked him over and was torn from his grasp. He lunged at it as it flew off into the night, a hopeless leap in the dark that netted him only fresh air. And the rucksack was gone, leaving him sprawled among the grass and heather, water running like a river over the hard, impervious surface of the peat beneath him.

  In desperation, he searched around for his stick, the thin beam of light from his torch making little impression on the dark. He was certain he had laid it down beside him when he crouched to open his rucksack. But there was no sign of it, and now it began to dawn on Fin that he was in trouble. He had no compass or map, no stick to help him keep his feet. He was soaked through and starting to feel the cold seep into his soul. He had no idea where he was or what direction to go in. And by now, for sure, in these conditions, Whistler must have lost him, too.

  He crouched down on his hunkers, his back to the wind, and tried to make a rational assessment of his situation. But all the rational thought in the world could not displace the one that filled his mind. Men died in these conditions. Experienced walkers and climbers caught in a storm among the mountains, fully equipped and often in broad daylight, could perish in a matter of hours. Fin was inexperienced, ill-equipped and lost in the dark. One false step could lead to a twisted ankle or a broken leg, a fall that would leave him lying hopelessly exposed to the elements. The cold would steal his consciousness. Sleep would come quickly, and there would be no waking from it. He knew beyond any doubt that he had to find shelter, and find it fast.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus on where he thought he was. Whistler had led him up through the valley between Mealaisbhal, and Cracabhal to the south of it. The last time he had seen him, he had been standing on the shoulder of the rising shadow of what he took to be Mealaisbhal on his right.

  Fin had covered almost no ground since then, and if he was climbing, then the rise would take him up over that same shoulder. He had never been in the valley to the north of the mountain. But he remembered from his schooldays the stories of the Cailleach of Mealaisbhal. Cailleach was Gaelic for an old woman, and this one had killed her son and lived wild in the caves of Carnaichean Tealasdale beneath the cliffs at the north end of Mealaisbhal. Or so the story went. But there were supposed to be numerous caves there, among the cliffs and rocks. Caves that would provide a man with life-saving shelter.

  He decided to keep climbing.

  With the beam from his torch trained on the ground immediately ahead of him, he forced himself up the slope, taking the shortest route over boulders and rocks lying in jumbles and clusters all across the slope of the shoulder. They were slippery and treacherous, and with the hail stinging his face, and the rain in his eyes, he could barely see.

  But he could tell immediately when the ground beneath his feet began to level off, and at the same time he found himself even more exposed to the weather. He staggered forward through the rain, the wind hitting him with such force that he fell over several times. But still he kept going, even though every muscle and sinew in his body was crying out for rest.

  The shadow of a massive rock rose up ahead of him, and he felt his way around it to the leeward side where he was briefly out of the wind. He pressed himself back against the sheer face of this giant slab and stood there gasping for breath. He had never in his life felt so small, or so vulnerable. The scale and scope of the land, and the power of the elements, dwarfed him into insignificance.

  He found himself shivering now with the cold, teeth chattering. To stop would be fatal. He had to find shelter. As he turned again to face the black uncertainty that lay ahead of him, the sky lit up in a series of lightning flashes that cast their ghostly effulgence across the valley that fell away beneath him. It was startling and bleak in this unforgiving light, a landscape so alien and primordial that it would not have been out of place on the moon. Cliffs rose sheer at his right hand, pitch-black and shining wet, reflecting the flickering lightning from overhead. Then the ground fell away in shelves and inclines into a wide valley littered with boulders the size of tower blocks, massive chunks of gneiss and granite cast upon the land by long-ago ice bursts. Sometimes in clusters, sometimes in single, solitary chunks that stood at impossible angles, balanced on corners and edges, casting their shadows like elongated fists, before vanishing again into darkness. It was like nothing Fin had ever seen.

  Further down the gully, a large body of water reflected the storm in long and short flashes, as if in response to some heavenly signal lamp pulsing Morse into the night. A hidden loch in the basin of the valley.

  Fin began the descent, slowly at first, each step made with care. He slipped for the first time, sliding several yards before managing to bring himself to a stop. Then back to his feet, and on, faster now, as his body weight propelled him on down the slope, pushed by the wind like a hand at his back. His torchlight flashed back and forth across the tangle of bracken and heather ahead of him, before picking out the shambles of smashed stone that formed a steep scree declivity that plunged towards the dark shapes of jagged rocks distantly below. Rainwater ran off the hill in streams and rivulets, snaking its way through the stones at his feet as he stepped on to them. He had covered only a few slithering yards before the scree shifted to the left and right of him, gathering momentum. Then like an avalanche it took his feet and swept him away, to fall helplessly down into darkness, his ears filled with the rush of falling stones. Until he struck something so hard it took his breath away. For one brief, terrifying moment, his head was filled with light, before he was taken by a darkness from which he knew there would be no return.

  A flickering yellow light filtered slowly through the gauze that fogged his consciousness. It brought pain, fear, an uncontrollable shivering. Whistler’s big pale face, with its smears of black and silver whiskers, flickered too, like a light bulb at the end of its life. The gauze was smoke. A thick, choking, hot smoke that filled the air. Fin coughed as he breathed it in, a painful racking cough, and he tried to sit up. But he couldn’t. He was wrapped, as if in a cocoon, unable to move.

  Three feet above him, an irregular stone roof curved away into darkness. A complex tracery of spiders’ webs hung from it in broken veils, reflecting the light of the flames that licked up through the darkness no more than eighteen inches from his face.

  ‘Bloody idiot!’ He heard Whistler’s voice strained through the gauze. ‘If you’re going to follow a man up into the mountains on a night when they’re forecasting a storm, you should at least come prepared.’

  Fin managed to unpeel a dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. ‘You knew there would be a storm?’

  Whistler showed his teeth. ‘Of course I did. I thought you would have checked that.’

  Fin saw his and Whistler’s wet clothes stretched over dry stones, steam rising from them on the far side of the fire, and realized for the first time that he was naked inside his cocoon. ‘What have you wrapped me in?’

  ‘A couple of woollen wraps and an aluminium blanket. And keep shivering,
boy. That’ll generate about two degrees centigrade an hour. The blankets’ll keep it in and you’ll reheat yourself. With a bit of luck your clothes will be just about dry by the morning.’ He leaned over and put his fingers on Fin’s forehead, his touch as light as chiffon. ‘You’ve a nasty bang on the head, though. I’ve disinfected it and dressed it, but you’d better see a professional.’

  Fin could see now that Whistler was sitting cross-legged on the far side of the circle of stones which contained the burning peats that were generating both the heat and the smoke. His long black hair was still wet, and swept back in a tangle from his forehead. The jumper he had worn beneath his jacket was dry, as were jeans protected by waterproof leggings. ‘What is this place, Whistler?’

  ‘We’re in a wee beehive dwelling at the north end of a pretty inaccessible valley somewhere between Mealaisbhal and Brinneabhal. There’s a few of them clustered here. Not real beehives, of course. That’s just what the archaeologists call them. God knows who built them, or why. Maybe shepherds at some point for when they brought the sheep up to the high grazing. Anyway, most of them are in ruins. Just circles of stone and turf. This one I remade myself, and keep it stocked with dry peats. Just as well, eh?’

  ‘What the hell do you come up here for?’

  ‘Deer. Mountain hare.’ He laughed, then. ‘And I’ve spent quite a long time in these parts searching for the cave of swords.’

  Fin frowned. ‘What swords?’

  A grin of something close to embarrassment split Whistler’s face. ‘Ach, it’ll be a bloody wild goose chase, I’m sure. But I was always fascinated by the story I heard once about a man who knew these valleys like the back of his hand. Got lost one time in a fog, and fell into a hidden cave among the boulders. There were steps down into it. And inside it he found a stash of rusted old swords. Dozens of the things. He couldn’t carry them himself, but he was sure he would find his way back with friends to bring them down to the village.’ Whistler shook his head. ‘He never did. No matter how many times he looked, he couldn’t find that cave again. No one ever doubted him, though, and there was a lot of speculation about where the swords had come from and who put them there.’

  ‘And?’

  Whistler shrugged. ‘And nothing. I never found them either. My favourite theory was that they belonged to the men of Uig who hid them from the English after the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden. Everything “Highland” was forbidden, including the wearing of the kilt and the bearing of arms. So if the locals hid their weapons up here, there was no way anyone would ever find them, but they’d be quickly accessible if they were ever needed.’ He laughed. ‘I’d have loved to feel the weight of those Jacobite swords in my hand, Fin. Not least because they’d have been worth a bloody fortune.’ He tipped his head to one side, casting Fin an appraising look. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Bloody awful.’

  ‘Good. As long as you’re feeling something you’ll be okay.’

  He took a stout stick and tipped several blackened stones out from the embers of the fire on to the beaten earth floor.

  ‘When these have cooled enough for me to handle, we’ll wrap them into your blankets to help generate a bit more heat. Under your oxters, and at the back of your neck. God knows, you’ve no brain to speak of, but what little you have has a wee bit at its stem that regulates your internal temperature, along with your breathing and circulation. The hypothalamus. We want to keep that warm and in good working order.’ It was typical of Whistler that knowledge like that could trip off his tongue almost without thought.

  Fin let his head fall to one side, still shivering, and heard the sound of the wind thundering all around the outside of this tiny stone dwelling. ‘I guess you’ve done it again,’ he said.

  ‘Done what, boy?’

  ‘Saved my life.’

  Whistler roared. ‘Well,’ he said, when he was finally able to stop laughing. ‘It’s a family tradition.’ He grinned. ‘And given that I exploited that stupid pride of yours to lure you up here in the first place, there was no way I could let you die. No matter how hard you were trying to kill yourself.’ His smile slowly faded to be replaced by something like guilt. He hesitated for a moment, then: ‘I’m sorry I hit you the other night.’

  ‘So am I.’ Fin managed a rueful smile.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t.’

  Whistler’s smile returned, burgeoning into a grin that made light in his eyes. ‘No. I should have fucking killed that bastard Jamie Wooldridge. Next time, I will.’

  Fin closed his eyes, and for the first time since consciousness had returned, felt his shivering start to subside just a little. He was aware, then, of Whistler tucking the hot stones into the folds of his blankets, and he could feel the warmth of them bringing life back to his frozen body.

  Whistler was right. He was a bloody idiot.

  He woke to a sound like the end of the world, and felt the earth moving beneath him, as if the whole mountain was shaking. The fire was blazing, and he could see the fear and confusion in Whistler’s face on the far side of it. Fin sat up and almost cracked his skull on the roof of the beehive. ‘What the hell’s that?’

  The noise roared, even above the blast of the storm, filling the air, the ground fibrillating all around them. Whistler placed a hand flat on the roof above his head as if afraid that it might fall in on them. ‘I’ve no idea.’ His voice sounded very small, and Fin could barely hear it.

  ‘Feels like an earthquake,’ Fin shouted above the noise.

  ‘Aye, it does. But it can’t be. Not on this scale, anyway.’ If anything the shaking was getting more violent. Whistler put both hands on the roof now, like Samson in reverse trying to hold the temple up. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  Fin had no idea how long it lasted. It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime in which the end seemed just a breath away. Though neither of them voiced it, each feared that they were going to die, without any clear idea of why. And then almost as suddenly as it had wakened them the shaking stopped and the noise subsided, and the sound of the storm took precedence once more.

  They sat in breathless silence for several minutes hardly daring to believe that it was over, whatever it was, and fearing that it would start again at any moment.

  Then Whistler tipped forward on to his knees and crawled towards the entrance. ‘I’m going to take a look.’ He pulled aside the big flat stone that sealed them in, and Fin felt a rush of cold air that threw sparks from the fire and fanned the peats to fill the dwelling with their strange, incandescent light. Whistler wriggled out into the night, and Fin sat wrapped in his blankets full of uncertainty and apprehension.

  Whistler was back in less than a minute, soaked even in that short space of time. His hair was wild and smeared across a face that was unusually pale.

  ‘Well?’ Fin searched it for enlightenment.

  But Whistler just settled himself again on the far side of the fire and shrugged. ‘Can’t see a thing. It’s pitch out there. We’ll need to wait till dawn.’

  ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘Just after two. Another four hours or so.’

  Fin lay down and rolled on to his back, still tense, waiting for the noise and the shaking to start again. But only the storm disturbed the night, rain and wind assaulting their tiny shelter with the fury of thwarted attackers. The long summer of drought was well and truly over.

  The next time he awoke it was daybreak, which is when he had found Whistler out on the ridge in that strange, pink dawn light, looking down into the vanished loch where Roddy’s plane lay canted among the rocks.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jamie pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his Barbour jacket and shoved out his jaw. ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ Fin said. He glanced beyond Jamie and saw Kenny’s scepticism.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing much. Whistler was waiting for me up at the loch. He apologized for the other night. We tal
ked about old times, and took shelter from the storm.’

  Jamie’s disbelief was patent now. ‘The plane was found a long way from Tathabhal.’

  Fin just shrugged. ‘Why are you looking for him?’

  ‘If it’s any of your business, Macleod, I’m serving Macaskill with notice of eviction. Thought I would do it myself, rather than send in the bailiffs.’

  Fin felt his hackles rise and he glanced at Kenny. ‘And brought backup in case he kicked your arse again?’

  ‘I’m not sure I like your tone.’

  ‘And I’m not sure I want to work for someone who would throw a man out of his own home.’

  Jamie bristled. ‘It’s not his. Neither the land nor the building. His father sold the feu of the blackhouse to my father years ago for ready drinking money. I’ve checked back through the books. There’s not been a penny paid in rent on the house or the croft since last century.’

  Fin blew air through pursed lips. ‘A peppercorn rent. I’d be willing to bet we’re not looking at anything more than a few hundred quid. Not a fraction of the value of those chessmen in there.’ He jerked his thumb back towards the house. ‘Whistler was right. You’re not half the man your father is. He and Whistler had an understanding. You’re just a vindictive bastard.’

  Anger simmered dangerously in Jamie’s unblinking gaze. ‘And you’re fired!’ His voice was tight and soft, barely audible above the wind.

  ‘Too late,’ Fin said. ‘I already quit.’

  Jamie stood for a moment in seething silence, but whatever thoughts flashed through his mind wouldn’t form words on his lips. He turned and strode back down the hill to his Range Rover.