Fire & Flesh

by Kerri Carr

  Cailean felt carefully with a finger over the piece of leather, tracing patterns with the raised ridges on its surface. After a moment, he rolled up the parchment, stuffed it in the satchel and hurried east of the lake.

  He ran quickly for several minutes, pausing only to survey the area and sniff at the air, before continuing ahead. He was following the smell of cooking meat, knowing who he expected to see.

  He slowed as he approached a clearing where the dancing flames of an open fire were visible Three men were hunkered in front of the fire warming their hands, while a fourth slowly roasted a skinned rabbit. Three horses stood nearby, leashed to tree trunks. Their weapons—three broadswords and one halbard—lay against a nearby tree. They all had biodags at their waists. They appeared deceptively innocuous. The casual air about them would make one think they were not expecting any danger and. However, no matter how the scenario played out, if they all attacked him at once, he was definitely at the losing end—and losing the battle wouldn’t be the only thing he would lose.

  Hidden behind a tree, he fixed an arrow on his bow and took aim. The first arrow tore through the roasting rabbit and impaled the cook in the throat who pitched into the flames, headfirst, without a sound.

  The fellow’s comrades turned in horror at the sight of the dead man’s head on fire. That’s when the second arrow struck, and another man toppled over, the arrow lodged in his chest.

  Both remaining men scrambled at the same time for safety, yelling in terror. He shot one of them fatally through the back and maimed the other with an arrow in the shin.

  The fellow screamed curses at his attacker, his lineage, his children, everything as Cailean approached calmly. When the flames revealed the face of his attacker, he gasped in shock. “Ye!! Traitor!” He screamed both in pain and rage. He swept out his biodag and Cailean’s foot lashed out swiftly. The sound of cracking bone was loud in the still night and the man screamed. Cailean hunkered before him as he held his fractured wrist, weeping and cursing.

  “Ye will live, Stuart son of Lewis,” the warrior said. “But only to tell Laird Donald that his son is yet his death and his end. Consider even this, mercy.” In one movement, he yanked the arrow out of the man’s shin. His screams rang for miles.

  ***

  Cailean fastened the bleeding man to a horse and sent the horse back the way it had come.

  Then he went about binding the dead bodies with ropes and weighting them with rocks. Afterwards he attached the bodies to two horses and dragged them back to the lake where he shoved each body to the bottom of the lake.

  ***

  They had arrived at the rendezvous point sooner than he anticipated. For a whisper of intuition, he would have delayed his attack until the next evening, he thought. There was no more time.

  Reading his braille map briefly again, he traced his way northwest of the camp he’d just visited. He walked until the horizon lightened to lilac and the night birds began to return home. At an open field, about six miles from the lake house, he paused at a cairn with a stone cross. He regarded the mound of stones thoughtfully for a moment and then tugged at the stone cross with considerable effort till it broke free of the stones in which it had been buried. The bottom of the cross had been worked into a hoe. Carefully he removed the stones of the cairn until a bare patch of earth showed.

  He dug until the sun was high up in the sky.

  *****

  Cailean knew something was wrong before he stepped foot into the lake house. The house was just too quiet.

  An alarm went off in his mind when he noticed signs of a scuffle by the fire place. “Aila?”

  He dashed toward her room, and almost slipped in a pool of blood. No… no… no, his mind cried as he opened the door.

  She was sprawled on the floor face down, a bloody biodag in one grip.

  “Aila!” he cried, dashing toward the prone figure on the ground.

  Fire flashed in his eyes at the sight of her bruised face and arms. “Who did this?” He cradled her gently in his arms. Her lips moved slightly. He bent toward her. “What did ye say?”

  “I ripped his face with my biodag,” she whispered painfully, attempted a small smile.

  He was as gentle as possible, but she cried in pain as he lifted her off the ground and placed her on a bearskin mat. He quickly made a poultice with some dried herbs from his satchel. For the next half hour, he bathed her bruises and applied the poultice. And then he fed her a light broth.

  Her eyes opened, looking curious. “What is in ye poultice?”

  He smiled, openly relieved. “Ye will know with time but this time is for rest and recovery.”

  She paused. “I smelled this a couple of days ago, before ye arrival. I didn’t know what it was but here ye are.”

  She glanced at him thoughtfully. “Where were ye, Cailean?”

  “On some urgent business,” he replied, rising. “Sleep now, I will prepare the house.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was referring to tidying the house or booby-trapping it as they had planned. It could have meant both. She rose to her feet, grimacing at the sudden pain in her side. Asides that, and a slight burning sensation on her face, she was fine. The poultice had indeed worked wonders.

  “Ye need to rest, Aila,” came Cailean’s voice from the next room.

  “I’m tired of resting,” she returned, limping slightly.

  After a pause, he asked, “Who attacked ye?”

  “Perhaps ye will recognize a man with his lower face sliced when ye are about yer business yonder,” she returned. “His companion was the one who hit me though. He was the one who–her face flushed red–spotted us out on the lake.”

  A mysterious look played on the man’s face. “A jealous suitor I see. I think I know who that would be.”

  Aila looked at askance. “Pray how is that?”

  He smiled, a mere contraction of his lips. His eyes were stone cold. “A sliced up lower face didn’t ye say? Now how would I miss that?”

  “Ye saw him then?”

  “I will,” he said. “Rest now, while I go about my work.”

  “How many men would we be expecting?”

  He thought. “A lot, quite a lot. Laird Donald has trained countless numbers of fighters and he cleverly places a claim on all the sons of the families to whom he loans money. He takes their children and trains them vigorously for weeks while the debt is being service. By the time the debt is repaid, the child is not interested in returning to their family.”

  “Ye give an idea that ye suffered the same fate at some point.”

  Cailean merely smiled. “One day, ye will know everything.”

  ***

  He walked through the woods the same way he had last night, making small discreet marks in different trees and tree stumps with a biodag. He checked various weapons he had hidden across the forest ground. He came up to the massive tree stump where he’d stooped and retrieved his poke the night earlier. From the poke, he withdrew a smaller poke fastened with a string and a scoop. Then he also withdrew a length of cloth which he doubled and then wrapped tightly around his lower face so his nose and mouth were concealed. Retracing his steps to the trees he had marked, at their roots he carefully poured a greenish brown powder with the texture of dried moss. He did this quickly and hurried away.

  *****

  Aila was considerably recovered when he returned and was preparing a scotch broth and biscuits.

  “Not sure what ye put in that poultice,” she said. “But I’d think I was just scratched if I didn’t know better.”

  “Just a few wild mistletoes and yew leaves.” Cailean smiled. “Ye are a very strong lady.”

  “If there had been mistletoes I’d have known,” she interjected with a scoff. “There’s nothing in there familiar.”

  She looked up at him. “Ye are a man of mystery, Cailean. And I thought that honor belonged to me.”

  “Ye are in good company then,” he returned, chuckling. After a pause, he said, “I noticed y
e had sharpened the halbard recently, where did ye train?”

  She told him about Sebastian.

  “I may have use of it,” he said. “And while we bade our time, it will be wise not to go for a walk in the woods just yet, not until the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why is that so?”

  “We may have company sooner than expected,” he said. He told her about his trip the night before, omitting that he had killed three men he had discovered camping out and sent one wounded back to his master. He also didn’t mention his visit to the cairn.

  “Have you got plans for reinforcement?” she asked. ‘My father’s friends are in Thurso.”

  “We won’t need any reinforcement but I will need ye to move to Reay—”

  “My place is here, I won’t be running off.”

  “In a battle, ye presence will be my weakness—”

  “I don’t need yer protection,” she retorted. “I can protect myself alright!”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he paused and looked at her. “I will be stronger if I knew you were safe”

  “And I will be worried if I knew ye were out there alone fighting.”

  “I will be fine, Aila.”

  “And so will I, Cailean.”

  They regarded each other for a moment.

  “Ye know we face certain death during the battle,” he said.

  “But I won’t go down without the heads of the men who murdered my family rolling.”

  He pulled her in an embrace. “Heads will indeed roll, my love.”

  She smiled. “That is a first.”

  He kissed her slowly. “I love ye, Aila.”

  She returned his kiss, wrapping her arms securely around his neck.

  When they joined, it was with the desperation of those who faced uncertainty but were satisfied in the certainty of their bond.

  ***

  Later as they lay quietly in the dark, he said to her, “I’ve found the gold yer father hid away.”

  She glanced up at him sharply. “And ye only just mentioned it?”

  “Ye have to trust me, Aila,” he said. “I have hidden exactly one tenth of the gold by the lake, under the yew tree with three knife etchings on the biggest root lying toward the north-east. Should our enemies capture any of us, this is the only information they will ever get from ye or me. They will never have all the gold.”

  “Why can’t we just leave, Cailean?” She sat up and peered at him earnestly. “We could leave with all that gold.”

  “Because Donald is a wild wolf that must be stopped, this is the reason I cannot leave. This is my one chance of bringing him down for what he did to yer father. I will be doing a lot of innocent people a favor should I kill Donald.”

  “Vengeance is the Lord’s!”

  “And men are his agents, Aila,” he countered. “I came to Reay for this moment.”

  “There’s no changing ye mind then.”

  “There’s no changing my mind, yes,” he nodded.

  “Then by yer side I will fight till the very end.”

  He smiled. “By sun up, ye will show me how much training ye have put in yer halbard.”

  ***

  They trained from early dawn until the sun began to climb the sky. Cailean didn’t say much, but like Sebastian, she came to understand the meaning behind his grunts. Perhaps all highland soldiers had an unspoken code of communication during training, she thought.

  “Sebastian,” Cailean finally spoke up, “he taught ye well.”

  *****

  The twenty men hurried through the woods, rage burning in their hearts for what had happened to their brothers. But fear also, for who was responsible.

  They had approached the lake when the first man started choking and collapsed, with his hands wrapped around his throat.

  By the time the group head screamed “poison moss” as a prompt to protect the lower part of their faces with cloth masks, nine men were already choking to death. The eleven others had hung back to explore the area and so were lucky to miss the poison moss.

  One man grimaced in rage. That son of a whore and his bloody chibs!

  What was his father thinking when he sent them against the most ingenious battle strategist in the clan with mere swords and arrows?

  As a result, three of his blood brothers lay dead before him. He was going to kill the son of Donald, no matter what other instructions he had received. It would have to look like an accident, he thought. Or else the laird would punish him with death if it was found, no matter the circumstance, that it had been deliberate.

  He would walk down to the lake house and surprise him there with revengeful fire and pain.

  But he couldn't move even a muscle. Only if he could move.

  He was dead, claimed by poison moss.

  ***

  Since they could not estimate how long the poison moss had been applied, they couldn’t camp and wait it out. The ten surviving men instead opted to circumvent the danger zone by giving the area close to the lake a wide berth—playing perfectly into Cailean’s ploy. The direction they were headed to avoid the poison moss would lead them away from the lake house to the next village.

  They had traveled less than a mile when a powerful voice behind them commanded them to turn and come to him at once. They looked at themselves in puzzlement as they recognized the voice. He had actually shown up himself? Their looks seemed to say.

  They hurried back the way they had come, and found a group of men sprinkling water across the area affected by poison moss.

  At the center of the group was an elderly, but powerful looking man with a claymore between his shoulders. He regarded the men that had just arrived. They bowed shortly when they saw him. “Greetings Laird Donald.”

  “Greetings, my sons,” the old man responded. “You will bury your brothers and honor them. Then we will proceed to find that chanty wrassler and his whore and bring them both to their end.”

  They spent the next three hours digging graves and gathering stones. Then they buried their brothers as the laird read from a Bible in their honor.

  Afterwards, the laird scattered the powdery contents of a metal jar across the graves and lit it. It burned with a dark red smoke that could be seen for miles around.

  Even the stoutest of warriors, such as Cailean, would spot the red column of smoke and recognize a feeling of anxiety within themselves. For it signified an unrelenting revenge war against the enemy’s house has been initiated with no option of peace until the entire lineage of that enemy had been subdued in death.

  Thus, Cailean understood as he observed the column of smoke from the roof of the lake house. He smiled a thin bitter smile. He had long burned the powder of red smoke against his enemies, the men of Inverness under Laird Donald Mackay.

  ***

  His face still burned underneath the wraps despite the herbs that the apothecary had concocted for his injuries and the pain kept him awake each night. He could barely part his lips to eat and drinking anything other than water was sheer agony. He suspected the girl had applied a poison to the blade.

  His death looked certain, he realized with bitter anger. Killed by the blade of a woman as Abimelech was killed by the millstone of a woman in the holy book.

  But he would bring no such disgrace on his family. He wouldn’t die before he had put the girl out of her misery. He would kill her and then lie in wait for the warrior who was with her.

  He tried to smile and cursed in bitter anger at the sudden pain.

  *****

  Accompanied by Aila, Cailean went about the lake house busily, setting up various traps and showing her how to trigger them. She smiled at his ingenuity, thinking of what life would have been like if he was a farmer on the vast farmlands of the village and applied his tricks and skills to farming the soil. Undoubtedly, he would be very rich and influential.

  Yesterday a clear smell had come to her—Aberdeen roses. Still she didn’t know what this might signify. The littlest comfort was that it wasn’t
the fragrance of myrtle blossoms as with her uncle Sebastian.

  Thoughts of a family with him had surprised her, fantasies of how their children might look and number. She couldn’t bear to think this might be their end when this life with him felt like a beginning, a beautiful one.

  She resolved she would do all in her power to make her dreams a reality.

  *****

  Ross mobilized nine armed men, with the plan that once the lady and the man were dealt with, they would cart away valuables from the house. He felt ashamed knowing how the lady had attacked and almost finished him off; her prowess with the biodag was unbelievable. She had sliced open his jaw before he’d realized the dagger was even out. And if his bodyguard had not intervened, it would have been his sure death. Rage boiled in his chest. He would personally inflict grievous torture on her so that death, when it finally came, would be much welcome freedom. The same treatment he would mete out to the man, for daring to acquire his woman. There was no telling what the man was capable of or what reinforcements he might have but subduing them was now a passion. He assigned three more fighters to the group. An overkill was better than anything else.

  And what if they had fled? A rational part of his feverish mind asserted. He would hunt them down to the ends of the earth with the last of his breath on Earth.