WHITEBLADE

by H A CULLEY

  ‘Yes, but it’s only a small one for chopping firewood.’

  ‘That’s ideal. You lead and cut steps into the snow. When you get tired, yell and someone else will relieve you.’

  The wind had packed the snow against the side of the mountain and Griogar found it relatively easy to cut steps into it. However, reaching down far enough to cut the next step below where he was standing was tiring and his back ached.

  ‘This is fun, but I feel guilty getting all the pleasure myself. Would someone else like to enjoy himself for a bit?’ he called up.

  With a laugh, Iomhar took over, casting aspersions on Griogar’s masculinity as he did so. However, after a quarter of an hour he asked Ruaraidh to take over from him. By the time that Torquill and Oswald had taken their turns, the slope was becoming less steep and the snow had stopped falling. By midday, they were down on the valley floor.

  They took a brief rest and ate some cold food before pressing on. The snow there was only a couple of inches deep in most places and they made it back to where the river forked just as it was getting dark. Iomhar suggested pressing on, but Oswald said it was too dangerous at night, especially one as dark as this was. It was still overcast and pitch black in consequence.

  The next morning Oswald thanked Cormac for probably saving their lives. Iomhar and Griogar apologised for doubting him, but Ruaraidh didn’t say anything, just scowled at the boy. Oswald decided to have a quiet word with Torquill, but then changed his mind. Torquill was no fool and he would have already realised that Ruaraidh was intolerant and resentful. He wouldn’t be invited to scout again.

  The snow had stopped and a little later a thin, watery sun put in an appearance. Oswald returned to find that everyone had been very concerned about them and, consequently, extremely happy to see them all safe and sound. On the final leg of the journey he had made two decisions and once everyone had stopped fussing over him, he sent for Rònan and Cormac. The younger boy arrived first.

  ‘Cormac, I was very impressed with you over the past two days. Am I correct in thinking that you’re an orphan?’

  When the boy nodded and hung his head, Oswald told him to come and sit beside him.

  ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ Oswald told him, putting an arm around his shoulders.

  ‘It’s not that, though everyone does seem to act as if it’s your fault that your parents were killed, as if I could have fought off a hundred warriors,’ he explained bitterly. ‘No, it’s just that I’ve nowhere to go and nothing to do.’

  ‘Well, I may be able to help there. My body servant, Rònan, is fourteen and I’m about to free him and let him train as a warrior, so I’ll need a new body servant – not as a slave, of course. I’ll pay you.’

  ‘You want me to serve you?’ the boy’s face broke into a broad smile. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better.’

  Rònan was delighted when Oswald told him, but then his face fell.

  ‘I will miss being your servant, though. You were more than a master to me; you were my friend, too.’

  ‘I hope I can still be your friend. Just because you’re no longer looking after me doesn’t mean that I care for you any less.’

  At that the boy looked a lot happier.

  ‘What about Gytha? Won’t she be looking after you?’

  ‘No, my mother and my siblings need a servant. You’re a free man from today, Rònan. Once we’ve sorted out this place, I shall start to train the younger warriors properly and maybe recruit some of the other orphans from Cormac’s settlement, if they’re suitable. You can join them and share a hut with them. They’ll probably be glad of your cooking skills!’

  The one person who wasn’t happy about Oswald’s new servant was Oswiu. He’d hoped that he could look after his brother again, once he heard that Rònan had been freed to train as a warrior. Therefore, the news about Cormac came as a bitter blow. Oswiu went in search of him and, without any warning, punched him on the nose.

  ~~~

  Their first winter on Arran was a harsh one. Without supplies from Kintyre they’d have been in danger of starvation. Warriors were not fishermen, however good at rowing they were, and only a few of them were proficient hunters. In any case, game was scarce. The food shortage would have been worse had not Conmael and his men returned to Lorne for the winter with a promise that he would return in the spring.

  The few married men, including the priest, who had elected to stay, sent for their wives and children and, as winter wore on, several of the younger warriors married the widows of the settlement men who had been slain by the men of Strathclyde.

  Once the hall had been completed, work started on a second hall for the families to share initially. Later, once huts had been built for the married men and a small communal hall for those women who remained unmarried, the original hall in the settlement became the church.

  Conmael had taken one of the captured birlinns with him as a reward for his part in the recapture of Loch Ranza. The others Oswald sold, one to Domnall Brecc and the rest to Fergus. This gave him the money to reward his men and to purchase grain, seed and animals from the mainland of Kintyre.

  Oswald used the winter well. Once construction work had been completed so that everyone had shelter from the snow, the cold and the driving rain, he introduced a harsh training regime. Most of his men were good fighters, but that wasn’t good enough. He wanted them to become formidable. Rònan and one or two other boys from the settlement who were big enough to wield a sword and shield properly were trained separately. Whilst too young as yet to be considered warriors, they would be able to help defend the settlement if it came to that. Oswiu was allowed to join them, not that he would be allowed to fight if and when the time came – he was still far too young – but it made him feel better to be included.

  At last spring arrived and Conmael returned. He had expected to find Oswald living in the hall as the chieftain of Loch Ranza. Instead, he was living in one of two separate huts that had been built inside the palisade that surrounded the hall where the single warriors lived. The other was occupied by Acha and her three youngest children, but Gytha was no longer their slave. Acha had recruited an orphaned girl from the settlement called Caitrìona as her servant and Oswald had married Gytha.

  Oswald had been attracted to Gytha when he first saw her. As time went on he found that attraction had turned to desire and desire to love. They were married in the new church in the settlement at the end of March. Cormac had stayed on as Oswald’s body servant and Gytha had taken Caitrìona’s younger sister as her servant to help her look after their home. After two months of marriage, Gytha thought that she might be pregnant, but she wasn’t certain, so she said nothing to Oswald, or even to Acha.

  Whenever the weather allowed, Oswald took Eochaid, Oswiu and Cormac hunting. The older boy had been furious with Oswiu for giving him a bloody nose, but after Oswald had boxed Oswiu’s ears and made him apologise, the two got on much better.

  Oswald dearly loved every moment he spent with Gytha, but he found the hut claustrophobic if he spent too long cooped up. Of course, as chieftain of the settlement he was often required to sit in the hall to adjudicate on disputes, try petty criminals and listen to petitions, so hunting restored the balance between duty and enjoyment.

  One day in early March the weather was benign enough for him to consider a reconnaissance of Brodick again. This time they made it to the top of Gaoda Bheinn without any trouble. In addition to his usual party of hunters, he had taken Torquill as well. Acha had been dubious about letting Oswiu go along, but as he was now ten years old and Oswald had promised that he wouldn’t let any harm come to him, she relented.

  The four men and two boys stood on the summit of the tallest mountain on Arran and were stunned by the view. It was sunny but chilly, so the air was crystal clear, not hazy as it often was on hot days in the summer. They could see Kintyre to the west and some distance away to the east, the mainland of Strathclyde. The Isle of Bute, where the men who had attacked Loch
Ranza had come from, lay to the north east and the entrance to Loch Fyne due north.

  They could see that the southern half of Arran was less mountainous. Domnall Brecc had driven the invaders back towards Brodick and strengthened the defences of the settlements there before withdrawing as soon as winter set in. Belin’s men seemed content to maintain their toehold at Brodick for now, but Oswald was certain that they would renew their attempt to capture the island in the spring. He was determined to drive them out before they could reinforce the men they’d left behind to hold the settlement during the winter.

  He looked down at Brodick with interest. The mountainside was relatively barren, but halfway down there was a large wood before the trees gave way to pastureland around the settlement. It was too far away for him to make out much detail, but he could count six birlinns tied up along the wooden jetty. At a rough estimate, that meant about three hundred and fifty warriors. Then he noticed two more birlinns on the sea between the mainland and the island. He concluded that reinforcements had started to arrive; he needed to warn Domnall Brecc and prepare his own settlement in case of attack.

  ‘We need to establish a lookout post up here to give us notice in case they head our way.’

  The others men nodded, looking worried.

  ‘Do you want someone to stay here and see if any more cross to Arran?’ Torquill suggested.

  ‘No, we can always count the number of birlinns later; they won’t be doing anything today. The lookouts up here will need to bring food and a tent with them for shelter.’

  ‘Isn’t there a danger that Belin’s men will come up here and find them?’

  ‘I doubt it. We have never encountered any sign of them in the interior of the island. If they hunt, they must do it down there. No, I expect them to attack us from the sea,’ Oswald stated with conviction. ‘However, whether they come by land or sea, we will have good warning.’

  ‘May I suggest that the lookouts light one signal fire if they are coming by sea and two if by land? It won’t matter if they know someone is up here, because they’ll have plenty of time to make their escape,’ Torquill suggested.

  ‘Good idea.’ Oswald wished that he’d thought of the plan. He was coming to appreciate the young warrior’s qualities more and more as he got to know him.

  ‘Perhaps they had better prepare three fires,’ Eochaid put it with a glance at Torquill that smacked slightly of triumph. ‘Just in case they decide to come by both land and sea.’

  Oswald smiled. ‘I’m obviously not needed! Well done, the pair of you!’ He was determined to nip any rivalry between the two of them in the bud.

  With that, they turned and started to clamber down the other side of the mountain.

  ~~~

  ‘The signal fire’s been lit!’ the lookout on top of the hill above Loch Ranza yelled in excitement. The two other warriors, who were helping him keep watch throughout the hours of daylight, woke with a start and one of them kicked the boy sleeping nearby hard to wake him up.

  ‘Go and tell Lord Oswald,’ one of the men told him.

  The boy stared at him, resentful because of the strength of the kick.

  ‘How many fires?’ he asked, as if talking to a small child.

  The man glared at him and was about to box his ears when the man on watch intervened.

  ‘Good point, lad. There’s just the one so far. No, wait! There’s a second.’

  ‘So they’re coming by land?’

  ‘And by sea. There’s the third. Well, what are you waiting for, boy? Off you go.’

  ‘And well done,’ he called after the retreating back as the boy flew down the hillside like a mountain goat. He’d been picked, not because he was the fastest runner, but because he was the most surefooted over the rocky terrain.

  Oswald’s eyes glimmered with excitement.

  ‘It’s a pity we didn’t think of a way of indicating how many were coming by sea and how many by land.’

  ‘Does it really matter?’ Conmael mac Gilla asked. As he had promised, he had returned the previous week. This time he had brought two large birlinns with him, each with twenty oars a side and a complement of sixty men each. That meant that Oswald now had nearly two hundred and seventy men in total. He was waiting for Domnall Brecc to reinforce him, but no one had arrived to date.

  The last report he’d had from the lookouts had been when they had been relieved a few days ago. At that time there were nine birlinns in the harbour, but some were only ten oars a side. His best estimate was that there were five hundred warriors in Brodick. It was not good odds, but the fact that they had split their forces was encouraging.

  Oswald was in two minds: whether to try and attack both forces at once, or to ambush the party coming overland and defend the settlement against a seaborne assault until the ambush party returned. He came to the conclusion that to do the former option would risk defeat in two areas, whereas the second had a better chance of success. He just wished he knew how the enemy had split their forces. In the end he assumed that they would divide them equally. He therefore took just over two hundred men with him and left Eochaid and his crew to defend the fortress on the spit of land.

  Both Gytha and Acha had urged him to stay and defend the inhabitants, but he knew that success depended on a decisive defeat of the enemy coming overland. Then he could return and trap the enemy between his men and the fortress. Naturally Rònan and Oswiu wanted to come with him, but he told both of them he needed them with his family to defend them for him until he returned. They both knew that, in reality, there was little Oswald could do to keep them safe and it was just his way of letting them down gently, but they accepted it.

  Oswald went forward with Torquill, Griogar and Iomhar to find a suitable ambush site, leaving Conmael in charge of the main body. There were two routes that the attackers might choose, but Oswald considered that the steep descent from the saddle, that had caused them such difficulty in the snow, might be usable with care now, though it seemed a poor option for a large body of men.

  Oswald didn’t want to risk setting his ambush on the wrong route though, so the logical place for it would be on the saddle itself. He hoped they did opt for the steep, but more direct route, as then the enemy would be bunched up waiting for their turn to descend.

  He decided to place the bulk of his forces, divided equally, amongst the rocks on the mountainsides to the north and south of the saddle. He detached twenty men under Torquill to cut off any who fled back towards Brodick. It was few enough, but it was as many as he could afford.

  Oswald was only just in time. His men had had further to travel than the enemy, but the latter had proceeded cautiously, not knowing the countryside, whereas his men had moved twice as fast at a slow run. They scattered amongst the rocks on the hillsides above the saddle and waited.

  Torquill’s cut-off party had even further to go as they had to keep out of sight by taking a route behind the mountain to the north and then go over the shoulder into a valley which led south west into the one the men of Strathclyde had taken up from Brodick. They followed the stream down from the saddle until it met the one flowing down Glen Rosa and then hid amongst the rocks that lined the valley.

  Every man was an archer and they planned to pick off those fleeing at a distance rather than get embroiled in any hand to hand fighting, if they could avoid it. However as they waited, they became more and more concerned. The sound of intense fighting had reached them some time ago, indicating that the ambush had been sprung, but so far only two men had come back down the valley. Both had been killed, but there should have been a lot more if the ambush had been successful.

  ~~~

  Eochaid counted the Strathclyde birlinns as they entered Loch Ranza and made for the spit of land on which the fortress sat. There were four, which probably meant an attacking force of over two hundred men. However, they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to land and launch their assault. All the inhabitants had crammed into the fortress, abandoning the settlement, and he half exp
ected the enemy to plunder that first, but they made no attempt to do so. He came to the conclusion that they were waiting for the other half of their men to arrive. Presumably, the job of this small fleet was to stop anyone escaping by sea.

  Eochaid had lined the walkway that ran round the palisade with archers, both warriors and inhabitants who knew how to use a bow. There was no point in exposing the rest of his fighting men before he had to.

  Eventually the man commanding the Strathclyde birlinns must have got bored waiting and they beached them on a small stretch of sand to the north of the fortress. It was obvious by then that the inhabitants had no intention of fleeing by ship. The enemy approached the palisade cautiously. The front rank held their shields in front of them and their archers followed behind them. Those in the rear were less well armed and not all even had shields.

  Eochaid whispered what he wanted to the most experienced of his archers and the man crouched low as he ran along the walkway briefing his men as he went. When Eochaid yelled ‘now’, the archers stood as one and released their arrows at high trajectory. By the time the Strathclyde men had shot back, the archers had ducked down again and the arrows thudded harmlessly into and over the ramparts.

  Not so the volley fired by Eochaid’s bowmen. They had aimed at the less well protected warriors in the rear and many of them were wounded or killed. With that one volley they had reduced the strength of the attacking force by fifteen men. The rest withdrew hastily, taking the wounded with them but leaving the dying where they’d fallen. The archers fired another volley after them and several more were hit. Eochaid counted fifteen corpses in all, as the crows and buzzards flew down to feast on the fresh meat.

  Seeing this, some of the attackers advanced again behind their shields to collect the bodies of their dead and Eochaid allowed them to do so. The men of Strathclyde retreated to their ships and for the moment, made no more attempts to attack. Eochaid stood his men down, leaving sentries to keep an eye out for any sign of a renewed attempt to take the fortress, but he was convinced that they were now waiting for the majority of their men to arrive. He prayed that Oswald’s ambush had been successful. If the Strathclyde men attacked by night, when he couldn’t use his archers, he doubted they could hold the combined force off for long.