by Susan King
Domhnull grabbed her. “You cannot stop this. He is truly crazed, I suspect.” He pulled her back. “Protect yourself.”
She sobbed out as she watched the flames bite into the square sail of Diarmid’s birlinn. Another hit inside the boat, and still more hit the sail. She watched the canvas catch fire slowly, smoking heavily, until orange flames erupted around the jutting tip of the mast and began to blaze along the lines.
She saw Diarmid beat out a small fire at the base of the mast, saw him look upward toward the higher flames, with no way to reach them. The old man pulled at her arm.
“Come away, now,” he said gruffly. “I do not want you to watch your man die. A fire on a birlinn is a serious thing. You may have to be stronger than you have ever been before.”
She curled forward in agony. Domhnull laid a hand on her shoulder. Within moments, she felt wet drops on her hands and face, on her arms and back. “Rain!” she cried, looking up as the towering dark clouds unleashed a torrent. “Rain!” she sobbed gratefully, heedless of the downpour that soaked her.
Domhnull grinned. “Another miracle for you. I heard you helped bring one in for Lady Sorcha’s child. You must have angels following you, lady.” He laughed, gap-toothed and whiskery, rain streaming down his face. “Your man will be fine if he can get his ship to land as fast as possible. Ranald’s men will fire no more volleys. The rain has ended this battle.”
She nodded, tears sliding down her face, and saw through the rain that Diarmid searched for her, his hand shielding his brow, his shoulder reddened. She waved to him frantically, trying to plead to him to go back. Mungo stepped over to him then and pointed as if telling Diarmid something dire.
Finally Diarmid turned away, and the smoking birlinn moved obliquely to maneuver around. Michael watched the oars lift and dip rapidly as the vessel pulled away into the sheeting rain. She bit her lip and wiped the wetness from her face.
“They will be back,” Domhnull said. He gripped her arm, steadying her on the undulating deck. “I vow it pains him deep to leave you. But I am here, lady, if you need me. I saw MacSween’s treatment of you. Believe me, I did not plan to let it continue.”
She nodded, his reassurance that Diarmid would be back for her repeating like a litany in her mind. Determined to make certain of that, she turned to Ranald.
“Diarmid is returning to Glas Eilean,” she said. “Enough of this. We must go back too.”
“I did not win,” he growled, wincing as he placed a hand on his stomach.
“You did not,” she said.
“Pull out the arrow,” he barked.
She shook her head. “When we return to the castle, it will be done properly. Tell your men to turn the galley around.”
“Remove the arrow now,” he said, grasping the shaft with a bloody hand, “or I will do it myself. I am not done with Diarmid Campbell. I will turn back and pursue him. Pull it out and bandage me. I need to take command of this vessel.”
She sank to her knees and placed her hands over his. “Stop. You will kill yourself.”
“Let go,” Ranald growled.
“Ranald,” she said. “Remember that you will need a skillful surgeon if you hope to survive this wound. Leave Diarmid in peace, I beg you.”
He snarled incoherently, tried to yank, and groaned.
Michael pressed her hands over his to prevent him from pulling out the arrowtip. As if a flame sparked unexpectedly, she felt heat flow from her hands into his, joined around the shaft. She sat in a rocking ship in the aftermath of a battle, in the cold biting rain and howling wind, and felt a warm, loving peace descend into her.
She gazed at Ranald and saw into his brown eyes, where fear lurked, where his needs were hidden. Sympathy for him, a mute understanding, filled her without words. Heat poured through her hands, and she felt her fear, her anger toward him dissolve.
Ranald stared at her and slowly released his hands. “What—what are you doing?” he asked. “The heat—the pain is gone.” He struggled to sit up. “What did you do?”
“Helped you, Ranald,” she said quietly. “Only that.”
“Jesu,” he breathed, staring at her. “By all the saints.” He shook his head as if in a daze.
“We must go back,” Michael said.
“We must,” he said. “I feel stronger now. I am not done with Diarmid.”
“You are a fool, Ranald MacSween,” Domhnull snapped. “Think of what you owe this woman! You have a daughter now—think of that child, if no one else!”
Ranald rubbed a hand over his face. “I have a daughter, but none to carry on my name.”
“There are plenty to carry on the name of MacSween,” Dommhnull said. “Because of this woman, you have a child to carry on your blood.”
Ranald hesitated, looking at Michael, looking at his elder cousin. Then he grimaced, grabbed the arrowshaft, and tore it from his abdomen. Screaming out, he fell sideways. Domhnull leaned forward to lay him down.
“Ranald—” Michael grabbed his arm. “Go easy. Let me see.” Domhnull handed her a cloth and she wadded it against the gushing wound. “Now he will need Diarmid Campbell’s skill for certain,” she said quietly to Domhnull. “I cannot repair such serious damage alone.”
“I must have my satisfaction against Diarmid,” Ranald gasped out. “You do not know how much he has taken from me.”
“Never meaning to, Ranald.” She held the wadded cloth against him, tried to summon the heat, the power again. “Never meaning to.”
Around her, she heard shouts. Men scrambled to take up the oars, screaming to one another through the furious sound of the storm. Domhnull turned. “Seek safety, lady,” he said. “Hold on to the mast.”
“What is it?” she cried.
“The currents have carried us northeast, well past Glas Eilean and Isla. Look there.” He pointed through the curtain of rain. “Those mountains are on the isle of Jura.”
“Jura!” Ranald shouted. “How far up its coast are we?”
“Too far,” Domhnull replied. “Too far!”
“What is wrong?” Michael cried, alarmed.
“Listen!” Domhnull shouted above the deafening howl.
Diarmid had said that to her once, at sea. Listen. She did, and heard an agonized roar, like a monster caught in the deep, and remembered what Diarmid had told her then. No storm alone could make that hideous, black-hearted sound.
Ranald lurched to his feet, clutching his belly. “The currents have driven us toward Jura’s northern channel. We must turn—row!” he screamed. ”Row! Your lives depend on it. Turn back!”
Michael looked at Domhnull, dreading, knowing.
“The whirlpool—it has come to life, just ahead,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“The boat can be repaired,” Diarmid said, as he sat heavily on a wooden chest. “Her mast is partly burnt and the sail is gone, and she has a few leaks. But we made it back whole, with all the men aboard.”
“We can ask for no more than that,” Mungo grunted.
“We can ask for Michael safe,” Diarmid said, and winced as he shifted his arm. The arrow wound seared like fire whenever he moved his shoulder; he knew it had cut deep into the muscle. He had removed the arrow and bound it tightly, knowing that would have to do.
Mungo nodded. He looked up. “This was a brilliant idea, Dunsheen,” he pronounced. “What a fine birlinn this is. Look at her—shining new, forty oars, even filled with provisions and weapons! We lack for nothing, except enough men to man these oars.” He grimaced. “Twenty-six will have to do. Twenty-eight, with the two of us rowing. But in a storm, we need a full crew.”
“We have no choice but to try,” Diarmid said grimly. “We must get Michael from off that birlinn.”
“Row!” Mungo called. “Row! To the northeast, with the winds, in the direction of the storm!”
Diarmid placed a hand on the prow of Ranald’s proud new galley, propped a foot on a low wooden chest, and watched silently as his oarsmen slid her out
of the sea cave and headed for the heart of the storm.
Despite furious winds and sporadic rain showers, the voyage took far less time than earlier, when his men had taken the limping, damaged Gabriel back to Glas Eilean, leaving her in the hidden sea cave. The new birlinn rode the waves like a dolphim, low and sleek and built for speed and endurance.
“Not even your own forty-oared White Heather is as fine and fast as this one,” Mungo said. “I wonder if she has a name. If she were mine, I would name her Sea Dragon.”
“A fitting name. Someday you will have one like her.”
Mungo shrugged and looked ahead. “Surely Ranald saw the foolishness of staying out in this storm, and is turning back.”
“He will, if only to pursue me,” Diarmid replied. “We will meet them soon.” He scanned the wild, choppy seas. When several minutes passed, then longer, he darted grim, worried glances at Mungo. No birlinn appeared on the horizon.
“Perhaps we veered in the wrong direction,” Mungo said. “I did not think they would have gone this far north.”
“The currents are wickedly strong,” Diarmid said, watching the rushing waves that pushed the birlinn relentlessly forward. He looked to the side, and saw the vague conical shapes of mountains through the drizzle. “Jura, so soon? These currents are more powerful than I thought. Together with the gale winds, they could drive a ship far off its course—” He frowned suddenly, and ran toward the prow. “Mungo—the currents will push us toward the channel at the north end of Jura!”
”Ach Dhia!” Mungo stepped beside him. “It cannot be!”
“Do you not hear the proof of it? Listen to that roar!”
“But that sound can be heard for miles. The whirlpool’s roar does not mean that we are in imminent danger.”
“Look at those mountains, man! We are heading for the channel for certain!”
Mungo swore. “Do you think Ranald’s galley was blown as far northeast as this? Our Sea Dragon handles well, but no galley can resist a storm like this.”
“If Ranald’s vessel was blown toward the whirlpool, pray God we catch them before they go down,” Diarmid said.
Mungo frowned. “Listen. It is close, too close. We will have to choose whether to risk going ahead, or to turn back.”
One of the oarsmen shouted as the scream of the whirlpool rose over the winds. Around him, others began to take up the cry to turn around.
“Row on!” Diarmid shouted. “Row ahead!”
Mungo grabbed his arm. “Are you a madman as well? We have to turn back while we can!”
“Michael may have gone this way!” Diarmid said. “We can veer toward Jura and leave those who do not wish to take the risk. But I will find her!” He glared at Mungo. “If she is at the bottom of the sea, by God, I will find her!”
He turned away, his fists clenched, his heart slamming. Michael hated water. For a moment, it was all he could think about. She was frightened of the water. He had to find her.
“Too late,” Mungo said behind him. “The currents have us now. We have no choice but to go where the sea takes us.”
“Tie down what you can!” Diarmid shouted, turning. “Dowse the sail! The wind will rip it to shreds!” He scrambled to help his men, then found a chest by an oarhole and sat, taking up the oar. “Pull!” he screamed, dragging on the oar with all of his strength. They had to resist the force of the eddy, or die within its grasp.
The roar increased steadily in furor. Ahead, Diarmid saw a swirling mass of water where currents came from two directions to collide. He felt a chill of fear unlike anything he had ever known. He had heard the heavy moan of Corrievreckan before, from a distance. But no one ever risked negotiating through this channel at the height of a storm. Now, the enormous power of the sea carried their sleek galley there, tossing her like a fragile toy.
The sight that lay beyond the crashing waves was terrible in its power. The bellowing of the vortex was deeper, grander, louder, more horrifying than he would ever have imagined.
Mungo sat down across from him, taking up another empty oar. Twenty-eight men strained with every measure of strength that they had, joining together in a massive effort to hold the galley away from the mouth of the whirlpool.
What Diarmid saw next turned his soul to ice. Ranald’s birlinn swept around the edges of the revolving current, rocking precariously as she went. In the mix of spray and rain that nearly obscured his vision, Diarmid sighted Michael.
She clung to the mast with two men, her hair whipping out in the wind. Diarmid’s heart sank, broke. He cried out from his gut in anguish. Ranald’s birlinn was caught in the wild whirl, and no power of mankind would stop its course.
He prayed then, muttering in anger, in terror, in pleading as he rowed, rolling Latin prayers and Gaelic chants off his tongue as if he could wring magic from them. His thoughts centered on Michael, then expanded to beg for all of their lives, nearly fifty men and one woman between the two galleys.
He prayed like a martyred saint, but he rowed as if the demons of hell had hold of the oar with him, sweeping it with superhuman effort through the water. If they could just stay outside the edges of the pool, they would not be sucked into the heart of the black well that sang for their souls.
And if they could stay out of it themselves, they might be able to throw lines to Ranald’s ship, might be able, through sheer strength, to pull it back from the maelstrom. If they had an anchor of some sort—he looked around anxiously.
Then he saw a rock behind them, glistening like onyx in the storm, jutting several feet above the cresting waves. He dove from his seat and took up a coil of rope. Swinging the line, he tossed it. Missed. He swung again, tossed, only to see the line swallowed by the sea.
Beside him, in front of him, he saw two of his men grab lines and throw them toward the rock. Diarmid hauled back the rope and looped it, swung it, threw it again, though the effort seemed to tear his wounded shoulder from its socket.
His line caught, held. Another man’s line snagged the rock as well. Diarmid and the oarsman grinned at one another, then fixed the lines around the wide mast.
Running to the stern of the boat, Diarmid took up the tiller, swerving the rudder to steer away from the spinning grip of the water. The moorlines held to the anchoring rock, holding the galley back. Diarmid ran the length of the slippery deck toward the prow and scanned through the rain and the spraying, foaming waves for Ranald’s birlinn.
They were still upright, still trapped in the swirling current, following it helplessly. Diarmid saw a man on board Ranald’s galley attempt to toss a line toward the other birlinn, but the rope was too short. Diarmid turned.
“Let out some slack!” he shouted. “We need to go closer!”
He heard no protest. Two men ran to unwind some of the length of the mooring lines, allowing the galley to swoop over the water, closer to the lip of the vortex.
“If the waves were not so fierce—” Mungo shouted. He hollered a sound of inspiration and lifted one of the casks of almond oil high. Knocking it against the side of the boat, he smashed its end. Diarmid watched in amazement as his friend poured the oil into the water.
Running across the deck to peer over the side, Diarmid saw the effect: the waves quieted noticeably, then swirled again.
He picked up another cask of oil, broke it open, poured it into the foam. Mungo did the same, until they had emptied several casks into the surrounding water. Diarmid looked down in astonishment.
The waves crashed into the side of his birlinn more slowly, cresting with less strength. He bellowed with joy, and heard Mungo scream like an elated lunatic.
“How did you know that would work?” Diarmid shouted.
“An old fisherman on Glas Eilean told me the trick!” Mungo yelled. “I have spent a good deal of time on that island, with little to do but talk to folk!” Diarmid grinned, and they both turned to take hold of ropes and toss them toward Ranald’s floundering galley.
Throwing again and again without success, they
had to wait at one point as Ranald’s boat circled the far side of the maelstrom and came back. Diarmid held his breath every second that the vessel was out of reach, never taking his gaze from the pale, slight form clinging to the mast.
The water would soon swallow them into its terrible depths. Michael tightened her arms around the mast until her whole body ached with the strain. She would never see Diarmid again, never feel his arms around her, or hear his voice at her ear. Sobbing, she leaned against the post, drained, flattened there by the force of the winds.
Beside her, Ranald clung too, so weak that Domhnull held him up with one large arm while he circled the mast with the other. During the endless moments while they circled the upper edge of the whirlpool, Michael had first seen Diarmid’s galley—a new one, a larger one, sleek as a sea eagle—riding the outer lip of the vortex.
She could hardly bear to look toward him now. The sight of his galley, so out of reach, so beyond her hope, hurt her unutterably. She did not want to see his stricken face as she spun away from him again. She did not want him to watch her die.
Soon the whirlpool would pull them lower, and there would be no prayer of survival. They would go down, down, gripping frail wood, until the endless water sucked them into its soul. Diarmid could not stop it, yet Michael knew he would try, and she feared his death as well.
She bowed her head against the force of the rain and wind, listening to the scream of the monstrous force beneath them, and prayed, imploring heaven to show mercy to all of them.
Ranald gripped her arm. “Look,” he said hoarsely. “Look there. Your man still comes for you. He does not give up.”
She raised her head and saw the other birlinn riding close, saw the line snake out, saw it fall limp into the swelling water. Diarmid threw the line again.
“He comes for all of us,” she called back.
“We are doomed,” Ranald groaned. “Michael—I want to—I need to thank you. For my daughter. She will live on after me.”
