Lord of the Isles (Coronet Books)

by Nigel Tranter

  This inevitably took more time to mount, for it entailed flint-and-tinder work, lighting resin-soaked rags attached to arrows, to shoot down into the ships. This was slow work, at first, but it was certainly effective in causing maximum confusion amongst the packed rowing-benches and setting canvas, shrouds and gear alight.

  Somerled sent racing messengers to Conn and to Dermot, the one to bring on the rest of their men, making much noise about it, the other to mount a display, a distraction, in the outer loch with some of their longships.

  There was a brief hiatus in this peculiar encounter. The Norse, the first four ships at least, found themselves bottled up individually, unable to move more than a few yards one way or the other. Apart from the arrow-shooting, Somerled’s people could do little in attack, since any assault by swimmers on the shield-hung sides of the stationary longships would be suicidal; and they had no javelins for throwing. Given a little time the enemy would undoubtedly rally and evolve some coherent strategy, but for the moment there was confusion and indecision.

  More horn-blowing therefore, ushered in the second phase of Somerled’s plan. Fire again, this time localised and over on the far side, where piles of dead timber, brushwood and the branches of the felled trees were lit along that western hillside, for the smoke to pour down, on the prevailing south-westerly breeze of that seaboard, into the channel-valley, enfolding ships and men ashore alike in its murky, throat-catching shroud. Just before it became really thick, however, Conn’s men came baying round at the run, scattered, and in the haze looking more numerous than they were.

  Somerled, eyes running, moved down to meet Conn as near to the dragon-ship as he could get. He was going to concentrate on Ivar Blacktooth.

  It must have been a strange situation for the Viking chief to find himself so divorced from initiative, and with so few options open to him. He could either sit still in his ship and do nothing, under the falling fire arrows. Or he could order his men over the side to try to come to grips with the enemy, or to seek to remove those booms and free his vessels. There was not much doubt, of course, as to which the savage sea-rover would choose.

  With much splashing of long oars, and considerable chaos on the rowing-benches, the dragon-ship began to swing its tall prow round, to turn in on the eastern shore, where at least the smoke was not in Norse faces. Only a few yards were involved. There were perhaps one-hundred-and-sixty men aboard.

  After all the tactics and artifices, it came down to sheer bloody hand-to-hand fighting in the end, of course. But at least Somerled had evened the odds very considerably. The Norse thousand was split up and detached from the leadership, unsure of what was happening, or of what numbers were against them, initiative lost, amidst conditions bad for unified action, smoke hiding everything more than fifty or so yards away.

  With Conn’s men, Somerled had some two hundred at this point, surely sufficient to deal with Ivar and his dragon-ship’s crew. In time, no doubt others would come to aid their leader. It was Saor’s task to delay this for as long as possible.

  There was no mistaking Ivar Blacktooth, smoke or none, as he stood on his forward platform, in leather-scaled armour and great horned helmet, a thick massive man of early middle years, battleaxe in hand. He looked formidable.

  As the dragon-ship’s prow ran aground, the Norsemen began to leap down into the water, with swords and axes and their round, painted shields, to be faced at once by the eager gallowglasses. The advantage was with the latter, for the others had of course to jump down individually, recover themselves in the shallows and wade ashore into a solid phalanx of their enemies. Quickly this was proved to be an expensive procedure and they began to mass at the ship’s side before wading to land in groups. This was more effective but they were still much outnumbered.

  Somerled refrained from joining in the hacking, stabbing, shouting mêlée. From streaming eyes he was watching the man Ivar, who was trying to direct his people’s assault from his platform.

  A messenger arrived from MacIan of Uladail to say that the last three enemy ships were backing out of the channel. If they then turned to land their men on this shore, three hundred at least, he with his mere sixty could do little to prevent them coming to join their chief. What should he do?

  Somerled hoped that Dermot Maguire’s display of their ships in the outer loch might inhibit any such move, but he could not rely on it—and three hundred newcomers arriving could change the picture here drastically, especially as there were four other ships’ crews in the narrows who might also break out. He told the runner that Uladail should demonstrate along the shore, if a landing seemed to be contemplated, to discourage it, disguising his lack of numbers as best he could; but to send word at once if they got ashore and to retire here before them, making suitable noise opposite the other trapped ships.

  Cathula was tugging at his arm. Ivar Blacktooth had evidently decided that he was losing this immediate battle by letting his crew trickle ashore in groups. He had jumped into the water himself and was gathering all his remaining men into a tight formation around him, leaving only a few in the ship. With this, behind a solid defensive ring of shields, he made for the shore.

  Almost with a sigh of relief, now that he could give in to his urge for personal combat, as distinct from detached generalship, Somerled hurried down into the fray.

  He pushed his way through the struggling, smiting throng to where Conn Ironhand was seeking to maintain some sort of direction in the confused conflict, his helmet gone and with a bleeding scalp wound.

  “Ivar comes! With some eighty men,” he shouted. “Solid. Behind shields. We must open. Encircle him. Part your gallowglasses.”

  That was more easily ordered than done and there was chaos before anything like an encirclement was achieved. However, the turmoil likewise affected the enemy, with the Norse who were already engaged faced with their colleagues’ ring of shields and negating their impact. Their absorption into Ivar’s tight company in fact much loosened it.

  Somerled and Conn saw their opportunity and bored in, hacking and thrusting mightily, ably supported. They were almost two-to-one, to be sure, and morale high. Once broken, the circle, which could have been very effective, did not fully reform.

  Somerled sought to cleave his way directly to Ivar himself and not to be inveigled into lesser contests, difficult as this was. He had necessarily to exchange many a blow with others and indeed suffered a glancing blow on his left shoulder from the axe of an opponent for whom he had shown insufficient respect. In the excitement he scarcely felt this, and pressed on.

  At length he won through to the Viking chief. He was younger and taller and armed with a short stabbing sword against the other’s battleaxe and dirk. The sword was more manageable, lighter, but the axe could decide the issue with one well-placed blow. He was wary, therefore.

  Ivar was nothing loth and no doubt recognising the quality of this assailant by his gold belt, if nothing else, hurled himself upon him without pause. With a curious sideways swipe to the neck, he could have finished the matter there and then, for Somerled was unready for so unorthodox a stroke and only managed to jerk himself aside with a mere inch or so to spare.

  Admittedly such wielding of a heavy axe required some recovery. Unfortunately Somerled’s hasty avoiding action threw him a little off-balance and he was unable to take advantage of the other’s very brief vulnerability, especially as Ivar’s dirk, in his left hand, contrived a lightning-quick thrust which the other had to avoid by a further contortion. He did achieve a jab with his sword but it was less than truly aimed and without full force. The steel struck only an oblique blow and by no means penetrated the Norseman’s leather.

  They circled. Other men left them to it.

  Somerled drew his own dirk. As the other’s eyes flickered towards it, he lunged, low. But even as Ivar slashed down with his axe and took a pace backwards, the sword changed direction, swept up, and as its owner leapt forward, stabbed at the throat.

  It was a near thing. But
Somerled’s footwork on the pebbly strand flung him off-true and his sword-tip only grazed the other’s jaw, scoring a gash but nowise disabling him. The Norse dirk nearly caught him, also, as he teetered close.

  He danced back, panting. He recognised that he must retain the initiative, the advantage of his speed. Barely giving time for the other to raise the axe again, he flung his dirk in Ivar’s face. The man, surprised, dodged and staggered; and darting in again, both hands on his sword-hilt now, with all his might Somerled slashed down his blade on the unprotected axe-arm. Bone snapped and blood spurted.

  But the effort carried the Scot onwards, to cannon right into the wounded Viking. And Ivar Blacktooth was not finished yet, although grievously wounded. He still had another arm, and a dirk in its hand. He staggered and all but fell, with the dire shock, but raised that arm desperately, to plunge in his steel, before his opponent could pull himself free. The hand came down, the blow fell—but the dagger slipped harmlessly from nerveless fingers. At the Norseman’s back, Cathula MacIan withdrew her sgian dubh, gleaming blade now brightly red. Ivar slumped to the ground.

  Somerled and the young woman stared at each other as the battle raged around them. Neither spoke.

  Presently the man turned to rejoin the fray—but the fire had gone out of him and now his shoulder hurt grievously.

  Their leader fallen, and out-numbered, the dragon-ship’s crew lost heart. They by no means broke and bolted, but their fury flagged and soon almost all were seeking opportunity to break off. Some splashed back to the ship, some sought to reach the other vessels, others ran off inland.

  Jadedly now, Somerled turned his attention to the remaining boom-bound smoke-shrouded craft. He found that the first required no attention—Saor and his people, their other duties completed, were dealing with it, adequately it seemed. The smoke made it impossible to see what was happening with the others.

  Pressing on, he discovered that the second ship’s crew had disembarked, in the main, but on the farther side, presumably having heard all the noise of battle on this eastern shore and deciding that they would be better off elsewhere. They would have to be left meantime. The third and fourth captains had recognised different priorities. They had a large proportion of their men over the side and hacking at ropes and timber with their axes, seeking to clear the two booms away behind them, no doubt so that they could follow the other three ships out to the open loch again, sternwards—these assailed in only token fashion by small numbers of MacInnes of Kinloch’s men, who were spread only very thinly along this shore. Somerled urged his people down to the attack here, although, being into the water, it was difficult and inevitably less than effective—this, of course, applying equally to the defence.

  For a while thereafter, then, the entire struggle took on a strangely vague and almost subdued character, diffuse, dispersed, to which smoke, lack of enemy leadership and communications, plus sheer physical problems contributed. Indeed, for much of the time at least some proportion of the opposing forces were merely glaring at each other, through running eyes, across water, from various distances, an inglorious state of affairs.

  Yet Somerled was not upset nor distracted—for these circumstances inevitably worked in his favour. The longer this continued the less likely were the Norse to rally and form any coherent front, their morale sinking.

  He had to think of possible developments from the ships which had got away. Also the single vessel isolated in Kentra Bay. The latter probably would not represent much danger, in the circumstances; but the three in the outer loch might. Presumably they had not, as yet, sought to land men at the mouth of these narrows, or MacInnes would have sent word.

  In fact, no contingency tactics were necessary. The fighting along the channel just gradually petered out. The surviving Norsemen—which was most of them, to be sure—appeared to come to the conclusion that nothing was to be gained by continuing with this scattered struggle against opponents unknown as to identity and numbers but who must seem to be everywhere, and had successfully carved up their fleet and disposed of their renowned chief. The smoke from the fires of the west bank was thinning away now and it became evident that there were comparatively few of Somerled’s force on that side. So thither the Vikings began to drift, into the cover of the smoke-curtained woodland, abandoning their confined ships. And soon the drift became a flood as the confused and leaderless Norse went streaming off.

  “What now?” the wounded MacMahon demanded, panting. “How shall we take them now? Weary as we are.”

  “We shall not have to, friend Conn. Or so I hope. Let them go. They can retire westwards along that coast for many empty miles, at no danger to us. And when they are some way along the shore of the outer loch, they will seek to be picked up by the three ships which went back there. Is it not what you would do? They will signal the ships, to come for them. And the shipmasters, I say, will be glad enough to see them and to go for them, seeking information. For they will know nothing of what is done here, how the others have fared—but they will fear ill. And they will feel guilt, I swear! For having cut free when the others could not. So—they will take these aboard. But I do not think that they will turn back to the attack. Indeed, I am sure that they will not. How think you?”

  The older man nodded a bloody head. “That makes fair sense, yes. You believe that they will sail away, then? Leave all here?”

  “I do. None will be in any heart to take up the battle again, against unknown numbers in a burning land, after what will seem to them a sore defeat. They will have been told that we have ten ships but not know that we are but four hundred men. With only the three overcrowded craft, will they challenge us again? They will go, I say—and we can leave them to do so—for we are in no state to seek more fighting, our own selves.”

  “And what of that one ship which won into the bay?” Cathula asked.

  “That we must now go to find out . . .”

  It did not take them long to discover the situation of the scout vessel. They could see it, presently, drawn up on the shingle at the head of Kentra Bay, apparently deserted. And when the lame MacGilchrist met them from the township, he informed that its crew had beached it there and hurried off overland in the direction of Loch Shiel. There they would find their dead comrades and three empty longships, at Ardshielach. What they would do then was any man’s guess.

  “My guess is that they will sail off, in one of the ships, up Loch Shiel and hope to escape us in some fashion. Or else go on overland, by Acharacle and Salen to Loch Sunart,” Somerled said. “Certainly they will not return here.”

  That was accepted. But a small party was sent to ascertain.

  With his tired, battered and somewhat bemused people trickling back in twos and threes and small groups, many well endowed now with Norse booty and golden armlets, to compensate for wounds and bruises, a messenger arrived from Dermot Maguire to report that the three vessels in the outer loch had moved into the western shore and taken off many men there. He, Dermot, had made a display of his own craft, but had not felt strong enough to venture close. The enemy had then sailed off seawards and were still going, heading north-westwards, not south, presumably for Knoydart or Skye.

  “So—you were right in this also!” Cathula commented. “You must have a Norse mind, I think, to so well judge what they will do. I shall be warned!”

  “I misjudged Ivar Blacktooth. And would be a dead man now, but for you, Cathula MacIan.” Somerled answered, deep-voiced. “I thank you.”

  “It was but one debt paid,” she said, levelly.

  “Nevertheless my debt is the greater—for my life. I shall not forget.”

  “Your shoulder hurts? Let me see it. I shall find something to rub on it . . .”

  “It is nothing. It will be stiff for a couple of days, that is all. A small price to pay for what is gained.”

  “Others have paid more.”

  “Aye—but that is war. We have suffered but lightly, however. Less than I had looked for, thank God. The enemy like
wise, indeed. For they are defeated and gone but have left only small numbers of dead and dying behind. I have not counted them but cannot think that there can be one hundred bodies. Out of a thousand. Cheap victory, cheap defeat! And what have we gained? Moidart largely cleared—like North Mull. The threat to Morvern lifted. Six more longships, in good order, won—nine, if these on Shiel are counted. Much booty and gear. And best of all, repute. Repute for defeating Norsemen. Repute to rouse the spirit of our own down-trodden folk on all this seaboard, in all Argyll and Lochaber. That is what I seek—that I shall not have to do all the work of clearing and cleansing this land of the invader. That, lass, that is the gain that I seek.”

  “The Vikings will not always tamely dance to your fiddle, Lord Sorley,” she said. “They will gather their wits and their hardihood and strike back. You cannot win always by guile and trickery.”

  “I know it. But I have made a start, see you . . .”

  CHAPTER 4

  The dragon-ship thrust its proud prow steadily north-westwards through the colourful but quite rough waters of the Hebridean Sea, Cathula MacIan beating the gong with rhythmic precision to maintain a regular speed. The great vessel was by no means being driven flat-out, with a new crew not yet entirely used to the feel of its length and weight and sixty-four oars. Besides, there was no hurry. The two escorting longships, although undermanned, were quite able to keep up. The oarsmen sang to the pulsing beat of it, a gasping, repetitive refrain almost coughed out on each deep breath, a strangely dramatic, even barbaric sound.

  Somerled paced the high stern-platform, between the girl and the helmsman, humming the simple but almost hypnotic cadence, eyes on the jagged blue outline of the shadow-slashed mountains of Rhum ahead, each with its remarkable halo of parasitic cloud above. He frowned thoughtfully as he hummed, judging, assessing. He was a great assessor, that young man. He would wait to call for maximum effort and increased speed until they were well up the east coast of Rhum, for they would not be seen from inside Loch Scresort there before that, however soon they were spotted by look-outs, and there was no point in wasting energy and effort for no purpose. Meantime he would sail close enough past the islands of Muck and Eigg, on the way, to consider their usefulness or otherwise, for the future. Eigg, he was told, had considerable good tillable land, unusual in the Hebrides, which might serve well as a granary in a properly exploited lordship.