The Winter Isles

by Antonia Senior

  At the side of the loch, in an indent near the neck, there was a hall, and some outbuildings. There were signs of life. A few women clucked about the yard. A big man came out of the hall, walked to the water’s edge. He scratched his belly, looking up the loch towards the hills of Mull beyond.

  Sheltered, fertile, practical.

  Hang that, cried Somerled’s heart. All the beauty of the world. The early sun left the land undefined, its edges blurred. Mull, over the water, was a smudge of black rock and white snow, set in a light blue sky. Above, last night’s moon clung on in a thin curve, unwilling to let go of this place. All the white-capped, God-raised, Christ-blessed beauty of creation was there in that steep-sided loch. To their left, a nub of high land nosing out into the Sound. Exposed, true. But from there, a man could survey the whole run of ships coming down the Sound. Control them all.

  ‘Ardtornish.’ Callum’s voice was a gruff intrusion. He pointed at the bluff of land Somerled was contemplating. ‘Thor’s headland.’

  Any god would take this as his own.

  ‘Listen, Callum. Listen. When we win, I will support you. I will help you, by fair means or vicious, to take your place at the head of your hall. But here’s my price. I must have this. This must be mine.’

  Callum looked sidelong at him, silent.

  ‘This is the better place,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, but it’s not yours. Not your people. Tell me you don’t want to plant your feet as lord in the place where you grew up.’

  ‘Perhaps. But who would pay tribute to whom?’

  ‘Worry about that later. We must take it first. And we are out-manned, out-galleyed.’

  ‘So how?’

  A Loki-sent certainty bubbled in him.

  ‘By cunning,’ he said, and his smile was as wide as the sky.

  ~~~

  They weathered the headland and glided into the bay. Ugly clouds were spritzing a cold rain. Dusk threatened.

  ‘Beach, or push on?’ Sigurd shouted from his place at the steering oar.

  ‘How long until we reach Fergus’s place?’

  Sigurd sniffed at the salty air like a hunting dog.

  ‘Two hours. Perhaps three?’ With courtesy, he looked at Callum, who nodded.

  Somerled weighed the decision. The tipping thought, for him, was the notion of one last night in the easy brotherhood of his band. Before the politics, before the pulling-on of helmets. He knew it was not a good reason, but there were others in his favour. Better to arrive in a fresh dawn than hungry and tired. Besides, it could be dark before they arrived, and he would not risk a blithe sail into a potentially hostile bay. Who knew what had happened to Fergus’s plans in the three weeks since he had left? Callum’s presence was not guarantee enough.

  They pulled her up on to the muddy flat of sand and shingle. Ruaridh scampered along the rocks at the bay’s edge to watch the sweep of the sea.

  Somerled sat with his back to the rock, a pitcher by him. A rough covering of hide propped above his head. The rain pattering down on the skin. Aed by his side. He watched Sigurd outside, scraping at the exposed planking of the galley.

  ‘Come in!’ he shouted. ‘Out of the rain.’

  Sigurd came under the hide, water streaming off him. He grinned at Somerled fondly. Somerled thought the pilot might ruffle his hair, as he had always done until not so long ago. Would he mind it? He should, he supposed. He grinned back at the older man.

  ‘So, tomorrow,’ said Aed, and paused.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ began Somerled, and even as he gathered his thoughts, there came a cry.

  Sharp, the three men’s heads cracked towards the sound. There was Ruaridh, waving a warning from the land’s edge.

  ‘Fire,’ barked Somerled, and Thorfinn quickly dumped a bucket of water over the fire, which hissed and spat in protest. The smoke died as they kicked sand and stone and stamped it down.

  Ruaridh was on them. ‘Six galleys’, he said, gulping at the air. ‘Under sail. Thor’s hammer on the hide. I watched them bear away, as if to fetch here on a new tack. Perhaps sail off.’

  Somerled turned to Callum. ‘Any other sheltered bays between here and your place?’

  The big man shook his head.

  ‘Thor’s mark,’ said Somerled. ‘The ships are from Ardtornish. They are bringing the war to you.’

  Callum nodded. ‘It looks like it.’

  Think. He watched his men raise their faces, calculating odds, judging the wind, reckoning the tide. Think. He saw them turn to him, trusting and stupid. Even Aed. He wanted to strike them, to shake them up. To grab the straggling ends of their beards and pull, pull. Jolt them out of it. Not now. Think.

  ‘How long until they’re round?’

  Ruaridh shrugged. ‘Twenty minutes?’

  They would come sailing into the bay, the wind and the tide behind them. No time to beat out with the oars and win the wind. They would come down on them with sails sheeted home, the warriors free to bristle with spears, free to use their numbers against one pathetic oar-pulled galley. Think.

  ‘Callum. Can you be home across the land and back with your family’s fleet by dawn? Surprise them?’

  ‘Aye. But you’ll be dead by dawn,’ he said, flatly.

  ‘No. Go, go quick.’

  Callum, his face unreadable, clasped arms with Somerled and set off, winding his way across the machair to the higher ground. Dead. What did he know, the big stupid bastard?

  Somerled turned to Sigurd.

  ‘Sigurd,’ he said, his voice almost tender.

  ‘No.’ Sigurd half turned away.

  ‘I’m telling you. We can’t get away; they’ve the wind and the tide. There’s six of them. We’ll die.’

  ‘We’ll all die anyway.’

  ‘Aye, but not yet. Scuttle her.’

  Indrawn breaths from the slower of the crew, the words ricocheting between them like a skimmed stone.

  Sigurd let the wrench of it show on his face. But he nodded. With cold hands they grabbed at her sides, pushing and scraping her down into the water.

  ‘Careful,’ shouted Sigurd, then shook his head fiercely, muttering to himself.

  Waist-deep in the cold sea, Aed climbed on and raised his double-headed axe to the sky. It paused at the top of the upstroke, seemed to tremble, then crashed down on to the wood they had so carefully seasoned and tended. The wood they had scrubbed and sanded so a man could slide across it in his bare feet and never catch a splinter. Aed laid about like a berserker, as if the fury could ease the sadness of it.

  He jumped back into the cold sea, and they helped her sink, pushing her downwards under the murky water, holding her there as the bubbles rose and broke on the grey skin of the sea.

  ‘Quick, quick,’ shouted Somerled, and they waded back to the shore, pointedly ignoring Sigurd’s tears, the proper weeping of a sailor who had knowingly drowned his own ship. They scrambled up the beach, grabbing their packs, scuffing the marks behind them, covering the scorched earth with sand and rock. They scrambled up and over the hill behind, sinking into the heather and fighting for breath.

  Somerled gestured for them to stay put, and crawled back up to the bluff of the hill. They had better be putting in here, the bastards. He would weep like Sigurd if he found it had all been pointless.

  There they were, thank the Lord, sweeping round into the bay, in a quiet rush of wind and sail.

  ~~~

  The sound of their voices drifted over the heather to where Somerled and his men lay huddled below the summit of the hill. Norse, not Gael. He picked out words from their thick accents. His band leaned in together, cloaks pulled tight. It was a dark night, cloudy and moonless. A strange, suspended night, with tension and cold keeping them wakeful and time drifting endlessly.

  Aed, next to him, whispered: ‘I shall not be able to look at my axe in quite the same way. All the men it has sent to hell, but never its own galley.’

  ‘You love that axe.’

  ‘Is that what you think, Somerled?
No.’

  Aed paused. Somerled knew that he was smiling. ‘A big bastard like me,’ he said at last. ‘People want me to have a bloody great axe. Scares them shitless, which is half the battle won. Love it? No. I’d like a fine sword, jewelled handle, sharp, slender blade.’

  Somerled felt the hilt of his own sword and the mistaken notch in it that seemed shaped for his thumb. His hands were numb and he drew them back under the cloak. Aed shall have his sword. He slept, a little, perhaps. Or else they were thoughts, not dreams, about the Otter, twisting into Mebd and back again. Hard to know.

  At last it was brighter. A lifting of the absolute black that held each man cocooned. He could see his fingers distinctly now, as he brought them out to blow them awake. With Aed, he shuffled on his belly to the top of the hill, the sharp branches of the heather snagging at them. Below them, the dark mounds of the beached galleys. Two were anchored in the bay, with no room on the small stretch of flat. The swing and clank of their rigging the only sound bar the rippling of the water. On the beach, small lumps of sleeping men dotted like cowpats. There, where Ruaridh had stood yesterday, a moving shape. No need to post a sentry to landward, in this bleak landscape.

  They waited, not moving, for the light to spread. With each passing second the brightness grew, and with it the knot in his stomach. There, at the edge of the horizon, caught in the dawn haze that blurred the edges of the world, were ships. Callum and Fergus.

  ‘Two hours away?’ he whispered to Aed.

  ‘At least.’

  Somerled rolled on to his back. He’d wanted them closer, sailing into the bay at dawn to spring a trap on the sleeping men. Catch the bastards at the morning confusion. What now?

  Above him, a gull circled and turned, floating on the sea breeze. The sky still had the pallor of night-time, but the edges of things, the details on them, were becoming clearer. He could see the gull’s open beak as it shrieked.

  From where he stood, the sentry would spot the sails within minutes. Should have done already, the dozy sod.

  The sentry.

  Somerled jerked his head. ‘Scrag him, Aed. Quiet. Bring him back.’

  Aed nodded, moved off. He was quiet for all his bulk, slipping around the back of the hill like a dark wraith.

  Soon across the bay came a muffled cry, and a gurgle. On the sand, the shapes began to shift and move. Somerled slithered back down to his waiting band. He whispered instructions and they got to it, breaking out the black cow hides they had brought as gifts for Fergus. They cut up the brown hides they used to keep off the rain, turning them into makeshift cloaks, which should convince at a distance. Ten makeshift cloaks of black, ten brown and each of his men with his own cloak.

  He took half of them, ten in all, up the hill. They stood tall at the summit and watched the men below running for their arms in a scampering confusion. Iomhar, the Irishman, was laughing, and Somerled stared him into silence.

  He barked an order, and the ten men on the ridge marched back down it. The next ten came up, and paused, letting the men below register them. Somerled could see the first ten men ditching their own cloaks and donning the brown hides, ready to march back to the summit. The men at the top came down, and switched to the black cloaks, as their brothers in brown climbed up to taunt the Norsemen on the beach.

  From the beach, they would look like a fresh set of men. If he could persuade the enemy, in the murky dawn light, that there were twice, three times the number holding the high ground, they would think before attacking up the hill.

  He stood at the top, letting his men rotate and march around him. Far below him, a group formed a huddle. The chief and his advisers? He counted all the figures on the beach. At least seventy men. It must be the Ardtornish lord’s full war-band. The huddle broke into individual figures, and he watched them. They moved to their ships, evidently deciding that these strange men were not their problem. This was not their war.

  He wanted them to stay bottled in this bay, not out on the open sea where they could make their greater numbers count against Fergus. He nodded at Aed, then, who stood next to him, straddling the body of the sentry he had dragged back up the hill. Casually the big man hacked the sentry’s head off with his axe, as if chopping wood. Picking it up by the hair, blood spattering his arm, Somerled heaved it down onto the beach, where it smacked into the muddy sand face down and rolled to the edge of the sea. A rising tide.

  They could not hear the thud of the head, but they could hear the howling rage, hear the rasping of sword and spear.

  Thorfinn’s eyes were questioning across the slender shaft of his own spear.

  ‘No,’ growled Somerled. Once they began this, the Ardtornish men would know how few of them there were. For now, let them bristle and plot on the beach. Let them fire themselves up for an uphill raid, let them shake and hackle with thwarted battle rage.

  Behind them, four galleys with striped sails were on a tack that would bring them sailing into the bay, wind and tide with them.

  The men on the beach had spotted the coming galleys now. He watched them pointing, heard the shouting, but missed the sense of the words. The Norsemen paused, and a silence flooded the bay as they understood that they were caught in a trap. Somerled saw one of them pull his foot back and boot the head of the useless sentry into the rush of the rising tide.

  He watched from above like a god, as they pondered and whirred like small creatures. He could almost hear them thinking: better to fight at sea than on land. Six galleys to four, fair wind or no.

  ‘We need to delay them. Another few minutes,’ he said to Aed, his mind racing as fast as his heart could beat.

  ‘Let me,’ said a voice at a growl. Gillebrigte. He was shaking and pallid from the booze tremors. It gave him a wild edge. An air of madness. He gripped his axe and stared at Somerled with red-rimmed eyes that pleaded and watered.

  Somerled nodded. Gillebrigte moved towards him, as if to embrace him. But instead he shook his head and threw it back, howling at the dawn like a wolf. The noise swooped across the bay, freezing the men below. On he howled, and the red-black puckered edges of his burned skin were terrible suddenly, even to those used to the sight of him, used to pitying him.

  Pumped and growling, he set off down the hill at a half-run. They saw him coming, felt the madness on him, knew that he was offering himself to the gods and would take men with him. As he ran at them, they gave before him, feet scrabbling in the ridged sand. Their champion stepped forward, and Gillebrigte took him down with startling ease. Who could resist the battle frenzy of a god? Already men were heaving at the galleys with desperation, trying to get them floating and away.

  Jesus, thought Somerled. We could take them. They are scared. Panicking. His men beside him knew it too, watched Gillebrigte whirling and screaming on the beach, and the fear rolling off those near him. They bounced and snarled; a wolf pack. At a word from Somerled, they set off at a scream, running downhill, slamming into men trying to go backwards. Pushing them over, taking them down, bowling them into the sea.

  Somerled took his first man quickly, the spear grinding into his neck with a jarring quiver. He left it there, spinning with his sword, punching it between a man’s eyes, stretched wide with a doe-like fear. All around him was a roaring. Men fell into the sea, blood catching the retreating waves, pooling in the indents in the sand left by the cockles.

  Some of them were trying to swim, and men leaned out from the approaching galleys to pick them off with spears for the sport of it.

  He saw the Ardtornish lord then, the life leaking from his gashed fat belly, the tide washing over his spluttering mouth. Near him lay Gillebrigte, his yellow teeth bared and blood spooling down his chin. His father’s eyes were staring at the sky. Was it a grimace, or a smile? No matter. No matter. Oh my father.

  The galleys were slowing; hauling their sails and throwing out storm anchors.

  Think. Think. Fergus stood at the bow, cheated of his place in the battle, justified in his faith in the boy lord
from Morvern. He needed a gesture.

  ‘They are dead, Fergus,’ he shouted across the waves. ‘And they killed my father. Danes, they are. No Christians. I will give you a gift of his heart.’

  He straddled the body of the fat chief, who spluttered no longer. He thrust his knife into the man’s chest. It scraped on bone. He could not push through. His hair fell down his forehead into his eyes, which stung from salt and sweat. Jesus. He couldn’t get at the bloody heart. What a fool he was. What a child.

  Aed beside him, grinning. ‘A great victory, little lord,’ he said, joy bubbling.

  ‘I can’t get at the fucking heart, Aed,’ Somerled whispered, and laughter gripped at his belly. Aed caught it too, and bent double with a giggle that looked like a seizure. The blood and fat and bone slipped from the dead man’s ripped belly.

  ‘Jesus, Somerled,’ said Aed, trying to control himself. He bent over the man’s body, and pulled at the ribcage with a great roaring and spitting. Somerled heard the crack and splinter of bone; saw with a pickle of tenderness and revulsion the inner workings of a dead man. How like a pig he was, split down the middle. How pathetic, stripped of his skin and his soul.

  Think. Fergus called something from the shallows, wading towards him with outstretched arms, his cloak bloodied at the hem from the red-washed water. Somerled cut and pulled, and there it was in his hand, gelatinous and warm, the blood running down his arm, a spatter of it in his mouth. A man’s heart, beating its last in his palm.

  I am Somerled. Immortal Somerled. Immovable Somerled. Eternal Somerled. He screamed, then, and the answering cheer carried him up like a gliding eagle as it ran along the beach and above the galleys and over the crimson sea.

  1130

  SOMERLED

  ‘In Ancient Rome,’ said Father Padeen’s voice behind him, ‘victorious generals parading through the streets employed a slave to stand behind them whispering, “Remember you are mortal.”’

  Somerled smiled, and looked out over his land. He could see into Loch Aline from up here, and out into the Sound. In the loch, three fat, heavy merchant galleys swung at anchor. Three galleys of his own were beached in the bay, by the Sound, and three more beyond the merchant ships in the loch. There, at the head of the loch, under a roof to keep the timber dry, was the bare frame of his new ship. Not captured, this one. Built from its very skeleton outwards.