Calum and John took the long road that skirted the loch to avoid running into any more English dragoons on the rampage. They’d been riding all day since lynching the Gentle Lochiel, and John’s stomach was rumbling loudly.
Calum was about to comment on the noise, but as they rounded a bend in the road, all thoughts of baiting his friend vanished, and he stared in horror at the four corpses hanging from the big ash tree.
He heard John gasp and then curse, but didn’t hear what he said; he was transfixed by the family hanging from the branches.
The man’s body was bloody and mutilated, and the woman’s clothes had been cut from her. Their two young children had been badly beaten before they’d been hauled up next to their parents to swing gently in the cold wind.
“Who would’ve done such a monstrous…?” John couldn’t continue. He jumped down from his horse, drew his dirk, and began cutting them down. The children first.
Calum stepped down and lowered the bodies gently to lie among the early bluebells as the ropes parted. The children were thin and weighed nothing. The girl was eight or nine, and the boy looked no more than six. His eyes were open and seemed to be pleading with Calum, and he closed them gently with his fingertips. They had seen more than anyone should.
John stood for several seconds, staring at the family and the bloody signs of their last terrible minutes, then turned without speaking and strode to his horse and mounted.
“Where are you going, John?” Calum asked, still kneeling beside the children.
“To find the English bastards who did this. And rip out their hearts.”
Calum stood now. “We will find them, and we’ll make them pay. But first we should put these poor souls to rest.”
John’s eyes returned to the bodies, and he nodded once.
They were warriors and had seen men die in every imaginable way, but nothing in their lives came near the horror beneath that tree. And for the next hour, as they scooped out shallow graves and laid the family to rest, the anger grew until they felt they would explode.
John tore strips from his plaid and tied together rough wooden crosses, which he pushed into the heads of the graves. When he’d finished marking the little girl’s last place on earth, he leaned against the tree trunk and felt the tears roll down his cheeks.
He made no attempt to hide his sorrow. This was how Mary had died. And how Calum had laid her in the ground. He looked up and saw him place a wooden sword on the boy’s grave. And then a handmade rag doll on the little girl’s. They’d been playing happily with these when the English had arrived.
John’s knees refused to hold him, and he slid down the tree, put his head in his hands, and let the grief that he’d bottled up all these months come. For Mary and for his bairns he would never see again.
Calum walked a little way from his friend to give him space for the grieving he had put off for so long. He sat on a fallen tree, took out a small whetstone, and carefully honed the edge on his smallsword. He would be needing it soon.
After a few minutes John stood up slowly, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and bent to straighten the doll on the child’s grave.
“D’ya think that scum from earlier did this?” he said without looking away from the graves.
“Aye,” said Calum, “I do.”
“Then let’s go and pay them back.”
Calum stood, put the stone away, and sheathed his sword. “You recall there were fourteen of them?” He crossed to his horse.
John walked past him and stepped up into his saddle. “Aye, I do.” He started his horse moving. “I’ll be sure to leave some for you.”
They let their mounts find their own pace, a steady canter that ate up the miles without exhausting them.
It was getting dark as they passed an old church at the end of the loch, and they had started to follow the road south-east when Calum stopped.
John rode back alongside his friend and waited.
Calum looked intently at the church. “Did you see the doors are open?”
“No, I didna see any doors. What of it? They leave church doors open for the worshipers.”
“Not when it’s this cold they don’t.”
John sat upright. “The English.”
Calum rode forward slowly and drew his pistol, and John drew his and held it against his leg.
“Did I mention that there are fourteen of them?” Calum whispered.
“Is that all?” John said, and dismounted at the gates.
They hitched their horses to the metal rings by the gate and walked slowly down the wide path to the church.
Calum’s senses were buzzing, and he could see John sensed it too. This was going to be bad. They kept walking.
They entered the church, and Calum stepped right, with John going left. They stood back against the grey stone walls and waited for their eyes to adjust to the gloom.
They could hear English voices at the front of the church and the clatter of metal. After few moments, Calum saw the dragoons in the light from the lantern on the altar, stripping the silver plate and crucifixes from the shelves and ramming them into sacks.
Calum caught John’s eye and raised eight fingers. John nodded. Eight dragoons. Which meant the others were hiding, or gone. Gone would be better. He wanted to make them pay for what they’d done, but he wasn’t stupid.
“What we got here?” said a gruff English voice behind Calum, and a hand clamped on his shoulder.
Calum drew his dirk, rammed it up and back, and turned to follow it. The dragoon grunted and tried to step back, but he was already dead and just needed his brain to catch up. He slumped against the wall.
Not gone, then, John thought. He raised his pistol and put a ball into the chest of the man standing next to the ashen-faced old priest.
Calum shot the corporal tugging his pistol from his belt, bent and grabbed the dead dragoon’s pistol, and killed the looter running down the aisle towards them with his sabre raised above his head; then he sat back against the pew and began to calmly reload his pistol.
The advantage of surprise was gone, and the looters pulled their pistols and fired a ragged and hasty volley, but their targets were well out of sight.
John looked across to see Calum reloading and thought about doing the same, but he was not quick enough and knew it. His claymore was his weapon of choice, and he drew it carefully. The looters might still have shots left for any part of him he exposed above the woodwork. He could see Calum had drawn his sword and put it by his side while he finished loading his gun. He was waiting for five rapists and murderers to come storming up the church, and he was smiling.
John had seen it many times, but he would never get used to it. They were up against overwhelming odds and were probably going to die, but Calum was loving it, completely unafraid and eager to get to it. It was very disturbing. And he felt the same way, and that was even more disturbing, but he was alive as only those about to be dead can be.
M’be he’d lost his mind, because Calum most certainly had. It comes to every soldier who spends too much time at war. He gets to need it, the life-and-death moments and the exhilaration of being moments from death, and can’t cope with meaningless ordinary life. He swore they had to get out of this way of life. All they had to do was survive this one last fight. Which seemed very unlikely.
Whose idea had this been anyway?
He took a quick look over the pew and saw the dragoons approaching very slowly down both sides of the church. He knelt down quickly and pointed at Calum’s pistol. Calum nodded. John raised one finger, then pointed over the pew and raised five. Calum nodded again and made a signal that John understood but couldn’t believe.
He pointed at himself and then up. Calum nodded. And there was the smile again. The man was completely mad. And now he was counting down. There was no way on God’s green earth that he was going to… John stood up.
The men along the walls froze for a moment, saw he had only a broadsword, and started to aim their pistols, which he gu
essed they’d reloaded or they would’ve just charged him down. So shooting holes in him was the choice they’d made.
Calum stood, aimed and fired in one move. The lantern on the altar shattered, plunging the church into sudden impenetrable darkness.
Everybody froze, except Calum. He opened his eyes he’d kept tight shut long enough to get his night vision, threw the borrowed pistol down the centre aisle as a distraction, drew his dirk, and moved off along the wall to his right. He could just make out the looters silhouetted against the slightly lighter window above the altar and could hear them whispering questions to each other and shuffling about nervously.
“Who’s that?” the nearest man hissed.
“Shut up!” Calum hissed back. “It’s just me.”
“Oh.”
He must have realised his idiocy as he started to move back, but Calum reached out of the pitch black and silently slit his throat, and then lowered his body to the floor.
“Beckett! Is that you?”
The voice was close, and Calum stepped back against the wall and followed the smell of the man.
“Beck—”
Calum put his hand over his mouth from behind and pushed his dirk up through his ribs. Six down, three to go.
A candle flared into life, flooding the church with pale yellow light that silhouetted the old priest next to the altar with the taper still in his hand. The light was spluttering and poor, but it was enough. Calum was clearly visible.
The three men across the church turned and aimed their pistols at Calum. The dragoon nearest the door screamed and raised his arm. Blood spurted from where his hand used to be, and he stared at the stump in horror.
The other two fired, but the scream had spoilt their aim, and Calum dived behind the pews. They’d intended beating some sense into their noisy friend, but when they turned, they saw Big John standing behind the wounded man with his broadsword dripping blood.
He slammed the wounded man’s head against the stone wall to put him out of his misery and get him out of the way, and the last two dragoons fell into each other as they tried to get away.
“What’s all the damned noise?” The sickly sergeant stepped out of the priest’s sacristy, clutching a rolled tapestry and the poor box.
He saw the bodies of his mates and Calum and John, dropped his loot and drew his pistol. John was too far from the pews to take cover and too big to miss. He was the sergeant’s target.
The old priest picked up the discarded silver crucifix and swung it backhanded into the sergeant’s face. The Lord’s symbol smashed the man’s teeth and dropped him to his knees, as if in prayer.
The last two looters had found their courage out of desperation and drew their sabres.
John lunged forward and ran the point of his claymore through the first man’s stomach and kept pushing until it skewered the second; then he flexed his powerful muscles. And turned the blade.
The men tried to scream, but it became an awful, bloody gurgle.
Calum tapped the sergeant on the shoulder with the tip of his smallsword. “Get up.”
The sergeant just glared up at him, blood pouring from his smashed mouth.
Calum flicked his sword and cut off most of his ear. The sergeant slapped his hand on the pain and stood up.
“There,” Calum said with a smile. “Wasn’t hard to do, was it?”
“I’ll kill you, you bog-loving shit-eater!”
Calum raised his eyebrows at John as he joined them. “He’s got a mouth a pig would vomit up.”
“Cut his throat and let’s be on our way,” John said, and wiped the blood off his claymore on the sergeant’s shoulder.
The man’s expression changed instantly to one of shock, and then open fear. “There’s no need for none of that!”
“You killed that family,” John said through gritted teeth. “And you…” He punched the sergeant in the face, sending him sprawling back through the door.
Calum tutted. “I wanted to ask him some questions.”
John looked up at the wooden cross in front of the big window and shook his head, then stepped into the sacristy, grabbed the sergeant by his hair, dragged his limp body back into the church, and dropped him face down on the stone floor, smashing the few teeth that had survived the encounter with the crucifix and John’s fist.
The shock woke the sergeant, and he groaned and slowly climbed onto his hands and knees. John dragged him up with one hand and held him dangling inches above the floor.
Calum glanced at his friend. “That’s very helpful.” He stood on his tiptoes so he could look the sergeant in the eyes, then stepped back. “He’ll live.”
The sergeant let out a long sigh at the news.
“Where are the rest of your troop?” Calum said quietly.
The sergeant spat blood onto the floor.
“Do that again,” John growled into his ear, “and I’ll wipe it up with your face.”
The sergeant tried to twist around so he could see him, but he was held like a strung rabbit. “If I tell you,” he said to Calum, “you’ll let me go?”
John shook him. “If you don’t tell him, I’ll pull your arms and legs off.”
The sergeant stopped wriggling. “There was a bit of a… disagreement.”
Calum waved him on.
“The lieutenant wanted to go back to the regiment, and we…” He pointed at the bodies. “We wanted no more of the army.”
“You’re deserters?” Calum said with a frown. “Then why kill that family? Why not just get going south?”
The sergeant tried to shrug. “It was Patrick’s idea.” He pointed at the corporal’s body in the centre aisle. “He’s Irish.” He seemed to think that was enough. Then saw Calum’s expression. “Hates the Scottish, does Patrick. Well, he did.”
John turned him slowly, like a hog on a spit. “Was it you who raped the woman?”
The sergeant shook his head and blood flew away from his mouth. “No, it was…” He looked around at the bodies, then pointed at one. “Billy there. He took her.” He saw John’s eyes blazing. “Patrick hung the farmer.” He reached up and wiped the blood from his lips and met John’s eyes again. It wasn’t going to be enough. “All right! All right, I done the woman.” He flinched as if he expected John to hit him. “She was goin’ to die anyway. I ain’t been with a woman in two years. It would’ve been a shame to waste it.” He actually tried to smile. “Y’know what I mean?”
John put him down. “Aye, I do that.”
The sergeant couldn’t believe his luck and nodded furiously. “Now if you good gentlemen’ll excuse me, I’ll bid you farewell and be off back to London.”
“The others,” Calum said quietly. “The rest of your troop. You killed them?”
“Like I says, there was a disagreement. Some of us wanted to go home. Some of us didn’t.”
Calum nodded. “Disagreements happen.” He pointed at the front door. “Get on back home, then.”
The sergeant backed off down the aisle, stepped over Patrick’s body, and headed for the door.
Calum picked up the tapestry and poor box and handed them to the priest, who was still leaning against the wall as if all his strength had gone. “Thank you, Father,” Calum said with a smile. Then he turned to John, who was watching him intently. “Make sure that…” He pointed at the doors. “Doesn’t steal our horses.”
John strode down the aisle and out of the church.
“Will you say a prayer for us, Father?” Calum said, just to help the priest recover his wits.
“I will,” the old priest said. “And one for these men.”
“Save your breath, Father. Where they’ve gone, no amount of praying will help.”
The priest pointed a shaking finger at the door. “And the other one? He might come back.”
Calum smiled a thin smile. “No, Father, he won’t.”
There was a piercing scream from outside that continued while Calum walked up to the doors, then ceased suddenly. He spoke over
his shoulder to the priest. “Don’t worry, Father, he won’t need that where he’s gone.”
He started to pull the door closed behind him, stopped and looked back at the priest leaning against the altar. He looked exhausted and very, very old.
Calum went back down the aisle. The place was a mess, with statues of saints smashed on the floor and broken pews thrown on top of each other. But the priest was staring at the shattered stained-glass window above the altar.
“Will ya have us get rid of this mess?” he asked, pointing at the corpses littering the church.
The priest woke up, pushed himself upright and looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time. “No.” He shook his head slowly. “They deserve a Christian funeral.”
Calum bit off what he was going to say. “You canna do that, Father.”
The priest turned to him with a puzzled and slightly annoyed expression. “Everyone, regardless of how he leaves this life, deserves a proper funeral and a chance to meet his maker and atone for his sins.”
“Aye, if you say so, Father. But there is no time for that for these… men. If the English find their bodies here, they’ll hang you.” He waited for the old man to understand. “And they’ll hang everyone in this village.”
The priest jumped. “Why would they do that? The people here had nothing to do with this.”
“No, Father, m’be not, but the English won’t care about that.” He put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “We will get rid of their bodies.”
The priest shook his head again. “You’ve done enough.”
Calum raised his eyebrows.
“No, I mean… thank you for saving our church. And me.”
“It was nothing.”
“From what I remember, it was far from nothing.” The priest stepped up onto the stone pulpit and looked around. “The parishioners will remove these men.”
“And who will repair the damage?” Calum pointed at the window.
The priest’s shoulders sagged. “This is a poor community. We will not be able to replace the window.” He looked down at the broken statues. “Or the damage. We will have to do the best we can, and trust in God.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Calum said with a smile. “Take our horses. They’re fine animals, and what you’ll get for them will easily pay for this.”
The priest stepped down from the pulpit. “No, I can’t take your horses. What would you do?”
“Don’t worry about us, Father; there are lots of spare horses outside. Their riders don’t need them anymore.”
The priest followed his eyes to the bodies and looked back quickly. “Then we should take those instead. We could—”
“No, Father,” Calum said quickly. “If you try to sell them or the English find you with them, they’ll kill you all and raze your village.”
The priest looked at the crucifix lying on the altar and unconsciously looked at the door to the sacristy. “May God forgive me.”
“Don’t worry, Father. God put you and his cross in the right place at the right time.”
The priest smiled a thin smile. “And he put you here too.”
“M’be,” Calum said without conviction. “I’d like to think I had something to do with that decision.”
“Then you think that, my son.” He was recovering, his body was straighter and his face had lost its look of horror. “I will accept your offer of the horses.” A worried look crossed his face. “But if the English find you with these men’s horses, won’t they hang you too?”
Calum chuckled. “They’ve tried that before.” He patted the priest on the arm. “Will you be all right with these bodies?”
“I’ve seen bodies before. It is a big part of my job.”
“Aye, I see that. I meant getting rid of them.”
“The fish in the loch have to eat too.”
Calum laughed out loud. “The Lord giveth the beast his food and those that cannot toil for themselves.”
Now the priest chuckled. “Psalms one-four-seven. Are you a religious man…” He frowned. “I don’t know your name.”
“And it’s best left that way, Father. What you don’t know canna hurt you.” He started to leave. “And no, Father, I’m not a religious man. I’ve seen too much suffering to believe a god would allow it.”
“It is better to suffer a moment here in the flesh, than an eternity in hell.”
“If you say so, Father.” Calum closed the door behind him.