Fillan held himself on the edge of darkness, on the edge of a roof ravaged by flames. A powerful terror devoured him from within.
There was just one scream. Long, pained, and fearful. And then nothing.
His heart stopped beating, even though only a second ago it had been racing from the intensity of his run. His body reacted first because his mind was laden with fear and doubt. He leapt down quickly from the roof without looking where he was landing. He pushed on through the street, shoving aside the crowds and being shoved in turn, almost oblivious of his surroundings.
Fillan set off down the street where the scream had come from, driven by an instinct that could not be explained. He pressed forwards, occasionally putting his hands up to protect his face from the floating embers. He squinted at the shadows pooled at the end of the alley, and through the smoke he saw a figure trying to get up.
“Ailéas!” he gasped.
He had no strength left in his voice, which was filled with despair.
He pressed on and almost tripped over the body of an English soldier with a burnt face, but slipped on the blood that covered the ground. He arrived in time to help the shadow up. Both relief and anguish washed over him; the shadow was just a man, a city resident whose slit throat was oozing blood in weak droplets.
The man gave a last gargle. A bubbly and foul-smelling gasp. Fillan pushed the body away in horror, barely registering his own shaking hands. He looked around him for the body of his sister, praying to the gods he wouldn’t find her there. He couldn’t see her and let out a sigh of relief.
Which ended with a sharp intake of breath.
His eyes landed on a specific spot in the street a yard away. The ground was falling away under his feet. The pavestones, the mud, the blood, the bodies, everything was disappearing.
“No,” was all he could try to say, but his lips barely moved and no sound came out.
His knees hit the floor with a wet sound.
His emotions were all over the place, contradictory and violent. They made no sense to him but flowed all the same. He could no longer contain them, as though he was a prisoner to them.
He could only crawl. With a trembling hand he reached over the fluids on the ground and touched a ripped piece of fabric.
“Ailéas…” he rasped.
It was a fragment of the shirt his sister had been wearing. It was torn. In the only places not covered by blood, he recognized the blue-gray color. On the fabric there were strands of red hair clumped together in the sticky mess, confirming the unthinkable truth.
His stomach churned and his throat contracted but he had no time to vomit. A clack resounded from down the street. He raised his tear-filled eyes, that were red from the heat, and found his sister’s face. It was rigid and still. Instead of calming him down, this sight destroyed him. He wanted to scream, scream enough to drive himself mad.
A man exited the alley. He was fleeing the devouring fire at pace. Judging by his armor he was an English soldier. Over his shoulder was slung Ailéas’s limp body. His twin’s arm swung lifelessly. Her head, upside down and covered in blood with her mouth hanging open, did the same. Fillan searched his sister’s face for even the slightest trace of life but saw only still and cold death.
His legs began to move by themselves. He took a first step and almost fell.
He was still screaming to himself. Ailéas couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible! Not today. Not now. Not after all the horrors that he’d seen on her face.
He took another step. His legs were trembling and spasming. The man was about to disappear around the corner.
The teenager pushed through the terror invading him.
“Aileeeeeeeeaaa—”
A hand violently grabbed his neck.
“Now I’ve got you!” enthused one of the warriors in the red capes. “Come with me, and no funny business, or…”
He simply raised his sword, which glowed in the light of the flames.
Ailéas disappeared along with every ounce of willpower from Fillan. He let himself be led away, unable to hear what the man was saying to him as he pushed him along. A building collapsed in front of him with a rumbling and cracking, covering the soldier. Fillan was deafened and flung his arms up to his face as the city continued to scream out its agony. The flames were licking up against his skin and he could barely even feel it.
Get to the quays!
Right. Get to the quays. He started to stumble like a drunk, then found the strength to run, and fled without a backward glance at the soldier struggling under the burning wood. He felt like his whole body was suffering, but denial invaded his soul and made him forget everything. He ran through terrible scenes without even really seeing them.
The survivors continued to flee, crazed and trampling over the dead. They hoped not to die as prisoners of the flames, or worse, to be massacred out in the open. Nothing represented better the massacre that took place that first night of April. The English had progressed and spread terror. They burned, pillaged, and raped. They let out screams of rage and bloodlust. They laughed like animals amid a frenetic killing spree, high on the hunt, blood and death.
Fillan pushed through it all with agility. He dodged a horse that almost knocked him over as it reared up with neighs of pain. An old man lying on the ground with only one leg tried to reach out for him, but Fillan ignored him. Carried on ignoring everything. He thought about getting back up onto the roofs, but there was no point; everything was on fire and full of smoke.
He reached the main city square, the trading heart of the city where different markets took place during the week. Here, unlike the rest of the city, a group of townspeople had stopped fleeing to regroup and challenge the English, with the senseless hope of surviving for just a little longer.
The resistance had already confronted the English and formed a compact wall in the center of the square.
It was useless, in vain. They should have fled, thought Fillan, with no idea as to where. He ran along the line of melee to the right but came face to face with Charles, the blacksmith of the square. Wielding a giant sword, he taught an English soldier respect, dodging his attacks like a fawn. His crossed red and black tartan* made him look even fiercer in the flames. In a large sweeping movement, he disarmed the soldier, whose sword flew through the air. The blacksmith pivoted, and in the same movement, decapitated his opponent.
Fillan did everything he could to dodge the body that fell on him, but it hit him so hard it knocked the wind out of him. He found himself lying in the middle of a pile of bodies. He felt time slow down and wondered if it would be better to stay here and play dead. Maybe he’d figure out a way to get out of it later.
It was a stupid idea.
Using the last of his strength, he pushed away the body whose blood was pooling in its mouth.
He didn’t know who he was anymore. Maybe he was just a shadow, trying to escape the horror. He got up and started running again.
“It’s the kid!” shouted an English soldier as he spotted him. “He murdered the captain!”
“What? Don’t let him get away! Bring me the murdering bastard!”
Fillan ignored them. He dived, ducked, and even dropped to the ground to avoid everyone fighting, those who were screaming, and the dying. On his way, he spotted Glenn, swimming in a sea of blood and surrounded by other bodies. The goldsmith had no rings left on his fingers.
A new sprint, another street.
The chaos of the fight grew quieter. The interior quays, at last, came into view. The sea air and its freshness were so soothing in comparison to the heat of the city. Fillan even felt drops of water on his face. He had started to cry.
He approached the east wall of the city, not far from where all the ships were docked in the port. They would soon catch fire and become giant torches. He saw no one on the way to the ramparts. The residents, like the English soldiers, surely knew there was no reason to come here, because there was nothing here.
Think. He had to think. Remember.
The denial in his head blurred everything, but a few fragments came back to him.
The quays. The east wall. The drains.
He boarded a long wooden pontoon that hadn’t yet been devoured by flames and paddled towards an opening that led to the waters of the Tweed.
“Hey ho!” he tried, without shouting.
His throat and his lungs were burning.
“Is anybody there? I know Alastair!”
His denial broke at these words, because he’d spoken of the master in the present tense, though his master was dead. He gritted his teeth and inhaled the port air and waited. Still no one.
As he watched the shadows on the wall, the clinking of armor made him jump. One of the English soldiers from the square had followed him and was approaching him with a dagger in hand.
“Time to die, Scottish bastard!”
Fillan once again found himself paralyzed, unable to make the slightest movement. Everything spun in his head. The severe glare from Alastair as he reprimanded him. The sound the weapon had made as it had entered Alastair’s chest. Berwick, the hub of fire and death. And Ailéas, or worse still, her lifeless face. A blow struck the back of his head and the world started spinning.
As he was dying, he hoped to rejoin his sister.
* Tartan is a checkered and colored wool fabric typical to Scotland. The word also denotes the garment made from the fabric.