James lurched awake, heart thudding as he grabbed his sword. Where were his men? He took a deep breath of the scent of pine needles that made his bed and remembered where he was. In the gray half-light of near dawn, thick mist wrapped the trees like winding sheets. He staggered to his feet. “Robbie,” he called. “You awake?”
Boyd groaned nearby. “I could use a featherbed. With a nice soft lass in it.”
“Didn't you find one whilst you were home?”
Boyd laughed, groaned, and laughed again. “Mayhap.” There was some rustling in the darkness. “Randolph. Don't think you're staying abed.”
“I'm awake, man,” Randolph groused.
James flapped his way into his hauberk. He searched the ground around his feet for his surcoat, donned that, and buckled his sword belt. “I don't think I'm looking forward to the King's plan.” He grinned to himself. “Or not the climbing in the murk part anyway.”
“James. Boyd,” Gilbert de Hay called. “Time for a council.”
The torches formed a halo of light where Maol Choluim, the Earl of Lennox, his elegant head thrown back with a scowl, faced the King. “The risk is too great, Your Grace. They could tear us apart.”
“Ridding the kingdom of the enemy is worth the risk. I can't fight the English with a Scottish sword at my back, Maol.” He motioned to James to join them.
The earl nodded to him, glumly. “I'll see that my men are ready to march then.”
Niall Campbell appeared through a curtain of mist as Boyd strode out from the trees, Randolph at his heels. “My men are at the mouth of the pass,” Campbell said.
“You'd best have your sergeant join us, Jamie,” the Bruce said. He started into the foggy gray of dawn. “Robbie, you'll lead your men along the river bank with the rest of us.”
James whistled the scream of a falcon.
Wat shouted, “You want me, my lord?” He trotted through the fog to James's side and blinked at the King, giving a startled bob of a bow.
“Are the men roused and ready?”
“Aye.”
“Then come with me to look where we're leading them.” He walked behind the King down a narrow, stony path. Pale shimmers of dawn fanned out to the east turning the mist ghostly. The western sky was still black, sprinkled with stars. Through breaks in the mist, dark, jagged peaks rose high and wild. The King stopped next to the river, a short way down from the path. Strands of white drifted, writhing, from its foamy water as it rushed by.
The Pass of Brander yawned before them, stretching into blank darkness.
James raised his gaze to the track to the summit, up and up, to stones and trees and a looming mass of a mountain shrouded black under the damp pall. James strained to see the through the murk. He tightened his sword belt to cover a shiver.
“Our scouts place the MacDougall's caterans halfway through the pass, where the river bends. I'll lead our men into the pass alongside the river once the sun is full above the horizon.”
James chewed his lip. They'd fought MacDougall's Highland warriors at the Battle of Dail Righ, where they had all nearly died. Attacking them with so small a force was no light matter. “I don't have enough archers to do that many of them much harm.”
“No. It will come down to hand-to-hand. But archers can break their attack first. Then we have them in a pincer.”
James bit his lip as he leaned his head back, still searching for the summit. “Wat, bring up our men. It will not get better for waiting.”
Wat waved an arm over his head and shouted. “It's time! Move you.”
Gelleys and Hew led his men toward the track, steep and narrow, that wended its way upward. There were near two hundred men: some fifty-odd archers in the green of foresters with Ettrick bows on their backs and the rest foot in motley armor with swords and axes on their belts, shields strapped to their backs.
“You're our eyes in this soup,” James said. “Gelleys ahead; Philp to the right flank. Hew to the left. A single rockfall could give us away, so silent as you go. Anything moves more than a mouse, give a falcon's cry.” He thrust his chin toward the mountainous way they would take. “They say Iain Bacach's men lie in wait halfway through the pass. So those, you'll watch for. Two calls when you spot them.” He slapped Gelleys's shoulder and watched as the men trotted ahead and were swallowed up into white nothingness. Then with a wave of his hand, he followed. Wat walked beside him.
Behind them, there was a moment of uneasy murmurs, and the men came after them. The bowmen bunched in the center. Andro and Richert walked together as they'd been lads together in Peebles. Fergus walked a bit away from the others. Even his men feared Fergus, who always seemed a bit crazed in battle, his eyes wild with fury.
As they ascended a twisting path between giant outcrops, mist wrapped them like a blanket. When James brushed a clump of bracken, a raven flapped away, cawing angrily. He paused and gulped in a breath, listened. Silence. Mist deadened the air like the grave. James let out a breath he'd not known he was holding and walked softly on.
James watched each place that he set a foot, stepping over scree that would slide underfoot and hollows to stumble over. The climb took two hours through air, so still they seemed in a ghostly white world apart.
Beside him, Wat was panting softly when they reached what James thought must be the summit. A breath of air brushed his cheek. He swiveled his head. In spots the mist wavered. Soon they'd be as exposed as a priest at the altar. Where were the hell-spawn MacDougalls?
He held up a hand. “Hold here,” he whispered.
Wat passed the word back to Richert, and it went from man to man.
James eased his way to the edge of the cliff and knelt on one knee, peering down. The wind brushed his face, and the fog split and writhed. He dropped onto his belly. Through tatters of white, all he saw was gray rocks, brown bracken poking up between them. A falcon shrieked and then again. He jerked over onto his side when at a touch on his arm.
Hew knelt beside him and whispered, “Just ahead, my lord. Gelleys sent me back. He's keeping watch.”
“How far down are they?”
The man wrinkled up his ruddy face as he thought about it. “Less than a bow's shot. But not far from that far.”
James huffed, far enough that it might be possible to lie in wait without being spied. Perhaps. He stood up, and a stone moved under his foot, not so near the edge that it went over. “Could you tell how many?”
“More than I could count in the mist. Lying quietly in wait, it seemed to me.”
An echo of a shout from the depths of the pass repeated and died away. The King must have begun his march into the trap. A drape of mist broke away and floated off like a ship's sail.
“Come.” James spun on his heel and walked as fast as he could, looking down at every step for scree on the bare rock. Around a crag, his men still awaited, bunched nervously.
Standing close to Wat's shoulder, James said, “Two lines in front of the archers, kneeling. Swords at the ready. Wat, form them up where Hew shows you. I'll bring the archers after they have their orders.”
Wat nodded to Hew and motioned to the men to follow him. James watched as they silently filed past. “We've little time. The King is walking into the trap. You must keep him alive. The moment they begin their attack, fire. Every arrow must count. You understand me?” He looked from face to face, meeting each man's eyes. “Everything depends on you. The King's life. Everything.”
He gave them a moment to absorb his words before he said, “A double line behind the foot. And quietly.” He turned and padded carefully into ragged wisps of fog quickly blowing across the yawning chasm of the pass.
His foot knelt in two lines, sword gripped in their hands. Shields up. The archers scurried into place, spacing themselves so that the man behind would have space to aim. Sweat pooled under James's arms as a last long strand of mist sailed into the chasm. Brown bracken stuck up between rocks. Patches of heather clung to the steep empty slope. But halfway down teemed with men. Bare-shanked men, clad in homespun tunics beneath piebald cowhide coats but a few in mail hauberks, all in helmets and rawhide brogans. Men ready for battle. Hooked Lochaber axes to bring down horses. Claymores. Round highland shields. No. Not quite teemed, for they were still as a stalking cat, ready to spring.
The bowmen braced their bows to string and eased arrows free for firing. One of his men strangled a cough. James stood there amidst scraggly patches of heather that struggled through the rocky terrain, straining his eyes down the fair pass for the glint of sunlight on steel. Above a pair of gulls wheeled and squalled, lost from the sea. Long minutes he chewed his lip, barely breathing. Should the MacDougalls spot them before time...
Beside the undulating blue river far below, a glittering snake of men appeared around the far bend. Points of sun shone on helms and hilts. They couldn't go more than two abreast in so narrow a space. More and more came into view, too far to make out detail. A gold banner fluttered in the rising wind. A blue and white Saltire flew beside it. Ten minutes and the King would be below. Less... Battle was nothing. But the King...
A gull screeched overhead.
James wiped the sweat from his palm on the front of his surcoat. He drew his sword with a whisper against the leather scabbard. He gripped the hilt hard, heart pounding in time to a war drum only he could hear.
One of the MacDougalls leapt to his feet. “Thoir lonnseagh agaibh!” the man bellowed. A long wail of a horn sounded, echoing from the rocky sides of the pass, followed by wild shouting from thousands of throats. Rocks smashed down, bounced, and crashed toward the army below. Three men shoved at a boulder the size of a horse. It thundered down the mountainside.
Beside the shimmering river, the King's horse reared. A wall of men turned their horses in a pantomime of war. The stone landed with a tearing crash amidst of the horsemen.
“Fire!” James shouted. The bows thudded. Twap. Twap. Twap.
“Lonnseagh!”
The Highlanders ran, bounding down the side of the mountain, screaming their war cries. Below the King's banner, the line of wheeled, horses reared, a thin shrill of a trumpet cut through the battle's chaos.
Twap, Twap sang the bows. Screams mixed with the cheers. A dozen bodies tumbled forward and then slid down the braeside. A bearded man knelt, arrow in his back, screaming. Another boulder tumbled beside them.
James heard anguished screams. A trumpet blasted. On their hocks, the horses labored to scale the steep slope.
“Fire, damn you!” he shouted. “Over our heads! A Douglas!” He ran. His sword's song was sweet as he swung.
His men shouted only a step behind him. “Douglas! Douglas!”
Arrows sailed over their heads, hissing death. The MacDougalls spun to meet them. Men hacked at them with long axes and broad-bladed swords. The battle shrank to the man in front of him. Red hair flying, a cateran swung his hooked axe. James ducked under, swung, and the man went down in a fountain of blood. Then another. Men fled down the braeside or stood and died. “Douglas!” he shouted as he killed. “King Robert and Scotland!” Let them stop us now.
A swordsman came, screaming a war cry. James lopped his arm off at the elbow. James ran on. A cateran raised a rock over his head and heaved it. James barked a laugh as he dodged. He chopped into the man's belly. He ran past the King, standing in his stirrups and hacking in wide right and left swaths at a mob of shouting Highlanders, Robbie Boyd and Earl Maol Choluim beside him. It was a chaos of rearing horses and desperately fighting men afoot. A cateran drove a Lochaber axe into the chest of a man-at-arms' horse. The screaming animal crashed to the ground, trapping the man’s leg underneath it. James swung at the cateran's neck as he ran by.
The MacDougalls broke and scrambled, plunging down the braeside before them. A few tossed aside axes to run faster.
“After them,” James bellowed. The mouth of the defile opened before them. A MacDougall dashed up and lunged at him. James caught the blow with his blade. Their blades clashed again. James knocked the man's sword aside and buried his blade in the man’s chest.
As he jerked it free, he caught sight of a long, slender bridge over the river. On the far side of the shining, rippling river, a MacDougall lifted an axe over his head, red hair gleaming in the sunlight. He brought it down on a wooden piling. The wooden span shuddered. A trickle of MacDougall caterans pounded onto the bridge.
“The bridge! Seize it.” He bolted toward the narrow span. Sweat dripped, stinging, into his eyes. Fergus ran beside him, hacking at every MacDougall they came to.
James reached the foot of the bridge; his steps rang hollow on the planks. A cateran, bare-headed, bald as an egg but with arms that rippled with muscle, spun and swung at him. He blocked the powerful blow. The bridge shuddered under his feet. “Fergus!” James called as he swung a stroke. The cateran brushed it aside. They hacked at each other, raining desperate blows. Fergus's dirk sank into the man's side. The man twisted and tried a hopeless thrust. James slashed at his throat. The blood gushed as he fell. James leapt over his body. “Hold this side. I'll take the other,” he said over his shoulder, not bothering to look.
He raised his sword as he dashed over the rocking bridge, footfalls sounding like drum beats. A man ran at him, screaming. James slammed the flat of his sword into his head and tipped him over the railing into the river. Ahead, a short, smash-faced man paused, axe raised above his head, then he lowered it, tossed it aside, and fled.
James thrust the point of his sword into the ground and leaned on it, panting. He pulled off his helm and dropped it at his feet. Pushing his fingers through his dripping wet hair, he took a deep breath. The glittering waters of Loch Etive spread before him, and on the shore, a thin stream of men ran, fleeing. The river air was moist and cool as he sucked it into his lungs. He looked up the brown twisting track that led to the castle high atop the promontory.
But on the other side of the bridge, men were still screaming. MacDougalls hacked and slashed at his bunched company, blocking the foot of the bridge in wild, bloody hand-to-hand fighting.
He strode toward the ragged remnants of the battle. “Richert. Fergus. Hew.” James pointed to the far end of the bridge for them to guard. They peeled off from the melee and trotted past him. Blood trickled down Fergus's neck. Somewhere he had lost his helm and one of his ears.
The King galloped up, Robert Boyd, Niall Campbell, and the earl still beside him, tailed by hundreds of their men. “Yield!” the King shouted.
One of the MacDougalls ran at the Bruce, grimly silent, Lochaber axe flashing. Earl Maol jerked at his horse, it reared, lashing with hooves and the man's head shattered in a splatter of gore. The MacDougall's resistance shattered with it.
The King met James's gaze. He nodded. They held the Pass. Now for Castle Dunstaffnage.