Chapter Thirty-Four
Worried and desperate, Finlay searched for Katrin as the army started moving.
They had become separated when the body of Murtray’s men pressed forward to their chief, seeking answers.
Now he could not see her anywhere. After all their waiting, on this cool and rainy morning with fog lying like a blanket over the rough moorland, things moved all too swiftly.
He could feel the rush of it, a vibration running through the men, a kind of buzz of conversation, questions, muttering, like the heave of the sea beneath a tiny boat.
He felt edgy, his stomach queasy. He could have eaten no breakfast even had any been on offer, which it was not.
The persistent mist clouded the world. The land here was a broad, rough, and ragged plain that undulated up and down, now torn by the hooves and boots that trod across it.
No one could see much of his surroundings, which only added to the dread.
Did their commanders know where, exactly, this English army lurked? They might be anywhere.
And whence had these forces come? They’d been told England lay empty before them, and so far they’d glimpsed naught of significant opposing forces. Could the information coming back to them be wrong?
Uncertainty bred fear, and fear ran through Murtray’s men, who were now so very far from home. Finlay could feel that too. No doubt everybody there could, and it united even as it shook them.
“Come, march wi’ me and my da.” Of a sudden, Katrin was there beside Finlay as if she’d materialized from the very mist, her hand on his arm and desperation in her eyes.
No more than he did she know what this day would bring.
But she wanted them to face it together.
And was he not here for the express purpose of fighting at her side?
“Come along,” he bade Gregor, and they moved up through the ranks.
The Gallowglass band was, as ever, just in front of Chief MacMurtray’s position.
Reagan had donned his helmet, and the fog swirled around him like the remnants of a dream, adding to Finlay’s sense of unreality.
Mayhap he did dream all this, no more or less than one of the tales he told.
Like the memories that came to him in his dreams.
Suddenly Laird Robert Stewart appeared at their head with one of his captains, on horseback. He shouted at them, “This division—ye are under my command! Forward, but let the rest o’ the army move ahead o’ ye!”
Why? In the long-ago battles Finlay had fought, he’d always been in the vanguard, or close to it. Did Stewart wish to keep them in reserve, should the fight go badly for the rest of the forces?
A humble harper, not even a proper warrior, had no chance to ask. Over the strange and foreign land they moved, unable now to see even their own flanks that spread out ahead and to either side. Orders from the other commanders came back to them muffled.
If their scouts could be trusted, an army awaited them, one of unknown size.
How far ahead? It must be some distance yet, for the commanders made no effort at silence.
But it could all end here. For him. For Katrin, for both of them.
One final turn of fate’s wheel. Had he found her only to lose her before she knew him?
All too possible. In battle, men died. He knew that to the root of his soul, knew it better than he knew his own name. For, aye, he had been here before, though not in this life. In this life he had eschewed the path of the warrior. This he had done for the sake of the lass who walked at his side.
Yet he found himself here anyway. An irony the likes of which life seemed so fond.
Katrin must have felt his gaze upon her, for she turned her head and their eyes met. An exchange took place, one as intimate as when he’d been with her in her chamber. When they’d lain together, two bodies—and two souls—became one.
He might never have that again, but by God, he would stand strong beside her, whatever that required.
The mist stirred and floated around her. It had wetted and darkened her hair. Her face looked pale, but as she gazed at him, light took hold in her eyes.
His world lay in those eyes.
The commanders were not being quiet. They shouted to their men and to one another.
Far away to the front, Finlay could hear the king’s voice raised.
No silent approach, this. To one side of them, a drummer started up a beat.
A piper far on the other side took it up in a tune.
To his astonishment, Finlay realized he knew it—the march tune he had made for the Gallowglass.
With a breathless laugh and a look for Finlay, Katrin also took it up. Her voice rose bold but muffled by the mist, disembodied like a murmur from the past. His own tune, aye, and the words they had made together.
Come all ye who would valiant be
Who would follow the train o’ bright glory.
Where battle brings us gory fates
We follow them both soon and late.
The Gallowglass gang to die!
After a moment’s hesitation, Finlay raised his own voice, a fitting complement to hers.
His heart bounded and rose. The men around them stared before beginning to step in time with the rhythm.
One by one, beginning with Gregor, they joined in, a score of voices deep and strong. Courage rose among them with the tune.
For fight they will wi’ sword or spear,
With blade and axe, their numbers dear.
The heart o’ courage lingers here.
We will follow wi’ strength o’ eye.
They lead us on to victory,
May the Gallowglass never die!
Anders slanted them a look and grinned. Reagan, still at their head, glanced back with a grin also. In a neighboring company, other voices took it up.
A kind of battle cry, the song was. A defiance of fear, and fate. How many of those who sang would survive? In what future might their ancient song be sung?
Katrin reached out and snagged Finlay’s fingers. Clutched tight. Would anyone notice? Did it matter if they did?
The sun rose, and the mist brightened strangely all around them before beginning to lift and giving way to a cold rain.
Men continued to mutter as they tramped.
Back so far in the ranks as they were, surely the fight—if ever they did sight the English troops—would be long over before they reached it?
They stopped moving. Waited, and waited some more. Many of the men sat down even though the ground was rough and sodden. Just ahead of them, Chief MacMurtray lowered himself to the ground with the help of one of the Gallowglass soldiers. They waited some more.
Eventually, Sir Robert Stewart rode back, shouting orders.
“The English army lies just ahead. We will take position and hold. Our division is to keep back—the king and Earl Moray will take the lead for the time being. Understand? Hold and wait!”
The tension, which had backed down a few steps during their singing, cranked up impossibly high.
Finlay sensed raw fear and uncertainty in the men around him, many of whom—just like Katrin—had never experienced such a conflict.
Waiting before a battle was hard, but that was not the worst of it.
The worst came when the world broke apart and a man committed himself to the killing, and death sprang up from the very ground.
He did not want that for Katrin. He did not want it for himself. He must heed O’Hanlon’s advice and get Katrin and her father to the rear when the battle began.
If he could.
The clouds moved across the moor as the rain came and went. Bit by bit, Finlay saw the vast army around him, shifting, shifting with their commanders directing them. The breath caught in his throat. No matter what forces the English possessed, surely they could not overcome so vast an army as this?
As the mist crawled away behind them, he saw where they were.
Sprawled across a rise, all uneven and grizzled green, with a steep slope in front of them.
To be sure, most the Scots army was in front of them now, two units having moved ahead.
Across from them he saw another rise, this one topped by a stone monument. And there—there…
The English army looked vast, but nay, it could not number much better than half their own.
Their position, though—did they stand the easier ground?
Hard to tell with the masses of knights and horsemen and footmen obscuring the way.
Finlay thought he glimpsed a wall, and much broken ground on the Scots’ side, which would complicate any kind of concerted charge.
But his place was not to give the orders.
He must try to protect those around him, even if it cost his life.
He turned to Gregor, still at his side. “Stay near to me when it begins.”
Gregor’s brown eyes had widened with fright. “When will it begin?”
“God knows.”
It once more started to rain, as if to add to their woe. A cold autumn rain it was, and heavy. It further obscured the limited view they had.
One of Robert Stewart’s captains came through on horseback, reinforcing his order. “Hang back. Hang back till ye’re needed!”
The army—their army—had split into three distinct detachments, the two that had moved forward poised to descend the slope. Earl Moray commanded the foremost, and the king—no one could call him a coward—led the other, visible on his mount even through the rain.
Across from them on the opposite side of the gully, the smaller English army had also broken into three.
Finlay’s keen eyes saw they had many more mounted knights, men no doubt highly trained in warfare, who even at this distance looked lethal.
And there was something about the disposition of their warriors…
The entire Scots army shifted like some great beast taking a breath, and moved forward.
Katrin, who still clutched Finlay’s fingers, turned to him.
“I love ye. I want ye to know that full well, before—” And she kissed him right there amongst her father’s men.
The years blurred and convulsed around him.
He was an Irish warrior standing outside in the sun, gazing into eyes of blue.
He was an exile, learning the price demanded and paid for such a love.
A second son, fighting against all odds to keep hold of the heart with which a wild Caledonian princess had gifted him.
He was a Scotsman willing to risk all he was to say to the Norsewoman who should be his enemy but could never, never be—
“And I love ye.”
Did the wheel of life jerk and turn? Or was that but the ground Finlay felt shifting beneath his feet? For here he was, as ever, risking—risking it all again.
He wished with sudden, sharp desperation that he could tell all of it to her, who they were and who they had been. But there was no time, and if things went badly, that time might never, never come.
Her father’s men, standing so close around them, did not seem to notice the exchange, their very beings focused on what happened up ahead. But everything within Finlay narrowed to awareness of the woman whose mouth hovered just below his. His life, she was. His heart. His very being.
How strange and terrible, the ways in which a man’s life unfolded. He had spent most this lifetime aware of her, though not knowing who or where she was. He’d spent years searching for her and had found her at last.
Only to quite possibly see it all end here in the pouring rain, on this forsaken patch of foreign ground.
“List to me,” he told her. “When the battle begins ye must heed all I tell to ye, aye?”
She did not say what she might, that he was a harper, not a warrior, and she had better training than him. Her gaze clung to his and she nodded.
Then she turned to her father, on her other side, and spoke to him.
“Stay near to me, Da, when it begins.”
And Anders MacMurtray replied, “Daughter, it already has. May God protect us.”