Chapter 25
“Ready!” James shouted, and hoped his orders would carry to the men on the far reaches of the line.
To pit his twenty-four hundred men against a force near seven thousand strong, he’d drawn his troops into a long and shallow front.
Only three men deep, it stretched far along the floor of Tippermuir valley—long enough, he prayed, to avoid being outflanked by the Lowland general.
Sibbald and Rollo manned the left and right flanks, and James and MacColla held the center.
They had but three horsemen, a knot of axe-wielding Highlanders, many men bearing sword and targe, and some with no weapons at all.
James had gleaned a few lucky score of muskets, and it was these that he would use in the first assault, shot from the center of the line.
He’d momentarily silenced the piper. The air was charged, amplified only by the rasping of breath and hissing of steel poised in scabbard.
“Gentlemen!” James shouted. “It is true you have few weapons while your enemy has many.” He locked eyes with as many men as he could, and thought in that moment that his heart would break for love of them.
They stood brave and eager for battle, seeing their lack of arms not as an obstacle, but a challenge.
“But many stones lie upon this moor, and I say: Take as stout a one as you can manage.” The men began to buzz, and James raised his fist in the air.
“Run to the first Covenanter you meet.” They cheered him, and his voice grew louder.
“And strike him, and take his sword.” James yelled above the din.
“And then, gentlemen, I believe you will be at no loss how to proceed!”
Whooping and battle cries thundered down the line. “Silence!” he yelled.
The enemy Covenanters had begun their advance, and the hollow echo of approaching soldiers pressed toward them like a wall of sound.
“Prime!” James ordered. The sound of clicking metal was shrill in his ears as hundreds of men pulled back on the cocks of their muskets and methodically primed their weapons. They pressed hammers forward, opened priming pans, tipped powder flasks, poured, returned hammers.
The acrid smell of gunpowder subsumed everything, drowning the stench of unwashed men.
“About!” James called, and was roused by the sight of so many men moving in unison. Swinging their muskets butt first to the ground, pouring a measure more of gunpowder into the barrels, plucking lead balls from between their teeth to drop onto the powder.
“Draw ramrods!” There was a great screeching as his men withdrew their rods from channels beneath musket barrels, and plunged them down to seat bullets firmly against powder.
“Aim!” The snap of metal reverberated down the line, one single, tremendous sound, as James’s men pulled their muskets to full cock.
“Fire!” he shouted, and flinched at the deafening boom. Black and gray smoke filled the air, and James whooped at the unexpected rush of exhilaration and the sensation that he was raw and alive to everything around him.
Lord Elcho, the enemy general, had taken a standard approach to the battle and, hoping to draw James’s men from their ranks, was sending a cavalry unit as his first advance.
But the band of Highlanders and Irishmen had cut their teeth far from those military colleges favored by rich, young lords. They didn’t know that proper infantry like themselves were supposed to fear men on horseback.
Rather, James and his men merely fired their single round and then, with looks that ranged from unimpressed, to impatient, to disgusted, threw down their muskets and charged the horses head-on.
The valley was choked with smoke, and at first the Covenanters only heard James’s men. Many hesitated at the blood-chilling chorus of shrieks and cheers and howls, as if they were to stand witness to some epic Gael force risen from the dead.
James roared his own battle cry and ran beside his men as they exploded through the dense cloud of gun smoke, leaping and whooping, mad with delight and fury, and hundreds of their enemy soldiers turned their horses and fled from the sight.
Unfettered by horse or musket, James felt the rage of battle course through him with a newfound intensity and clarity. He dashed and leapt, cutting a path along the uneven terrain, and as his feet pounded directly along the Scottish soil, more than ever before he felt as one with his country.
Just as his feet were linked to the beloved ground, so too did the sword in his hand seem to extend effortlessly from him as if a part of his own body. He and his sword arced and sang through the air, cutting down any foolish enough to stand in their way.
His enemies fled. Lord Elcho frantically tried to regroup, but the horsemen who’d fallen back collided with the Covenanter foot soldiers who’d remained on the field, and the results were catastrophic.
With James and MacColla carving a path through the Covenanters from the middle, and Rollo and Sibbald holding their flanks, they routed the enemy.
James found MacColla in the center of the valley, standing and laughing at the outrageous vision of Highlanders throwing stones at their retreating enemy.
"’Twas a braw day, Graham.” MacColla clapped him hard on the shoulder.
“Indeed.” James nodded, sharing his good humor. “Though I’d wager you could walk from here to the gates of Perth without touching your foot to the ground.” Bodies of Covenanter soldiers littered the field. James scanned his troops and shook his head in disbelief. “What of our casualties?”
“I know of but one man lost,” Rollo said, riding up from behind. “One man for one thousand Covenanters.”
“Extraordinary,” James murmured as he took in the devastation around him.
“I’ll get you a full accounting by day’s end.”
“Aye, do that. And where has Sibbald got to?”
"He took himself one of those Covenanter ponies,” MacColla said. He looked around the field as if struck by possibility of procuring his own spoils. “It looked to me like the old man rode east.”
“To Perth?” James pulled off his bonnet and shook the sweat from his head.
MacColla merely shrugged.
“Rollo,” James said, “we need to arrange a quick surrender with Perth. I’d not have it suffer the same plundering as Aberdeen.”
“I understand.” If they were to avoid the plundering that could happen after battle, they needed to broker the town’s surrender as soon as possible. Rollo turned his mount and was off at once, his horse picking a tentative path through the carnage.
“Aye, and the Irish were shocked that our James is no blustering bonnet-laird!” MacColla leaned over and clapped James hard on the shoulder for what must have been the twentieth time that evening. The man was built like an ox, and James thought sure he’d have a bruise by night’s end.
Young Alexander Robertson and his family hosted a celebratory dinner for them, seating James in an honored place at one end of the table, with Magda and MacColla sitting to either side.
He was becoming quite fond of MacColla and his bluster, though the man did have a startlingly vicious streak in battle that James thought he’d best keep an eye on.
They dined in Blair Castle, and James found the Great Hall a warm welcome indeed. The room was simple but gracious, with high ceilings and a fire roaring in the hearth. Sconces and candelabra chased the gloom from the hall and filled it with a warm golden light.
“Why, James can’t be called a bonnet-laird what with all the Graham landholdings.” Alexander placed his cutlery down, contemplating the issue in earnest. Though already named chief of his clan, he was a young fourteen and his title was more honorific than realistic as yet.
"No, lad,” Rollo said. "I think the MacColla’s meaning has more to do with James’s battle courage and acumen.
” Rollo’s usually hard-edged voice was kind, and belied the great pain he must have been enduring.
James knew at what cost his friend sat a saddle for the day, and a number of times he’d caught Rollo pounding the feeling back into his rigid, bent legs.
"Aye, but I curse the Campbell.” MacColla slammed his fist on the table. “The rogue was too much of a coward to face us himself.”
“I’ve a feeling he’ll not let this day stand.” James poured himself another glass of Bordeaux. “Bide your time, friend. You’ll get your chance at revenge against the Campbell.”
The glee that had suffused James was subsiding, and he grew thoughtful. They’d only lost one man to the Covenanters’ thousand. It was the first time he’d seen a Highland charge in action and he was awed. And sobered.
“Over a thousand dead,” Alexander marveled, as if reading James’s mind. “Never before have so many fled from so few.”
“Wise words from a young mouth, lad.” James raised his glass in a toast. “You’ll make a fine chief.”
As the dinner guests began to disperse, James once again addressed his young host. “I’ve a gift for you, Alexander.”
James walked to the corner of the hall and retrieved his musket from the shadows. “I owe you a great debt for the hospitality you’ve shown us. I find this is no longer of any use to me,” he said, and holding the barrel pointed toward himself, James handed him the gun.
The boy merely looked at him, incredulous.
“Aye.” James smiled. “My bullets are spent, lad. I’ve my broadsword, and that will more than suffice.”
Alexander took the musket gingerly into his hands.
The butt of the rifle was made of wood the color of cocoa that James had polished to a fine patina, and it was short compared to the barrel, which swept forward in a thin, elegant line.
Other men in his acquaintance coveted firearms with elaborate carvings or even ivory inlay, but James prized simplicity in a weapon, and his plain iron matchlock was polished to a bright silver sheen.
“Use it well, lad.” James smiled. Alexander beamed in reply, moved by the gift. “I’m taking our fight deeper into the Highlands,” James said. “It’s the weapon of a Highlander I’ll use now.”