Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [326]
There was a noise to the left, in the direction of the sea. It was faint, and indistinct, but the note of alarm was clear to battle-trained ears. Someone, he supposed, had tripped over a furze bush.
“Hey?” The note of alarm was taken up by one of the sentries nearby. “What’s happening?”
The priest would have to take care of himself, he thought. Jamie drew the broadsword as he rose, and with one long step, was within reach. The man was no more than a shape in the darkness, but distinct enough. The merciless blade smashed down with all his strength, and split the man’s skull where he stood.
“Highlanders!” The shriek broke from the man’s companion, and the second sentry sprang out like a rabbit flushed from a copse, bounding away into the fading dark before Jamie could free his weapon from its gory cleft. He put a foot on the fallen man’s back and jerked, gritting his teeth against the unpleasant sensation of slack flesh and grating bone.
Alarm was spreading up and down the English lines; he could feel as much as hear it—an agitation of men rudely wakened, groping blindly for weapons, searching in all directions for the unseen threat.
Clanranald’s pipers were behind to the right, but no signal as yet came for the charge. Continue the advance, then, heart pounding and left arm tingling from the death blow, belly muscles clenched and eyes straining through the waning dark, the spray of warm blood across his face going cold and sticky in the chill.
“I could hear them first,” he said, staring off into the night as though still searching for the English soldiers. He bent forward, hugging his knees. “Then I could see, too. The English, wriggling over the ground like maggots in meat, and the men behind me. George McClure came up with me, and Wallace and Ross on the other side, and we were walkin’ still, one pace at a time, but faster and faster, seein’ the sassenaches breaking before us.”
There was a dull boom off to the right; the firing of a single cannon. A moment later, another, and then, as though this were the signal, a wavering cry rose from the oncoming Highlanders.
“The pipes started then,” he said, eyes closed. “I didna remember my musket ’til I heard one fire close behind me; I’d left it in the grass next to the priest. When it’s like that, ye dinna see anything but the small bit that’s happening round you.
“Ye hear a shout, and of a sudden, you’re running. Slow, for a step or two, while ye free your belt, and then your plaid falls free and you’re bounding, wi’ your feet splashing mud up your legs and the chill of the wet grass on your feet, and your shirttails flying off your bare arse. The wind blows into your shirt and up your belly and out along your arms.…Then the noise takes ye and you’re screaming, like runnin’ down a hill yelling into the wind when you’re a bairn, to see can ye lift yourself on the sound.”
They rode the waves of their own shrieking onto the plain, and the force of the Highland charge crashed onto the shoals of the English army, smothering them in a boiling surge of blood and terror.
“They ran,” he said softly. “One man stood to face me—all during the fight, only one. The others I took from behind.” He rubbed a grimy hand over his face, and I could feel a fine tremor start somewhere deep inside him.
“I remember…everything,” he said, almost whispering. “Every blow. Every face. The man lying on the ground in front of me who wet himself wi’ fear. The horses screaming. All the stinks—black powder and blood and the smell of my own sweat. Everything. But it’s like I was standin’ outside, watching myself. I wasna really there.” He opened his eyes and looked sidelong at me. He was bent almost double, head on his knees, the shivering visible now.
“D’ye know?” he asked.
“I know.”
While I hadn’t fought with sword or knife, I had fought often enough with hands and will; getting through