Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [391]
It was a tiny building, stone with a thatched roof, crouched in a small depression of the hill, like a cowering animal. I felt a strong feeling of kinship with it. The English watchfires were visible from here, glimmering through the sleet, and I could hear shouting in the distance—Scots or English, I couldn’t tell.
Then the pipes began, a thin, eerie scream in the storm. There were discordant shrieks, rising unearthly from several different places on the hill. Having seen it before at close hand, I could imagine the pipers blowing up their bags, chests inflating with quick gasps and blue lips clamped tight on the chanters’ stems, cold-stiff fingers fumbling to guide the blowing into coherence.
I could almost feel the stubborn resistance of the leathern bag, kept warm and flexible under a plaid, but reluctant to be coaxed into fullness, then suddenly springing to life, part of the piper’s body, like a third lung, breathing for him when the wind stole his breath, as though the shouting of the clansmen near him filled it.
The shouting was louder, now, and reached me in waves as the wind turned, carrying eddying blasts of sleet. There was no porch to give shelter, or any trees on the hillside to break the wind. My horse turned and put his head down, facing into the wind, and his mane whipped hard against my face, rough with ice.
The church offered sanctuary from the elements, as well as from the English. I pushed the door open and, tugging on the bridle, led the horse inside after me.
It was dark inside, with the single oiled-skin window no more than a dim patch in the blackness over the altar. It seemed warm, by contrast with the weather outside, but the smell of stale sweat made it suffocating. There were no seats for the horse to knock over; nothing save a small shrine set into one wall, and the altar itself. Oppressed by the strong smell of people, the horse stood still, snorting and blowing, but not fidgeting overmuch. Keeping a wary eye on him, I went back to the door and thrust my head out.
No one could tell what was happening on Falkirk Hill. The sparks of gunfire twinkled randomly in the dark. I could hear, faint and intermittent, the ring of metal and the thump of an occasional explosion. Now and then came the scream of a wounded man, high as a bagpipe’s screech, different from the Gaelic cries of the warriors. And then the wind would turn, and I would hear nothing, or would imagine I heard voices that were nothing but the shrieking wind.
I had not seen the fight at Prestonpans; subconsciously accustomed to the ponderous movements of huge armies bound to tanks and mortars, I had not realized just how quickly things could happen in a small pitched battle of hand-to-hand fighting and small, light arms.
The first warning I had was a shout from near at hand. “Tulacb Ard!” Deafened by wind, I hadn’t heard them as they came up the hill. “Tulacb Ard!” It was the battle cry of clan MacKenzie; some of Dougal’s troops, forced backward in the direction of my sanctuary. I ducked back inside, but kept the door ajar, so that I could peer out.
They were coming up the hill, a small group of men in flight. Highlanders, both from the sound and the sight of them, plaids and beards and hair flying around them, so they looked like black clouds against the grassy slope, scudding uphill before the wind.
I jumped back into the church as the first of them burst through the door. Dark as it was, I couldn’t see his face, but I recognized his voice when he crashed headfirst into my horse.
“Jesus!”
“Willie!” I shouted. “Willie Coulter!”
“Sweet bleeding Jesus! Who’s that!”
I hadn’t time to answer before the door crashed against the wall, and two more black forms shot into the tiny church. Incensed by this noisy intrusion, my horse reared and whinnied, pawing the air. This gave rise to cries of alarm from the intruders, who clearly had thought the building unoccupied,