Pay the Devil - Jack Higgins [78]
They were safe enough after that. Marteen led the way, twisting and weaving from one valley to another, splashing through marsh and bog, all the time working steadily higher into the hills. They rode for an hour in single file before emerging from a small valley onto a steep hillside.
Before them, no more than two miles away, lay the sea, and below, a small loch cut deep into the heart of the hills, black with depth near the center, purple and grey near the edges where basalt ledges lifted to the surface. Clay dismounted and stood in the desolate light of gloaming, looking north to where the peaks of the mountains were streaked with orange.
The beauty of it was too much for a man, and he breathed deeply on the sweetness of the heather, still wet after heavy rain, then followed Cathal and Marteen down the steep hillside, past a trickle of water that fell through drooping ferns. They reached a rough track, mounted again and rode along the side of a loch, following a running stream which gurgled through the quiet evening.
Behind them the hills lifted in a smooth swell into the dark arch of the sky, where already a single star shone, and as they turned a curve in the valley, he saw a small hunting bothy in a green loop of grass beside the river.
It was stoutly built of dressed stone and roofed with turf. As Marteen dismounted, he said, “We’ll be safe enough here, Colonel. It’s only half an hour to the cliffs. The tide will be out and we can follow the beach to the place where the Frenchman is landing.”
He and Cathal sprawled on a crude bench and talked of America in subdued tones. With the natural resilience of youth, the past was already becoming of less importance to them than the future. Clay walked away and sat on a boulder by the river.
His wounded arm nagged at him constantly and his mouth was dry as a bone. He leaned down and scooped water up in the palm of his hand, savoring the coldness of it with conscious pleasure.
He thought of Joanna and was filled with a feeling of savage loneliness and the heart seemed to dry and wither inside him. Whatever a man tried to do, Fate always dealt the last card—that was life. By accepting it, a man saved himself a great deal of pain.
For a moment, he was filled with that terrible knowledge of his own littleness that comes to a man from time to time. He had known it before, standing amidst the carnage of the battlefield, realizing that next time it could be him, accepting that whatever one did always led nowhere.
Above his head, a single cloud of red fire seemed to burn itself out as he watched, and then the light died on the bald faces of the hills, and night dropped its heavy cloak across the valley.
He sat there for a long time, gazing out toward the sea blindly. Finally, Cathal came and tapped him on the shoulder. They mounted and rode away from that place, their harness jingling softly in the night.
They went carefully, keeping to the shadows of the valley, dismounting when they reached the cliffs, to lead their horses down a treacherous, crumbling track, with boulders gleaming whitely in the moonlight below.
The sand stretched before them, wet and shining in the moonlight where the sea had receded. Cathal spurred his mount into a gallop and they thundered along at the water’s edge, occasionally riding belly-deep through the sea to round a spur of rock into another bay.
The ship lay half a mile offshore, her spars and rigging etched clearly against the night sky. Clay looked up at the moon with a slight feeling of panic, wishing for a cloud to dim its light until they were safely on board.
Marteen laughed excitedly