Lord of the Isles

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

By the power of his sword arm, his dragon fleet and his sheer personality, Somerled Norse Slayer carved an enduring name for himself in Scottish legend. Inheriting his father's shattered thanedom in Argyll in the twelfth century, he enlarged it by courage, initiative, military shrewdness and diplomacy. For decades his navy held the balance of power in the northern seas, and it was he who cleared the Vikings out of the Hebrides. Set against the romantically celebrated West Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, the story of the conquests and courage of this hero king is a living tribute to a renowned legend. A thrilling story of the Scottish Isles in the 12th century by Nigel Tranter, master of Scottish historical fiction.By the power of his sword arm, his dragon fleet and his sheer personality, Somerled Norse Slayer carved an enduring name for himself in Scottish legend. Inheriting his father's shattered thanedom in Argyll in the twelfth century, he enlarged it by courage, initiative, military shrewdness and diplomacy. For decades his navy held the balance of power in the northern seas, and it was he who cleared the Vikings out of the Hebrides. Set against the romantically celebrated West Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, the story of the conquests and courage of this hero king is a living tribute to a renowned legend. A thrilling story of the Scottish Isles in the 12th century by Nigel Tranter, master of Scottish historical fiction.

Release date: December 20, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 383

Sample

Just who was responsible for the assassination of Somerled and his son has never been established; none of course suggested that either the High Steward or the Bishop of Glasgow had anything to do with it, however joyful they were at the result. The bodies were buried at Saddell Abbey, where Somerled’s tomb is pointed out to this day.

The kingdom of Argyll and the Isles, although never conquered, did not long survive the death of its creator. It was divided up between Somerled’s surviving sons, into three great lordships, under Dougal, Ranald and Angus who all called themselves kings but were scarcely that. Dougal, who never had much real interest in Man, took Lorn, Mull, Jura and lesser isles; and from him is descended the Clan MacDougall. Ranald got Kintyre and Islay; he it was who changed the Abbey of Saddel into a Cistercian monastery later that 12th century; it would be nice to say that the Clanranald descended from him, and it did, in fact, but took its name from a much later Ranald; however, his son, Donald of Islay, gave his name to the great clan of MacDonald. Angus, Somerled’s third surviving son, got Bute, Arran and lands to the north, and although he no doubt left progeny, no clan, so far as I know, takes its name from him. Clan Donald it was which carried on the designation “of the Isles”, and which played so vital a role in Scotland’s story.

History is silent, as so often in the affairs of women, as to what happened to Ragnhilde thereafter. Probably she passed her widowhood at Finlaggan on Islay.

Her brother Godfrey the Black in due course won back Man, as Henry of England’s vassal, and reigned for many years, oppressive and unpopular to the end. Malcolm, Earl of Ross, died four years after his brother-in-law, ineffective as always; and his son Donald is heard of no more, so presumably died in captivity. Other MacEths, however, although they never achieved the Scots crown, did found the Clan Mackay.

King Malcolm the Fourth did not die at Doncaster but survived till the following year, dying at the age of twenty-four, one of Scotland’s most ineffective monarchs. He was succeeded by his brother William, who despite his accepted style of William the Lion, was not much more lionlike than Malcolm the Maiden, getting that by-name because he it was who adopted the Lion Rampant as the Scottish royal heraldic emblem, instead of the boar. Fortunately his grandson, Alexander the Third, was a great improvement and put Scotland back on its feet.

It is perhaps odd that their descendant today, via the Stewarts of course, should bear as subsidiary titles to Prince of Wales, that of Lord of the Isles, High Steward of Scotland and Baron Renfrew.

It made a peaceful scene in the warm May afternoon. The sea, in the wide loch-mouth, was almost mirror-calm so that the slap-slap of the wavelets against the longship’s timbers was so gentle that it did not drown out the sleepy crooning of the eiders from the skerries. Even the haunting calling of the cuckoos drifted across the quarter-mile of blue-green water which separated them from the nearest island. Only the rhythmic snoring of one of the oarsmen, sprawled over his sweep, disturbed—that and the stench of sweat from near one-hundred male torsoes after long and strenuous exertion.

The young man who sat alone on the high prow-platform beneath the fierce dragon-head, chin on fist, elbow on bent bare knee, may have appeared to be in somnolent tune with it all, but was not. His mind was busy assessing, calculating, seeking to judge chances and distances, times and numbers, and probable odds; and every now and again his keen glance lifted to scan the long fretted coastline of Ardnamurchan to north and west, its features and contours, and then to swing still further westwards across the glittering waters of the Hebridean Sea, empty of sail if not of isle and skerry—and pray it to continue empty meantime. If all the beauty of that colourful seascape was scarcely in the front of his mind, it was not wholly lost on him, despite presently being impervious to the peace of it all.

For that matter there was little enough that spoke of peace about that ship, from the rearing red-painted dragon-prow and shield-hung sides, to the stacked arms at the high stern-platform, with swords, throwing-spears and battle-axes at the ready. Nor were the men pacific in appearance, any of them, most naked to the waist, in ragged saffron kilts, with shaggy hair and thin down-turning, long moustaches, Irish gallowglasses almost to a man. Few would look for peace and quiet from that crew.

The young man in the bows, so thoughtful, was distinct in almost every respect. He was fair-haired, for one thing, where the others were dark, hint of the Norse in his ancestry. He was clean-shaven, and though strong enough as to feature, it was a sculptured strength which spoke of a very different breeding. He wore the saffron kilt also but of finer quality, with a silken shirt reasonably clean and a long calf-skin waistcoat on which were sewn small metal scales to form a protective half-armour, pliable and light but effective. His great bulls’-horned helmet, silver-chased, the curling horns tipped with gold, lay on the deck at his side and the shoulder sword-belt gleamed golden also. Somerled MacGillebride MacGilladamnan MacFergus looked what he was, a Celtic princeling of part-Norse extraction. It was perhaps aptly amusing that his father, the exiled Thane Gillebride, should have given him, at his Norse mother’s behest, the Christian name of Somerled, which in her tongue meant the peaceful-sounding Summer Voyager

He turned his speculative attention to the two smallish islands so close together on the south, off which they lay, in the very jaws of the long and fair sea-loch of Sunart. The islands, a bare half-mile apart, were extraordinarily dissimilar to be so close, the seaward one, Oronsay, jagged, rocky, strangely M-shaped, cleft into many small headlands yet nowhere much higher than one-hundred feet above the waves; whilst its neighbour, Carna, was smooth and green and lofty, no more than a mile-long grassy whaleback rising to a peaked central ridge five times as high as Oronsay. It was the former which held the man’s attention.

A shout from the stern turned all waking heads towards where the helmsman, Big Conn of the Ironhand, pointed away north-westwards towards the far Ardnamurchan shore beyond the point of Ardslignish. At first it was difficult to distinguish anything in the hazy sunlight other than the frowning cliffs, ironbound shore and shadow-slashed corries of Beinn Hiant. But after a moment or two the keen-eyed were able to discern what appeared to be a small low white cloud, down at sea-level, a moving cloud which seemed to roll over the face of the water towards them. Presently to even the untutored eye it became apparent that most of the cloud was in fact spray, but rising out of it was a single square sail.

Until it was within half-a-mile or so, the hull of the oncoming craft could only be glimpsed occasionally amidst the spume set up by the double banks of long oars on each side, forty-eight all told, which lashed the sea in a disciplined frenzy, each pulled by two men, and with the sail’s aid drove the slender, low-set galley at a scarcely believable speed in calm conditions. Evolved out of the Viking longship and the Celtic birlinn, the Hebridean galley represented by far the fastest craft on any water, greyhound of the seas indeed—although some would call them wolves, rather. They held their own grace, even beauty, but few saw them as beautiful.

The newcomer swept up in fine style, scarcely slackening speed until almost alongside and then pulling up in a few lengths with back-watering sweeps in masterly precision and timing, great sail crashing down at the exact moment and the helmsman bearing on his long steering-oar to swing the craft round on to the other stationary ship only a few yards from its prow, all in a flourish of dramatic seamanship. Saor Sleat MacNeil was like that.

A shout, part bark, part crow, part laugh, spanned the water-gap. “No shipping, no Norsemen, Somerled! Only a few fishing-cobles at Mingary and Kilchoan. And some dotards and old wives. We have it all to ourselves, man.”

The fair-headed young man had risen. “That is well,” he called back. “But why, then, half-slay your crew? In your return? I need these men for better work than as playthings for your vanity, Saor MacNeil! Mind it!”

“Yes, lord,” the other acknowledged, grinning.

“Take heed, Saor—or you will find it difficult to laugh, hereafter! Even you.” That was quietly said but with a sibilant hiss in the Highland voice.

Considering those actual few words, the impact of them was rather extraordinary, quite transforming the scene. Where all had been relaxed, all but somnolent, in tune with the warm May afternoon, abruptly in those ships there was a tension. Men sat upright on the rowing-benches. Saor MacNeil himself stood stiff, grin gone. The quiet sounds of lapping water and crooning eiders seemed suddenly loud. Somerled MacGillebride MacGilladmnan MacFergus, roused, could frighten other men strangely, possessed of a violent shattering force supremely at odds with both his years and normal pleasing appearance and habit. That none knew just what could be expected to rouse him, was part of the difficulty.

For long moments this pause lasted. Then Somerled jerked a beckoning hand. “Come you aboard,” he commanded, but mildly enough now.

Saor MacNeil wasted no time. He flung an order to his oarsmen on the starboard side, who dipped in their sweeps in a single controlled motion which slewed the galley’s fierce prow round to leeward through a ninety-degree arc, to close the gap with the other vessel, whilst he himself leapt down from the stern-platform, ran lightly along the narrow gangway between the two sets of rowing-benches, sprang up onto the bow-platform and so was in position to jump the yard or two of space as the two prows came together, an agile, exactly-timed performance, like so much of what that man essayed—for he liked to impress.

Somerled smiled, less than impressed. And as the dark man leapt, so, as exactly timed, the fair man’s fist flashed out, to take the leaper on the shoulder and spin him round and backwards. Balance gone, agile precision likewise, arms waving wildly, MacNeil toppled and fell, outboard. He hit the water with a splash and shouted curse.

A howl of mirth rose from the packed benches on both craft.

Stooping unhurriedly, Somerled picked up a rope and tossed it over to the flailing swimmer, to draw him up and aid his streaming person back and over the side. Then, as MacNeil panted and glared and spewed out salt water, the other clapped him on the wet shoulder with a blow which almost felled him, and burst into a shout of laughter.

“Ardour cooled?” he demanded.

For a second or two the dark man’s eyes flashed dangerously; but meeting the amused but cool and piercing gaze of the other, he swallowed and shrugged and the grin reappeared in some fashion on his dripping, trim-bearded features. After all, Somerled was his foster-brother.

“Yes, lord,” he said again, but in a different tone from last time.

“Yes, then—so be it.” The Lord Somerled waved forward two others to the prow-platform, Conn Ironhand MacMahon, the steersman, and Dermot Flatnose Maguire, captain of gallowglasses, both Irishmen from Fermanagh, as were all save the pair already forward. When these came up, he at once reverted to the quietly businesslike, turning to face the south and the islands. He pointed. “This is the back-door to Morvern. Our rear, we hear, is safe from Ardnamurchan meantime. And we are hidden from Mull. No sail is in sight. God willing, this will serve. We beach the galleys behind this Oronsay, eat, and then march. March by night.”

“March?” Dermot Flatnose said. “My lads are seamen, see you—not bog-trotters!” He spoke with the Erse brogue, so different from the lilting soft Hebridean tongue of Somerled which was so genial and so deceptive.

“They will march, nevertheless, my friend—march far and fast. And as like as not fight at the end of it. Or I will know the reason why!”

Maguire held his tongue.

“There may be as many as ten miles to cover, at a guess. I have not been here since I was a lad, mind. Up yonder glen, by Loch Teacuis and through the hills beyond to the Aline River, then down to Kinlochaline. The clachan there is where we make for, the principal place of this Morvern, where my father used to have a house. And where the Norse are like to be. For whosoever holds Loch Aline, if they have ships, holds the Sound of Mull and the key to the Firth of Lorn.”

“Why march by night, lord?” Conn Ironhand asked. “If the men must march and fight, will they not be fighting better rested and in God’s good daylight?”

“Perhaps. But the only way we may succeed here is by surprise. We have less than two hundred men, leaving some few with the ships. Even if they are all heroes, two hundred will not take Morvern from a thousand Vikings and more. There must be no warning. The local folk, these MacInneses, are much cowed, we know, lack spirit after all these years under the Norsemen’s heavy hand. We cannot rely on them for help. And some might even warn of our presence in their hills. We march by night.”

“The gallowglasses will not like it.”

“I do not ask them to like it—only to march.”

Saor MacNeil hooted. “And Mary Mother of God help them!” he said. He had stripped off his hide jerkin, ragged shirt and kilt and was wringing them out, standing naked and by no means ashamed or hiding himself.

The two Irishmen exchanged glances.

“See you to it, then,” Somerled told them. “We row in behind this Oronsay. The passage is narrow and opens only towards the west. At the east it shallows and dries out at low-water. In there is a creek where we hide the galleys. Back to your ship, Saor, and follow me in. To your helm, Conn.”

Gathering up his clothes in his arms and laughing, MacNeil the exhibitionist beckoned his own galley’s bows closer and, naked as he was, leapt the gap once more, already shouting orders to his crew, who commented in frankest fashion. Somerled, watching, smiled. He was fond of that odd character, but well recognised the need to keep him in some control.

Quickly the two galleys were on the move again, wheeling about, first westwards then south round that promontory of Oronsay and in eastwards thereafter between the island and the mainland of Morvern by a channel little more than two hundred yards wide, and shallow—but not too much so for the shallow-draught galleys, provided that they kept to the centre, although they could see the waving weeds of the rocky bottom in the clear water below them. It was half-tide. Half-a-mile of narrows and the channel widened out to an almost landlocked lagoon a mile long and half that in width. The south or Morvern shore was open woodland sloping upwards; but to the north Oronsay itself was cut up here, like the rest, with narrow probing inlets. Into the central of these Somerled manoeuvred his galley, and cautiously, for there was barely space for the long oars to work, to beach his craft almost half-a-mile deep into the rocky isle, MacNeil close behind. A more secret and secure hidingplace would have been hard to find on all the intricate thousand-mile coastline of Argyll—but no place to get out of in a hurry.

“A death-trap!” Conn MacMahon called, critically, and a growl of assent rose from the rowing-benches.

“Just that,” Somerled agreed. “If we are for dying, hereafter, as well here as anywhere! But matters will be in a bad way, whatever, if we need to fight our way out of here.”

Unconvinced to say the least, the galley crews shipped their oars, gathered their gear and arms and made their way ashore.

There was wood about the place, a little scrub-oak and birch, also dry driftwood above the tidemark, and the Irish were for lighting fires and boiling a porridge of oats and roasting the venison, brought from the Isle of Rhum where they had left Thane Gillebride, Somerled’s father, and the other half of the expedition. But Somerled would not allow it, however welcome would have been a cooked meal as against raw venison or old smoked beef and oatmeal mixed with cold water, shipboard diet. He had not gone to all this trouble to hide their arrival in Morvern, to give their presence away by the smoke of camp-fires. But, since they had time enough, and it was necessary to keep these Irishry in as good a temper as was possible, he offered them a diversion. No doubt they all had seen a number of wild-goats on the small cliffs of Oronsay, as they waited? Those who felt so inclined could go goat-hunting for an hour or two and stretch their legs after the constriction of the galleys—provided always that they kept to the north side of the island where they would not be seen from the mainland. Not that Morvern was populous—indeed it was the least populated area of all Argyll and this north-western corner in especial had always been empty, but there could be cattle-herders out at the start of the summer shieling season or egg-gatherers on the mainland cliffs. Young goat’s flesh was sweet enough; and the warm fresh blood mixed with the oatmeal was better than water. Some small sport would do no harm.

So they awaited the evening. Somerled did not announce to the gallowglasses just how far they had to march. He was only too well aware of the problems of his situation, as to men as well as to task. These Irishmen were not his own, nor even his father’s, only lent to them by the MacMahon, chief of Clann Cholla, at the behest of the High King of Ireland—approximately four hundred men and four galleys. MacMahon was Somerled’s father-in-law and it was probably as much for his late daughter’s sake as in sympathy with the former Thane of Argyll that he agreed to provide these gallowglasses for an attempt to win back at least some part of Gillebride’s lordship, wrested from him more than a dozen years before by the all-conquering Norsemen, who now controlled all the Hebrides as well as much of the West Highland mainland of Scotland as they did Man, Dublin and some of the east of Ireland. It was all Somerled’s idea and project, his father less than hopeful—but then, the Lord Gillebride had never been an optimist and having waited a dozen years was quite prepared to wait longer. After sailing from Donegal Bay they had voyaged to the little-inhabited Isle of Rhum in the Inner Hebrides, where Somerled had left his father, unenthusiastic, with half the force, to make an attempt on the islands of Tiree, Islay and Jura, whilst the son essayed this hardly hopeful assault on mainland Morvern with his handful of doubtful Ulstermen, bonny fighters no doubt but here lacking involvement and conviction. He was going to require all his powers of leadership and control.

In due course the hunters straggled back, with three goats, none of them young and tender but made much of as symbols of prowess. Thereafter, Somerled informed all that they were going walking and by night, for their own safety. They would move as soon as the dusk came down.

There were grumblings and questionings but nothing sufficiently serious for drastic measures.

An hour after sundown they started off, leaving a dozen of the older men with the galleys, enough to get them afloat again at high-water if absolutely necessary. It was low-water now and they were able to cross to the mainland on wet sand and shingle at the east end of the island—Oronsay meaning half-tide island—and thereafter to turn away south-eastwards into the shadowy hills.

For the first four miles or so their route followed the boggy south shore of Loch Teacuis, a long and narrow arm of the sea, its mouth all but stoppered by the lumpish Isle of Carna. The gallowglasses were scarcely nimble walkers and it took two hours to get that far, with resentment beginning to become all too vocal. Somerled coaxed and jollied them on for another mile or more, then recognised that something more was required if he was to get his company the remaining four or five miles to Kinlochaline. There were many complainers, but one in especial, a heavy-built surly oaf whom his companions called Cathal Frog, was loudest, announcing that he was an oarsman and sword-fighter not a landloper or a night-prowler, and he had blisters on his feet. With others making a chorus of it, Somerled called a halt, but quite genially, and strolled back to the chief vocalist.

“Your feet, friend, pain you—as your voice pains me!” he said. “Let me see them.”

“Eh . . .?” Cathal Frog blinked.

“These feet, man. That pain you. Show me.”

The man drew back, doubtfully.

“Saor—I wish to consider these painful feet. See to it.”

Grinning, MacNeil acted swiftly. He slipped behind Cathal Frog, flung an arm around his neck and with an expert explosion of strength heaved him backwards off his feet. As the man sprawled, Somerled stepped forward, stooped and jerked off first one filthy rawhide brogan, then the other, and tossed them to Conn MacMahon, then grabbed up both ankles high so that the gallowglass, for all his burly weight, hung like a sagging hammock between the two Scots. “So—feet of a sort, yes! Faugh—how they stink!” He peered close, in the half-light. “I see corns, the dirt of ages, scabs—but no blisters. Still, far be it from me to disbelieve an honest man. This sufferer shall ride. Lest he should hold up men with better feet. Saor—on my back with him. Up, I say!” And he dropped the legs and turned round, arms wide.

MacNeil promptly hoisted the protesting man to his feet, stamped on the bare toes by way of warning, and heaved. Somehow he got him on to the other’s back, and Somerled reached round to grasp the legs firmly, and then started forward.

“Come!” he shouted, into the noisy laughter of the company. “Now we shall make the better time.”

Cathal Frog struggled, of course, causing his lordly bearer to stagger. But the grip on him was strong. Moreover, Saor MacNeil’s drawn dirk was a potent reminder of realities.

The march resumed.

Cathal Frog clearly was at a loss, however much of a fool he felt. He probably could have freed himself, at the cost perhaps of a few pricks of that dirk-point. But without his brogans he would have been able only to hobble along feebly, and look as ridiculous as he did now. And he was well aware of his companions’ change of attitude, all suffering from a warped sense of humour.

Somerled kept it up for the best part of a mile, despite the rough going and poor light, before, breathing heavily and stumbling frequently, he set his burden down.

“I swear your feet are better than mine, now!” he asserted. “Soon you will have to be carrying me, Cathal man! Conn—give him his brogans.”

After that, and the cheers of the gallowglasses, he had no more trouble with reluctant marchers.

There were two more lochs after Teacuis, one small, one larger, and then a short and winding little pass, not high, before the main central north-south glen of Morvern was reached, that of the Aline River, more than half-way down. Here they had to go more cautiously, for little-populated as this Morvern was, it was in this valley and along the southern hore that most of the folk lived. Indeed, within a mile or so of their entry was the main village of the great peninsula, the clachan of Aline—which they must avoid. The folk would probably be friendly enough, for they were Somerled’s father’s own people; but they would be terrified of the occupying and all-conquering Norsemen, and not without cause. The word was that the Vikings themselves did not use the village, save for the supply of women and food, preferring, as always, to remain close to their longships, at Kinlochaline, the head of the three-miles-long sea-loch. Norsemen were never happy far from their piratical ships.

It was not difficult to skirt the clachan, for most of it was on the other side of the river. Dogs scenting them and barking were a risk, but in the prevailing circumstances, nobody was likely to come to investigate, in the middle of the night, what could well be a prowling Viking. Nevertheless, Somerled took a route which contoured amongst wooded slopes fairly high, the gut of the valley a well of shadow beneath.

There was a narrow throat or wooded defile of over a mile between clachan and loch-head and it was possible that the Norsemen might have a watching-guard therein. So, awkward as it was, they still kept to the steep high ground, amongst fallen pines and outcropping rock—although keeping quiet the progress of two hundred men on such terrain was not easy. Whether there were sentries below they had no means of telling, but they gained no impression of alarm roused.

At length they could sense rather than perceive the wide opening of Loch Aline. Somerled called a welcome halt whilst he considered the situation. It was all guesswork, to be sure—but informed guesswork. Part-Norse himself, he knew how Norsemen thought, acted and reacted. Kinlochaline, down there, all agreed was their headquarters for Morvern, central, and enabling them to dominate the important Sound of Mull, key to the Inner Isles, and much of the Firth of Lorn also. They might be away, of course, hosting—or some of them; but not all, for a presence here would remain. If he could destroy that presence, it would be a major step in his purpose.

How to find them in this light, or lack of it? No fires or even embers glowed. Almost certainly they would be near the loch-head, where their longships could be beached most effectively with the tides. Which side of the river? The far side, probably, the same as the clachan for convenience, there being no bridges. He would require to ford the river, therefore.

The main question was—to wait for daylight to discover the Norse position, or to risk going down now and trying to find it in the dark? There were probably more than two hours left before dawn. Was there any alternative to these courses? It was many years since he had been here, as a boy, years of exile, but he thought that he could recollect two or three huts, salmon-fishermen’s huts, where the river entered the loch and their nets could trap the fish at their runs up and down. If these were still there, the fishermen might tell where the Vikings were.

He decided to chance it. He ordered a silent descent of the hill.

Silence was only approximate, but they reached the river at length where it began to shallow to salt-water. There they picked their way across without too much difficulty, if with muttered cursing at the slippery stones underfoot and the chill of the water. Leaving the company there in Saor MacNeil’s charge, Somerled went onward, southwards, alone, following the river-bank, carefully.

It was further to the estuary than he had calculated. Then he stumbled over the stakes of salmon-nets, stubbing his toes. These stakes were not old, with netting still attached; so at least it looked as though the fishermen were still active. He came to the first hut soon thereafter, but found it broken down and abandoned. There was another, however, close enough for him to hear a dog growling. He decided that it would be wiser not to creep and crawl. He made for the sound, walking normally—but he drew his dirk.

At the black gape of an open doorway where a rough, old blanket hung, with the growling rising menacingly, he thumped on the hut timbers.

“God save all here,” he called, quite strongly. “A friend calls—no Norseman. A friend, I say.”

There was a pause and then some whispering. A distinctly hesitant voice spoke. “What friend? At this hour? Who speaks?”

“A friend in your need perhaps. Quieten your dog.”

The authority in that command may have had its effect, for another voice spoke, and the dog sank its rumbling a little. “What do you want?” this other said.

“I mislike Norsemen and would know where they are, friend.”

“You will have no difficulty in finding Norsemen, to my sorrow! They are everywhere.”

“Yet—you sell them your salmon?”

“They take our salmon, God’s curse on them!”

“Good! Then you will help me teach them to pay! Where are they, these robbers of honest Scots? The nearest?”

“Who are you, who comes in the night?”

“My name is Somerled. Somerled MacGillebride MacGilladamnan MacFergus. Is that sufficient for you?”

“MacGillebride? And MacFergus? Not, not . . .?”

“But, yes. Son of Gillebride himself, rightful lord here. Rightful lord of all Argyll.”

There was silence then as his unseen hearers, simple men, digested that. Then two of them materialised out of the gloom.

“Where, then?” Somerled insisted.

“Not far, lord,” the more vocal of the pair said. “A half-mile, no more. There is a lesser river comes in from the east—the Ranich. A bit of a bay is formed. They are there, at Achranich.”

“This side of the river, or that?”

“The far side, lord. But it is not deep. What do you intend?”

“Slaughter!” he answered simply.

“Ha! You, you have men?”

“Some two hundred. Enough? How many of the Norse?”

“Twice that. Or there were. They come and go.”

“Fair enough odds, given surprise. Will you guide us?”

“Surely. When?”

“Now. Before daylight. Or when I have fetched my people. Wait for me.”

Somerled hastened back, to bring his company along, the Irish all eagerness now that they scented action. The fishermen were ready, elderly men, their lurcher dog ti