The Last Sunset (7 page)

Immobilised by fear, he wondered why he alone
had been spared while all around him was useless sacrifice. He was no more than
ten yards from the wire and could hear the screams and moans of those impaled
Highlanders who were still alive.

Another flare was sent hissing into the air.
As it floated back to earth Alistair could see the faces of friends and
comrades enmeshed in their eviscerating prison.

“Alistair!” Somebody was calling his name
now.

“Alistair! For the love of God, waken up.” It
was Colin’s voice.

Alistair looked blankly at his brother.

“Don’t make a sound, whatever you do,” Colin
whispered. “They haven’t seen us yet.”

“What; the Germans…?”

“SSShhhh! Keep your voice down or they’ll hear
you!”

Alistair was beginning to come to his senses.
They were lying behind an embankment of the Laragain burn. He could hear the
splashing roar of a waterfall to his left; its sound magnified by the mist.

“What are you blethering about?” he asked, in an
agitated whisper.

“Them;” Colin hissed. “
Saigdearan dhearg
!”

Alistair gaped stupidly at his brother. “
Saigdearan
dhearg
? Redcoats…?”

The terrible vision they’d seen earlier came
back to him then. Those apparitions were gone. But other images from the past
now filled the glen. Alistair smelt the sweet scent of peat smoke, and saw the
dark bulk of cottages against the lighter grey of the mist. These were no
pathetic ruins, but substantial dwellings topped by thatched roofs. There was
movement too amidst this archaic scene; with utter disbelief, Alistair caught
his first glimpse of the red coats and white gaiters of the
saigdearan dearg
.
He watched as a small group of soldiers emerged from a cottage beside the burn,
driving an old woman and two children before them. A number of people were
under military guard beside a second cottage. All seemed immobilised by shock.

Alistair could also see two figures lying
prostrate on the ground. The vision was so clear he could make out their tartan
plaids, and the pools of blood in which they lay.

Colin was whispering in his ear, his face
flushed with excitement: “It’s the massacre, Alistair! What should we do? We can’t
just sit here!”

“Himself was right. I thought it was all just
some old
cailleach’s
tales, but this is real…” Alistair’s voice was a
mixture of fear and wonder, as if he’d found himself in the halls of Valhalla.

A large group of soldiers appeared out of the
mist. At their head was a thickset, brutal-looking individual. Alistair could
see no badges of rank on the man’s tunic, but guessed he was probably a
sergeant. The bulk of the soldiers continued into the mist, heading west. The
sergeant remained behind with a dozen of his men. He growled something at his
troops, and one after another they plunged into the crowd and began to separate
the men from the women and children. An old woman at the front of the group
began to moan like a terrified animal.

“Alistair! We have to do something,” Colin
pleaded. “We can’t just sit here and watch this.”

“What can you and I do?” Alistair hissed in
reply. “These are just images of the past… Turn away if you can’t look…”

A soldier silenced the old woman with the butt
of his musket. She was trampled in the mêlée as the soldiers struggled to tear
the men away from their families. The sergeant waded into the crowd, using
fists and boots to quell the rising hysteria. One by one, six old men and three
youths were bundled into the nearest cottage and a water barrel was dragged in
front of the door. Some of the soldiers looked uneasily at each other, as if
not all had the stomach for this work. Some of the women were now wailing like
lost souls.

The sergeant’s intentions were becoming clear.
Two of his men trotted over to the thatched roof of the prison. Moments later a
wisp of smoke rose into the air. The women erupted into hysteria. Some of them
breasted the hedge of bayonets, trying to force the blades to one side. Flames
licked the bundles of yellow-grey straw, like a dog tentatively tasting a
strange flavour. The sergeant stood twenty yards away, hands on his hips, like
an evil deity, feeding on the horrors he’d sown.

“It’s him!” Colin hissed through gritted teeth.
“That’s the one we saw!”

There was no mistaking that maniacal glow of
pleasure. Here was the monster they’d watch rape that beautiful wraith in the
mist. Alistair could hear Colin’s breathing grow more and more shallow. Neither
of them could endure much more of this nightmare.

A thick cloud of smoke billowed into the air as
the flames began to overcome the dampness of the thatch. Alistair could hear a
babble of voices coming from inside the cottage. The hands of the three youths
stretched through the narrow windows. In their panic no longer young men, but
terrified children.

Colin tore his haversack from his back and began
to scrabble through its contents.

“What are you doing?”

“I can take no more of this!” the younger man
cried. He located the box of shells and loaded the empty chamber of his rifle.
The remainder of the shells were stuffed into his pocket.

Alistair grabbed hold of his arm. “Colin, none
of this is real! You can’t interfere; you don’t know what you’ll bring down
upon us….”

A wild screech of excitement rang out as a dark-haired
figure broke through the redcoat line. The brothers had a fleeting glimpse of
bare feet and shapely legs beneath a red tartan shawl. The woman ran to the
cottage, where she levered her body against the water barrel. Within seconds the
barrel had been pushed over, the water draining away. Immediately the men
poured out of the cottage, retching and coughing, black smoke belching out
behind them.

Two of the soldiers ran over to round up the
escapees. En route they were ambushed by the woman. She launched herself onto
the back of one of the redcoats, clawing like a wildcat. The other soldier
jabbed at her with his bayonet, nearly skewering his friend as he tried to
rescue him.

The sergeant pried the wildcat off the soldier
and carried her, spitting and snarling, away from the burning cottage…
What
would otherwise have been elegant arms and legs swung this way and that, trying
to inflict damage on her assailant…

The sudden recognition brought Colin to a halt.
His resolution vanished. At the cottage the soldiers were dragging two of the
youths back towards the smoke-filled doorway. Already flames licked around the
top of the door. Two children, aged about seven, ran off squealing in terror.
They came to a halt beside the sergeant. Frozen in shock, they stood hand in
hand as they watched him force his victim to the ground and unbuckle his
trousers.

There was a deafening explosion to Colin’s
right. He turned to find Alistair at his side, smoke drifting from the barrel
of his rifle. Colin almost wept with relief. Now, these nightmare images would
surely return to hell where they belonged.

To his horror the images turned to face the
brothers. Instantly the clansfolk were forgotten. The two soldiers at the
cottage fired at the intruders. The shots were wildly off target; the lead
balls whizzing over their heads. Alistair reloaded his rifle, responding to a
threat that was at last tangible. He would try to make sense of it later. He
saw the girl kick at the sergeant’s groin as he desperately buttoned his
trousers, and watched him hobble painfully back to his men.

The old men and the women, meanwhile, had seized
the children and fled into the mist.

During this momentary lapse the remainder of the
soldiers fired a ragged volley in their direction. Alistair felt a thump in his
left arm, as though hit by a stick in a game of shinty. Colin let out a sharp
cry and dropped to the ground.

“Where are you hit?” Alistair yelled.

“In the leg! But, I’m all right! I don’t think
it hit the bone! Alistair, I don’t think these beggars are ghosts, at all…”

The older man smiled ruefully. He retained
enough movement in his left arm to sight his rifle. He could see the cartridges
of powder and ball being rammed into the barrels as the soldiers frantically
reloaded. They were so densely packed he could hardly miss. As the weapon
recoiled into his shoulder one of the soldiers was flung backwards, blood
spraying from his mouth.

Alistair tried to reload. His left arm was
stiffening rapidly, and the bullets spilled from his hands. As he steeled
himself to receive the soldiers’ second volley Colin levered himself onto one
knee and fired at the two figures in front of the burning cottage. One of the
redcoats took the round full in the chest and was flung backwards into the
inferno.

Alistair hauled his brother to the ground as the
second volley rang out. The smoothbore musket had no rifling that would spin
the bullet and improve its accuracy, but the brothers were well within general
volleying range. A hail of lead balls flew closely above their heads.

Colin loaded his rifle, handed it to Alistair,
then levered a round into his brother’s weapon.

Alistair jammed the rifle into his right
shoulder. “When I say ‘now’ we get up and fire together, all right?”

Already, however, the initiative had been taken
away from them. The sergeant sent his men forward in line abreast, determined
to come to close quarters with these rebels, and their extraordinary weapons.
Alistair rose to meet them, his brother one-legged by his side.

“Space out, don’t give them an easy target. You
take one on the right. I’ll do the same on the left.”

“You run for it, Alistair. I’ll try to hold them
off.”

“Just take one on the right!” yelled Alistair.

He waited until his brother had fired at the
oncoming redcoats. Alistair was no stranger to death but was still shocked to
see Colin bring one of the soldiers down, in that familiar dreadful way. As
Colin reloaded, Alistair squeezed the trigger, and another soldier crumpled. To
his right another shot rang out from Colin, and another soldier ran on a few
paces, before collapsing in a heap.

Alistair made no effort to reload. His left arm
was now useless, and in a desperate bluff he pointed the empty weapon at the
five remaining redcoats. From the side of his eye he could see his brother also
standing his ground. As Alistair wondered if he’d had time to reload, the
gallant little charge suddenly fizzled out. The soldiers halted, then began to
draw back, defiantly at first, musket and bayonet to the front.

They continued to back away until eventually
they were swallowed up by the mist.

The brothers surveyed the field. Two of the
soldiers they’d shot were dead. The third was trying to crawl after his
comrades, a red trail tracing his dying moments.

Colin hobbled painfully over to his brother.

“Alistair?”

As he drew closer he realised his brother was
trembling uncontrollably, tears pouring down his chalk-white face. He saw the
pool of blood in which his brother was standing.

“Och, Alistair, man. Your arm.”

The blood was dribbling through the fingers of
his left hand like juice from a fruit-press. The older man swayed, trying to
remain on his feet, but he was unconscious even before he hit the ground.

~*~

In the distance Alistair could hear the
incessant rumble of artillery. A smouldering glow illuminated the horizon, as
if the door to some gigantic furnace had been left ajar. Everything was deathly
still in his sector. He could see neither shape nor movement in the
pitch-blackness before his trench. It was as if everything he knew to be out there:
the barbed wire, the shell holes, the decaying remains… all had disappeared
into a featureless vacuum.

He tried not to visualise the faces of
comrades lost in that last assault. This stretch of ground had been fought over
for weeks now. God alone knew how many lay out there, deprived even a Christian
burial.

Something was moving in the darkness… He
sensed a subtle change at first, as though some entity had been surreptitiously
spawned in the night. He heard it then; a distinct sound coming from no man’s
land. Not the furtive chink of metal upon metal that told of an enemy raid, but
something less… secretive, more like a heavy load being pulled along the
ground. He heard it again, to his left, the same laboured dragging sound, now
much nearer.

He held the flare pistol tightly in his hand,
waiting for the right moment to flood the scene with light. The fear was like a
dead weight on his chest. Absurdly he could hear singing, coming from… out
there. It was an old Gaelic lullaby his mother had crooned at him when he was a
child… He’d barely realised the singer was a woman, when the flare pistol was
taken from his hands.

Immediately the scene was bathed in light.

Alistair opened his eyes, to see the face of an
angel looking down at him. He recognised the little wraith who’d saved her
people from the inferno.

“Her name is Mary,” Colin explained brightly.
“Herself has been singing to you this past half hour, man. I think myself
somebody has a wee fancy for you.”