The List
They read it at sunset, as they always did when smoke laid its plan across the sky. Names of those who had stood at the burn. Names of those who had fallen. Màiri Mhòr spoke them, each a bell struck once.
"Alasdair mac Thornaidh—living." A ragged cheer: the boy with the too-tall musket grinned like he'd been kissed.
"Padraig mac Eòghainn—wounded."
"Iseabail Nighean Chaluim—living." A woman in a smoke-streaked shawl raised her cleaver like a sword.
"Iain mac Raghnaill—dead."
Silence; then the thud of a woman's hand against her own breastbone to keep the grief inside ribs where it could be carried.
Seumas added at the end, voice low, "And those we do not know by name—enemy or no—who bled upon our land. May their blood soak in and drive roots of mercy where none grew before."
No one applauded that. But no one gainsaid it either.
They ate standing, as folk do when the ground under them feels uncertain. Kelp-bread dark as earth, salt herring, a thin broth with a whisper of mutton. It tasted of survival. Agnes pushed a heel of bread into Seumas's hand and he pretended not to see the worry travel with it.
"You'll eat," she said.
"I am," he replied with the dryness that could still make her laugh.
"More than a soldier's joke."
He tore the bread. "I'll eat when you sit."
"Then we'll starve," she retorted, but she took a sip from the broth anyway, and that small gesture was as intimate as any kiss in a crowded room.
Children's Lessons
"Again," old Davie MacIan said, and the knot of children at his feet wound their slings for another cast. He'd set a row of broken pans along a driftwood log; the clang of stone on iron sang like chimes.
"Not the arm alone," he barked. "The shoulder, the hip. A sling is a conversation with your whole body. Ask the stone nicely to fly true."
A girl with hair in two fierce plaits narrowed her eyes and let go. Clang. She hopped with the delight of accuracy. "Will it kill a man?" she asked.
"It'll hold him long enough for someone older than you to make sure," Davie said, grim and kind at once. "That's enough for now."
Agnes passed, pausing to ruffle the plaits. "You've a good eye, Sorcha. Save it for crows and men who want your dinner."
Sorcha glowed like a coal well banked.
They took turns on the headland above the loch. The first watch belonged to lads who had been too lit with triumph to sleep; the second to women whose hands needed a task other than remembering; the third to old men who liked the cold because it felt like an old friend who no longer asked favours.
Seumas insisted on an hour, against Agnes's scowl. He stood with his cloak tight, the wind plucking at the fringe, the sea talking its endless talk to the cliffs. He counted the beacons, three still, their throats red. He listened for the horn that did not blow.
Ewan came, stamping his feet, cheeks Salt-bitten. "They'll come again."
"Aye."
"Do we run if they bring fire to the pans?"
"We move the fire." Seumas glanced sidewise. "You were steady today."
"I was afraid," the lad confessed.
"Fear's a good smith. It tempers fools into men."
Ewan laughed softly in the dark. "Then I'm near steel, chief."
"Near enough."
They stood a long while, until the stars crawled one finger's width, and then Ewan took the next post and Seumas crept back to the longhouse to cough quietly where Agnes could not hear it.
Agnes's Ledger
Not Robert's tidy book bound in leather, but a slate, chalk stubbed to a nail-paring. Agnes squared figures that had nothing to do with coin and everything to do with winter.
"Barley—six sacks. Salt—four barrels. Kelp ash—two scores of stones. Powder—" she grimaced, "—too little. Flints—more too little."
Màiri Mhòr peered over her shoulder. "We can trade ash for flints if the Wick factors don't go deaf."
"They've gone deaf to need and sharp to bribe." Agnes drew a line. "Then we grow sharper."
She added another column: Hands fit for fighting; hands fit for work; hands that must be guarded. She did not write old or young or broken; she knew each face already.
"Sleep," Màiri advised. "Even saints blink."
"I'm no saint," Agnes said. "I'm the woman with the fire."
"Then bank it," the old one returned, and padded away laughing to herself.
Someone started a tune at the threshold—low at first, then gathering voices like twigs for a flame. Not laments tonight; they had been spent already. This was the old working song Agnes's mother had taught her to beat wool softer:
"Heave then, hò ro,
Turn then, hò ro,
Weave then, hò ro,
Cloth for the bairns."
They slapped palms against thighs in the waulking rhythm, even those with bandaged hands tapping the boards with their heels. It wasn't joy, but it was breath, and breath was victory enough for a night.
Seumas closed his eyes and let it run through him like warm river water. He remembered the first time he had heard it in a kitchen where a boy with more hunger than manners had been given a bannock hot as the sun. He had been that boy, and now he was the man at the door with a blade across his knees. Circles, he thought. Some mercies return if you live long enough to meet them.
The Messenger
Near midnight a shape detached itself from the dark beyond the beacon. A boy, lean as a whippet, boots split, breath smoking. He stumbled into the light and blinked like a thing born too soon.
"From Clyth," he gasped, then remembered his manners. "For Agnes Craik. For the Gunn."
Seumas straightened. Agnes rose from her slate. "Speak."
"They move again," the boy said, swallowing hard. "Keith's men. Not all—two score, maybe, with pikes and tins. They've veered east along the shore. Word is their captain aims for the pans, to starve you of salt."
Agnes's jaw worked once like a woman deciding whether to spit or swallow grief. "How far?"
"An hour, two at their pace. Less if they're angry."
"They are always angry," Seumas said mildly. He looked at Agnes, felt the old thrill that was half terror, half joy when two fires agree. "Wake those who can stand. Douse what flames we cannot guard. Move the hidden barrels. And put the old men where the wind will make them look like giants."
She was already moving, voice slicing the longhouse into sharp purpose. "Sorcha—wake your mother, not your baby brother. Niall—take your stones to the cliff path. Ewan—lanterns in the low ground, dim them; I want ghosts to confuse their aim. Màiri—edict for the hearths: bank, not blaze."
The boy swayed. Agnes pressed bread into his hand. "What's your name?"
"Ruaraidh, mistress."
"Good work, Ruaraidh. Eat. Then carry my thanks back to those in Clyth with your feet."
He bit the bread like a wolf and smiled through crumbs. "Aye."
The longhouse emptied of all who could carry weight, steel or wood or fear turned inward like a nail ready for a hammer. The pans along the shore dimmed, covered with iron lids and sea-wet sacking. The kelp stacks nearest the water were dragged into shadow where the cliff shouldered them like a friend.
Agnes took Seumas's hand and pressed it once, hard. "You'll stay where I put you."
He raised a brow. "And where is that?"
"At the place I know you'll break your promise," she said, smiling without mirth. "Which is to say—beside me."
"Aye."
She leaned her brow to his, quick as a gull's wingbeats. "Còmhla gu bràth," (Together forever) she breathed.
"Gu bràth," he answered, and coughed into his sleeve where she could not see.
Voices rose in the dark as the Craiks took their posts—Gaelic prayers, snatches of Scots curse, the salt grammar of the sea when men speak to boats as if they could be charmed. The wind carried the distant scrape of iron on iron from the east, the hush of men who think they are quiet.
Màiri Mhòr walked the line of children with slings, tapping each brow with a finger stiff as truth. "For your fathers," she said. "For your dinners. For the old songs."
Sorcha licked her lips and wound her thong twice round her wrist. Ewan, farther down with the muskets, checked the flints again, fingers steadier than they had been that morning. Domhnall stood in the dark like a tree that had decided not to fall this century.
Agnes, at the centre, drew her short sword with a whisper and kissed the knuckle of her right hand. Seumas's claymore sat easy in his grasp, as familiar as hunger.
They were not an army by any measuring stick that would satisfy a general. They were a people: fisher and burner, spinner and crofter, widower and widow, boy and lass, elder and lame. They were us against them and that has been enough to knock empires sideways more than once.
Each had a voice, and tonight those voices braided.
"I am Màiri Beag and I will not have my boy grow without salt on his tongue."
"I am Davie MacIan and I fought at Tannach and at a dozen nameless places and I'll fight here till my legs remember how to be young."
"I am Sorcha Nic Iain and I have a stone with a name on it and I will find that name when I throw."
"I am Ewan and I was afraid and I am afraid and I will be afraid tomorrow, and still I will stand."
"I am Agnes Craik and this shore is my heart's map."
"I am Seumas Gunn and I have bled enough to drown a tribe, and still there is more in me."
The wind took their breaths and gave them back warmed.
The Last Lantern
On the headland, someone shielded a lantern with their palm and then blew it out. Darkness fell like a friend putting a cloak on your shoulders.
From the east came the soft chime of harness, the hush of boots in heather, a muttered command in a voice that thought itself alone with the night.
Agnes glanced once at Seumas. He nodded, slow, as if to an old tune he knew the steps to. She lifted her hand and the night seemed to hold its breath on that palm.
"Steady," she whispered, though no one could hear the word but him.
"Steady," he echoed, and felt for a heartbeat that the illness in him lifted like morning fog, leaving only the iron, the oath, and the woman.
The storm was no longer on the horizon. It moved through the heather now, breathing other men's breath, wearing other men's boots, carrying other men's hunger. When it met the shore it would learn the taste of brine and ash and Gaelic words older than crowns.
Seumas rolled his shoulders, felt the bandage tug, and smiled without teeth.
"Airson na beò," he murmured.
"For the living," Agnes replied.
They waited, and the land waited with them.