The Clash at the Salt Pans
The Approach of Fire and Iron
The Craik scouts had not lied. Just as Ruaraidh warned, Keith's detachment came along the coast an hour before dawn. The sound reached the defenders first: the scrape of pike-butts on stone, the metallic clink of iron-bound targes, the muffled curses of men unused to marching in darkness. The salt wind carried their voices.
Seumas stood with his back to the cliff, eyes narrowed, hand firm on the hilt of his claymore. His ribs ached, each breath felt like pulling air through broken glass, but he held steady. Beside him, Agnes scanned the dim shore, where the salt pans gleamed faintly under the moon like shallow pools of silver.
"They'll come for the pans first," she whispered. "Break those, and the fish rots in a week."
Seumas nodded grimly. "Then we make the pans their graves."
Agnes had prepared well. The salt-boilers, women with soot-streaked faces and hands cracked by brine, had left pans half full and fires banked low. Buckets of boiling brine stood ready, wrapped in wet cloths so they could be carried to the ramparts. Barrels of kelp ash were stacked by the sheds, lids loose, ready to be hurled into fire to make choking smoke.
"Not just steel," Agnes told them. "Salt feeds us, salt keeps us, salt defends us."
The women murmured prayers as they lifted buckets. One kissed the rim of her pan, whispering, "Bi na armachd dhomh." (Be my weapon.)
The Keiths surged into view, their torches painting wild shadows against the rocks. At their head marched Captain MacRobb, a Lowland soldier-for-hire with a voice like gravel and a scar that cleaved his lip.
"Take the pans!" he bellowed. "Burn them! Let them starve!"
Muskets levelled. Sparks flashed. The first volley cracked the night. Bullets thudded into turf and thudded against targes. One Craik fisherman fell with a cry, his shoulder shattered. Another shrieked as a ball grazed his thigh.
"Now!" Agnes roared.
Craiks rose from their hiding places. Slings sang, muskets cracked, and buckets tipped. Scalding brine poured down on the front rank of Keiths. Men screamed, clutching at eyes and faces, dropping weapons as skin blistered.
Smoke from burning kelp choked the air, thick and acrid. The battlefield vanished into a haze that burned throats and blinded eyes.
Through the smoke, Seumas charged. His claymore gleamed, a silver arc in the torchlight. He crashed into the disoriented Keiths, his first stroke cleaving a pike-shaft clean through, the second tearing into the man behind it. Blood sprayed hot, mixing with salt water.
"Airson na Craicich!" he roared. For the Craiks!
His ribs screamed, his breath tore, but he fought as if the illness in him had been burned out by fire. He was a specter in the smoke, striking, vanishing, striking again.
One mercenary lunged with a bayonet. Seumas caught it on his targe, shoved it aside, and drove his blade into the man's gut. Another came from behind—Agnes met him, dagger flashing, cutting deep into his arm. Together, they moved like twin storms, each filling the other's blind side.
Agnes in the Fire
Agnes was everywhere—at the pans, shouting to the women, then back at Seumas's side, her voice carrying above the din. She hurled a bucket of brine herself, scalding a man who had nearly reached the salt sheds.
Her hair was wild, her cloak singed, her dagger red. To the Craiks she was no longer only Agnes; she was banrigh nan lasair—queen of the flames. Her people roared her name even as they bled.
"Agnes! Agnes! Airson an teine!" For the fire!
Keiths Captain MacRobb rallied his men with curses. "Forward, you bastards! It's smoke and women you fear?" He waded through the brine and blood, pike in hand, driving his soldiers back into the fray.
They surged, torches flung into sheds, thatch catching. Flames leapt high, lighting the salt pans with hell's glow. Keith men hacked at barrels, spilling brine into the dirt. One rammed his pike into a pan, tipping it over with a crash.
The Craiks screamed in fury. Salt was life, and every grain lost was blood spilled anew.
Seumas saw the fire spreading toward the main sheds where the barrels of kelp ash were stacked. His heart lurched—if those caught, the smoke would choke friend and foe alike.
"Agnes!" he bellowed.
She saw it too. Without hesitation she sprinted across the yard, dodging musket balls, leaping over a fallen body. She seized a bucket, flung water onto the sparks, and beat at the flame with her cloak until smoke smothered it.
A Keith mercenary rushed her, dirk raised. She spun, dagger flashing, but he was too strong, driving her back. Seumas barreled into him, claymore cutting him down in a single savage blow.
He caught Agnes's wrist, pulled her close. "You're mad!"
Her eyes burned. "So are you."
They turned back to the fight together.
The Craiks' fury was too much. Slings pelted the Keiths from the ridges, muskets cracked, dirks stabbed from smoke. Buckets of brine scalded, ash choked, targes slammed. The Keith line faltered, wavered, then broke.
Captain MacRobb bellowed for order, but his men were already fleeing, dragging their wounded, stumbling into the dark. The torches guttered out one by one, leaving only the hiss of dying fires and the ragged cries of the defeated.
The Craiks roared, stamping feet, raising blades. "Buaidh! Buaidh!" Victory!
The salt pans still stood, though two were cracked, their brine lost. Smoke curled from a burned shed, but the barrels of ash were safe. The ground was littered with bodies—Keiths groaning, Craiks mourning.
Agnes knelt by a fallen girl, Sorcha's elder sister, hair singed, face pale. She closed the girl's eyes with steady hands, tears streaking her soot-stained face. "She stood. That's all we can ask."
Seumas leaned on his claymore, coughing blood into the dirt. Agnes was there instantly, holding him upright. "You're bleeding too much."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smiled faintly. "So is the land. We're matched."
She pressed her forehead to his. "Don't leave me."
"Not yet," he rasped. "Not yet."
Margaret's Shadow
Far above on the cliff, Margaret Sinclair had watched it all. Wrapped in her scarlet cloak, she looked down on the fire, the smoke, the blood.
"They fight like devils," Robert muttered beside her, pale with fear.
Margaret's lips curled. "Let them. The more they fight, the sweeter their fall. Look at her, Father—the kelp witch, running with a dagger like a fishwife. Does Seumas not see? She shames him."
Robert turned away. "She saves him."
Margaret's eyes burned. "And that is why she must die."
The salt pans smoked but still stood. The Craiks had defended their lifeblood, but at terrible cost. Seumas bled more with every breath, Agnes burned brighter with every cry. The Keiths had been driven back, but they were not broken.
The storm was not passing. It was only beginning.
While smoke still drifted above the coast, Margaret Sinclair returned to Wick in a hush of hoofbeats. Her white palfrey snorted clouds into the night, hooves ringing against cobbles slick with frost. Robert followed slower, hunched in his saddle, his ledger flapping against his thigh.
The town was silent save for dogs and the creak of a signboard. Men had already whispered of the skirmish at the burn and the blood spilled at the salt pans. By the time Margaret rode through the square, stories had grown like thistles—Seumas Gunn cleaving men in twain, Agnes Craik casting fire like a witch, Keith warriors stumbling blind in kelp smoke.
Margaret smiled at the tales, her teeth flashing in torchlight. "Good," she murmured. "The higher the ghost's shadow, the harder it will fall when I strike."
Robert heard her and winced. "This is no game, Margaret. We lost men. Pans and ash are worth less to us than coin, but they were worth everything to them. And they defended them well. Too well."
"Then we starve them out," Margaret replied, dismounting. She handed her reins to a boy with a glare sharp enough to cut. "We break their nets, burn their weed, salt their fields until nothing grows but memory. Do you think I care how long it takes? I want her gone."
Inside their quarters, Robert spread his ledger across the table, ink blotched from the ride. He dipped quill, muttering. "Seventy-three fit for service this dawn. Forty return. Fifteen wounded, ten unable to march. Do you see, Margaret? This is not arithmetic that favours us."
Margaret leaned against the wall, arms folded, cloak pooling like blood around her boots. "Men are numbers. Numbers can be bought again."
His head snapped up. "Bought? These are not cattle! They are Keiths, Sinclair tenants, Highlanders who bleed for feud and land."
"They bleed for silver as well," she said coolly. "You think they follow Keith because of some ancient oath? No—they follow because I whisper into their hands. Bain follows because I bought his hunger. Murdoch because I bought his bitterness. Even Davie Kerr listens when my coin clinks."
Robert's hands shook on the quill. "You are poisoning them."
She tilted her head, eyes glinting. "No, Father. I am feeding them. Poison and food are the same when hunger is deep enough."
When Robert at last slumped asleep in his chair, she stood alone before the fire, staring into the flames. They twisted, orange and gold, and in them she saw images that were not wood and smoke but visions of her own making.
She saw Agnes at the salt pans, hair tangled with kelp smoke, dagger red. The people roared her name as if she were a goddess. Margaret's nails bit into her palms until blood welled.
"Witch," she whispered. "Salt witch, kelp witch, fire witch."
Her breath quickened, her voice thickened. "You think you've stolen him from me? You think because you share his blood and sweat you own his heart? No. That heart is mine, whether he knows it or not. And if he does not give it, I will carve it out of him."
She laughed, low and sharp, startling the hound by the door. "Yes. When she dies, he will know it was I. And he will look at me, if only in hate. Better hatred than invisibility."
Robert woke in the small hours, fire guttered low. He watched his daughter standing rigid in the dim glow, her eyes reflecting the coals. She did not move, did not blink. Her lips moved, soundless, as if speaking to the flames.
A chill ran down his spine. He thought of the men who whispered already of her—Keith soldiers who spoke her name with unease, servants who crossed themselves when she passed.
He whispered to himself, "I have made a monster."
But he knew the truth even as he said it. Margaret was not his creation alone. She was the product of their clan's hunger, of a land where feud was fed like bread, of a world that rewarded beauty and punished it in the same breath.
Still, she terrified him.
Margaret's Resolve
At dawn she dressed in scarlet again, her cloak like a wound across the grey square. When Robert tried to bar her way, she brushed him aside.
"Where are you going?" he demanded.
"To speak with Bain," she said. "To remind him of his promise."
Robert grabbed her arm. "Margaret, enough. We are bleeding men faster than we can bury them. If you press further, Keith himself will turn against you."
Her eyes cut him down like a blade. "Keith thinks with feud. You think with coin. I think with vision. And mine will outlast both."
She wrenched free and strode out, her boots striking stone like drumbeats of war.
She found Bain in a tavern, sharpening his dirk with slow strokes. His eyes lifted as she entered, the silver she had pressed into his palm glinting in memory.
"You promised me his blood," she said without preamble.
He grinned, teeth yellow in the dim light. "And you'll have it, my lady. But a man like Gunn doesn't die easy. He fights like he's already dead."
She leaned close, her perfume sharp even over the stink of ale. "Then kill what keeps him alive. Kill the witch."
Bain's grin widened. "Aye. That might be sweeter."
Margaret's smile was slow, dangerous. "Do it, and I will see you richer than any Keith."
So Margaret deepened her snare—Robert choking on doubt, Bain fed on promises, Keith unwittingly led by her poison. Her obsession grew brighter than any beacon fire, hotter than any kelp flame.
The Craiks had saved their salt, had won a battle. But Margaret Sinclair had not lost. She had only sharpened her knives.