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Highlands 03

Warrior Of The Highlands

By

Veronica Wolff

A Warrior's Mouth

Was she cursing him to the devil? Did this wee Campbell lass dare damn him?

MacColla glared at her, trying  to make sense of her strange accent. She seemed to be speaking English, but none like he'd ever heard. Her words were like the sharp claps of a barking dog. “Speak slow when you curse me.”

He approached her. He saw spirit in those wide gray eyes, and he was compelled to look closer.

She shuffled back, arms askew as if to brace herself on thin air. The lass was shouting at him now, unintelligible words.

He studied the movement of her mouth, trying to understand her words. Her lips were full and dark against the pale glow of her cheeks in the moonlight. He'd taste this Campbell woman, he decided suddenly.

He leaned down, closing the distance between them. A low laugh rumbled in his throat, so eager was he to taste her.  His free hand clutched the soft flesh of her rump, pulling

her toward him.

MacColla kissed her. He'd wanted at first to be rough, but she was soft. So soft and sweet, his mouth gentled in the tasting of her. And, for a single moment, he imagined the lass kissed him back, her breath sighing into him, her mouth opening just enough for him to taste her, fresh and warm on his tongue.

And then, with a tiny growl, she caught his lower lip hard between her teeth and bit.

MacColla pulled away. She glared at him, bared her teeth, and exhaled with the measured breath of a prowling wolf.

He studied the wee Campbell hellcat before him, and then strangely, inexplicably, he found himself laughing.

Prologue

Campbell stared at the woman. She seemed an ill-used and wizened creature, despite the fact that she was likely not much older than his forty-three years. The moon's watery light picked out but a few white strands marbling her red hair, and yet her body was hunched into a rigid bow, fat and muscle stretched thin and tight on her bones.

He shifted. He'd have the woman get on with her ritual. His clansmen would look in horror at such black witchcraft, but the trepidation he'd  initially felt was waning, and  Campbell grew piqued with each passing minute. He resented sitting on the ground like some rustic, his back aching, with small rocks biting into his palms every time he adjusted his weight on the cold, packed dirt.

He tried  to take her measure. It had taken coin aplenty to track the witch down, but her reserve planted the seed of doubt in his head: Was she truly one to be feared, or was she merely some shrewd carlin adept at parting men from their purses?

Though he stared openly at her, Campbell could get no more than a passing glance of her face full-on. Her eyes focused on a place in the far distance and didn't deign rest on him, always wavering ever so slightly as if she were blind, though he knew she was not. She moved in the darkness like a cat, and Campbell saw clearly how those who knew of such things told of witches choosing the detested animal as their familiar.

He would see if this Finola had powers. And he would burn her himself if she wasn't the sorceress she claimed.

Finola.
 
His skin crawled. Campbell knew the name meant  “white shoulder,” and it thrust intimate and unwelcome images into his head. Fragments of ivory skin. The fall of red hair onto a pale shoulder.

He gave himself a shake. Perhaps it was the dark  arts at work. Perhaps she had the power to shift shape into some fiendish consort for Lucifer himself. Unthinking, he spat into the ritual lire to exorcise such thoughts.

Finola's gaze shot up to meet his. The flames set her green and yellow eyes to glowing, and Campbell imagined he saw evil glimmering there, like an oily shadow sliding just beneath the surface. He'd hoped to catch her in a glimpse head-on, and now he just wished her to look away.

His voice cracked in the darkness. Anything to break the

spell he felt chilling through his flesh down into his bones.

“When will you begin, woman?”

The sinister glare receded like a retracting membrane from her eyes, and what was left was simply Finola regarding him with distaste. “You yearn for your enemy like a spurned child. Your impatience makes drudgery of a simple task.”

He pursed his lips.
 
Impatience indeed.

There was a task at hand  - he need not suffer the scoldings

of some witch woman.

His clan harbored a long-running feud against Clan  MacDonald. But it was Alasdair MacColla who'd raised the

stakes, using his Royalist battles as an excuse to douse  Scottish soil with the blood of untold numbers of Campbell

sons.

And it was MacColla he'd destroy.

“I paid you good coin to help me ruin him.”

Campbell's bravado was met with impenetrable silence.  The witch merely set back to work, using her thumbs to mold the final touches on the clay figure lying before her.  “You desire MacColla,” she said finally. “And so here he is.”

She leaned back to reveal a crude  effigy, the reds and browns of the Highland earth packed together in a featureless, calico likeness of a man.

“The
 
corp creadha.
 
The clay body of your enemy MacColla.”  She retrieved a handful of silken black strands from a

pouch at her waist and systematically worked clumps into  the crown of the tacky clay. “The hair of the sister recalls  the man.”

And then Finola struck fast, like a snake, reaching over to grab Campbell's hand, slicing his palm with a tiny steel blade.

“How dare ”-

“You will silence your tongue, or I will exact your silence

from you.” For the second time, the witch's eyes met his.

Campbell's mouth went dry. The first traces of true fear seeped into him shuddering up his spine, leaving his blood chilled in its wake. He would remember his purpose here.  Remember what he was about. He was a man of stature

who could kill this Finola with but a word. And he would

use whatever it took  - use
 
her
 
- to ruin MacColla once and

for all.

She spoke again, but this time her voice was hollow, otherworldly. “We come in the night to a place where three streams meet.”

Squeezing his hand with surprising strength, Finola pulled  Campbell close to the
 
corp creadha,
 
drizzling his blood over the eye sockets she'd hollowed from the clay. “That the enemy sees the  blood of your hatred.”

Finola pulled a bone from the sleeve of her cloak, dull and yellow brown where the meat was scraped clean from the blade of a lamb's shoulder. “We place the
 
speal
 
upon the heart of your enemy.” Firelight licked red shadows along the surface of the bone, placed on the torso of the clay corpse. “That the enemy feels the blade of your vengeance.”

Power thrilled up Campbell's spine, dissolving his apprehension. He would strike the deathblow to MacColla and Clan MacDonald. The blade of his vengeance.  Campbell gave a small smile at the sound of it.

She took tongs from the dirt at her side and began to extract charred river stones from the flames, placing them one by one around the effigy. “That the enemy burns in the flames of your destruction.”

Aye, burn MacColla.
 
Campbell would annihilate him. Their clans had feuded over land and power for generations. But with the war that now raged through Ireland and the  Highlands, the rivalry had curdled into something venomous. Something murderous.
 
Burn.

Campbell had rid the west of most of the MacDonald vermin. He'd imprisoned MacColla's father and brother, and though they roamed free now, he'd exiled the rest of the clan to Ireland.

But he'd underestimated the middle son. MacColla had

returned for Campbell, sniffing him out like a dog, seeking  his revenge. It was when he'd come to Campbell's own  lands at Inveraray, savaging Campbell holdings and killing  Campbell kinsmen, that he'd vowed to destroy MacColla  once and for all.

But first he'd see him suffer.

Finola stiffened. With a sharp inhale, she rolled her eyes back and swayed, her breath coming in short pants.  Rocking forward and back, forward and back, she intoned:

Cloaked in black of night. I call the elements. Hear me. By the blood of my enemy-

Chanting and quaking madly now, she swept her hand over the clay crown of the corpse's head.

Grant me dominion over fire. Grant me dominion over wind,  Grant me dominion over earth, Grant me dominion over water.

Campbell was uneasy once more. That  she'd taken his own blood for her ritual disturbed him, and his hand inched to the dirk at his side.

Uncertainty nagged at him, and dread that he'd stepped upon a path from which there was no return. It wouldn't sit well with his clan to know the lengths  he went to. Black witchcraft was feared in the Highlands. He'd never known anybody who'd resorted to its use. Or at least none who'd confess to it.

But his noble Lowland peers, they'd simply have his head if they discovered he dallied in such devilish abominations.

I shall bathe in the lustral fire, I shall bathe in pools of wine.

Her hands waved over the flames, sweeping the gray smoke to her breast. She cast palmfuls of dirt and water toward the fire and it hissed angrily, shooting plumes of ghostly white smoke into the night. Campbell hastily pulled a handkerchief from his waist pocket, covering his mouth and nose to protect his body from inhaling such evil.

I shall bathe in the tears of mothers, I shall bathe in rivers of blood.

White sparks crackled out from the flames and whorled around them before winking into darkness. Campbell recoiled, looking around in panicked horror, his hand finally seizing the hilt of his weapon.

Finola stood suddenly, and the flames rose with her.

Campbell let go his dagger, whispering a prayer as he edged back from the fire.

The whites of her eyes filled her sockets and shone an eerie, translucent gray in the night. Her voice jumped higher, beseeching in a keening, inhuman voice.

Thine art the midnight beloved.

Thine  art the black swan.

Thine art the prince of the night.