“A fine hurry they are in,” he said. “I wonder what news it is they are bringing from the ben, and what they could be finding at all on that wild place.”
“Perhaps the water-bull of Lundavra has been straying north a bit,” suggested Alex, breaking his long silence. His voice dropped to an eerie whisper, and only Kelpie could hear the hint of laughter in it. “You’ll have heard of it, no doubt, with its broad ears and black hoofs and wild demon eye?”
The soldiers shivered, and one made a gesture, quickly halted, of crossing himself. For though the Campbells were now all good members of the Kirk, old habits remained from many generations past and were likely to pop up in a crisis.
They went on, with occasional furtive glances over their shoulders at the brooding shape of that giant mountain Ben Nevis—the highest, it was said, in all of the British Isles, and therefore an apt place for uncanny and ungodly things. Kelpie too would have been glad to scurry from its menace, had there not been a greater one facing her. As it was, she would gladly have fled to Ben Nevis for protection, even if there were a dozen water-bulls there.
They had circled below the castle now, to the river, and were perhaps a mile from Loch Linnhe. If only Hamish would relax his hard, reassuring grip on her hand, she might be able to dive into the surrounding dusk and lose herself. But when she gently tested his grip, he merely tightened it.
Perhaps if she should suggest to him that she could walk better with both hands free? Or was it already too late? There was a group of dark shapes in the gloom just ahead now. If that was Argyll, this was her last chance! “Please,” she began in her softest voice, and got no further.
From behind came the pound of running footsteps, and an excited voice raised. “Mac Cailein Mor! Mac Cailein Mor!”
A soldier rushed past them to the figures a few yards ahead, and the cold voice of Argyll answered. “Here. What is it, then?”