“Montrose!” The soldier gasped. “Some of our scouts have just come back. They say Montrose is on Ben Nevis!”
21. Vengeance
In the shocked silence which followed, Hamish forgot his comforting grip on the poor wee frightened lass for an instant, and in that instant the poor wee frightened lass vanished.
She crouched on the far side of a rhododendron bush, tensed and ready for further flight. For the moment, it was best not to move again, for there was silence beside the river, and she dared make no noise that might call attention to herself. Och, the good luck of it! And a fine chance there was that, with this news, no one would think of her again at all.
“Impossible!” said Argyll. His voice was thin.
“It is true, Mac Cailein Mor!” insisted the messenger. “On the north slope of Ben Nevis it was, his army ran into our outpost, and some of our scouts escaped and came to warn us.”
“Impossible,” repeated Argyll more thinly yet. “He couldn’t. He went up the Great Glen, and he hasn’t come back down it. And there’s no other way he could have come in this cold and snow—not with an army and horses and cannon. It’s not humanly possible.”
There was a good deal of sense in this. Even Kelpie, still as a bogle behind her bush, frowned in puzzlement. How could Montrose have come so quickly, and not through the Great Glen? Over the bitter impassable mountains, then? Och, Glen Roy, it must be! Argyll didn’t know this country as she did, and as the Camerons and MacDonalds would. Through Glen Roy, then—and it was next to impossible even then, but if anyone at all could do it, then it would be Montrose and his Highlanders, and she the cause of it all, with her message! She hugged herself silently.