22. The Last Word
For a moment even the daybreak seemed to pause over the Highlands. The thin sky of morning lighted a wan world of muted gray and white and purple with an eerie, ghostlike tone. There was no sound outside the ruined shelter with its circle of sickly firelight, and for just an instant there was no sound even there.
Alex’s face seemed carved in an odd expression of exultation and anguish combined, and his eyes fixed upon her as if they would never leave. But Kelpie did not see this, for her own eyes were fixed defiantly upon Argyll, waiting.
She had not long to wait. “The witch!” he whispered, and his eyes blazed in pale fury. “And in her Ladyship’s stolen clothes!” he added with new outrage.
Alex laughed, and his laughter was delighted, exasperated—and somehow sad. He moved to stand beside Kelpie. “Och,” he said, “and isn’t it just the way you will be overdoing things? I would have had you remain unprincipled and live. I would have called you liar and saved you yet. But you must appear in Lady Argyll’s stolen clothes and seal your doom—and knowing it!” His eyes were stricken, exultant, tender; but Kelpie only looked at him dazedly. All of it was beyond her understanding, except that she had doomed herself irrevocably by her own madness, and the thing inside said it must be so.
Argyll was breathing hard, taut with hatred; his menace was overwhelming. “Shoot the man now,” he said between his teeth, “but bind the witch and take her aboard the galley. I will try her and burn her when this business with Montrose is over.”
And then all Lochaber seemed to explode at once. Shots echoed from Ben Nevis just as Alex went quite berserk. His face was as she had seen it in the witch-hunting town, jutted with sharp angles of rage. He hurled himself against Argyll, the full force of his hard shoulder driving into the Campbell’s midsection; and down they went. The others rushed forward with yells, and from the castle came more yells and a new volley of shots.
Hamish was pulling his chief from under Alex and shouting, “The battle has started!” Someone kicked Alex brutally in the head, and Kelpie flung herself at the culprit, using both teeth and nails, and was herself flung to the ground, while still another voice shouted, “Get you to the galley, Mac Cailein Mor!”
Kelpie, dazed from her fall, saw Argyll, staggering and winded, clutching his shoulder and croaking contradictions. “Shoot them! Take the witch on board! I’ll burn them both! Shoot them at once!” Alex struggled up and tried to shield Kelpie with his own body as someone raised a gun. She heard a wild shriek of pipes from the direction of Ben Nevis, more shots and more yells. And then came a blaze of pain, and nothing at all.