Lady Eilean

Chapter 20

Calum was quick on his promises. Within a week a majority of his men had left, carrying letters of introduction between Stormway and the other Island strongholds. He himself took up the cause of discovering what had become of Alex, sailing off on a bright winter's day. He ordered a few men to stay behind to hunt and help around the castle.

I reigned myself in, my sense of insignificance; hesitated from asking them if they minded. Did my best to make the remaining Northmen feel comfortable. To ease any potential feelings of resentment toward me or their Laird. With Calum's pledge, we had, after all, stopped them from returning home to Istimere and the snowy Northern lands. By all accounts, the men were not bitter about their recent appointments as guards and hunters of Stormway.

Calum installed a cheery fellow, Angus, who was short and round, with a wide barrel chest and a mighty red beard, as my personal secretary. His primary responsibility was to follow me from sun up to sun down and allay the burden of sending my commands throughout the estate. Within a week, he had over three dozen children in his employ. Well trained, they ran hither and thither throughout the castle on "official business". Angus paid them well with handfuls of boiled sweets, and bright stones or shells magically pulled from behind their ears. At night, he taught the children and their mothers how to read and write.

Thus a respite fell over Ellesmure. Hunger and desperation still lingered, yet access to fresh game and with a few knowledgeable hands, we kept the wolves at bay. Spirits improved, and there was a new, humble excitement in the faces of everyone in the castle. No longer were eyes sullen and cheeks sunken. We would survive the winter, that much was clear. What came after would be the genuine test of our "new world".

On a warm day in late-February, I stood at the window in my office and watched water melt from the many icicles that clung to the battlements. The steady plink plink plink of the drips onto the windowsill was calming and meditative. Angus, seated behind me at the desk, was making his way through the first batch of letters that had come in from the other Islands. As he read them aloud, I heard tales that both mirrored my experience and differed remarkably from what we had survived.

In the South, they had been rotating troops every six months to keep fighters rested and farms productive. In the North, outside of Calum's territory, they had endured a bitter freeze but had years of surplus to see them through the winter. Their Lairds had only taken half of the men to war. To the West, stretching out into the sea, the news was positive: harvests had been bountiful and trade successful. They discovered that their land produced a natural component needed for manufacturing gunpowder. In emphatic language, they asserted that they only traded with the Islander forces, but it was clear they had been selling to the Mainland, too. Most other Islands were struggling as we had, robbed of men and supplies. Their more heartbreaking letters put me at ease around the vulnerability I had laid bare in my initial correspondence. What I would do with these new relationships, I barely knew. Calum would be my guiding light in the realm of politics.

As Angus droned on, a dark smudge obscured the snowcapped horizon. I watched as the shadow grew, fanning out over the distant hill and moving ever forward. A low rumble shook the ground and reverberated in the still air.

Angus stopped reading mid-sentence and stood up, the sound of his chair screeching against the stone floor. As she had weeks ago, Bess rushed into the room.

"What is it this time?" She asked, breathless. She smoothed her hair back with flour-dusted fingers.

The approaching hoard was massive. They didn't even attempt to narrow their approach to pass within the boundary of the main road. I leaned out of the window, desperate for a better look.

"Calum promised support," I said, looking over my shoulder and back into the room.

"No one has a force that bit," Angus said with a frown. Shaking his head, he continued, "And not one that could have gotten here so fast."