Lady Miracle (41 page)

“We can ask for no more than that,” Mungo grunted.

“We can ask for Michael safe,” Diarmid said, and winced as he shifted his arm. The arrow wound seared like fire whenever he moved his shoulder; he knew it had cut deep into the muscle. He had removed the arrow and bound it tightly, knowing that would have to do.

Mungo nodded. He looked up. “This was a brilliant idea, Dunsheen,” he pronounced. “What a fine birlinn this is. Look at her—shining new, forty oars, even filled with provisions and weapons! We lack for nothing, except enough men to man these oars.” He grimaced. “Twenty-six will have to do. Twenty-eight, with the two of us rowing. But in a storm, we need a full crew.”

“We have no choice but to try,” Diarmid said grimly. “We must get Michael from off that birlinn.”

“Row!” Mungo called. “Row! To the northeast, with the winds, in the direction of the storm!”

Diarmid placed a hand on the prow of Ranald’s proud new galley, propped a foot on a low wooden chest, and watched silently as his oarsmen slid her out of the sea cave and headed for the heart of the storm.

Despite furious winds and sporadic rain showers, the voyage took far less time than earlier, when his men had taken the limping, damaged Gabriel back to Glas Eilean, leaving her in the hidden sea cave. The new birlinn rode the waves like a dolphim, low and sleek and built for speed and endurance.

“Not even your own forty-oared White Heather is as fine and fast as this one,” Mungo said. “I wonder if she has a name. If she were mine, I would name her Sea Dragon.”

“A fitting name. Someday you will have one like her.”

Mungo shrugged and looked ahead. “Surely Ranald saw the foolishness of staying out in this storm, and is turning back.”

“He will, if only to pursue me,” Diarmid replied. “We will meet them soon.” He scanned the wild, choppy seas. When several minutes passed, then longer, he darted grim, worried glances at Mungo. No birlinn appeared on the horizon.

“Perhaps we veered in the wrong direction,” Mungo said. “I did not think they would have gone this far north.”

“The currents are wickedly strong,” Diarmid said, watching the rushing waves that pushed the birlinn relentlessly forward. He looked to the side, and saw the vague conical shapes of mountains through the drizzle. “Jura, so soon? These currents are more powerful than I thought. Together with the gale winds, they could drive a ship far off its course—” He frowned suddenly, and ran toward the prow. “Mungo—the currents will push us toward the channel at the north end of Jura!”

”
Ach Dhia
!” Mungo stepped beside him. “It cannot be!”

“Do you not hear the proof of it? Listen to that roar!”

“But that sound can be heard for miles. The whirlpool’s roar does not mean that we are in imminent danger.”

“Look at those mountains, man! We are heading for the channel for certain!”

Mungo swore. “Do you think Ranald’s galley was blown as far northeast as this? Our Sea Dragon handles well, but no galley can resist a storm like this.”

“If Ranald’s vessel was blown toward the whirlpool, pray God we catch them before they go down,” Diarmid said.

Mungo frowned. “Listen. It is close, too close. We will have to choose whether to risk going ahead, or to turn back.”

One of the oarsmen shouted as the scream of the whirlpool rose over the winds. Around him, others began to take up the cry to turn around.

“Row on!” Diarmid shouted. “Row ahead!”

Mungo grabbed his arm. “Are you a madman as well? We have to turn back while we can!”

“Michael may have gone this way!” Diarmid said. “We can veer toward Jura and leave those who do not wish to take the risk. But I will find her!” He glared at Mungo. “If she is at the bottom of the sea, by God, I will find her!”

He turned away, his fists clenched, his heart slamming. Michael hated water. For a moment, it was all he could think about. She was frightened of the water. He had to find her.

“Too late,” Mungo said behind him. “The currents have us now. We have no choice but to go where the sea takes us.”

“Tie down what you can!” Diarmid shouted, turning. “Dowse the sail! The wind will rip it to shreds!” He scrambled to help his men, then found a chest by an oarhole and sat, taking up the oar. “Pull!” he screamed, dragging on the oar with all of his strength. They had to resist the force of the eddy, or die within its grasp.

The roar increased steadily in furor. Ahead, Diarmid saw a swirling mass of water where currents came from two directions to collide. He felt a chill of fear unlike anything he had ever known. He had heard the heavy moan of Corrievreckan before, from a distance. But no one ever risked negotiating through this channel at the height of a storm. Now, the enormous power of the sea carried their sleek galley there, tossing her like a fragile toy.

The sight that lay beyond the crashing waves was terrible in its power. The bellowing of the vortex was deeper, grander, louder, more horrifying than he would ever have imagined.

Mungo sat down across from him, taking up another empty oar. Twenty-eight men strained with every measure of strength that they had, joining together in a massive effort to hold the galley away from the mouth of the whirlpool.

What Diarmid saw next turned his soul to ice. Ranald’s birlinn swept around the edges of the revolving current, rocking precariously as she went. In the mix of spray and rain that nearly obscured his vision, Diarmid sighted Michael.

She clung to the mast with two men, her hair whipping out in the wind. Diarmid’s heart sank, broke. He cried out from his gut in anguish. Ranald’s birlinn was caught in the wild whirl, and no power of mankind would stop its course.

He prayed then, muttering in anger, in terror, in pleading as he rowed, rolling Latin prayers and Gaelic chants off his tongue as if he could wring magic from them. His thoughts centered on Michael, then expanded to beg for all of their lives, nearly fifty men and one woman between the two galleys.

He prayed like a martyred saint, but he rowed as if the demons of hell had hold of the oar with him, sweeping it with superhuman effort through the water. If they could just stay outside the edges of the pool, they would not be sucked into the heart of the black well that sang for their souls.

And if they could stay out of it themselves, they might be able to throw lines to Ranald’s ship, might be able, through sheer strength, to pull it back from the maelstrom. If they had an anchor of some sort—he looked around anxiously.

Then he saw a rock behind them, glistening like onyx in the storm, jutting several feet above the cresting waves. He dove from his seat and took up a coil of rope. Swinging the line, he tossed it. Missed. He swung again, tossed, only to see the line swallowed by the sea.

Beside him, in front of him, he saw two of his men grab lines and throw them toward the rock. Diarmid hauled back the rope and looped it, swung it, threw it again, though the effort seemed to tear his wounded shoulder from its socket.

His line caught, held. Another man’s line snagged the rock as well. Diarmid and the oarsman grinned at one another, then fixed the lines around the wide mast.

Running to the stern of the boat, Diarmid took up the tiller, swerving the rudder to steer away from the spinning grip of the water. The moorlines held to the anchoring rock, holding the galley back. Diarmid ran the length of the slippery deck toward the prow and scanned through the rain and the spraying, foaming waves for Ranald’s birlinn.

They were still upright, still trapped in the swirling current, following it helplessly. Diarmid saw a man on board Ranald’s galley attempt to toss a line toward the other birlinn, but the rope was too short. Diarmid turned.

“Let out some slack!” he shouted. “We need to go closer!”

He heard no protest. Two men ran to unwind some of the length of the mooring lines, allowing the galley to swoop over the water, closer to the lip of the vortex.

“If the waves were not so fierce—” Mungo shouted. He hollered a sound of inspiration and lifted one of the casks of almond oil high. Knocking it against the side of the boat, he smashed its end. Diarmid watched in amazement as his friend poured the oil into the water.

Running across the deck to peer over the side, Diarmid saw the effect: the waves quieted noticeably, then swirled again.

He picked up another cask of oil, broke it open, poured it into the foam. Mungo did the same, until they had emptied several casks into the surrounding water. Diarmid looked down in astonishment.

The waves crashed into the side of his birlinn more slowly, cresting with less strength. He bellowed with joy, and heard Mungo scream like an elated lunatic.

“How did you know that would work?” Diarmid shouted.

“An old fisherman on Glas Eilean told me the trick!” Mungo yelled. “I have spent a good deal of time on that island, with little to do but talk to folk!” Diarmid grinned, and they both turned to take hold of ropes and toss them toward Ranald’s floundering galley.

Throwing again and again without success, they had to wait at one point as Ranald’s boat circled the far side of the maelstrom and came back. Diarmid held his breath every second that the vessel was out of reach, never taking his gaze from the pale, slight form clinging to the mast.

The water would soon swallow them into its terrible depths. Michael tightened her arms around the mast until her whole body ached with the strain. She would never see Diarmid again, never feel his arms around her, or hear his voice at her ear. Sobbing, she leaned against the post, drained, flattened there by the force of the winds.

Beside her, Ranald clung too, so weak that Domhnull held him up with one large arm while he circled the mast with the other. During the endless moments while they circled the upper edge of the whirlpool, Michael had first seen Diarmid’s galley—a new one, a larger one, sleek as a sea eagle—riding the outer lip of the vortex.

She could hardly bear to look toward him now. The sight of his galley, so out of reach, so beyond her hope, hurt her unutterably. She did not want to see his stricken face as she spun away from him again. She did not want him to watch her die.

Soon the whirlpool would pull them lower, and there would be no prayer of survival. They would go down, down, gripping frail wood, until the endless water sucked them into its soul. Diarmid could not stop it, yet Michael knew he would try, and she feared his death as well.

She bowed her head against the force of the rain and wind, listening to the scream of the monstrous force beneath them, and prayed, imploring heaven to show mercy to all of them.

Ranald gripped her arm. “Look,” he said hoarsely. “Look there. Your man still comes for you. He does not give up.”

She raised her head and saw the other birlinn riding close, saw the line snake out, saw it fall limp into the swelling water. Diarmid threw the line again.

“He comes for all of us,” she called back.

“We are doomed,” Ranald groaned. “Michael—I want to—I need to thank you. For my daughter. She will live on after me.”

She stared at him. He looked away, rain and water washing over his contorted face.

Moments later, one of Ranald’s oarsmen shouted as he grasped and held the writhing loop that crossed from the other birlinn. Several men scrambled to help him hold the line.

A small hope of salvation, fragile and unsure, sparked within her as she watched the men struggle. She moved away from the mast as they wound the rope to its base. Falling to her knees, she crawled toward the stern to hold on, and watched, through mist and rain, as Diarmid’s men pulled and strained to draw them out of from the grip of the current.

A crest of water surged upward and flung the galley back, closer to the other boat, so blessedly close suddenly that both hulls knocked together for an instant. Michael could almost reach out and touch the prow. Behind her, a few men stumbled over to join her, but then shouted for the others to stay back. The galley was beginning to tip, her prow rising high, her stern dipping.

Diarmid’s birlinn bumped theirs again. She turned, saw him, and cried out. He was so close that he could have grabbed her, but the two hulls kept sliding apart. He tossed another line over the gap. Michael leaped for it herself, missing it.

Ranald and Domhnull came toward the stern, Ranald’s weakness so severe now that he could barely stand upright. He fell to his knees on the slick deck and looked at her silently, his eyes wild, his face gray. She laid a hand on his shoulder as the men around them worked to release the galley from the hell of the whirlpool.

Another rope whipped out and Domhnull caught it this time, his massive strength sufficient to draw them nearer yet to the other boat. Diarmid leaned over the side, arms extended.

“Michael!” he yelled. “Michael!” He reached toward her.

The vortex roared then, impossibly louder, and a new blast of wind tore between the two boats. Domhnull lurched, strained, held on as if he were made of oak. Diarmid’s oarsmen did the same, but the current threatened to devour them all.

Ranald grabbed Michael’s arm with surprising strength. She looked at him, terror resurging. The prow of the other galley slammed against their stern, swept away, slammed again. Diarmid reached out, shouting.

Ranald lifted Michael and dragged her toward the undulating, uncertain gap between the two boats.

“Go!” he screamed. “Go to him! I owe you this!”

He held her legs until Diarmid’s hands closed around her. When he grabbed her under the arms, Ranald let go.

She fell against Diarmid, gasping. His arms closed around her like a benediction, a moment of inexpressible bliss. Then he released her and turned back to help the others.

Michael stepped out of the way and fell hard to her knees as a wave rocked the deck. She stayed low and watched as Mungo and two other oarsmen crowded into the bow to help the others come over the side. The lines that anchored Diarmid’s boat to the rock creaked and stretched, and the ropes connecting the two boats tightened, while the whirlpool sucked and screamed. But within minutes, men crowded the deck of the galley.

“The ropes are dragging us into the eddy!” Mungo shouted. “The mooring to the rock will not hold against the pull!”