“The people have fled,” Melcorka said, “but look!” The fire flared like a beacon, brightening up the sky to the north. “You are right, Bradan. The Butcher is beckoning us onward.”
They increased their speed, guided by the acrid stink of burning and the gleam of fire. After a mile, a second fire flared ahead, bright in the darkening sky. They reached the first, to find three bodies waiting for them, each with its legs sliced open and the right hand pointing to the north, where the next fire awaited.
“The Butcher is taunting us.” Bradan rubbed his thumb on top of his staff.
“I'll do the taunting soon,” Melcorka said grimly.
As they ran onwards, they heard the screaming, high pitched and hopeless. “The Butcher's killing somebody else,” Melcorka said.
Bradan touched Melcorka's arm. “He”s luring us into a trap, Mel. Be careful.”
“He doesn't know Defender.” Melcorka tapped the hilt of her sword.
The fire was 30 feet high when they reached the farm, with two corpses waiting for them, each pointing northward, towards the coast. One had its left leg cut off, the other was twisted, charred and blackened by the fire.
“Run,” Melcorka said. “I want this man.”
“Don't fight in anger, Melcorka,” Bradan advised.
By now they were running fast, leaping over walls and the small streams that crossed the countryside, until they came to a cliff, with the thud of sea surf far below. Seagulls wheeled and called around their heads, some swooping so close that the wind of their passage ruffled Melcorka's long dark hair.
“Where is he?” Melcorka asked. She raised her voice to a shout. “Show yourself!”
The sea responded with a suck and surge, followed by the screaming of a hundred seabirds rising in a white-feathered flock.
“Fight me!” Melcorka yelled. “Fight me!”
The wind carried the echo of her voice. “Fight me!” it said. “Fight me!”
The seagulls calmed down to subdued muttering as the last of the light died, and only the phosphorescence of the surf provided illumination. Bradan saw the boat first, its single sail white through the dark.
“There he is,” Bradan said. “He's sailing away.”
“I wish we had Catriona,” Melcorka said.
“So do I – but there are lights down there.” Bradan indicated a spot to their right, where something yellow flickered on the surface of the sea. “And that means houses, probably a fishing village, with boats.”
“We can follow the Butcher's sail.” Melcorka was moving on her last word. They slithered down a slippery path towards the lights, to stumble into a village, where four or five low cottages huddled between the cliff and the sea. Two open, clinker-built boats sat on a shingly beach, barely out of reach of the waves.
“This one.” Ignoring the protests of the bearded fishermen, Melcorka shoved the boat into the sea.
“We'll bring it back soon!” Bradan promised.
“I just have to kill somebody first!” Melcorka added as the fisherman put a despairing hand on the gunwale.
With Bradan at the oars, they pushed off in pursuit of the only sail they could see.
“Let's hope he's not going far,” Bradan said.
“He's not,” Melcorka said. “He's heading for that island there. He knows we will follow.”
About a mile offshore, the island loomed up before them, a massive chunk of rock with sheer sides stained white with the droppings of countless generations of sea-birds. “It's known as the Bass Rock,” Bradan said. “I've never visited, although I believe that some Celtic saints made their homes there before the Norsemen, or the Angles, murdered them.”
Melcorka crouched in the bow, peering at the rock. “That's as good a place to fight as any.”
“I can't see anywhere to land,” Bradan said, glancing over his shoulder.
The island seemed to be all cliff, with the waves breaking in white-frothed fury, throwing spindrift 20 feet into the air before receding to gather their strength for another assault.
“There!” Melcorka saw the white sail vanish. “There's something there. To starboard, Bradan!”
Skilfully handling the oars, Bradan followed the sail on to a tiny landing place, too small to be called a beach, on the east side of a protruding finger of rock. Melcorka jumped out first and together they hauled the boat up a natural, seaweed-slimed slipway to a piece of nearly level ground. Beside them, a larger vessel with a furled sail lay on its side.
“Where did he go?” Melcorka had to speak loudly against the crash and suck of the surf. “Where are you?”
Only the birds replied as a thousand gannets rose from the rock on which they stood.
“Up there,” Bradan indicated a series of wooden pegs that some daring hand had hammered into the cliff face. He looked upward where the white-streaked rock climbed into the night.
“Come on, Bradan!”
It was apparent that the pegs had been in the cliff for some time. While most were sound, a few had rotted through, so Melcorka and Bradan tested each one before trusting it with their weight. They ascended slowly, one peg at a time, with the cliff stretching seemingly for ever above and the batter of the waves and screaming of seabirds filling their ears. Once Melcorka”s handhold slipped, and she pressed herself against the surface of the cliff, balancing with her foot alone until she stretched for the next peg.
“Be careful here,” Melcorka warned, pulling herself up.
A few yards on and the birds became interested in their passage, swooping past them, beating with their wings and prodding at them with long beaks.
“I didn't know gannets were aggressive,” Melcorka said.
“They're not, normally.” Bradan ducked away from a screaming male. “Everything is aggressive this season.”
The moon had risen before they reached the top, illuminating a steeply sloping surface of wind cropped grass, with a hundred gannets watching. Melcorka was first, hauling herself upright as she looked around for her quarry.
“He's not here,” she said.
Bradan nodded, gasping for breath. “Sensible man,” he
