Jamie  Stuart

They were gone, abruptly, without warning. They had simply vanished. Jamie searched around the clearing and through the edge of the forest for any sign of the mysterious followers but found no sign. He had become accustomed to the presence of the followers and even welcomed the obviously benign company, accepting them as companions on his journey to the land of his ancestors.

It seemed to Jamie that the very air about him suddenly pressed threateningly into the void that their departure had left. Looking frantically about him for the source of his sudden discomfort, he longed for the comforting feel of his mighty Claymore within the grasp of his right hand, but it was lying on the field at Culloden, or worse, hanging in an English barrack room at Fort William.

There was a strange stillness about the clearing that was not noticeable before. Oddly, he could not remember if he had heard birds singing in the forest before the followers had left, but he could feel the silence of their absence now. The encircling ring of giant trees which marked the edge of the clearing seemed to stretch toward the centre in a vain attempt to block out the light of the sun, which appeared to be already waning above him, though by his reckoning it was still not far past noon. He recognised the terrible, all pervading feeling of loneliness and unexplained vulnerability which suddenly engulfed the very soul of his being as the same feeling which he had experienced, albeit to a lesser degree, when he had found himself alone one night in a strange town, just as the first chills of approaching winter had chased the last balmy summer evenings into the realms of memory. He had been selected to escort the elders of the Stuarts to the Clan meetings in Leckmelm, on the banks of Loch broom to thrash out the conditions of the new alliance. While the Chieftains decided the fate of the Highland tribes in the wake of the English invasion he had been left to wander the taverns and inns of the town alone. It had not been the best of times. The strangeness, and the hostility of the people in the taverns had upset him, and caused him to wonder.....

He had been more than happy to re -join the delegation for the return trip.

He was once more alone in a strange land.

The followers had departed, and had taken with them that part of him that was at ease with the land. The feeling of well-being which had shrouded him since his entry into the land melted away with their abrupt departure.

He fought to reconcile the deep panic welling up inside his mind with the conflicting images which his normal senses were still sending to his brain. To his eyes and ears there was no sign of any threat to his person, there was no enemy creeping up on him through the undergrowth ready to spear him with a wicked, rusty spike or loose off a deadly lead ball from a flintlock rifle. The Redcoats belonged in a different world now, they had no say in this world, despite their powerful arrogance. He knew that their influence did not extend to this strange land. There was a new enemy to contend with, an enemy that did not show itself by the colour of its dress or the manner of its speech, a powerful enemy which had contemptuously brushed aside the welcoming overtures of the mysterious followers to reveal the reality of survival here in the afterlife.

Had the followers betrayed him, hiding the ugliness of the land from him in a treacherous attempt to get him to lower his defences before the onslaught, had evil been his unseen companion all along, masked by the traitorous followers. No....., he couldn't believe that, the followers had seemed so.... so right!. No, the followers had been masking the evil from him, but not with malevolent intent, of that he was certain.

Evil crowded his senses with an irresistible persuasiveness, coursing through his suddenly vulnerable mind in an orgy of corruption. He tried to shut out the sickening images of destruction and perversion rising up before him in unrelenting waves of distorted visions set against the dark backdrop of the forest, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut that his head throbbed painfully with the effort. The images only intensified. His muscles stiffened to rigidity as the terrible scenes played out before him. He stood trembling, back arched at an impossible angle, sinews stretched to breaking point as his sightless eyes stared heavenward. He saw the great forest being ravaged by great fires, fires bigger and more fierce than any man had ever beheld. He heard the living trees scream aloud with unbridled terror as the flames scorched the bark from magnificent trunks towering majestically above the ground. He heard the pitiful whimpering of the ravaged forest in the wake of the inferno, blackened stubs of once mighty boughs pointing grotesquely upward in a macabre parody of their former glory. He felt the great forest begin to lose its very sense of awareness as the fires continued through the ages, slowly gaining the advantage as more and more of the forest succumbed to the raging fires until its very heart lay broken amid the glowing embers and the vibrant life force which had sustained the collective being throughout the aeons retreated once more to the earth and was dissipated even further through the vastness of the planets' surface. Until only the faintest glimmer of sentience remained. Into the void poured the dark ones, masters of corruption and disorder, their insatiable lust for total sovereignty of the lands urging them to greater obscenities against the unprotected multitudes of beings which had known no other life except for the orderly existence imposed upon them by the benign arboreal since the beginning of time. The evil tide of corruption produced the most foul results of cross breeding ever to blight the land. Chaos ruled for a millennium.

Amid the chaos, against all odds rose the first semblance of returning order in the few human survivors who had quickly learned that co-operation and complete unity was the only defence against the ravaging hoards who hunted them remorselessly in every part of the land, intent on their total annihilation. From these straggling survivors grew the Crelle, an isolated nation constantly engaged in a defensive 'war' against its surrounding neighbours, protected only by the dedication of its diminutive warrior caste and the fragile alliance of the Guardians, the slow witted hulks which had began to skulk about the defensive boundaries of the first bonded settlements, scrounging leftovers from the Crelle or raiding the meagre vegetable plots for spoiled leavings after the harvest. The Crelle eventually trained them in basic defence duties in return for food and shelter, an arrangement which seemed to suit the Guardians, whose needs were simple and undemanding. It was thought that they were the discarded product of an unsuccessful breeding experiment in the Dead lands, left to perish in the wilderness. They took their duties seriously and protected the Crelle, were-ever they might be, with their lives. Though they were hardly better than beasts, they proved to be loyal and obedient protectors.

As the tumultuous visions of the alien history of the land crashed through his slipping consciousness, crowding in upon his confused mind, Jamie found brief respite, momentarily countering with new-found powers of perception which flooded miraculously into his brain in a sudden wash of revelation. For the very briefest of moments he saw, with complete clarity, the reason for his presence in this tortured place. He saw the way of recovery, the cure for the sickness that blighted the land and kept him from his ancestors. He had been snatched violently from the ancient pathway to the land of his ancestors and brought to this place to set right a wrong. A wrong that he had no part in. The unseen enemy had momentarily dropped his guard and allowed Jamie a glimpse of the truth. He had unwittingly exposed the weapon of his own destruction.

Retaliation was swift and merciless. The crack was closed with a thundering howl of indignant rage which tossed Jamie contemptuously to the ground, his legs no longer able to withstand the strain as his tortured body was suddenly released from the iron grip that held it.

Agonising muscle spasms wracked his abused body as he lay writhing in the seething mud at the bank of the stream. Everything which was suddenly vile about the land cascaded into his mind without respite as the dark enemy sought to rectify the mistake it had made. The truth that Jamie had glimpsed amid the visions seemed less clear somehow, less real. He felt as if a veil had been strung before his reasoning, wrapping him tighter within its swirling folds. He tried to see past the veil, the truth lay on the other side, he had been there. The more he tried to push aside the misty veil of confusion and reach back to the truth, the more distorted the truth became. He had lost the battle. He no longer held the weapon of victory in his hands. Like his mighty Claymore it had been wrested from his grasp and now lay with the enemy, a trophy to attest to the shame of his defeat.

The painful cramps slowly eased and as the agony subsided Jamie once attempted to drag himself out of the clinging mud. Beaten by exhaustion and broken in defeat, he lay, still covered to his thighs, hardly moved in the stinking morass until his battered body finally gave in and the sleep of the dead mercifully engulfed him in its dark folds.

During his first period of sleep since his entry to the land, while he lay half in and half out of the mud on the bank of the stream running through the clearing in the Great forest, he was visited many times in his dreams by a succession of petitioners and bailiffs by strange beings purporting to be allies, by ambassadors of enemies delivering threats. The naive portrait of the land painted by the watchers was banished forever from his over trusting senses. The deception was fully exposed, allowing him to see the land for what it really was, an evil, twisted land, a beleaguered parody of the land that he had thought he had entered.

This was not paradise.

He put aside any lingering hopes of finding his ancestors in this land.

The building cacophony of confused signals pouring into his dream steadily increased to a deafening climax of incessant demands screamed at him by demented souls. He strained his weakening aura to identify the conductor of the chaos which threatened to overwhelm even his subconscious dream state. The conductor was near, he could sense him but the veil concealed him still. If only he could remember, his sword.... the answer lay with his Claymore.... but his Claymore was on a different world.

Jamie woke with a start.

It was dark. Something had brushed harshly against his half frozen body in the mud. His sudden jerk to wakefulness had alarmed whatever had been near him and it had darted back up the bank. He twisted his head around in the direction of the snuffling sound up the bank. The pain from his stiffened neck drew a loud gasp from his parched lips. The creatures' head jerked back in his direction. In the darkness two amber slits appeared and widened slightly to reveal a coal black orb at the centre of each. Jamie froze, he knew that he was looking into the eyes of pure evil. The beast didn't move, the eyes stared back without blinking. Jamie instinctively knew that if he attempted to run the beast would be upon him in a flash. He imagined the fearsome fangs somewhere below those terrible eyes. Besides, he doubted that his half frozen body would respond to any sudden demands put upon it by any attempt at flight. He held those eyes upon his own in a terrifying contest of wills while his right hand, trapped below his abdomen all this time, came painfully back to life in a rush of pins and needles as the returning blood supply fed the numb vessels along his arm. Ever so slowly he managed to dig his fingers into the mud and scoop up a handful of the slime. He took a deep breath and holding that fearful gaze a moment longer while he summoned his failing courage, he swung his arm around with all the strength he could muster, hurling the mud at the centre of the unblinking eyes. At the same time he lifted his aching body from the mud and yelled at the top of his voice.

'Yaaahh!!, Get, Go on.. Get out of here you heathen monster... Go...Go......'.

To his surprise and immense relief the beast suddenly turned and fled the bank, crashing into the forest in blind panic. It appeared to run in a half upright position, not on all fours as Jamie would have expected a scavenger to flee when its intended prey suddenly got up and retaliated. He was too relieved at the beasts' departure to give too much thought to this strange anomaly and shrugged it off as another peculiarity of the land, he had had to come to terms with so many of them since his arrival. He dragged himself up the bank and somehow made it to the edge of the clearing where the huge trees formed an almost solid wall rising from the long grass at the clearings' end. He had lost the trail that had led him to the stream, it was too dark to make out any break in the looming undergrowth. One of the trees sported a wide primary branch about ten feet up the main trunk. He climbed up the small outgrowths on the trunk and settled himself in the crook of the branch and the trunk and slept. This time he slept a dreamless sleep.

When he woke the sun was low in the east. He picked his way carefully down to the ground and walked gingerly back to the stream to quench his slating thirst. The water looked black and uninviting. He cupped his hands and dipped them beneath the sluggishly flowing waters. The stream seemed to have lost some of its precious vitality and the water tasted slightly brackish, but it sufficed to ease the his terrible thirst. Jamie recalled the morning after the night he had stole into his fathers room at the behest of the Furgus twins while they waited behind the crumbling rear wall of his families small croft to acquire the fat stoppered jug containing that fiery brew within which his father had found so much solace. He had felt like this then, after waking in the biting frost alongside the stream in the valley, the Furgus twins nowhere to be found. It had cured his curiosity about the wonders of the 'brew'.

As he knelt on the bank of the stream cupping the brackish water to his lips he became acutely aware of the intense cold which seemed to penetrate right to his bones. The mud which covered him had hardened and it cracked and flaked away as he moved. His kilt, once a proud pronouncement of his Stuart lineage, was torn and faded. His tunic was stained irreversibly by the ochre base of the clinging mud. He thought of discarding his inadequate clothing and immediately setting out to hunt for some warm furs to cover his freezing flesh but stubbornly decided to keep the attire of his Clan. He could hunt later, the first thing he would do was clean the symbols of his tribe and then set a fire to warm his earthly body. He removed his tunic and kilt and carefully set them out before himself on a large rock by the side of the stream. He strode naked into the icy stream and deliberately cleansed his body of the invading mud before taking his clothes and removing all traces of the desecrating filth which had permeated the close weave of the expertly dyed wool. Although he was shivering violently with the intense cold he stayed in the icy water until he was certain that every last trace of dirt had been thoroughly washed away. Finally he left the stream and made his way to the centre of the clearing where he had left his pack. He gathered up some tinder, barely defrosted in the weak morning sun and heaped it together in a small pile on the hard ground. He took the two small pieces of flint from his pack and struck them together over the heaped tinder.

The shock of the resulting flash of light sent him reeling over backwards. He sat up quickly, astonished at the sudden explosion and stared incredulously at the pieces of flint lying in the grass. The two rocks were glowing brightly as if they were themselves on fire. They appeared to be red hot yet the grass beneath was un-scorched. The heaped tinder which Jamie had struck the flint over was roaring fiercely, with bright flames leaping as high as his head as he sat there astounded.

He huddled to the warmth of the fire crackling loudly before him, almost singing the hairs on his body before he moved reluctantly back a little as the heat intensified. The few handfuls of tinder that he had gathered seemed to burn forever, the fire was much greater than the meagre heap should have provided, and the tinder within stubbornly refused to become ash, still clearly visible amid the dancing flames. He thankfully accepted this latest mystery and stayed close to the fire until the frost had been chased completely from his painfully stiff bones.

By the time his clothes had dried the sun was climbing steadily towards noon. The air in the clearing began to grow thick and heavy as the day progressed, until it became stiflingly oppressive, reeking of rotted vegetation and decay. The memory of those terrifying nightmares and the vividly real visitations of the night before came flooding back and he decided to leave the clearing as soon as possible and continue his journey, though he wasn't sure exactly where his journey now led, only that he had to keep moving, if there were people in this God forsaken land then he would find them. The fire had died out, seemingly of its own accord some time before, and the pieces of flint had returned to their normal state. The small mound of dry tinder was still intact, hardly touched by the flames. He picked up the flint and placed them back in his pack before setting off once more down the narrow trail, still heading toward the rising sun.

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