The edit continues.... jees it's painful!

Lamont’s Lament

Chapter 1


There are few days, whatever the season, when rain doesn’t fall on Scotland. Most months are cool and wet as precipitation piles in from the west on a deeply depressed Atlantic airstream. Swollen, peat-brown rivers sweep through narrow, boggy highland glens forcing powerful salmon into nature’s seasonal battle to reach the spawning grounds of their birth. Holidaymakers, drawn toward the beautiful Celtic myth, huddle beneath waterproof clothing as moist, sweet mountain air fills their lungs. Others, less spirited, gather in the cafes and bars to shelter from the frequent heavy showers. For the local population, familiar with the vagaries of the Scottish climate, it is just another, soggy summer.
This morning was a little different though; the stormy winds that swept over the mountains for a fortnight or more had relented. As the cool summer air passed slowly over the rugged, northern landscape a thick, early morning mist had formed over the waters of Loch Rannoch. Sprinting feverishly across the MacCaig estate land, the powerful, sandy-haired Scotsman knew his only sanctuary lay out in that swirling cloak of mist. Running for his life, he felt nothing of the chill air as it cut through his sweat-soaked clothes. Gasping for breath, he broke from the dense pine forest onto the Loch’s ragged shore. He paused only for a moment to gain his bearings and spotted the moorings off to his left. The family’s rowboat sat out on the glassy water, tethered to the wooden jetty.
‘Thank God’, he thought.
The chasing dog pack was still barking, though nearer now: they were gaining on him! Breathing hard he ran toward the boat, but retaining his footing as he scrambled along the loose stone beach, was near impossible. Despite the difficulty, he went down only once on the slippy, moss-covered shore, twisting his ankle. Getting up quickly, he regained his momentum and, shutting out the pain, soon reached little rowboat.
Jock breathed a desperate sigh of relief: pulling the mooring rope brought the boat close to the jetty and he could see that the oars were still lying across the seat. Luck was with him. Freeing the line from the ageing wooden structure, he tried to jump in, but the damaged left ankle wouldn’t take the pressure. Slipping, his trailing leg caught viciously on the portside lip. As the ageing fiberglass tender rocked unsteadily on the calm water, he felt a fiery pain and howled; his skin had torn as it dragged against the rough edge of the iron rowlock. Grasping his leg, he could feel the warmth as blood soak through his ripped jeans. He cursed loudly, and then pushed the oars into place. With short, hard tugs, Jock MacCaig, the eldest son of Lord Alexander Farquhar MacCaig of Rannoch, tried frantically to get the boat moving away from shore toward the safety of the mist.
Looking quickly over his shoulder while trying to straighten the dinghy’s course, Jock could see the early morning mist, heavy on the water. Now, he desperately needed to lose himself in that dense shroud. MacCaig winced as his right leg began throbbing painfully in response to the force of the rowing.
“Damn and shit!” he cursed loudly.
Ignoring the discomfort, he stroked hard again, and again, and again; now he seemed to be picking up a little speed. His shoulders ached, for Jock rarely had to row for himself. This was the ghillie’s job.
‘For God’s sakes’, he thought in a confused rush, ‘Why me?’
From somewhere beyond the tree line he could still hear the echoing of the hounds’ yapping and barking. It was getting louder; the noise was getting louder! A shiver ran down his spine at the sound of the approaching dogs. Pulling ever more anxiously, he put every fiber of his body into rowing harder.
‘Must be nearly there by now,’ he thought. Gritting his teeth and glancing over his shoulder again Jock was getting excited; he was nearly there.
Staring almost fixedly at the receding jetty, Jock fought to find strength in his arms. Hauling the heavy oars through the dark water, he prayed the old wooden structure would soon disappear into the damned mist.
‘Not far now!’ he thought again, trying hard to be positive. Swiping the sandy hair out of his eyes, he pushed the black woolen beanie up and away from his sweating brow. Jock fought desperately to pull with all his strength: even against the odds, he was never one to give up.
The shield of the mist was now clearly within his reach and the adrenalin coursed freely through his arteries as he fought for strength. Then Jock thought he could feel a light breeze on his face. Panic caught his breath. Any strong movement of the air could easily disperse the mist and the blanket of safety it offered. Ever more anxiously he pushed the sixteen-foot dinghy out toward the shelter of the open water. Though his effort never relented for a second, MacCaig felt momentarily encouraged, for the barking of the hounds seemed dampened. The distance to shore was now visibly increasing with every aching pull of the heavy wooden blades. He glanced behind again and could see the mist swirling.
‘Damn’, he thought fearfully. Turbulence would blow away his only protection. But Jock now knew he would row right across the Loch anyway. Distance was his best protection. A twisted grimace etched itself on his face as determination drove him on toward survival.
“Bloody made it!“ he muttered, as mist began to envelope the little vessel. Jock felt a moment of sheer triumph as the sense of survival pushed him into the swirling cloud.
He thought in panic: ‘Who the hell is it anyway?’
After all, he had only been having his usual early morning wander through the estate’s rough woodland, heading down toward the Loch. He had stopped on the Braggan Stone, a precipitous slice of tree-covered rock jutting out over the woodland three hundred feet above the glen. He envied Mac Tosland, the estate ghillie, and had told him so many times, for his cottage was no more than a good stones throw from this picturesque spot. Putting the camera bag on the floor, he took a deep breath and studied the view. The Minolta was usually left abroad with his work, but he had carried it all the way from Africa to catch the fall colours. With the change in the weather, Jock had thought he would seize the opportunity to capture the native woodland’s silhouette as the sun rose over the hills. Dawn on a Highland morning could be spectacular. As summer waned and the leaves turned, an explosion of rustic colour dressed the wild, rugged landscape.
Jock watched as the dark outline of the loch appeared through the trees below his vantage point. The gently rolling ridge on the other side of the glen then began to come more defined as the sun rose. Picking up the bag he unpacked the camera and put the lens cover in his jacket pocket. He then checked the camera’s battery level and smiled to himself; it wouldn’t be the first time he forgotten to charge it and arrived at his intended target with no power. Attaching the camera to the telescopic camera stand, he was about to pull it open when a percussive hiss rang out through the still morning air and the expensive instruments exploded from his grip.
Shocked for a moment, he looked around frantically to ascertain what had happened, then realised he had been shot at. Wildlife and landscape: these had been his intended targets this morning. Now he had become the target. Before he had time to gather his senses, chips of bark had flown off the conifer at his side. Then, as another muffled volley of shots had spat out, Jock was up and running, as far from the shooter as he could get: shattered camera and shots of the impending landscape hastily forgotten. He could not be certain of how many gunmen were shooting at him, but they had blocked his was back to the Castle and safety. Sprinting down through the forests gnarled roots toward the Loch, Jock remembered thinking in desperation that he could perhaps make it to the safety of the village.
Now, less than half an hour later, he was fighting for his life, desperate for the shelter of the Loch’s swirling mist. Whoever had fired at him, he thought, must have realised he would be impossible to find in the forest. They had gone back to the kennels beside Mac’s cottage for the hounds. Now he was being hunted. His pursuers must have known the dogs, and known too that they would track him and his familiar, friendly and very fresh scent. But the dogs couldn’t track him out here; they would be blind to his whereabouts as thick, moist air shrouded the boat from view.
Then Jock stopped rowing, shocked. The hound pack, thwarted at the Loch-side, barked excitedly. Just visible on the beach shingle and some way from the jetty, stood a menacing figure, arms raised to the shoulder. He had appeared as though from nowhere through the drifting mist and was aiming a rifle toward him. He could just see one man’s head, a head he knew all too well, position itself behind the gun’s telescopic sight.
Perhaps because he realised what was about to happen, Jock MacCaig thought the irony of the image almost comical as one of the dogs relieved itself. With no time to throw himself into the boats hull, he sighed resignedly just as a bullet tore through his chest. Deflected by his fifth cervical vertebrae, the misshapen projectile disappeared into the depths of the Loch a few yards in front of the boat. Fighting to stay upright, Jock dropped the oars and lowered his head to see what had hit him. He had hardly registered the powerful sound of the first shot, when a second high-powered projectile tore through his skull. As his body was pitched backward into the boat’s prow, blood-soaked bone and brain tissue joined the two bullets in the lonely depths of Loch Rannoch. For a few brief seconds before life left them, his legs twitched angrily where they hung over the boat’s bench seat.
Satisfied, the shooter turned quickly and disappeared into the thick forest followed by the noisy hound pack.
Gradually, the wind strengthened and the swirling morning mist dispersed, leaving a clear blue sky over the sparkling wetlands of the Glen. The boat drifted unnoticed on the Loch’s remote waters for several hours. Eventually it came to rest on the southern shore, a mile or so from the old Rannoch School. Lying in a deep inlet and screened by native woodland, it would not be found for three days…