‘Even so … this whole business is beginning to worry me.’
‘Put your mind at rest, my friend. Soon you will be summoned back to Eldacre in triumph. Think of it. Your reputation restored, your fame acknowledged.’
Gates had seemed mollified. Then Call’s raiders intercepted a courier carrying messages to the Moidart. Gates had written that he was convinced Call Jace himself was behind the raids, and that more men were needed to ‘pacify the Rigante’.
Two weeks later a large band of ‘outlaws’ ambushed the colonel and thirty of his men, killing them all. Call Jace sent an urgent message to the Moidart, explaining that violence and intimidation were getting out of hand in the area, and requesting more troops to protect the citizens. His own men, he said, had hunted down the outlaws, killing fifteen of them and driving the others south. In a separate incident the farmer who had refused tribute was found with his throat cut.
The Moidart did send more troops, this time under a fierce and ruthless colonel named Rollin Baynock. Colonel Baynock summoned Call to his headquarters. The wily Rigante leader arrived without weapons.
Baynock was a stocky man, round-faced and small-eyed. His mouth was thin-lipped, and his receding chin was hidden by a bushy black beard. He was sitting at his desk when Call was ushered into his office at the barracks in Black Mountain. He did not offer the Rigante leader a chair.
‘I have read the reports of my predecessor,’ he said. ‘This arrangement of yours ceases now. All swords held by the Rigante will be surrendered within the week. Your men will no longer patrol. You understand me?’
‘Of course, sir. I was merely trying to help.’
‘We need no help from highlanders.’
Two days later Rollin Baynock and twelve riders failed to return from a routine patrol near the Col Rasson pass, east of Black Mountain. A second patrol found their bodies in a gulley. Rollin Baynock’s tongue had been torn from his mouth.
Within weeks the beetleback force had doubled to four hundred men, but raids and murders continued. Call Jace wrote to the Moidart, politely questioning the tactics employed by the new colonel, and pointing out that at least a thousand men were needed to adequately safeguard the area. The Moidart responded by inviting Call Jace to visit him in Eldacre. Call reluctantly refused, on the grounds that he had recently injured his leg and was confined to his bed.
The new colonel died in a brief fight at Rattock Creek, when a volley of musket fire tore into his troops as they crossed the narrow bridge.
Once again Call wrote to the Moidart, requesting more troops, while assuring him that he and his Black Rigante could far more effectively patrol the area than forces from the south who did not have intimate knowledge of the terrain. He also offered to have his men escort the wagons carrying tax revenue on their twice yearly journeys back to Eldacre. ‘It surely will not be long,’ he wrote, ‘before these outlaw vermin realize that the wagons contain far more riches than the farms and businesses they are attacking.’
His warning proved curiously prophetic, since from that moment every tax convoy was attacked and robbed, the men guarding them killed.
Two more colonels came and went within the year. One died from a heart seizure in his office; the other was recalled in disgrace when the second of the tax convoys was taken.
Then came Colonel Lockley, an elderly man with a fine record. He rode to Call’s house with only two beetlebacks, and accepted the hospitality of the Rigante leader.
‘Fine uisge,’ he said, sipping from the same silver goblet used by Colonel Gates.
‘Aged in the cask,’ Call told him.
Lockley had deep-set, quiet eyes that masked a fierce intelligence. The conversation that followed was coded. Call knew that Lockley was almost certainly aware of his involvement in the raids. ‘The Moidart has graciously allowed me to see your correspondence over the years,’ the colonel said. ‘You have proved remarkably astute in predicting the outrages of the outlaws.’
‘Sadly, that is true,’ agreed Call. ‘It hurts me that my advice has not been heeded.’