Prologue #2
Now, there might have been something resembling peace in the region.
King David I reigned over Scotland; a king whose sister had married Henry I of England, whose wily father, Malcolm III, had battled William the Conqueror, and if he hadn’t exactly won those battles, he had still maintained a separate and largely whole Scotland.
David had come to his kingship having watched and learned from his father and brothers before him; he had grown up in England and prospered at English hands, while he had also watched his family struggle with the results of the Norman conquest. He wasn’t a young man, but a king in his prime, a mature, wise, and wary man.
He never forgot that any king held a precarious position, and that the world was a dangerous place.
Some resented his upbringing in the Norman court, but by blood, he could draw many ancient loyalties.
His mother had been the sister of Edgar, Atheling, Saxon royalty before the coming of the Conqueror.
He’d learned the power of fighting, and the power of alliances.
Yet the Scots, like Michael, supported and upheld their king despite this, and their hatred and distrust of all things Norman.
Despite many of his Norman ways and Norman leanings, David had proven himself, as a leader, and as a Scotsman, determined on his own identity, and that of his country.
He was a warrior, ready to go to battle.
Though relations sometimes remained diplomatically stable with their southern neighbor, along the border there was often war.
David meant not only to keep the lands traditionally Scottish; he longed to push the borders and keep the English from his heartlands.
In order to do so, he had granted Scottish lands to some of the important Norman families with whom he had become familiar.
With the tact of a good fledgling king, he had taken care to give lands where the chieftains of old had died out, where disputes among heirs might arise.
By taking care, he had allowed for the very ancient races of his homeland to accept—if grudgingly—still another arrival of a different people.
David had put down an insurrection in 1124 when he became king, and God knew, Scotland being the warlike, rugged land it was, he would put down insurrections again.
Feudal laws, many not yet a century old, vied with the ancient ways, and it took power, force, and cunning to rule the Scottish people.
David, thus far, was proving himself a most able man.
Still, two main threats remained to challenge his power: here, along the border, and from the Vikings, who were ever on the lookout for opportunities to gain an advantage.
David had studied history. Of all the factors that might have gone into the Saxon king Harold having lost England to the Normans, he believed that the Viking invasions to the north at the time of the Norman invasion to the south were the main cause.
The Vikings hadn’t beaten Harold, but they had weakened him.
Yet no king’s power seemed able to stop the savage skirmishing here on traditional borderlands and tonight, though Michael had managed with very little time to gather together numerous chieftains and their men, he had been assaulted hard by Lord Renfrew, a nobleman of Norman descent unsatisfied with the lot of land he had drawn in Yorkshire.
Joined by mercenaries from a Danish army, he had marched northward, sending farm inhabitants fleeing ahead of him.
He had plundered the churches and abbeys he’d found along his way, and ravaged many a poor young woman, so had come the news this morning.
And Michael had called upon his people, his clan and his clan associates, and they had gathered to defend the land.
Now, many of their number, many of their finest, lay dead or dying. And around this fire, the survivors argued their position.
Thayer Cairn, a huge burly man with the strength of an ox, stood to cast more kindling upon their small fire, seeking the warmth on his hands. Firelight rose around him, casting his face in an eerie shade of red.
Red, like the blood that stained the hills.
Michael felt an uncanny chill seize hold of him as he watched Thayer; his vision blurred. The small cottage seemed misted in red. “Where is the king with his troops when we need him and his help?” Thayer demanded. “The call has gone out; we are set upon and with no relief in sight!”
Michael stared at the fire. “We can’t go condemning the king for whatever speed or lack thereof keeps him from us. We must depend on ourselves here and now.”
“Aye, Michael is right!” Fergus Mann said, from the left of Michael.
He’d seen his brother and oldest son fall; his second and third son remained at his side.
The wiry old graybeard warrior still had his wits about him in his intent to salvage their situation now.
“The king matters not; what we do in these next few minutes is most important. I say that we must gather our wounded and disappear across the hills to the crags and cliffs by the lochs. Our only hope is to regroup. If they pursue, for the time being now, we must escape to our brethren in the hills.”
Michael heard a thumping sound and frowned. He glanced at Thayer. “Who’s on guard?”
“McBridie guards the doorway.”
Michael made a silent motion that Thayer should try the door—and see to the welfare of McBridie.
The warriors in the cottage tensed, but even as Thayer cast open the poor wooden door, a cry went out.
A yellow-haired Nordic warrior charged where the door had been—and great Thayer was pinned through the shoulder with the man’s razor-honed pike.
He let out a cry like a bull, yet even then, more of the enemy flowed in behind the Norseman; they burst through the thatch-covered windows.
In seconds, the twenty-odd Scotsmen who had taken refuge in the cottage were dead or injured.
Michael alone held his sword when a tall man, clad in chain mail and leather, strode through the doorway.
Lord Renfrew. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped russet hair, smiled, and reached for the youngest of old Fergus Mann’s sons, catching the lad by the hair in an instant and placing his small sword to the boy’s throat, flush against the vein.
He held the boy and stared at Michael, the chieftain.
“Ah, now! ’Tis Michael, himself. Laird of these lands,” Renfrew’s dark eyes narrowed even as his thin lips curled into a cruel smile, and he mocked the pattern of the Gaelic speech. “Throw down your sword, Michael. Do so. The lad will live.”
“It’s a trick, Michael!” the lad, Patrick, called out.
“What terms?” Michael demanded.
“Terms?” He nodded to his men around him.
“Bind the men’s hands, now, and be quick and thorough.
You’ve got to take great care, you know.
They’re the result of years of tribal invasions.
They’ve even got enough of your good Viking blood in them, eh, Ragwald, to fight like wild creatures.
” He glanced at the Norseman who had either killed Thayer or left him grievously wounded; then he stared down at Thayer.
Thayer could not say; he was slumped to the ground.
Renfrew looked back to Michael. “Your sword, Michael. Now. Or I kill the lad.”
“He’ll kill me anyway!” Patrick stated gravely, swallowing down his fear to make the statement.
Perhaps the lad was right, Michael knew, but in their current situation, it seemed to make no sense to hasten Patrick’s death. Michael cast down his sword.
Renfrew smiled with a nod, acknowledging his pleasure. “Bind him,” Renfrew commanded, indicating Michael.
The Norseman at Renfrew’s side did as commanded. Michael didn’t fight as the man tied his hands behind his back. He looked at Renfrew.
“What now?” the Viking asked Renfrew, having finished binding Michael as commanded.
“Bind them all,” Renfrew said, “for they will submit to me. They will be my prisoners.”
One by one, the men were bound, and when the task was completed, it was Michael who asked once again the question that Renfrew’s Viking had already put forward.
“What now?”
Renfrew smiled. “Now? What now, indeed? You are worthless, the lot of you, as hostages. Could I keep you, working you men as slaves? I assure you, many a once-proud Saxon lad still serves his master in England. Ah, it’s a fine thought, such proud, noble warriors enslaved to me!
But, alas! I’d be ever wary of my back. There’s little choice in it, I think.
Now, I let my men amuse themselves. Now, I hang you poor savage bastards, one by one.
Take him first!” he commanded, indicating Thayer.
“He’s half-dead already, but such deadweight should make a good fall, eh? We can test the rope for the others.”
The attackers filed out of the cottage, kicking and shoving the bound Scotsmen, laughing as they struggled to manage Thayer’s great bulk.
The last of them departed through the cottage door; it was the Norseman who had so swiftly skewered Thayer.
He paused before leaving. “You’ll pardon us, good Scotsmen, eh? We’ll not leave you hanging long.”
Laughing with pleasure at his own deadly humor, he exited the cottage.
“You should have kept your sword, Michael,” Patrick said glumly. “You’d have brought down at least one of the great, ugly bastards.”
They could hear deep, guttural laughter in the night as the enemy struggled still with Thayer’s body.
Then suddenly, they were startled by a thumping sound within the confines of the cottage.
A large dark shadow fell behind Patrick, who had been pushed closest to the rear thatched window. Patrick gasped, then held his tongue.