Prologue
It was a nightmare that would stay with him forever. He did not dream it every time he slept, but it would come to him on those nights when he was weary in his bones and the lurking sadness he carried everywhere with him rose up inside his heart.
His mother was dying. She lay gasping on the flagstone floor, her lifeblood seeping around her slender body, her hands fluttering for the final time. Her dry lips whispered her last words to the two small boys in the language of the Norse, the land of her forefathers.
“T-Take care of yer wee brother, C-Callum… Ye must swear it…”
She was not talking to him. His mother had spent her last few breaths of air asking his elder brother, his half brother, Callum MacNair, to look after him.
All of the children born to the women who worked at the tavern were half-blood relatives.
It was the fate of tavern wenches to bear bairns from multiple fathers, after all.
Callum had been the unimaginably mature age of six; he, Wee William, had been three…
four…it was hard for his memory to grasp his true age; it was over twenty years ago now.
He could only remember he had been young enough to scream and weep in terror as the soldiers had thrown him on the back of the cart; that he had been too small to walk behind the cart in the convoy of slave children with ropes tied around their necks.
Bumping over the dirt tracks with all the other bairns, any child no longer nursing at their mother’s breast had been swept up to be sold as a slave.
The only thing that kept Wee William from throwing himself over the cart side was the sight of his elder brother slowly plugging away behind the cart in the middle of the line of roped children.
When the soldiers had stopped to set up camp for the night, William had turned away from the offer of a ladle of milk and a hunk of bread. He curled up in one of the cart corners and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The nightmare would always increase in intensity when William dreamed of waking up.
Because when he had woken the following morning, still curled up in the corner of the cart, Callum was gone.
William had cried so hard that he could not breathe.
One of the soldiers had to slap the small boy’s face to stop him from turning blue.
The rest of the nightmare would involve being dragged to the market square in the village bailey next to MacTavish Castle. Except hardly anyone was there to bid for the child slaves.
“Where are all the buyers?” the captain of the guards had asked the bid master.
The man shrugged. “It’s been five years since yer last batch, sir, an’ in that time, folks have enlightened themselves to be finding the practice cruel.
Nay one wants a terrified bairn who is likely to grow to manhood bearing such a huge grudge against their masters.
Yer best bet is to foster the children out to kindly masters and mistresses…
else MacTavish is likely to wake up one morning with an army o’ grown slaves clamoring for his head on a pike one o’ these fine days. ”
With no one prepared to pay for a young child when there were so many foster children and orphans willing to join families for free, the children taken from the wenches who worked at the tavern were carted back to their mothers.
All except one boy, who sat in the cart and did not move when the other children ran back inside shouting and cheering.
“Go along with ye,” the captain of the guards said, poking Wee William with the butt end of a spear. “Ye’re free to go.”
“Mother is dead.”
The captain cast his mind back three days. “Och aye, I remember one o’ the wenches got stuck with a knife. Well, ye’ll have to make shift at the foster home until someone has a calling for ye.”
That was always where the nightmare ended.
“I heard ye yelling fit to wake the dead again last night,” Fingal Fearguson, the blacksmith, grunted the words after Will strolled into the kitchen, yawning and stretching the next morning.
During the summer months, Will would sleep in the hayloft over the horse stalls.
In winter, he slept in the kitchen, next to the fire.
Fingal Fearguson was a hard master, but not a cruel one.
That was why Will had chosen to stay affiliated to the old man after his apprenticeship had ended.
The kitchen seemed to become a lot smaller with the two tall men inside it.
Fingal’s wife had died some years back, and none of their own children had reached the age of five.
When Mistress Fearguson had spotted the angelic-looking child in the foster home twenty years back, she would not rest until her husband had offered the small boy a foster home.
It was fate that Wee William had grown and thrived while his Fearguson foster siblings weakened and died each year.
Mistress Fearguson had never stopped trying for a strong bairn, but her seventeenth birthing had pushed her exhausted body too far.
“I thank heaven Fingal has ye to comfort him in his auld age, Will,” she had told him before she gave up her earthly life for something else.
“What brought it on this time?” Fingal wanted to know.
He noticed his foster son had not done much more to dress himself that morning than to wrap a Fearguson plaid around his hips and knot the corners to stop it from falling down.
He sighed. Thus was the household run by a pair of careless single men.
He did not bother telling his foster son to dress himself better; the summer weather that year was sultry and warm.
Fingal was glad none of the village lasses came calling at the smithy that often; Will had the local females throwing themselves at his feet.
Maybe it was Will’s mercurial temperament, but the young man never wanted anything unless it was hard-fought for.
And what woman could put up the pretense of coy disinterest for long when Will’s tall presence entered a room?
If his ruggedly handsome face did not break down all womanly defenses, his hard, well-muscled body always did.
They were never put off by Will’s air of dour, silent watchfulness.
Will gave the question all due consideration before answering it.
He placed his spoon into the bowl of oat porridge, saying, “An order came in from a warlord last week. I did nae check his reputation first before crafting the sword for him. Turns out he is a brutal master who skips payin’ his servants. Now I cannae give him the sword.”
Fingal grunted again, then said, “Has he paid for it?”
Will shook his head. “Nay. But his emissary is comin’ to fetch it on the morrow an’ bringing the gold with him.”
“It’s a pity,” Fingal said, walking to the fire to take a second helping of porridge before returning to the wooden bench by the table and sitting down. “’Tis a fine piece of craftsmanship.”
And that’s all the two men had to say on the matter.
No emissary would dare demand the sword from someone like Will Fearguson.
Not only did he make the best swords in the kingdom, but he was a master at wielding them too.
The calm domesticity of the kitchen belied the lethal strength of its occupants.
When Will was old enough to lift and hold the blacksmith’s massive hammer and tongs, Fingal had entered the bedchamber he shared with his wife, and said, “William must go an’ begin his training with Laird MacKenzie’s men next week, Moira.”
The village where they lived fell under MacKenzie clan demesne—a well-defended land nestled on the northwestern Highland coasts.
His wife rankled at the suggestion. “Never! Wee William is me darlin’ little angel. He’s too young to go and train.”
Fingal had moved to his wife’s side of the bed and rubbed her shoulder gently.
“The lad’s taller than ye are now, Moira.
He is nay longer the small boy ye brought back with ye from the foster home.
Let him go. I swear the lad has a destiny to fulfill that nay blacksmithing will ever have the power to sway him from. ”
And the husband and wife had stared at the empty crib in the corner of the room until the candles guttered in the bowl. Thus, William had begun his training and rapidly surpassed every MacKenzie soldier in the art of war. But when he was asked to join their ranks, he shook his head.
“Nay, Laird. I thank ye for yer offer, but I belong in the smithy, working alongside me faither.”
Will would always stay loyal to the man who had taken him out of the foster home and shown him what it felt like to have a family again.