He drew his claymore with his right hand and walked into the glen. After three swings, Jamie Cameron, son of Lachlan and Joan called out.
“Ye mean ye cooked and ate breakfast withoot us?”
Logan smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “When I say sunup, that is what I mean.”
“But ye know ye cook better than Clarence the cook at Tor,” Jamie whined. The golden-haired highlander possessed the charm of his father and the resilience and staunch loyalty of his mother.
“Leave him be, Jamie, ye bastard,” Steafan MacDonald, son of Geoffry and Stel MacDonald warned and strode to Logan. When he stood only inches away, he unsheathed his sword. “I’ll fight ye.”
Logan’s smile widened. He loved these fools. They had saved his life, not to be cruel but because they considered him their leader. For that, and for who they were to him—his kin—he would do anything.
“I saved some food fer ye, Jamie,” he called out, then laughed briefly when his cousin hurried up toward the house.
“Has Ewen no’ returned from his journey to Dunley?” he asked Steafan, readying his sword.
“Are ye so vain that ye ask trivial questions when ye should be devising yer strategy against me?” his MacDonald kin asked.
“’Tis no’ vanity, Cousin. If I sound convinced that I can trounce yer arse from here back to the castle, ’tis because I can.”
He feigned a blow to Steafan’s side, to which Steafan answered too quickly with a jab to where Logan’s most vulnerable spot should have been. Instead, he felt the blunt of Logan’s hilt to the back of his head.
Logan stepped over him and waited for him to get back to his feet.
“What do ye think aboot me givin’ Dunley Keep to Ewen?” He blocked a strike of Steafan’s sword to his neck and swung hard enough, though he only used one hand, to knock Steafan’s blade out of his hand. “’Tis certainly in poor condition,” Logan continued as Steafan’s sword flew over his shoulder, “but he found me there.”
Steafan nodded, “As long as ye give me Inverlochy Castle when King James grants it to ye.”
“’Tis yers,” Logan promised. He didn’t care about castles, since Tor would likely become his.
“I’ll tell Ewen when he returns. Dunley Keep is his.”
His cousin raised his blade over his head after retrieving it and brought the iron down on Logan’s sword. Lights burst into existence between his face and Steafan’s. Logan held fast when their blades slid down to the hilts.
Holding Steafan off with his right arm, Logan hooked his ankle around Steafan’s and brought the beefy Highlander to his arse.
Reaching down, Logan helped his fallen cousin to his feet and swiped dust from Steafan’s tunic.
Steafan slapped his hands away. “Dinna pity me, Logan. I dinna lose to anyone but ye. And I dinna even know how ye do it…and with one arm!”
“I dinna consider what I canna do. I think aboot ye and Jamie and Ewen, and I think aboot what I can do.”
Steafan grinned at him. “Ye do it well, ye bastard.”
“My thanks fer sayin’ so,” Logan told him with a pat on the back as they left the glen. “Though all my toil at regainin’ my strength and skill does me nae good if I canna fight fer Scotland.”
They walked up the short hill at the base of the mountain and entered Logan’s smaller, thatched roof house parallel to his father’s two-story stone house, both built low against the wind. They found Jamie in the Main Hall standing over a thick woodentable near the great hearth and shoving a hardboiled egg into his mouth. When he saw Logan, he grinned happily.
Logan wished Ewen was here. Ewen was more like his brother than his cousin. All his cousins had been raised together. He spent the most time with Jamie under the watchful eyes of their mothers. But it was Ewen with whom Logan felt the closest. They had gotten into trouble the most—mostly trouble Logan had led them into.
The oldest of the cousins, despite being only two months older, Logan and Ewen were allowed to explore as far as Torlundy at the age of ten summers old.
But battle burned fiercely in Logan’s blood, and by the time he was twelve, he’d convinced his parents to let him go serve King Charles.
They had finally agreed, and from there Logan trained to be in the King’s Royal Army. By the time he was ten and five, he was granted his wish by being put in the king’s sixth regiment. Once he started fighting, he was more convinced than ever that he was born to battle.
He never lost to anyone, but one man. Lord William Woodburn, leader of a group of Protestants in his region. Logan knew Woodburn would come to be prominent and powerful in the Protestant movement. He and others of like mind believed the king should succumb to the power of the kirk. They believed God held the utmost authority over everything. Logan’s kin believed the same thing—and who gave the king all his authority? God.
But as wide as the bridge to friendship between them was, it wasn’t their religious or political views that drove Woodburn to attack Logan and take him prisoner in his keep in Dunley.
