Chapter 1
Western Highlands of Scotland, April 1629
As gloaming settledover the Highlands, Torr MacElrath drew up beside his friend Gavin MacTavish, who'd halted his horse abruptly near a dark wood. Their party of a dozen guards and clansmen paused behind them. The steel of Gavin's blade hissed as he withdrew it from the leather scabbard.
Following Gavin's fierce, ice-blue gaze, Torr surveyed the wood. "Did you see something?"
"A glimmer there." Gavin pointed his weapon.
Torr scrutinized the area, but naught moved amongst the mossy pine trunks and scrubby evergreens.
"Could be highwaymen wanting to steal our mounts." Their friend Brodie MacCain grumbled on Gavin's other side, his black brows lowering over his dark brown eyes.
"Or Alpin," Gavin said through clenched teeth.
Torr well knew Gavin's cousin Alpin was a greedy outlaw, wanting to steal everything Gavin and his father possessed, including the title, lands, and castle.
A near-inaudible snap of a dry twig reached Torr's ears.
The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as they discussed Alpin's motives. Regardless, someone—or several people—lurked in the bushy junipers that shifted in the wind.
Impatient, Torr leapt to the ground and strung his bow. "I'll flush them out." He retrieved an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and let it fly.
A man yelled, shattering the quiet. Several kilted, armed men sprang from the bushes and rushed toward them.
"Slud!" Gavin growled.
A clamor arose from the guards as they bounded from their saddles and drew their weapons, instantly battle-ready.
After casting his bow aside, Torr withdrew his basket-hilt broadsword and grabbed the targe from his saddle just in time to block the stabbing blade of an approaching enemy. Spurred on by the need to defend himself and those around him, he slashed and thrust at one foe, then another.
In the melee, Torr recognized Alpin MacTavish, with his long, dirty-blond hair and blue eyes, as the leader of this ambush.
With the targe, Torr blocked another blade swinging at him and delivered a cut to an adversary's sword arm.
"Retreat!" Alpin commanded.
The men who remained on their feet fled back into the wood after their brutish leader. Two rivals lay sprawled upon the ground, blood pooling around them.
Torr glanced at Gavin, shocked to see the long, bloody cut down the left side of his face from forehead to chin. Blood saturated his pale linen shirt. "Gavin, your face!" Torr had never seen an injury quite like it.
"'Tis only a flesh wound," Gavin mumbled and turned away. "Anyone hurt?"
Thankfully, their guards had only sustained minor injuries.
"You ken who he is, aye?" Brodie stared down at one of the dead men upon the ground.
"Alpin called him Silas," Gavin said.
Brodie nodded. "I met him once. He's the MacRae chief."
Torr had never met him but well knew killing a chief, even in battle, was serious. While Gavin and Brodie discussed the dead enemy, Torr wondered who he'd struck with the arrow earlier. He headed into the wood and toward the low-growing junipers. A kilted man lay upon the mossy ground, a bloody arrow protruding from his throat.
Shock lanced through Torr. "Here's the one I shot!"
Gavin, Brodie, and some of the other men joined him in the wood.
"Saints! I had nay inkling you were such a deadly marksman," Gavin said.
