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me rest, brother. Ye will earn yerself nothin’ by workin’ yerself to death.”
Angus waited until the door closed to shake his head and wryly said, “Someone has to.”
He turned back to the list in his hand, trying to figure out what next steps to take with this fire witch, until a headache began to pulse at his temples. He had not eaten or drunk anything from dawn and the rumbles in his stomach only made his headache worse. Rising reluctantly, he went to the kitchens and requested a light meal, water, and ale to be sent to his meeting room.
Walking out of the kitchen, he was about to go back to his meeting room when a familiar raucous voice came from the nearby dining hall. Angus rolled his eyes. He could hear Malcolm’s friend Alistair bragging about the last boar he had killed barehanded. Alistair was a dark-haired beast of a man with arms the size of a hundred-year-old tree trunk and a chest that busted leather armor as if it was a string of cotton thread.
Entering the room, he remembered the days when he was like his brother and his friends. Living the life of a simple soldier, carefree and able to do whatever he wanted. Free to go hunting before the crack of dawn, free to train in the heat of midday, and free to visit the taverns at night and see the wenches there. Sadly, responsibility had caught up with him after the death of his father, and he had been made the Laird. The memory of what the inside of a tavern looked like was now a very vague one in his mind.
Striding out, Angus smiled at his brother and his three friends, Alistair, Roran, and Cinead, at a table. The last one, Cinead, had Malcolm in a headlock and his brother was faking choking to death.
“All right,” Angus said authoritatively. “Enough of that. Cinead, release me brother before he expires. He has some use around here.”
Malcolm narrowed his eyes as he was let free, “Just some?”
“Aye,” Angus said while plucking an apple from a bowl nearby. “Maybe I should amend that to barely.”
An orange was lobbed to his head and Angus snatched it from the air and threw it back with deadly accuracy. The fruit was a blur in the air and connected by clocking his brother right on his nose. It was comical how loud Malcolm yelped.
“I am still yer big brother, Malcolm,” Angus grinned. “Which means I am still stronger, and faster than ye.”
“For now,” Malcolm hissed, while rubbing the mark. “Go back to yer meeting room and leave us alone, old man.”
At thirty, Angus still felt young enough to not be classed as old but, by his clans’ standard, he should have been married with two bairns by that age. Perhaps, he was old.
“And ye should grow up,” Angus said, without much heat behind his words. He spotted a maid with this food and after nodding to Malcolm’s friends, he went back to the meeting room.
Halfway through his meal, an expected knock came on his door and by the brevity of it, he knew it was his mother. Finishing the last gulp of his water, he called out, “Enter, Mother.”
The tight look on her face told him that his expectations of the men were right. They were dead. His stomach sank and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did ye and yer women get to at least ease their pain?”
Lady Isobel sighed, “We gave them herbal infusions first but when that dinnae work, we resorted to giving them the strongest mandrake root brew we had. It eased them enough so they could pass without the pain.”
The food Angus had just eaten sat like a lump of rocks in his stomach. The faint comfort his mother had given him about the men passing without pain felt diminished compared to the guilt he felt knowing that he had sent them to their deaths.
Never again. Angus swore. If anyone is going to kill that witch, it is going to be me. Nae me men, and nae any proxy…only me. I’ll shove that dagger into her heart with me bare hands.
“It is nae yer fault, Angus,” Lady Isobel said knowingly. “We never kent she would have been so strong.”
“I ken, Mother.” His words were placating but his tone was hollow and it showed how empty he felt.
Lady Isobel left him with a request—a futile one, Angus thought—for him to not take the men’s death to heart and for him to try and get some rest. He heard the door close, with his eyes looking down on the faded swirls of the wooden desk under his hands. How could he not take it to heart?
Running a hand over his face, Angus left the meeting room and the citadel entirely. Striding over the low-cut grass, he nodded in return to those who greeted him and went directly to the stables. His horse, Titan, a massive grey destrier, stood a good five hands over every other steed in the stable. His gaze was dark and intimidating, scaring most of the stable hands away. There were only two men besides himself who were willing and able to take care of Titan.
He entered and spotted the horse, whose head had jerked up at the sound of his footsteps. Over the stall, he reached out and fondled the stallion’s jaw. “Ready for a ride, boy?”
A part of him was always prepared for an answer whenever he spoke to the animal and despite knowing it was foolish, he was always disappointed when he got none. Leading Titan out, he saddled him quickly and heaved himself into the seat, and grasped the reins.
He had to speak to someone, and he felt ashamed for not thinking of it sooner—their village priest, Father Matthew. If he was going to fight fire with fire, then he needed to know exactly what kind of dark arts he was up against. The only other option, one that the Christian in him disliked, was to see a Druid, if the holy man did not give him much. He never got to see either as a frantic squire came running to him.
“Me Laird, yer brother and…” the poor boy was out of breath but the word brother had grabbed Angus’ attention anyway.
He jumped off the horse and grabbed the panting squire, “Me brother what?”
“He…” the boy was pale. “I overheard him sayin’ he and his friends are gonna find the fire witch and kill her. They just went off to the gate.”
God’s Blood! Angus leaped into the saddle and spurred Titan into a gallop towards the woods. Vivid visions of his brother made unrecognizable by black burns over his face and body made Angus’ blood run cold. If Malcolm did not get killed by the witch, he would damn sure kill the foolish boy himself.
