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Fearchar shoved Will hard in the chest, sending him staggering backwards as the women ran for cover at the sound of swords unsheathed from scabbards.
‘Father, no,’ shouted Fearchar’s son Drostan, weak, sickly, his voice struggling to be heard over Fearchar’s howl of rage. ‘Please, Father, let us get to the truth of this first.’
‘There is only one truth, son. For shaming me, I will cut out this wretch’s liver and make him watch as I eat it. I will feed him in chunks to my dogs.’
The men of Clan Bain gathered around them, faces rapt at the prospect of a fight to the death.
Fearchar rushed forwards. He was incredibly strong and delivered blow after crushing blow. Will managed to parry and swivel to avoid the worst of them slicing him in half, feeling the rush of air again and again as Fearchar’s blade swept past. Another blow narrowly avoided taking half his face with it and clipped his arm instead. Blood sprayed out onto the onlookers, who took a step back. His uncle bellowed out his anger, and then their swords came together with a deafening scrape as Fearchar threw his full weight at Will, crushing him against a wall.
Will’s head hit the stone with a dull ache and anger boiled in his belly, quickly turning to black rage. Will bit onto Fearchar’s ear, feeling the gristle crunch between his teeth. He tore on it, ripping flesh away from flesh, blood filling his mouth, metallic and warm. He spat it out into Fearchar’s face.
His opponent staggered backwards, red pumping down his cheek and onto the floor. Now was his chance. Will rushed at Fearchar, sword raised, but slipped on the blood and fell down. His sword clattered away from him and, as he reached for it, Fearchar brought his own down, hard and fast.
It was as if time held its breath.
Just as Will rolled aside the blade crunched into his hand. There was a thick, pumping feeling as blood gushed, a low-pitched ringing in his ears. Rolling to his feet by sheer determination, Will glanced back at his two fingers, severed on the floor. His vision darkened and bile rose to his throat. His senses seemed to fall away all at once, everything becoming muted, slow, as though he were drowning, sinking down and down. His clansmen, roaring. Blood pumping in his ears. Edana shouting, ‘Kill him, Fearchar, kill the raping bastard.’
It all rushed back in, the stumps of his fingers turning to red hot needles of pain, a clammy sweat breaking out all over his body. He grasped his injured hand to his belly as it seeped red into his tunic, but it just intensified the pain.
In a detached way, he readied himself to die, as Fearchar rushed at him. His head was swimming, any moment he might pass out but in some bleak recess of his soul his will to live rose up and growled, ‘Fight, you coward, fight on.’
With every ounce of self-preservation he had, Will side-stepped Fearchar’s charge. The big man’s sword bit into thin air, and the momentum of his attack over-balanced him. Will staggered back to his sword, grabbing it with a hand slick with blood and charged at his uncle before he could get to his feet. Fearchar turned, and Will’s blow hit its mark, slicing across Fearchar’s chest from shoulder to hip. The man fell back down to his knees, mortally wounded. As he bled out, he stared up at Will, the light fading from his eyes, face chalk white.
‘Be a man. Finish it,’ he gurgled, through a mouth filling with blood.
‘Forgive me,’ said Will as he thrust his sword straight through Fearchar’s heart.
He pulled it out, watching the life’s blood of Laird Fearchar Bain pump out all over the hall floor. There was a moment of shocked silence then his uncle’s body fell sideways to a collective gasp from the onlookers. Will wiped his sword on his uncle’s body and turned to his clansmen.
‘Does anyone have anything to say?’ he bellowed in a rage, hearing his voice echo off the walls. His mind screamed in agony but he did not show a trace of it.
Silence followed his words, punctuated only by the drip, drip, drip of blood hitting the floor from his ruined hand.
‘Any one of you pack of wolves want to challenge me to be Laird here?’
There, he had said it, and it had been a long time coming. Every man in the hall knew it would have ended this way eventually. Fearchar’s resentment of his nephew, his strength, his will to fight, the way he was respected and feared by his clansmen, had long been festering like an abscess, infecting the clan with division and uncertainty. To many, there was only ever going to be one outcome - a mortal struggle for supremacy.
Will swept his eyes around the hall at the faces of the Bains, hard bastards all of them. He pointed at Drostan, Fearchar’s son, white-faced and weeping with shock on the dais. ‘Do you want his son to lead you?’ he shouted. ‘This pup cannot fight. He cannot face down our enemies, and you know we have many, all clamouring for our demise. You have a choice here and now. Do you follow strength or blood?’
Silence.
‘If it is blood, come at me now. The first to attack is the first of many to fall as I am not done with this life yet. So I ask again, for the last time, strength or blood?’
‘Strength,’ shouted one man and he saw it was his friend Waldrick and nodded his thanks. Then others joined the chorus. ‘Strength, strength, always. That is the Bain way.’
‘Aye, we follow you, Will,’ said another.
Will took a deep breath and spat on the floor of the hall. He could still taste his uncle’s blood in his mouth. He sheathed his sword and pushed his clansmen aside to get to the her.
Edana backed away, but not quickly enough. He grabbed her around the throat with a red hand. ‘Are you happy? You got what you wanted. I made you a widow.’
‘Will, please, forgive me for lying, I…’ she began to plead, but he cut her off.
‘You would beat yourself just to get even with me? You would see me die for slighting your pride,’ he snarled with disgust. ‘What kind of a bitch are you?’
‘Please, Will you are hurting me.’
Shaking with rage and pain, he cast her aside. ‘Get out, now, while I still have it in me to be merciful and you still have your life, Edana. If you ever return to Fitheach, trust me, I will take it.’
