Prologue
Western Highlands
Scotland
1272
Thundering hooves echoed through the dark, misty Scottish night.
Robert MacQuarrie leaned into his massive black destrier, urging his mount to give him all the speed the animal could muster.
He rode like a madman, without care or caution, his only thought to reach Merlegh Hall before it was too late.
Before his friend Thomas MacGahan took his last gasping breath.
Thomas was more than a mere friend. If not for him, Robert would have died in battle on the point of a Saracen spear. A spear Thomas had taken in his stead and lived to tell about it.
He owed his life to Thomas.
Robert kicked the sides of the wild beast he rode, demanding more.
Faster.
“He calls for you, MacQuarrie. To be at his side when his spirit departs his poor broken body. To carry out his last request.”
The watery blue eyes of the old shepherd who’d brought Robert the message haunted his memory now.
“I dinna believe he’ll last through the night. You maun ride hard, lad, if yer to fulfill his final wishes.”
Robert had just left an audience with his king, Alexander, when the messenger had arrived. In two days’ time, he was to accompany Alexander to the wedding of a fellow King’s Guard, Connor MacKiernan. Learning his friend Connor had found a woman to settle his wandering ways, Robert had left the king’s chambers with a full heart. Though there was the little matter of the rumored threats against Connor’s safety that concerned Alexander, it should be nothing too serious. Certainly nothing that he and Connor couldn’t handle together. They were, after all, two of Alexander’s finest.
Robert had been on his way to find a celebratory libation or two when the exhausted shepherd had entered his life, sending him on this urgent mission.
For Thomas to die in such a fashion simply wasn’t fair.
Not that Robbie considered himself a man to waste undue thoughts as to the fairness of life. The things he’d seen, the places he’d been had taught him well the lesson that there was little in the way of fairness in this world.
But this, the loss of a warrior like Thomas to such a cruel twist of fate, brought a cry of foul to Robert’s lips.
Thomas, who’d survived more battles than most men ever fought, laid low by a sharp turn in a muddy track at mountain’s edge.
The warrior and his horse had tumbled over the precipice, the great beast landing on top of Thomas on a ledge below. Now, instead of a quick death on a glorious battlefield, Thomas faced the slow agony of drowning in his own fluids.
Ahead of him, the flicker of light caught Robert’s attention.
Torches. He’d reached his destination at last.
The faces surrounding him as he made his way into the hall were a blur, his thoughts focused on one man only.
A woman—a redhead, of all the foul luck—approached, the keys dangling from her waist announcing her position as Merlegh’s chatelaine.
“Come with me. He awaits you.”
Following the woman’s steps, he hurried through the dark hallways. If the shepherd’s warning hadn’t been enough to convince him of the seriousness of Thomas’s condition, the grim faces he saw here certainly did. The expressions of those he passed and that of the chatelaine. A redhead. Always a bad sign for him.
After what seemed an eternity, he entered his friend’s room.
“Robbie? Is that you?” Thomas lay in the center of a great bed, his voice weak as he asked the question.