Page 2 of Highland Slayer
Titan, heir to the Earldom of Warenton, grinned at Estevan’s statement. “Your mother is back at Ashkirk Castle,” he said,jabbing a big finger behind them. “She has sent us on ahead to your family seat of Hydra Castle and will join us there in a few weeks because she’s not finished enjoying the summer at Ashkirk yet. And do not forget your father’s new acquisition of Hollee Castle to the north. That alone should have your mother in good spirits because it means more income. She’ll not care about a gambling house.”
“Have yemetmy mother?” Estevan said incredulously. “If ye have, then ye wouldna make such a statement.”
Titan shook his head, amused at the fear demonstrated by a grown man. “The point is this—your mother is nowhere near us,” he said. “I promise, she will not hear us speaking of The Butcher’s.”
Hydra Castle, or “the Hydra,” was the dun Tarh stronghold, far north in the Highlands of Scotland. It would take them a few weeks simply to reach it, and Lares dun Tarh and his wife, Mabel, were at their Lowlands property of Ashkirk Castle they’d spent most of the summer. Even now, they were days away from it, but that wasn’t good enough for Estevan.
He was certain she could still hear them.
In fact, it was Kaladin who seemed to have the fear of God cast into him with that very same thought. No matter what Titan said, the man was living a fool’s dream. He started to groan and shake his head.
“Ye dunna know my mother,” he said. “Mabel dun Tarh knows all and sees all. Most especially, she hears all, and if she had the smallest hint that we’re going tae The Butcher’s, she’d fly over from Ashkirk and beat us all like incorrigible children. Dunna think she’ll leave yer de Wolfe arse untouched, for ye would be wrong if ye did. She’d blister ye just like the rest of us.”
Titan, an enormous man whose name suited him, started laughing. He turned to the men behind him, both English knights, to see that they were laughing also. He’d known themboth all his life, much as he’d known the dun Tarh lads most of his life. They were all intertwined because their families had all married into one another over the years. Mateo de Wolfe, off to his left, was a cousin because their grandfathers had been brothers, and Rodion de Velt was a cousin to the dun Tarh brothers, as their mother, the infamous Mabel, was a de Velt.
And that was why the three English knights were heading north.
It was a sort of exchange program that the northern English warlords had with the Earls of Torridon in the Highlands of Scotland. Lares dun Tarh, father to Estevan and Kaladin and several other sons, also happened to be the Earl of Torridon. They were deeply intermingled with the Houses of de Wolfe and de Velt, and there were times when Lares would send his sons south to spend time with the English houses, gaining experience, and then the English warlords would do the same and send some of their sons and men into the Highlands to gain experience and learn about the Scots.
It was something they’d been doing for several years, ever since Lares and Mabel’s first son, Aurelius, went to foster with the House of de Wolfe. Because Mabel was English, meaning their sons were half English, Lares had given his sons the choice of training as English knights, but so far, Aurelius was the only one who had actually earned his spurs.
However, Kaladin, now coming of age, was a permanent fixture at Castle Questing, seat of the House of de Wolfe, and he had decided to earn his spurs also. Baby Bull, as Kaladin was called, was already an astonishingly good knight and had inherited the de Velt trait, through his mother, of two-colored eyes. One eye was brown while the other, though mostly brown, had a big spot of green in it. That gave him a most fearsome appearance.
A de Velt with a thick Scottish brogue.
But today, Kaladin as well as his brother and three cousins were heading home to Castle Hydra before the winter set in. Castle Hydra was seat of the dun Tarh clan, and they were mostly eager to go home, but it was Kaladin himself who had come up with the idea of visiting one of the most notorious gambling dens in Scotland, a place called The Butcher’s, on their way north. They would be passing so close to it that it was truly a crime—Kaladin’s own words—not to spend a little time there. Games were good fun and Kaladin had a love for them.
So, here they were.
Big, strong men hoping their mummy wouldn’t find out what they were doing.
The Butcher’s had quite a history. It had started off as a gathering of friends in an old cottage on the outskirts of Dumfries, men who wanted to gamble and drink away from their women, but the news of the place had spread and others had joined in. The little cottage had other rooms built onto it, stone chambers for more games and more men, which would seem surprising given the somewhat remote location, but it seemed that no man in Scotland—or northern England, for that matter—gave a second thought to traveling a few days to such a place for the opportunity to gamble and drink and perhaps even seek companionship from a lass or two. It had becomethatkind of a place, too.
The nameThe Butcher’shad come from the man who had founded the establishment, a member of the Douglas clan, because when his wife asked him where he was going as he headed out for the day, he would tell her “the butcher’s.” Now, the group of five warriors were heading for The Butcher’s in spite of the fear of Mabel lurking around the nearest corner.
Some things were worth the risk.
“If I am jeopardizing my arse, this had better be worth it,” Titan said dryly. “But we should be in Dumfries by now. Wherearewe, Estevan?”
Estevan looked around, to the mouth of the River Nith to his left and the endless green sea beyond. “This was supposed tae be a shortcut,” he said. “If we take the main road, we end up passing through Archibald Douglas’ lands, and he and my da are not friendly, so this is a shorter route.”
“It’snota shorter route,” Kaladin said. “But it’s a safer one.”
Estevan merely shrugged to his brother’s comment. “We should be in Dumfries by nightfall if we keep up this pace,” he said. Then he looked off to the west, where dark clouds were gathering over the waters. “Mayhap we should move a little faster. I dunna think any of us wishes tae be caught in what will soon be upon us.”
He indicated the clouds in the distance. Rodion, who had been bringing up the rear of the group, reined his big horse over toward the mouth of the river where it met with the Solway Firth. Far to the south was England and further to the west was the Irish Sea and Ireland. A cold wind blew off the water, smelling of salt and sea, rippling through the sea grass that Rodion was treading upon.
“’Tis vast here,” he said, reining his horse onto a small rise overlooking the river. “One gets a great sense of earth and sky, of air and existence. I’ve always thought that about Scotland.”
Estevan, who had pulled his horse to a pause, turned to look at him. “Ah,” he said. “The great poet speaks. Paint us a picture with yer words, Rody. Ye’re good at that.”
Rodion smiled faintly at his cousin. Much like Kaladin, he, too, bore the de Velt trait of two-colored eyes, only his were oddly less pronounced than Kaladin’s were. He was a direct descendant of the great Ajax de Velt through his eldest son, Cole, but he didn’t have nearly the pronounced eye difference thatKaladin had. It was true that Mabel also descended from Ajax de Velt through a daughter, but in their family, the women seemed to be far less affected by the eye-color trait than the males.
Something else Rodion possessed was the soul of a poet, something quite foreign to any male with the de Velt name. The de Velts, as a rule, were fearsome warlords. Ajax de Velt had been the most feared warlord in all of England during his lifetime, so the name was associated with death and warfare. But Rodion, for all of his skill as a knight, had a side to him that some men could consider weak.
As Estevan said, he painted pictures with words.
“I simply mean that everything in the world comes together in this space,” he said, indicating the river as it ran into the sea. “The water, the sky, the earth, and the air. A place like this gave birth to men, to the world we live in. It’s where Time and God collide. I feel reverence here, I suppose.”
