The Raptor of the Highlands

by Peter Wacht

  During the day they continued to walk behind the last two reivers in the column, most of their attention focused on the ground in front of them. They had gotten better at it, so much so that by the fourth day they had mastered the skill and rarely fell down anymore, though the thought of being dragged behind the horses for a short time as a brief respite did appeal to them from time to time.

  The nights were harder. For Oso, he had to sit in silence against the tree as the reivers took into Killeran’s tent, and then a few hours later dragged him out. Killeran was very good at what he was doing, making sure he didn’t break any bones. But that didn’t prevent him from inflicting a great deal of pain.

  The second night, after Thomas’ latest ordeal, Oso asked what Killeran was doing to him and why. In a mechanical voice, Thomas replayed the events of the past few hours, explaining how Killeran began with the cestus and then moved on to the flail. Eventually Killeran grew bored with trying to beat information out of him and let him go for the night.

  The story chilled Oso’s heart. He couldn’t understand how his friend could endure so much. Yet he had. Night after night. Though Thomas had ordered Oso not to blame himself, he could not rid himself of the guilt that plagued him. However, instead of letting the guilt sit within his heart and fester, he used it for a more positive purpose, promising himself that when the time came to repay his debt to Thomas, he would be ready.

  Thomas actually began to enjoy the days. At least then any pain he felt was inflicted by his own carelessness. Killeran succeeded only in finding out Thomas’ name, and that because a reiver heard Oso call him that when they were talking one night. After a while, Killeran hadn’t bothered to ask questions. He only wanted to inflict pain, taking a sadistic pleasure in the task.

  Thomas hated Killeran. He hated him more than he had ever hated anything or anyone in his life. After that first night in Killeran’s tent, and having to feel those cestus pound into his body again and again, he swore to himself that one day Killeran would die a slow, painful death. Every night thereafter he swore the oath. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept him from breaking.

  On the evening of the fourth day, as the sun slowly slid behind the mountaintops, the column of reivers finally rode into a small valley surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs. Where the valley narrowed Killeran had constructed a large, square wooden palisade. Watch towers stood on each corner made of stone connected to a thirty-foot-high wall constructed from the stoutest trees in the Highlands. A ditch filled with wooden spikes surrounded the fort, with just enough space between the two to allow his soldiers to shoot anyone foolish enough to come too close.

  Within the compound were Killeran’s private quarters, barracks for his soldiers and the slave pens. At times he thought it was all a bit much when he considered the power exercised by his warlocks, as no sane Highlander would come near the walls. Of course, at times he doubted the sanity of the Highlanders with their never-ending desire to disrupt his plans.

  “So how do you two like your new home?” asked Killeran, who had ridden back from the head of the column. The boys’ expressions were the same — hard, flinty, filled with malice.

  Killeran laughed. They could dream of whatever they wanted now, even his death, but once they were in the mines they would think of little else but their own deaths.

  “Sergeant, escort these two to the cells beneath the barracks. I don’t want them mixed with the other workers yet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Killeran rode triumphantly into his fortress, the sergeant and a few reivers prodded Thomas and Oso through the gates. It looked very much like they had expected. There were two large barracks, one built next to the outer walls, the other parallel to it that served as the reivers’ quarters. Another barracks, on the other side of the fort, and a good distance away from the other two, must be for the warlocks. No sane man would stay near a warlock any closer than necessary. A smaller barracks, which resembled a quaint cabin, they quickly discovered to be Killeran’s, as he threw his reins to a guard and strode up the steps into his quarters. Then they saw the cages.

  Near the warlocks’ barracks, running along the outer palisade, were five steel pens. They resembled the cages used when tracking dangerous animals, but were built on a much larger scale.

  Thomas and Oso stopped dead in their tracks, unable to take their eyes from them. They were filled with people, a few to the point where there was barely any room to sit or lie down. The slave pens. Both Thomas and Oso had heard of them, but no one who had ever seen them had escaped from the fort before.

  The sight sickened them. The people were dirty and unkempt, and obviously undernourished. Their clothes were nothing more than rags. A tear came to Thomas’ eye. There were children in the cages, many children, and they looked to be doing the worst of all.

  The sergeant poked them from behind with the butt of his spear, forcing Thomas and Oso forward. He directed them to the reivers’ barracks. As they passed closer to the slave pens, Thomas averted his eyes. He couldn’t bear to look. The pain he had endured during the past four days was nothing compared to what he experienced now. What shocked him the most upon seeing the Highlanders in the cages was not their appearance, but rather their manner.

  The most distinguishing characteristic of any Highlander was attitude. They held a confidence in themselves unseen in many other lands. Not arrogance, but a quiet belief in their abilities and in their Kingdom. Now, their eyes were dull and held no life, the confidence stolen. Nothing was there, not even hope.

  And it was his fault. He was the Lord of the Highlands, or would be, and he had done nothing to help these people. Nothing at all. He had stayed safely on the Isle of Mist while his people, the people he was responsible for, suffered. Guilt rushed into him, filling up every pore and crevice within his body. He was ashamed of who he was. He was ashamed at what his grandfather would say if he could see what had happened. He was ashamed most of all of himself, and he didn’t think anything he did in the future could ever take that shame away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Mines

  The day after arriving at Killeran’s compound, Thomas and Oso entered the mines. Killeran hoped that the experience would soften the green-eyed boy, since his attempts during the journey had failed. There were other things besides pain that would serve Killeran’s purpose, many of which could be found hundreds of feet below ground.

  The smoky torches struggled in vain against the encroaching darkness. Spaced one hundred feet apart on the roughly cut wall, they were no more than pinpricks in a sea of black. To the miners, though, light or dark was of little consequence. You worked more with your hands than your eyes.

  The dreariness and hopelessness of the mines immediately pushed Thomas into planning an escape, he had nothing else to think about while hammering away at the rock. Unfortunately, any path he chose was fraught with one guarantee. He would have to deal with the warlocks.

  Yet, the plan that he formed during the monotonous, endless hours of black drudgery was much more ambitious than simply he and Oso escaping. He would not leave this place until every Highlander here did so before him. During the first night in his cell beneath the reivers’ barracks, Thomas did a much better job of torturing himself than Killeran ever had. The faces of the Highlanders he had seen upon entering the fort — the sad, lost looks; the resignation in their eyes — continually played through his mind. He lay on the hard stone floor in a cold sweat, and when he finally did fall asleep a few hours before dawn, he would have preferred to stay awake.

  The face of a small boy popped into his dreams. He was lying on his side up against the steel bars, looking out at what was going on in the fort. The vitality expected in a child was missing from his eyes. He should have been smiling and playing with his friends on the village green. Instead he was locked in a cage, covered in dirt and eating watery soup for his only meal of the day.

  In the dream, the boy stared at Thomas for what seemed like days, but this
time the eyes were alive — with accusation. He knew that he was in the cage because of Thomas. The boy was much too weak to even voice his thoughts. Yet his eyes spoke for him: Why? Why do you let them keep me here? Thomas didn’t know how to answer.

  That nightmare gave way to another, of an old woman cradling a crying child in her arms. She too rested against the steel bars, using them to support her aching back. The woman wouldn’t last in the mines much longer, and she knew it. The girl wasn’t her daughter, but there was no one else in the cage who could care for her. Her mother had died earlier in the day. She had given her daughter part of her daily ration to keep her strong, but it had only hastened her own demise. The old woman raised her head to meet his watching eyes. He knew what she was thinking: We die and you do nothing. Why?

  The last vision soon followed. Thomas stood by the entrance to the mines at the edge of the pit, the dumping ground for those who died in the mines. He looked down at the corpse of a Highlander, a man who had probably once been a Marcher. The buzzards and crows had not yet ravaged his body. The Highlander had died a few hours before, the mines having slowly worn away his will to live, and having already claimed his wife. He had nothing to live for, nothing to hope for. Thomas stared down at the dead man for a long time, a deep sadness settling into his bones. He felt older than his seventeen years, but no wiser nor stronger.

  Much to his surprise, as he was about to turn away, the corpse rose to a sitting position and turned its head toward Thomas. The eyes remained lifeless and cold. “I would have fought for you,” the dead Highlander said in a raspy tone. “I would have died for you. But instead I died for nothing. Where have you been?”

  Thomas woke up shivering that morning, drenched in his own sweat. The reivers came soon after that, taking him from his cell and leading him up into the dawn to join Oso and a hundred other Highlanders on the short trek to the mines. They exited through the main gate, one reiver for every worker, then followed a steep, sloping path that went down into the foothills below the fort. The entrance to the mines appeared before him, the hole resembling the gaping maw of some beast.

  Thomas followed the man in front of him, pulled on by the chains around his ankles and neck. Glancing to his left, he saw the pit he had dreamed of, exactly as he had seen it in his sleep. Thankfully, a Marcher did not lie atop it — not yet anyway. As he trudged through the mine entrance, the oppressiveness of the tons of stone pushing down on him from above almost overwhelmed him.

  It took more than an hour for the Highlanders to reach their destination in the bowels of the earth, walking carefully on the treacherous path. The mountain was silent, except for the tread of feet on the rocky floor and the occasional curse by a reiver and the slash of a whip, urging a Highlander to move faster. The Highlanders didn’t talk in the mines. Every word said equaled one lash.

  Finally they reached their destination, a small side tunnel that branched off from the main passageway. Thomas guessed that they were at least a mile beneath the surface. One by one the reivers unchained the Highlanders from their leg shackles, then led them farther into the darkness barely held back by the torches hanging from the wall. Soon a reiver came for Thomas. He was taken down a side tunnel for several minutes until the reiver told him to stop. He heard the Highlanders ahead of him already working. The sharp clang of their pickaxes striking the rock echoed down the passageway.

  The reiver pulled a chain up from the floor of the tunnel and attached it to the shackle around Thomas’ neck. He tugged on the chain where it met the rock to ensure that the metal spike was still firmly attached to the stone. Satisfied that it was, he handed Thomas his pick and told him to start digging. If anything shined in the light, dig it out and place it in the bucket at his feet.

  Thomas stood there for several minutes, examining his current plight. The darkness didn’t bother him. His eyes allowed him to see quite well in the mines. Yet, he could understand how it affected the spirit of someone who could not see so clearly in the dark. The darkness whittled away at a person’s spirit, until there was nothing left but the sound of the pickaxe striking the stone. In time, even that wouldn’t be enough, and the person’s essence would gradually seep away, and with it the will to live.

  With nothing else to do, he went to work. The hours passed slowly, and Thomas was in no rush to accomplish his task. Refusing to work served no purpose at all and could easily end in his death. Instead, he used the time to clear his mind of the shame and guilt that had plagued him for the last few days. He had failed his people. He wasn’t there when they needed him. Though he could do nothing about the past, he could do something about their present situation.

  He spent most of the day figuring out how to escape, but not just him and Oso. No, when he left this place, he was going to take all the Highlanders with him. That would help atone for his failure to a certain extent. Then he could focus on driving Killeran and his reivers out of the Highlands once and for all. It soon became clear to him that there was only one way to do that. But he would worry about that later, focusing on the task at hand.

  A reiver walked by every so often, checking Thomas’ bucket. Thomas had found a few pieces of gold, but he threw those farther down the tunnel, instead filling the bucket with iron ore. He would work in the mines as long as necessary, but he refused to turn a profit for Killeran. In the beginning, his body ached in protest and his head pounded with each swing of the pickaxe, his tortured muscles screaming out in pain. Yet, as time passed, the activity worked the kinks out of his muscles and in a way rejuvenated him.

  The last time the reiver came he unleashed Thomas and led him back to the other miners. When he finally returned to the surface, he was surprised to see that it was almost full dark, having completely lost track of the time while beneath the ground. But his day had not been wasted. He had developed an escape plan. All it would require was a little patience and luck, but first he wanted to talk with Oso.

  Thomas and the others trudged wearily back up the steep trail, many barely able to walk. Once they reached the camp the Highlanders returned to the cages while Oso and Thomas were escorted to their cells. As he was pushed roughly back into his new home, Thomas smiled. His plan would work if he waited for the right time. Now, he just had to make sure he was still alive when it was time to act.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tossing the Caber

  “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, Thomas,” Oso whispered fiercely. “But I’m going to kill that bastard Killeran if I have to do it with my bare hands.”

  They were alone in the basement, which was divided into four cells by steel bars. The cells were empty, as the reivers had made it a point to remove the straw normally used for beds. The only light came through a small window covered by a metal grille set high in the wall. To look outside, they had to pull themselves up the steel bars of their cells. They could then see the main courtyard with Killeran’s quarters to one side and the warlocks’ barracks across the muddy common ground.

  “You’ll have to get in line, Oso,” said Thomas. “I’m sure that besides us, there are several hundred other Highlanders who also want a crack at him.”

  Oso laughed softly. The swelling on his face had gone down, and despite the strenuous activity required in the mines, the wound on his arm no longer bothered him. “You’re probably right about that.” He, too, had been greatly affected by what the reivers had done to his people. The fact that he could do nothing about it at the moment gnawed at him constantly.

  Neither saw each other during the day. Thomas was always at the front of the line of workers, while Oso was in the back. When they returned to their cells after a day in the mines, a small bowl of watery gruel always sat waiting on the floor for them, hours cold. They dug into the slop hungrily, eating in silence. And each night they became restless, pacing around their small cells in frustration.

  Thomas decided to wait before he told Oso his plan for escaping. There was no reason to give him a sense of false hope, and he didn’t know
how long he would have to wait for the right circumstances. It was a very simple plan, really, but one that depended on a key variable over which Thomas had no control. He’d have to watch and wait, and be ready to strike when the time was right.

  “So how do the Highlanders stand now against the reivers?” asked Thomas.

  His question served two purposes. First, he wanted to change the subject, as he could see that Oso was getting worked up over their current predicament. He hadn’t known his new friend for long, but he had learned much about him in that short span of time. One of Oso’s primary characteristics was the need for action. If something needed to be done, he wanted to do it, and right away.

  Unfortunately, what Oso wanted to accomplish at the moment was all but impossible, yet his need for action demanded that he do something. So he walked around his cell and pounded his palm with a fist. Second, Thomas wanted to find out more about his people since he had been away from them for so long.

  Oso sighed. He knew that his anger was useless, but it was very difficult for him to let things go. “Some have accepted defeat and think only of their own survival. Others continue the struggle.” Oso stopped pacing and looked at Thomas, though he continued to pound his fist into his palm, the smack echoing in the small basement. “Were you raised in the Highlands?”

  “For a time.”

  “Then you know what it is to be a Highlander?” Oso’s question had many underlying meanings.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Highlanders were warriors, and had been for millennia. To hear that some had given up the struggle disheartened him. Even when there was no chance of victory, throughout the centuries Highlanders had refused to surrender. Accepting defeat went against their very nature.

  Oso nodded. “Those who have given up are few. Most of us still fight, though we don’t have the resources to challenge Killeran directly. In any normal battle, yes, we could defeat him, though the casualties would be high. But we rarely have the opportunity to fight a normal battle.”