by Jayne Castel
“Keep your voice down. Let’s try and leave without alerting the whole village.”
Maximus led the gelding out into the yard. Starlight bathed the space and the small wooden wagon laden with sacks of furs that awaited him. He then started to harness the garron to the cart. “Get in,” he instructed.
“Aren’t we riding the pony?” she whispered back.
Maximus snorted. “I’m riding Luchag,” he replied. “You’re not.”
“Mouse.” He heard the smile in her voice. “What kind of name is that for a pony?”
“A fitting one. Now get in … and try to hold your tongue till we get out of the village.”
Once again, he could sense her bristling displeasure, yet the woman did as bid, climbing onto the cart and making a nest for herself against the sacks.
Satisfied that Luchag was ready, Maximus swung up onto the garron’s broad back and urged him forward, turning toward the archway that led out into Fintry’s main street.
Maximus’s gaze traveled east, to where the horizon was just starting to lighten.
I should have left earlier.
The thought was uncharitable. Nonetheless, part of him wished he’d risen from his bed an hour before. That way, he would have already been on the road when Heather went looking for him.
She’d only have set off on foot alone, he reminded himself. This way, at least she’s safe from Galbraith until Stirling.
Maximus tensed. What did he care? One night in her company and this woman had clearly bewitched him. The sooner they parted ways, the better.
Fintry slumbered as Luchag clip-clopped his way through the village. It was a still, frosty morning, and Maximus’s breathing steamed in the gelid air. Fintry huddled in the Strath of Endrick Water—a large wooded valley nestled between the Campsie Fells and the Fintry Hills. In daylight, it was a pretty spot, yet Maximus was relieved to bid the village goodbye.
Rarely had a night at an inn caused him so much trouble.
The unpaved road led them out of Fintry and into an oakwood. And there, looming against the dark sky, its grey walls glowing in the silvery starlight, rose Culcreuch Castle.
The home of the young man Maximus had humiliated the night before.
Maximus’s mouth thinned at the sight of the fortress. Heather really did have to get away from Fintry. Galbraith wouldn’t leave things be now, not after last night’s shaming.
Turning his gaze from the castle, he looked north-east. Beyond those wooded hills was Stirling, and he was impatient to reach his destination.
“Look!” Heather’s voice cut through the predawn stillness. “That must be the star folk are talking about?”
Maximus turned in the saddle, his gaze rising to the heavens and the comet he knew his traveling companion had seen. “Yes,” he said softly, his gaze settling upon the bright smudge against the inky void beyond. “The Broom-star.”
“One of the customers called it the ‘fire-tailed star’ yesterday. I meant to go out and look for it last night … but I forgot.” Her voice trailed off, and he caught the note of embarrassment in it.
Maximus shifted his attention to the cloaked figure perched behind him. Heather was gripping the sides of the cart in an attempt to make the bumpy ride more comfortable. She was deliberately keeping her gaze trained up at the sky, to avoid looking his way.
“It goes by many names,” he replied. “For it appears in the sky every seventy-five years or so.”
Silence fell between them for a few moments before Heather replied. “How do ye know this?”
Maximus’s mouth curved. “You’d be surprised what I know.”
“The old man who told me about it said the star heralds change,” she said after another pause. “Do you think he’s right?”
Maximus glanced away. To him, the Broom-star meant much more than that. The cycle of the comet’s return had guided his existence over the last thousand years. He looked to its coming with both anticipation and dread. Anticipation that he might finally break the curse upon him, and dread that still—cycle after cycle—the time wouldn’t be right.
The star was why he was traveling to Stirling, reluctantly emerging from the wilderness to see if his time had finally come. The Broom-star was the first part of the riddle that he, Cassian, and Draco had struggled to solve.
Maximus could still remember the bandruí’s cold voice filtering through the hut as she said the words he’d memorized.
When the Broom-star crosses the sky,
And the Hammer strikes the fort
Upon the Shelving Slope.
When the White Hawk and the Dragon wed,
Only then will the curse be broke.
All this time, and they’d only ever solved the first line of the riddle. Maybe, with the Broom-star’s arrival this time, the rest would be revealed to them.
“To many, its coming represents a portent or ill omen,” he replied finally. “Three centuries ago, the English saw it in the sky … not long before the Normans conquered them.”
“Maybe it bodes ill for them again.” Maximus noted the fierce edge to Heather’s voice. Like most folk of this wild land, she loathed the English. “Maybe we will finally drive them away.”
Maximus turned from her, his gaze scanning the shadowed road ahead. “Perhaps,” he murmured. “After all … your ancestors repelled invaders, time after time, in the past.”
“They did,” she agreed, pride lacing her voice.
The fighting between the English and the Scots had gone on for a long while. But in all his years in this land, Maximus had never known their relationship to be as fraught as it was now.
An ambitious man named Edward sat upon the English throne, and he’d launched a number of campaigns north of Hadrian’s Wall. The last had ended in bloodshed for the English, but that didn’t mean they were defeated.
In Dumfries, Maximus had heard that English soldiers were raiding north of The Wall again. Word was that they were gathering for another push north.
Maximus’s mouth thinned then. War. When you lived as long as he had, you knew it was one constant. No matter what changed through the centuries, man’s need to conquer remained. And it would until the world ended.
IX
ALONE
Culcreuch Castle
Fintry
“I TAUGHT YE better than that, lad … didn’t I say ‘never let a stranger beat ye on yer own lands’?”
Cory Galbraith shifted awkwardly, pain lancing up his left leg. His knee throbbed dully like toothache, as did his left hand, yet he didn’t take his attention from the man who sat sprawled upon a high-backed chair before him.
Logan Galbraith, laird of these lands, wasn’t a man you took your eyes off. A wolf-skin cloak covered his father’s broad shoulders, making the man look even more intimidating than usual.
“Aye, Da,” he muttered. “I underestimated the stranger.” Cory’s belly cramped at the memory. He was rarely beaten in a fight, and defeat tasted like vinegar in his mouth.
Laird Galbraith’s sharp green eyes narrowed. “He made a fool of ye.”
Cory clenched his jaw. He didn’t need his old man to state the obvious, especially not with a hall of his warriors looking on.
Seated next to the laird upon the dais, his mother, Lena, fixed her son with a wintry look. As always, an embroidery project sat upon her lap. Her mouth pursed in displeasure, and she looked down her nose at him. Clearly, she was taking her husband’s side on this one. “Let me guess,” Lady Galbraith spoke up, her tone sharp. “Ye were making a nuisance of yerself over that woman again?”
Humiliation, hot and prickly, washed over Cory. He could imagine the smirks on the men lolling at the tables around him as they broke their fast with fresh bannock, oaten porridge, and tankards of fresh milk.
Wisely, he kept his gaze fixed upon the dais.
Diarmid and Brodric stood behind him. He knew they wouldn’t be smirking, for his friends both shared his humiliation.
That stranger had
wiped the floor with them.
“I thought as much,” his mother continued, taking his silence as agreement. “Yer cousin’s widow isn’t worthy of ye, Cory. Why aren’t ye setting yer sights higher?”
Cory ground his teeth. He’d tried—but all the matches his parents presented him with didn’t interest him.
He’d wanted Heather for a long while. He remembered the day she’d arrived in Fintry, perched behind his grinning cousin. The man had looked unbearably smug that day, returning home from Dunnottar to take up his father’s forge and bringing his bonny De Keith wife with him.
Cory had watched Iain help Heather off the horse—his gaze devouring the lass’s curvaceous form, her saucy smile, and mane of walnut-colored hair—and had decided then and there that one day, Heather would be his.
“Heather should wed again,” he growled finally. “And I will be her husband.”
“Well, clearly the lass doesn’t want ye,” his father rumbled. Logan Galbraith leaned back in his chair, stretching out his long legs before him and crossing them at the ankle. “Ye can’t force a woman’s affection, lad.”
Cory inhaled deeply. He’d had just about enough of his father’s condescension. “Maybe she’ll look upon me differently if I lop off that stranger’s head,” he snarled.
His mother’s lips compressed. “What a barbaric notion.”
However, next to her, the Galbraith laird let out a soft chuckle. “Ye think fear will make her succumb to ye?”
Cory held his ground, even if the throb in his hand now pulsed in time with his heartbeat. “Aye. Once she realizes that I’ll kill any who thwart me, she’ll see sense.”
“Heather De Keith isn’t the type to be cowed,” his mother pointed out coldly. “Lord knows, yer cousin tried.”
Indeed, he had. All of Fintry knew of Iain and Heather’s fiery union. Their shouting could be heard across the village at times, and more than once, Heather had emerged from the forge with a blackened eye.
“If ye want to avenge yerself on that stranger, go ahead,” his father said with a swipe of a ring-encrusted hand. “But don’t do it for that widow … do it for yer clan.” Logan Galbraith’s face had gone hard.
“He’ll likely be long gone by now,” Lena pointed out. “No man lingers in a place where he’s not wanted.”
The laird cast his wife an irritated look. “Then Cory will have to track him down and teach him what happens when ye cross a Galbraith.”
Heat ignited in Cory’s belly. This time, the warmth was not due to humiliation, but to anticipation. His father’s words made him long for that dark-haired foreigner’s blood.
“I will hunt him down,” Cory growled. “If I have to follow him across Scotland to do it.”
“If ye leave now, ye’ll catch up with him soon enough,” his father replied, his expression still fierce. “But don’t think I’m giving ye a host of men to assist in yer mission.”
Silence fell across the hall of Culcreuch Castle, a damp space that even the roaring hearths at each end couldn’t warm.
Cory swallowed the hot words that bubbled up within him. His father knew he couldn’t do this without help—not when he was injured. Nonetheless, he choked back his response. He could tell by the hard look in his father’s eyes that the laird was daring Cory to challenge him.
It had been like this for a while now—the push and pull between father and son. At forty-two winters, Logan Galbraith was still strong, but with each passing year, his warrior sons grew more of a threat to his hold over this keep and the clan. He knew that one day the eldest of them, Cory, was likely to rise against him, as Logan had done against his own father.
It was the way of things in their family. Old Macum Galbraith lay buried under six feet of dirt on the hill behind the castle, and it was Logan who’d put him there.
“Take Diarmid and Brodric on yer quest.” The laird broke the wintry silence. “And ye may choose three others from my guard to join ye, but no more.” His mouth twisted then. “If six of ye can’t take that foreigner down, I don’t wish to see ye grace my door ever again.”
Around him, Cory heard the sharp intake of breaths. Even his mother stiffened in her chair, her gaze sweeping to her husband.
There it was—finally—the gauntlet laid down.
Cory’s attention veered right, settling for the first time upon the table where his three younger brothers sat. Rory, Aran, and Duglas stared back at him, their gazes unflinching. The eldest of the three, Rory, wore a smirk that Cory itched to sink his fist into.
Just like him, they were the image of their father: tall, broad-shouldered, and green-eyed with wild auburn hair. And just like Cory, they’d been rivals from the moment they’d come out screaming into the world.
None of them would join him on this hunt, he knew at a glance.
They’d let him fight to recover his honor alone.
Alone. That’s how he’d been all his life, save for two friends who’d had his back since childhood. He didn’t expect things to change now.
Cory dismissed his brothers with a cool glance, his focus shifting once more to the muscular figure sprawled upon a carven chair.
“Six is all I need,” Cory finally replied, his tone gruff. Then, without another word, or glance at anyone present, he turned and limped from the hall.
X
AWKWARD QUESTIONS
“HOW IS IT ye know all about this Broom-star?” Heather asked, breaking the morning’s long silence.
Maximus allowed himself a grim smile. He’d been waiting for the question, and he could hear the wariness in her voice. This always happened when he spent more than a few hours with folk. You couldn’t live for as long as he had and not appear strange to others.
“My father told me,” he lied smoothly.
They rode north-east through a golden morning. The sun had melted the light frost, likely the last one of the year, and now warmed their faces. The oakwood had given way to a series of undulating hills, where burns glittered and the sounds of trickling water and birdsong filled the air.
Heather lapsed back into silence, digesting his answer. “So, ye were once a soldier … but now ye trap animals for their skins?” she finally asked.
“Yes, stoats, weasels, pine-martins … and on occasion, a wolf or a bear.” He glanced back over his shoulder, checking the road behind them. He felt strangely on-edge this morning. The nervousness wasn’t for himself, but for his traveling companion.
Heather was mortal. One strike of a blade to that lovely pale throat and life would leave her. She didn’t realize how vulnerable she was.
His attention shifted from the road to the woman perched on the cart. The morning sun caught the golden highlights in Heather’s hair and accentuated her lovely skin; the sight was distracting, and he resisted the pull. He needed to keep his wits about him today.
“You’re sitting on a sack full of ermine,” he continued, “which will bring me a good price in Stirling.” Ermine was the stoat’s winter coat—a pristine white fur favored by lairds.
A groove appeared between Heather’s brows. “So, ye spend yer days traveling the wilds … alone?”
“I do.”
A beat of silence followed before Heather’s frown deepened. “Isn’t it a … lonely life?”
Maximus turned away from her. He knew where this conversation was headed. “Not really … I prefer my own company.”
“And ye have never sought a wife?”
And here they were—she’d arrived at the point sooner than he’d expected. After only a short while in Heather De Keith’s company, he’d realized that the woman wasn’t one to bandy words. She could be disarmingly direct.
“No,” he replied, his gaze settling upon the garron’s furry ears.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t wish for one.” He too could be direct.
“Oh,” she replied softly, and then fell silent.
Relief filtered over Maximus, and he released a heavy sigh. He didn’t like t
o be rude, yet this woman wouldn’t leave him be.
A man like him didn’t take a wife—not if he didn’t want to answer awkward questions as the years wore on. Such as, why he didn’t seem to age, why illness never touched him, and how he could suffer a mortal wound and be healed again by morning.
The women in Maximus’s life over the years had been many—yet until Evanna, none of them had lasted longer than a couple of weeks. He always found an excuse to move on. There had been one or two he’d been truly sorry to leave, ones that had wept to see him go, but it was for the best—for them both. Out of all of them, only Evanna had refused to be ‘left’. A warrior woman to the core, she’d hunted him down, and the ugly scene that followed still pained Maximus to dwell on.
It had been his fault: he’d stayed with her for too long. It was a mistake he hadn’t repeated since. These days he kept his encounters brief, and usually paid a woman to warm his bed rather than risk tears or anger.
He couldn’t give a woman a family anyway, so there was little point in him forging a lasting relationship. In many ways, it was fortunate that the curse had rendered him infertile. The last thing he wanted was a daughter or son to track him down years later, only to wonder why their father was so youthful in appearance. More awkward questions.
Maximus Cato had been thirty-three winters old at the moment of the curse, and he hadn’t aged a day since. On the outside at least, he appeared in the prime of life, yet how he felt on the inside told a different story.
He was tired, stretched thin.
Each passing year drained him.
Heather shifted upon the sack of ermine. She’d seen Robert, the laird of the De Keiths, wear a cloak of ermine during winters past. It was a plush white fur that Heather’s mother had always coveted. But despite her husband’s position as steward of Dunnottar, they’d never been able to afford the luxurious pelt.
Amongst the sacks, Heather spied a longbow and a collection of sharp-toothed iron traps. She didn’t envy Maximus the life he’d chosen. She couldn’t think of anything she’d like less than living in the wilds alone for months at a time.
