“There are some would say we had a dram tae many,” Kyle replied, scraping the bottom of his boot against one of the fence posts on the hog pen.
“Well, they wouldn’t be true Scotsmen,” the guard said back, then he paused to scrounge up a wad of spit from the back of his throat and hack it down into the muck.
“I’m off tae the loch,” Kyle said. “Tae freshen. Will ye join me?”
“I cannae, Laird,” the guard said. “Me wife’ll be expectin’ me shortly enough. But I will gladly join ye on the morrow’s hunt.”
“Well, that is Good enough fer me,” Kyle said, standing straight. “Then I shall see ye on the morrow, Domnal,” and he clapped the old acquaintance on the shoulder.
“‘Til the morrow, Laird,” Domnal replied, nodding gruffly. Kyle turned to resume his stroll, but first, he glanced back.
“Ye ken me brither is the Laird,” Kyle added as he turned. “There is nay need tae call me such.”
“Old habits die hard,” Domnal said back.
“But I’ve never been the laird,” Kyle said, raising his eyebrow.
“Bugger off then,” Domnal said in response, and the two shared a breakout smile. They had known each other for some time. When Domnal had come back from the war, Kyle, just a young boy then, drank up his stories with fascination. As he had grown, Domnal had shown him how to swing a sword, at least at first, and they often hunted together.
“On the morrow then,” Kyle said, then he clicked his tongue and turned back toward the gate. He was excited about the hunt the next day. About once a month, or as often as he could muster, he would ride out with a few guardsmen and spend most of the day tracking game through the slopping hills and forests that lay about McGowan castle.
It was his preferred way to spend time in that peacetime lull. He had been raised in a time of war, but now that he was old enough to fight, and fight he could, there was no war to be found. Only the rare band of outlaws in the countryside, though they had learned several years ago that the pastures about McGowan castle were well guarded, and they had all drifted South and Eastward. In short, Kyle was terribly bored.
He walked through the gate, dodging one of the merchant carts rumbling into market, and hooked right along the outside of the wall. His strong legs carried him up and down along the bottom of the wall’s skirt until he came to a familiar rocky path that led him down toward the loch.
Kyle bounded over the loose rocks and followed the winding footpath as it curved steeply downwards into the valley, quickly leaving the sight of the castle behind as the jagged walls of stone obscured it from vision. He could smell the water wafting up through the cut, and he eagerly climbed the rest of the way down.
The loch was calm that morning, and Kyle smiled to himself as he stopped on the rocky shore, watching the ripples wash gently up against the large chunks of stone that had fallen from the valley walls over the years. It was a narrow body of water, stretching out before him and then curving out of view as it reached its long finger toward the distant sea.
Kyle quickly disrobed, tossing his garments into a loose pile out of reach from the tide, and stepped cautiously toward the water’s edge. He had known a stray stone with an edge beneath the water to cut a man’s foot, his own foot, and though he was a headstrong bull of a Scotsman, he still remembered that moment as a boy and as such always trod carefully when bathing.
He kept moving into the loch, letting the chilly northern water rise up to his chest, feeling all his muscles drawing tight and taking in a sharp breath while his nipples stiffened in the light breeze. He drew a long breath in through his nose, held it, and plunged his head beneath the surface, rearing up a second later and bellowing out,
“Haaa! Ha! Bloody freezing!” he heard his cry echo off the valley walls, and the cold water from his lion’s mane ran down the crease between his muscular shoulder blades. He stood for a moment longer, letting his echo dissipate, and suddenly felt a familiar pang of loneliness as he looked around and saw not a soul.
Something was missing, and Kyle was never more acutely aware of that fact than when he stood alone in the frigid water, shouting out to just himself. He lingered on the feeling for just a moment, but never one to be introspective, he quickly shoved the feeling away as he always did, trying his utmost to banish it entirely from his mind. The only thing he wanted to think about was the hunt in the morning, but that was a whole day away.
