Prologue
Now King Hobbe [Hood] gangeth in the moors,
To come to town he has no desire;
The barons of England if they might gripe him,
They would teach him to pipe in English,
Through strength:
Be he never so stout,
Yet he is sought out
Wide and far.
The Political Songs of England, translated by Thomas Wright
Rathlin Island, three miles off the north coast of Ireland
Ides of September, 1306
Robert Bruce closed his eyes like a coward, not a king, wanting to make it stop. But the images still assaulted him, flashing before his eyes like the scenes of a nightmare.
Swords whirling and clashing in an endless wave of death. Arrows pouring from the sky in a heavy hail, turning day to night. The fierce pounding of hooves as the enormous English warhorses crushed everything in their path. The silvery shimmer of mail turned dark with blood and mud. The horror and fear on the faces of his loyal companions as they faced death. And the smell … the hideous blending of blood, sweat, and sickness that penetrated his nose, his lungs, his bones.
He covered his ears with his hands. But the howls and screams of death could not be blocked out.
For a moment he was back at the bloody battlefield of Methven. Back to the place where everything had gone so horribly wrong. Where chivalry had nearly killed him.
But it wasn’t a nightmare. Bruce opened his eyes, not to Edward of England’s wrath, but to God’s. The clash was not of swords but of lightning. The hail from the sky was not of arrows but of icy rain. The horrible howling was not screams of death but of wind. And the incessant pounding was not of hooves but of the drum of the coxswain’s hammer on the targe to set the beat of the oarsmen.
But the fear … the fear was the same. He could see it on the faces of the men around him. The knowledge they were all about to die. Not on a bloody battlefield, but on a godforsaken ship in the middle of the storm-tossed sea, while fleeing like outlaws from his own kingdom.
“King Hood” the English called him. The outlaw king. All the more humiliating for its truth. Fewer than a hundred men in twobirlinnsremained of the proud force he once thought capable of taking down the most powerful army in Christendom.
Now look at them. Less than six months after his coronation, they were a ragtag bunch of outlaws huddled together on a storm-tossed ship, some too ill to do more than hang on, others shivering and white with fear as they bailed for their lives.
Except for the Highlanders. Bruce didn’t think they would recognize fear if Lucifer himself opened the fiery gates and welcomed them to hell.
And no one was more fearless than the man charged with the task of their survival. Standing at the stern with rain streaming down his face and gale-force winds whipping around him, fighting to harness the ropes of the sail, he looked like some kind of pagan sea god eager to do battle with whatever nature threw at him.
If anyone could get them through this it was Erik MacSorley—or Hawk, as he was known since joining the Highland Guard, Bruce’s secret elite team of the most highly skilled warriors in the country. The brash seafarer had been chosen for his swimming and sailing skills, but he had bollocks the size of boulders. He seemed to relish every challenge, no matter how impossible.
This morning MacSorley had snuck them out of Dunaverty Castle right under the nose of the English army. Now, he was attempting to cross the narrow sixteen-mile channel between Kintyre in Scotland and the coast of Ireland in the worst storm Bruce had ever seen.
“Hold tight, lads,” the fierce chieftain shouted above the roar of the storm, grinning like a madman. “This is going to be a big one.”
Like most Highlanders, MacSorley had a gift for understatement.
Bruce held his breath as the wind took hold of the sail, lifting the ship as if it weighed no more than a child’s toy, carrying them over steep, towering waves, and slamming them down on the other side. For one agonizing heartbeat, the ship tilted perilously to the side, and he thought this was it—this was the time the ship would finally go over. But once again, the seafarer defied the laws of nature with a quick adjustment of the ropes and the ship popped back upright.
But not for long.
The storm came at them again with all it had. Wave after wave like high, steep cliffs that threatened to capsize them with every crashing swell, violent winds that battered the sails and swirled the seas, and heavy sheets of rain that filled the hull faster than they could bail. His heart plummeted with each creak and crack as the violent seas battered the wooden ship, making him wonder whether this would be the wave that broke them apart and put him out of his misery.
I never should have done it.I never should have gone up against the might of England and its powerful king. In the real world, David didn’t beat Goliath. In the real world, David got crushed.
