Prologue
“Come away with me now. I beg ye, Slaine!”
Anna Thamhais pulled at her wee brother’s arm, urging him to leave his toys and follow her. The young boy was already large for his age and yanked his hand out of his elder sister’s with ease.
“Nay, Anna! I want to stay here with me wooden soldiers!” Slaine was too youthful to recognize the ominous sounds coming from the fields. But his sister could, and the fear showed in her face as she made to grab her brother’s hand once more.
“Do ye hear those sounds, Slainey?” Anna said in a harsh voice as she dragged him toward the little cottage where they lived with their mother and father. “That’s the sound of bandits come from the sea to steal from us! If ye stay playin’ with yer toys, they will find ye and…”
Little Slaine cocked his head to one side and listened hard as he allowed his sister to pull him along. He had only lived for five summers, and it took him a while to discern all the noises from one another. Beneath the panicked bleating of sheep and goats and the crazed whinnying of horses, another more sinister sound could be heard. He had heard the sound the male lambs made in autumn when it was time to thin the herd before winter feeding, and the noises were exactly like that, only mixed in with the screams were discernible words.
“Help me!”
“Save us!”
“Run for yer life!”
The words jumbled together and blended into a cacophony of terror.
A feeling of horror, the first time he had experienced the emotion, made Slaine’s stomach contract into such a strong spasm, the young boy thought he would lose the porridge he had eaten for breakfast that morning.
“Anna, Mither and Faither are in the fields. We must go and help them!”
They had reached the cottage door; Anna shoved her brother in through it ahead of her.
“I’ll go get them anon, Slainey. First, ye must do as I say.” She got down on her knees in front of him and forced the frightened boy to look her in the face. “Ye must promise me, and swear an oath ye will obey, that ye will stay put where I’m stowing ye and nae come out ‘til the men have gone, or someone comes for ye. D’ye swear?”
Slaine nodded and held up his small hand in the Highland sign of taking an oath. “I promise, Anna,” he said.
“Good, I believe ye,” she said, and took him by the hand again to lead him down to the cellar. She pulled an ale barrel to one side and felt with her fingers on the flagstones underneath. It seemed to him his sister found what she was feeling for because she leaned back on her haunches and lifted up one of the flagstones with a grunt. It revealed a small hole.
“Squeeze down there, Slainey. Another summer and ye’d be too big, but ye will fit with just a bit of a pinch.”
Slaine looked down at the gaping black hole without much enthusiasm, then he remembered the sound of villagers being slaughtered, sat down on the floor, and placed his feet in the gap. He could feel nothing underneath his toes and hesitated to hoist the rest of his body inside the tight entrance. His sister took the choice away from him and pushed on his head so his bottom slid off the edge. Slaine had two choices: to hang on to the rim of the hole and dangle there or to drop down.
He dropped.
His feet hit the bottom of the hole with a sudden thump. It jolted him, not because the drop was deep, but because it was so dark inside, there was no way he could gauge the jump. He rolled for a few yards and then stopped. When he looked up, he could see the faintest outline of Anna’s head against the dim lighting in the cellar.
“Remember yer promise, Slainey,” she said to him through the gloom. He heard a dull thud and the sound of the flagstone being dragged back into place.
Slaine was all alone in the pitch-black hole.
He curled up in a ball for what seemed like hours, remembering all the stories his mother had told him about specters and ghoulies. When the heavy silence was not disturbed by any ghostly clanking chains or gibbering boggarts, Slaine uncurled his body and thought to check what had made the thumping noise before his sister had closed the hatch.
Using his fingers, he detected a sack tied with twine. It took him a while to work out how to loosen the strings, but when he finally got it open, the sack revealed a host of treasures to the touch. His fingers picked up the shape of a flint—something his parents had never allowed him to have access to before—a bundle of beeswax candles, and a lamp. Slaine had watched his parents strike the flint countless times and could do the same action with his eyes shut, which turned out to be a lucky thing.
Soon, he had one of the candles burning and could turn the sack’s contents out onto the floor. A flagon of drink and some bannocks met his hungry eyes. He looked around the small hole and up at the ceiling, which was actually the cellar’s flagstone floor. The young boy knew he was not the first person down here; there was a small chest in one corner and a few pouches next to where he had landed when his sister pushed him down here.
He was about to take a nibble of a bannock and go see what was in the chest and pouches when he heard the sound of footsteps above him. Quick as a flash, he blew out the candle and hastily swallowed his mouthful of bannock.
Rough guffaws of harsh laughter and a noise like a stoneware jug being smashed echoed above him. Then the footsteps grew fainter and disappeared.
He was torn between relighting his candle to carry on with his meal or presume the men would come back at some point.
After dithering for a while, Slaine simply sat in the dark and waited patiently for his parents or sister to come and fetch him.
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