The Hunter (Highland Guard #7)

The Hunter (Highland Guard #7)
Monica McCarty



FOREWORD

The year of our lord thirteen hundred and ten. Four years ago, Robert the Bruce’s bid for the Scottish throne seemed doomed to failure, when he was forced to flee his kingdom an outlaw. But with the help of his secret band of elite warriors known as the Highland Guard, Bruce has waged a miraculous resurgence, defeating the countrymen who stood against him to retake his kingdom north of the Tay.

With the Borders and most of Scotland’s major strongholds still occupied by English garrisons, however, the war is only half won. The biggest challenge to the Bruce’s fledgling kingship—the might of the greatest army in Christendom—is yet to come.

After a brief respite from warfare, the truce with England comes to an end when Edward II marches on the rebel Scots. From his headquarters in the heather, Bruce launches his new “pirate” warfare, harrying the English with surprise attacks and skirmishes but refusing to meet them in an open field, eventually sending King Edward and his men scurrying back to the Borders for the winter. Delaying, not deciding, the final battle to come.

But there is no peace for treachery. And this time, it will be not the warriors of the Highland Guard who come to his aid, but another powerful ally that has been by the Bruce’s side from the first: the church. The support of men such as William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, has proven invaluable, with his network of spies and “couriers of the cloth” providing much needed intelligence—intelligence that just may end up saving the Bruce’s life.

Prologue

Dundonald Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland, late June 1297

Fynlay Lamont was drunk again. Ewen Lamont sat in the back corner of the Great Hall of Dundonald Castle with the other young warriors and tried to ignore his father. But every raucous burst of laughter and belligerent boast that filtered back from Fynlay’s table near the front of the hall made Ewen want to slide deeper and deeper into his bench.

“That’s your father?” one of the Earl of Menteith’s squires asked. “No wonder you don’t talk much. He does enough for both of you.”

The other young warriors around him laughed. Ewen wanted to bury his head in shame, but he forced himself to smile at the jest and act as if it didn’t bother him. He was a man now—nearly seven and ten—not a boy. He couldn’t run away the way he’d done as a child every time his father drank too much or did something outrageous.

But his father’s lack of control—his lack of discipline—was going to ruin everything. As it was, this meeting was like a bed of dry leaves next to a fire just waiting for a spark to ignite.

Though the great lords gathered in secret here today were kinsmen, all descendants of Walter Stewart, the 3rd High Steward of Scotland, they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. They had come to see whether they could put aside those differences long enough to fight the English rather than each other. Adding Wild Fynlay to the already volatile mix of men in the room was like holding up a blacksmith’s bellows to fan the flames with hot air—lots of hot air.

But like Ewen, Fynlay Lamont of Ardlamont was Sir James Stewart’s man, and as one of Stewart’s chief battle commanders, his father had a right to be here. If there was one thing Wild Fynlay knew how to do it was fight. It was keeping the fighting contained to the battlefield that was the problem.

Wild Fynlay’s epitaph had been well earned. He was quick to fight, quick to argue, and quick to take offense. Rules, law—nothing could bind him. He did what he wanted, when and where he wanted. He’d seen Ewen’s mother thirty years ago at a local fair, decided he wanted her, and had taken her. It didn’t matter that she was betrothed to his cousin and chief, Malcolm Lamont. It didn’t matter if those choices nearly cost him—and their clan—everything.

His father hadn’t changed at all in the year since Ewen had seen him last—except for the missing finger. While Ewen had been in the Borders in the service of Sir James Stewart, the 5th Steward of Scotland, his father had gotten so drunk, he’d bet one of their kinsmen that he could pull his hand away from the table faster than the other man could draw his blade. The top joint of the middle finger on his right hand proved Fynlay wrong.

Ewen’s reckless, more-savage-than-civilized father was always getting into trouble. He spoke with his sword and his fists—usually in a whisky-induced slur. Fighting and drinking were sports of which he never tired. And wagering. Fynlay Lamont had never met a challenge too crazy or dangerous for him to like. The last time Ewen had been home, his father had wagered that he could fight a pack of wolves with his hands—bare-arsed naked.

He had, and won. Although he’d suffered a serious injury to his leg when one of the wolves had managed to get his teeth on him.

Instead of returning to Rothesay Castle for his training as he was supposed to that winter, Ewen had stayed at Ardlamont to act as chieftain to his clan while his father recovered. It had been six months before Ewen could return to Sir James’s household. He’d missed every minute of it. But if there was one thing he’d learned from Sir James, it was the importance of doing his duty.

He sure as Hades hadn’t learned it from his father. Duty and responsibility were an anathema to Fynlay Lamont. He left everyone else to clean up his mess. First Sir James, and now, if he got his wish, Ewen.

But Ewen wasn’t going to back to Ardlamont. He didn’t care what his father wanted. He was going to earn a place in Stewart’s retinue and hopefully, if the men in this room could be persuaded, join the uprisings started last month by a man named William Wallace.