Demon Sword

'Some went,' said the miller. 'Dougal Red lost his sons at Leethoul.'

Dougal Who? Toby felt as if he'd dropped something and should turn around and look for it. 'Sir?'

'Dougal wasn't like Rae. He welcomed his Elly back. Young Kenneth lost a leg at Leethoul, of course. Ploughman with one foot'd go in circles all the time, wouldn't he?'

Oh, so that's where the conversation was heading!

Kenneth the tanner was a gloomy man, heavy in body, dark in spirit. Being a cripple, he rarely left his house, and he drank too much. Toby didn't care for him, and could not imagine him as having ever been young. Being married to screechy Elly might excuse a lot, and having a no-good son like Fat Vik a lot more.

'A house and a trade — that's what Dougal paid to buy a husband for Elly and a name for her babe. We chaffed young Kenneth a lot about what he must be selling. That Vik of theirs was born just a few months after the wedding—'bout the same time as you.'

'He's a week older than me, sir.'

Iain nodded. 'Well you're the biggest man in the glen now. He's but half a hand shorter. The two of you do stand out! I'm saying he'd no right to be calling you what he did, and I think maybe you have kin closer than me. You not know this?' he added skeptically.

'No, sir. I never guessed.'

Did the miller really think he was that stupid? Of course he'd known. It was obvious. They were the same age and almost the same size. Fat Vik had straight black hair, Toby's was brown and curly, but at school their height had marked them out in their age row. They'd always been foes. The other boys had taunted them by calling them the Twins, until they'd learned better, for that had been the one way to unite them. No one could ever prove it, but it was a reasonable guess that they'd been sired by the same anonymous English soldier. Toby Strangerson had a half-brother who had just tried to get him killed.

Forget him. Vik Tanner was a liar, a lazy do-nothing, a bully who pestered young girls and already drank more than his stepfather. He wouldn't even make good pike bait.

Much more interesting was why Iain the miller was confessing his own kinship — now, after all these years. From what Toby could recall of the glen's complex lineages, if he was related to Iain, then he was related somehow to at least a quarter of Fillan, quite apart from the general Campbell connection. They could have said, couldn't they? So he wasn't a Campbell and never could be, would it have been so terrible to acknowledge a motherless, fatherless boy being raised by the local witchwife, who was older than anyone and out of her mind half the time? It wouldn't have needed much effort. Couldn't any of them have broken the wall of silence?

And why had one of them done so now? It was too late for a woman to play auntie and hug a toddler who had fallen and hurt his knee. It was too late for a man to take another boy along when he took his own sons to dangle worms in the loch or poach the laird's deer — which everyone tried, but few ever managed. None of them had ever said. Or done.

The miller had been kind enough. He had let little Toby lead the donkey around, but he let all the kids do that. He still dropped off a sack of meal to Granny Nan once in a while — but a lot of the villagers brought her gifts. They did that because she was the witchwife and kept the hob happy, not because she'd taken in a rejected, abused girl and saved her baby and managed to rear it without even the help of a wet nurse.

So why had Iain the miller let out the secret now? Was he testing Toby's loyalties? He took English silver, too. He probably made more money out of the garrison than anyone else did. He had just rescued Toby from a very nasty confrontation.

The old man was waiting for a response, and the cart was under the black walls of the castle already. On the open turf, the Sassenachs were at their drill, marching to the beat of a drummer. A brief moment of sunshine made their helmets and muskets gleam, then they were hidden as the track detoured around a spur of rock.

'You're telling me that Vik Tanner may be my brother, sir?'

'It's possible. I wouldn't say it to anyone else.'

'Neither would I.' Fat Vik wasn't worth the horse dung to turn him green.

Iain turned the cart into the archway. 'You'll have to decide soon, Toby Strangerson. You've got no inheritance in the glen. Will you be going off to seek your fortune elsewhere, do you think, one of these days?'

Toby would like nothing better than to wipe the glen off his feet and begone forever, but he couldn't go yet, and what the miller seemed to be hinting was that the village was no longer safe for him.

'Granny Nan needs me.'

The cart clattered through the gate and into the echoing yard. The old man reined in and the horse lumbered to a halt. He turned his clever piggy eyes to study his passenger. Now he was going to get to the point.

'You're a strapping lad, Toby,' he wheezed. 'Whose man are you to be? You won't have much time. Better to make a free choice than swear an oath with a blade under your chin. Both sides are recruiting that way now.'

Meaning which side would the strapping lad choose? More than two years had passed since the rout of Parline Field, and Fergan was still at large — the fugitive king of Scotland was said to be hiding somewhere in the hills. The English king's puppet governor ruled in Edinburgh and, although the Lowlands were relatively quiet, rebellion still flickered in the Highlands.

Iain Miller had fought at Leethoul, the Battle of the Century; he had lost a son at Norford Bridge. He had proved his loyalty, surely? But he took the Sassenachs' money. He had just rescued their hireling, reminded him of his English parentage, and tried to turn him against the villagers with tales that might or might not be true.

If Toby gave the wrong answer it would get back to the wrong ears, and he did not know which was the right answer.

'Yes, sir. I know the problem. But my first loyalty is to Granny Nan. As long as she needs me, I'll stay in the glen.'

Rescue or not, he would never trust his throat to a Campbell.

CHAPTER THREE

As a child, Toby had been taught that Lochy Castle was a great and fabled stronghold. The English soldiers had corrected him on that. It was just a tall stone house with a high wall around it, they said. It looked impressive enough in the glen, where there were no other buildings with more than two rooms. It had withstood sieges in olden times because it had a good spring, but modern cannon would knock holes through its battlements in minutes.

Bringing cannon to the glen in the first place would be another matter, but Toby knew better than to mention that.

Another odd thing he'd learned from the Sassenachs was that, man for man, they weren't all that bad. Take an English soldier out of his uniform, and a Highlander out of his plaid, and you wouldn't be able to tell them apart. The Sassenachs had funny names, like Drake and Hopgood, or Miller and Mason, although they were soldiers, not millers or masons, and certainly not drakes. They griped in drawly voices about their food, Sergeant Drake's unending drill, and this bleak mountain wasteland they had been stuck in. They were unhappy and homesick. More than anything they yearned for female company. Perhaps the Taming of eighteen years ago had been a failure, or King Nevil preferred different techniques from his father's, or perhaps King Fergan's long- festering rebellion made a difference, but this time the garrison had been forbidden to touch the local women. As a result, all the men were screamingly horny, except presumably Captain Tailor, who had his wife here with him.

The drill squad came marching in through the archway with Sergeant Drake barking like a dog. The drummer's beat echoed back and forth between the walls. Captain Tailor lurked on the sidelines, watching. If Toby Strangerson had notions of joining the Sassenachs' Royal Fusiliers, it would not be because he wanted to spend his days doing musket drill.

He sprang down from the cart. Steward Bryce was approaching, but there was no need to wait for orders. The load must be moved to the granary, and it would travel on Toby Strangerson's back.