Alex’s red brows slanted upward. “Dhé!” he said. “I was so frighted I just held out my sword, and it seems the enemy was obliging enough to run into it. ’Twas Ian was the braw fighter, and none better in Scotland. It was he saved me more than once.”
“Only so that you could be saving me, Alex avic,” retorted Ian, “and Lachlan saving the both of us,” he added. “Besides, it was I was so scared I could only think to run away.”
“And since you were headed for Perth, already, the only thing to do was just cut your way through the face of the enemy,” finished Archie with bland seriousness.
Ian nodded gravely. “That was the way of it. I was too frightened to think of turning around.”
And so they went on, with the same old bantering Kelpie had heard so often at Glenfern, and each of them claiming to have been more frightened than any of the rest. Kelpie listened with an odd feeling of contentment. This brotherhood, this easy straight-faced teasing which was an unspoken love between friends, was a warm and joyous thing to hear—for all that it was dangerous to have it. There was wistfulness in her heart as she walked silently among the cheerful group, and a shadow on her face.
Presently they came to a river and a small gray town on the near side. “I doubt they’ll love us there,” predicted a tall lad in Duncan kilt, “but perhaps their good Lowland sense of business will make them willing to sell us a pint or two of ale—or even good uisghebaugh, if there is such a thing outside of the Highlands.”
It was a popular suggestion, and the long Highland strides became even longer, so that Kelpie—though she denied it—had to stretch her own to keep up. As they drew near the cluster of stone houses with the somber square kirk in the center, she frowned a little. A dour, gloomy place it was! Not that it looked different, really, from other towns, but there was a bad feel to it. None of the others seemed to notice, but Kelpie’s bones were wary.
There seemed to be very few people about. Perhaps most of them had seen the Highlanders coming and gone inside. The few folk they did meet cast looks of hate at the kilted barbarians—which the barbarians, secure in the safety of numbers and reputation, found rather amusing.
An innkeeper sourly sold them ale, with black looks thrown in for good measure. “Och, wouldn’t he like to poison it, just!” said Alex in Gaelic as Kelpie refused the ale Ian offered her. It might not actually be poisoned, but it could have an evil spell on it, all the same. She said so.
“If your spells haven’t worked, I doubt anyone’s could!” Alex taunted her. “For you’ve tried hard enough, haven’t you?”