[Immortal Highlander, Clan Skaraven 01.0] Brennus

by Hazel Hunter

  “Ruadri,” Brennus called out. “We need a shaman over here.”

  The big man staggered to the War Master first. “He but fainted.” He took slower steps to approach Althea, and held up his hand between them as the ink on his forearms glowed a pale blue. “You arenae dead, my lady.”

  “I’m not,” she agreed but blinked at him. “Why?”

  He swallowed. “I feel what you are, but I cannae fathom it. ’Tis no’ possible without a druid spell of great power.”

  Brennus reached out and grabbed the shaman’s arm. “Never tell me she’s awakened to immortality.” When Ruadri nodded slowly he released him and looked at his love. “You did this.”

  “Maybe. I do have druid blood.” She showed him his clan ring. “And this.”

  “We carved our clan rings from sacred oak, to protect us,” the shaman said. “Bren, we were wearing the rings when we were awakened. They still contain the magic of the spell. Giving yours to your lady did the same for her.”

  The Skaraven began looking at each other with broad smiles.

  “We didn’t get the others back, did we?” Althea asked Brennus, and sighed when he shook his head. “We can’t give up on them.”

  “We willnae, my lady.” He pressed her slim hand over his heart. “We shall find them again, and rescue the ladies, and defeat the famhairean. I swear it.”

  “Then I think I can marry you,” Althea said, and smiled at their clan. “It’s time things changed for the Skaraven. I’m going to be part of that now. That means this clan is no longer male-only.” She touched the ring again as she looked up at Brennus. “You don’t mind, do you Chieftain?”

  She laughed as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her back toward their home.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IN A SMALL room above a noisy village tavern, Oriana Embry sat and watched the images moving across the rough surface of Bhaltair Flen’s bespelled crystal. The Skaraven Chieftain carried his laughing lady from an empty grave into a maze of ancient tors, followed by the rest of the clan.

  “It doesnae show how we may find our way to Dun Mor, Master,” she observed. “’Twould be better to ken where ’tis, so that in need we may call on the Skaraven directly.”

  “My dear one, the clan despises intruders almost as much as druid kind,” Bhaltair said drily. “I wouldnae stray near the place even if it meant disincarnating.”

  Once the vision faded she rested her chin on her hand. “But do you no’ think it curious, Master, that a mere ring awakened the chieftain’s lady love? ’Tis no’ how our magic works.”

  “’Tis no longer our magic.” The old druid picked up the crystal and carefully wrapped it in a protective linen. “The Skaraven possess their own power, through their battle spirits, unlike any of our talents. Now they live as immortals, and the lady came from druid kind.”

  Oriana got up to fetch him more evening brew. “’Tis no’ so very bad. The Skaraven fought bravely against the famhairean. They’ll keep searching for them until they’re found and defeated. They vow to save the druidesses from the future.”

  “’Tis the stuff of conclavist nightmares.” He rubbed a gnarled hand over his face. “You mustnae show such interest in their private matters. ’Tis unseemly. We’re to have more dealings with the clan, and we must strive to be civil—and cautious.”

  “I shall in all things, Master.” She offered a tentative smile. “I do hope you shall become their ally, like the McAra.”

  “If the Skaraven ever learn that we betrayed their plans to Hendry Greum,” Bhaltair warned, “they shall gut us both and roast us on their spits.” He winced. “’Tis to say, they shall never forgive us.”

  Her master had known that the message he’d left in his cottage would enrage the other druid. She and Bhaltair had rehearsed precisely what they would say in the presence of the flour.

  Oriana braced her hands against the table, and heard Master Flen scrape back his chair as her eyes went white. Her grandfather’s voice came from her lips, as clearly as if he were in the room. “Betrayal is something the Skaraven understand only too well, old friend.”

  THE END

  • • • • •

  Another Immortal Highlander awaits you in Cadeyrn (Immortal Highlander, Clan Skaraven Book 2).

  For a sneak peek, turn the page.

  Sneak Peek

  Cadeyrn (Immortal Highlander, Clan Skaraven Book 2)

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wedged in a corner beside a wooden bin, Lily Stover listened to the winter wind wailing outside the granary. Silly as it seemed, she wished she knew what time and day it was. Her watch had been smashed during her last beating, and calendars probably hadn’t yet been invented in fourteenth-century Scotland. She’d tried keeping count in her head, but the rotten weather and her own exhaustion blurred one day into the next. They might have been here a week, a fortnight, or even a month.

  It felt like forever.

  At least the bitterly cold gusts couldn’t get at her in her new medieval prison. The storage building’s thick stone walls had no windows, and something heavy barred the only door from the outside. For that she should be grateful, as she had only the torn, dirty clothes on her back and her sodding safety shoes, which had started to come apart at the seams.

  As long as her mind didn’t do the same she’d be aces.

  Staying alive didn’t make her heart glow with gratitude. Since being taken from her time she’d been subjected to malicious beatings, beastly conditions, and constant starvation. Her entire body felt like one great minging bruise. Working double shifts as a sous-chef in the Atlantia Princess’s busy, cramped galley had never left her feeling this filthy or knackered. If by some staggering stroke of luck she ever made it back to the twenty-first century, she was never again stepping one foot off that bloody cruise ship.

  “Can we eat grain, Lily?”

  She looked up at Emeline, the black-haired Scottish nurse who had been taken with her and the two Thomas sisters. Throughout their ordeal she’d looked after everyone without complaint, even ignoring her own wrenched shoulder and badly-bruised jaw to tend to their injuries.

  Her question perplexed Lily. They had no food other than the stingy rations the guards tossed in once a day.

  “What are you on about?” The hoarse sound of her own voice made her stomach surge, and she tried again. “Sorry. You’ve found something to eat?”

  “Maybe.” Emeline led her over to another bin at the back of the granary. She raised the heavy lid to scoop out a handful of grain. “I think it’s wheat, but I’m not sure.” She glanced over her shoulder at the sisters before she murmured, “Perrin hasn’t been eating for days.”

  Perrin Thomas, the older of the sisters, sat on the floor staring at nothing. A professional dancer, she’d been slender from the start. She’d lost at least a stone since they’d been brought back in time, whittling her delicate features and long limbs to a skeletal gauntness.

  “She’ll do better.” Lily had talked to her last night about that and several other things, and the dancer had promised to try to eat enough to keep up her strength. “Let’s have a look at it.”

  Lily inspected the kernels, which had been winnowed to remove the indigestible hull. She sifted her fingers through it to look for rot or mold, and then popped a grain in her mouth to chew it. The nutty flavor confirmed what it was. “It’s barley, but it seems all right.” She squinted at the nurse’s swollen jaw. “Soaking it for an hour will make it softer.”

  Emeline gave her a lopsided smile. “No water yet.”

  No water. Not enough food. No blankets or medicines or bandages or help. The nurse always tagged her inventories of their deprivations with that optimistic word—yet—but she knew as well as Lily what they couldn’t depend on: hope.

  A pair of golden ducat eyes, burning like cognac flambé, glared at her from her memory. They belonged to the nameless Scottish warrior who had tried to rescue her at the mountain sheep farm. When L
ily had been snatched out of his reach and carried off, he’d let out a roar of fury that still echoed in her head. He’d kept riding after her, up to the moment when the mad druids had forced them into the portal and brought them here.

  He hadn’t given up on her, and neither would she—not yet.

  “Pound it with a stone first, to break up the kernels into smaller bits. Should be easier to swallow.” When Emeline nodded and went back to the sisters, Lily sank down beside the bin, and leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  She knew she should try and eat, but reliving those precious few seconds she’d seen the man with the strange, glowing tattoo on his arm gave her the only comfort she’d known since being snatched from the outdoor market.

  Other, uglier memories decided to come first.

  The day before she’d been taken, Lily had received a vile letter from her father’s solicitor, sternly informing her that she’d been disinherited. Gourmet restaurateur and food magazine publisher Edgar Stover had reluctantly revealed that she, Lily Elizabeth Stover, wasn’t his biological child. Of course, as a bastard she had no claims to financial provision under Britain’s Inheritance Act of 1975. She was, unequivocally, cut off without a pound from the wealthiest epicure in the UK.

  Through the rest of her shift Lily had smiled. When one of the pastry chefs had asked her what was so amusing, she’d laughed and said, “I’m penniless.”

  To celebrate after work, she’d taken a demi of champagne back to her cabin to drink. Then she’d been sick, but even chundering half the night had felt glorious. At last she’d been freed. Edgar would never have her dragged back to London now. The drinking binge and her almost-delirious happiness had made her reckless. The next morning she’d asked for shore leave for the first time in six months. The head chef had agreed, with the condition that she buy some local produce for him. She’d practically skipped down the gangway to the dock at Invergordon.

  Lily opened her eyes, but she couldn’t stop seeing the rest. Renting a scooter and riding out into the country had been such fun. She’d stopped at a small farmers’ market where she’d found the sweetest gooseberries she’d ever sampled. Then the earth had exploded around her, and a huge thing shaped like a cracked-faced plastic rugby player had grabbed her by the neck.

  Her trembling hand went right to her throat, and she swallowed a mouthful of bile. Those unspeakable moments should have been blurry, but instead they’d been etched on her brain. The thing had dragged her like a carcass toward the hole in the ground. The sickening crack of bones. The silent screaming inside her head when she’d realized what he had done to her. How with one blow the thing had bashed in the head of an old farmer who had tried to save her. Then being pulled underground, and through the ground, only to be hurled into another pit filled with thrashing branches. When she’d finally landed in the fourteenth century, somehow she’d staggered to her feet to run. The thing had caught her again, and tried to strangle her before another one pushed it away.

  You cannae kill this one. The Wood Dream need all five.

  The scraping, groaning sound outside the granary brought Lily to her feet. Emeline quickly hauled Perrin away from the door, while the dancer’s younger sister, Rowan came to stand in front of it. The slushy ground outside slopped as footsteps approached, and then a thin, middle-aged man with silver-streaked dark hair and viper-green eyes stepped inside.

  “Good morning, sisters.” Hendry Greum tucked his hands behind his back, making his voluminous robe sway as he surveyed them all. “I trust you’re well?”

  “With no blankets, food, or water?” Rowan snarled back at him. “What do you think?”

  Emeline came to stand beside the carpenter, and touched her shoulder before she said to Hendry, “We’re injured and exhausted, but with some proper food and rest we’ll recover. If you continue the kind of abuse we suffered at the forest farm, I doubt any of us will survive another week.”

  The druid nodded. “Until last night I wasnae aware of how badly your conditions became. You shall be given the provisions and care you require, but first I’ll need something in return.”

  Rowan tensed and leaned forward. “We don’t have–”

  “Quiet,” Emeline snapped, silencing the carpenter as she pulled her back. She turned to Hendry. “What do you want?”

  “One of you has a new talent.” He scanned their faces like a hungry fox inside a full coop. “A talent used to help Althea Jarden during the Skaraven attack. That caused injury to many of our caraidean, and that I willnae have. Tell me who has the mind-move gift, and the three who didnae help our enemy shall be well-treated and kept safe.”

  Rowan made a rude sound. “Like we’re going to fall for that. The minute you leave the beatings and starvation will start all over again.”

  “I’ve no plans to leave,” the druid told her. “But should I need to, I’ll leave Ochd with orders to stand guard over you.”

  Perrin rose to her feet and walked up to Hendry. “So all we have to do is give you the collaborator, and the rest of us get to live? We’ll really be safe?”

  “You have my word on it,” the druid said.

  The dancer backed away from him, and then turned around to point at Lily. “It was her. She’s the one who can move things with her mind.”

  • • • • •

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  Glossary

  Here are some brief definitions to help you navigate the medieval world of the Immortal Highlanders.

  acolyte - novice druid in training

  Am Monadh Ruadh - the original Scots Gaelic name for the Cairngorm mountains, which translates to English as “the red hills”

  aye - yes

  bairn - child

  bastart - bastard

  baws - balls, testicles

  Beinn Nibheis – old Scots Gaelic for Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland

  blaeberry - European fruit that resembles the American blueberry

  blethering - chatting

  bleezin’ -drunk

  blind - cover device

  blood kin - genetic relatives

  boon - gift or favor

  Bràithrean an fhithich - Brethren of the raven

  brieve - a writ

  brilliant - British slang for excellent or marvelous

  buckler - shield

  bugger - British slang for a contemptible person

  cac - Scots gaelic for “shit”

  Caledonia - ancient Scotland

  cannae - can't

  caraidean - Scots Gaelic for “friends”

  Chieftain - the head of a specific Pritani tribe

  clout - strike

  comely - attractive

  conclave - druid ruling body

  conclavist - member of the druid ruling body

  couldnae - couldn't

  cow - derogatory term for woman

  croft - small rented farm

  cudgel - wooden club

  daft - crazy

  dinnae - don’t

  disincarnate - commit suicide

  doesnae - doesn’t


  dru-wid - Proto Celtic word; an early form of “druid”

  eagalsloc - synonym for “oubliette”; coined from Scots Gaelic for “fear” and “pit”; an inescapable hole or cell where prisoners are left to die

  ell - ancient unit of length measurement, equal to approximately 18 inches

  fack - fuck

  facking - fucking

  famhair - Scots Gaelic for giant (plural, famhairean)

  fathom - understand

  feart - Scottish or Irish for afraid

  firesteel - a piece of metal used with flint to create sparks for fire-making

  Francia - France

  Francian - French

  Gaul - ancient region that included France, Belgium, southern Netherlands, southwestern Germany, and northern Italy

  Germania - Germany

  goosed - Scottish slang for “smashed”

  greyling - species of freshwater fish in the salmon family

  hasnae - hasn’t

  Hispania - Roman name for the Iberian peninsula (modern day Portugal and Spain)

  incarnation - one of the many lifetimes of a druid

  isnae - isn’t

  keeker - black eye

  ken - know

  lad - boy

  laird - lord

  larder - pantry

  lass - girl

  league - distance measure of approximately three miles

  leannan - Scots Gaelic for “beloved”

  lochan - a small lake

  magic folk - druids

  mayhap - maybe

  mustnae - must not

  naught - nothing

  no’ - not

  NOSAS - North of Scotland Archaeology Society

  oubliette - a dungeon with an opening only at the top