Ken Hood - Demon Sword

When the hob said he must not get into a fight, it must have meant a real fight, not a squabble with the steward. That would be no more of a fight than an ant arguing with a descending boot.

Whose man will you be? the miller had asked him. Never mind the future — whose man was he now? In Strath Fillan, he was the laird's man, beyond question. But if Bryce Campbell of Crief, the laird's agent, gave him immoral orders, what was he supposed to do about that? The laird might approve or not approve; he would certainly side with his steward against the odd-job boy. He might even be in on the fraud himself. If the smith did not come out of retirement, if Dougal was the only challenger, then the odds on the witchwife's bastard lad would be five to one at least. He was bigger now than he'd been when he took Dougal in three rounds last year.

Ironically, the Highlanders had far less to gamble with than the Sassenach soldiers, who were paid their pittance every week and had nothing to spend it on. That did not make wrong right, though. Would it be more ethical to cheat the crowd or cheat the steward, who was trying to cheat?

Could he throw a fight? Once he got going, would his fists stop if he told them to? Not likely. If Dougal couldn't take a dive, why should he expect himself to? Once the two of them started pounding each other, they would both just keep on pounding until one of them couldn't stand up any longer. That was what real men were like. So Toby must give the steward his promise, keep his job for another week, and then see what happened.

His head ached. He gave up worrying. He leaned back against a rock and watched the geese settling on Lochan na Bi and the eagles drifting in the sky. Lochy Castle stood at the foot of Beinn Bheag, facing south down Strath Fillan. Tyndrum lay just across the river and Crianlarich down at the far end, where the strath joined Glen Dochart. The villages were merely denser clumps of dwellings. Cottages were scattered all over the flats, summer shielings high on the hillsides. The fields were mostly rocks. The living was in the cattle.

The road ran south, too, but instead of turning east to follow Glen Dochart, it headed west, over the pass into Glen Falloch, and then down to Ardlui, on Loch Lomond… to Dumbarton on the Clyde, and thus the Lowlands, Glasgow, Edinburgh, England, Europe.

He'd been as far as Loch Lomond a couple of times. It was only fifteen or sixteen miles away, a half day's walk, there and back.

Tiny Lochan na Bi, beyond the castle, drained west into Glen Lochy. There was a local trail there, but the main road headed north, through the cleft between Beinn Bheag and Beinn Odhar, then on down to Bridge of Orchy and eventually to Fort William. Pondering what he had overheard in the guardroom, he remembered something from his long-ago schooldays. Neal Teacher had stressed that Lochy Castle was a strongpoint on the only real road to the northwest. That explained Captain Tailor and his men. There were few roads in the Highlands, and very, very few that were passable for wheels. Cannon traveled on wheels.

There was nothing left to eat; it was time to get back to work.

He had hardly returned to the dungeon before he gained a human assistant as well as the dogs. Between the gloom and the scraping of his shovel, he did not notice until a high-pitched voice exclaimed, "Zits!" in tones of deepest disgust.

Hamish Campbell was Neal Teacher's youngest and a recent addition to the dayworkers. He was dark, slight of build, currently growing a few inches every day. His arms hung at his sides like ropes and his ribs stuck out. He surveyed the cell and the filth around his toes with extreme disapproval.

"Uncivilized! What'd they catch you doing?"

Toby leaned on his shovel for a breather. "What'd you mean?"

"Old Bryce found me reading a book when I was supposed to be counting meal sacks." His teeth flashed in a grin.

Toby grunted, belatedly realizing that it wasn't anything he'd done that had landed him here, it was something he hadn't done: promise to cheat. Why hadn't he seen that sooner?

He could do worse for company. Hamish was bearable. He was clever, well-read, cheerful, and at times he would display a deadly sense of humor. Now he took hold of one of the sacks Toby had filled and lifted it. He put it down again quickly.

"Whew! Zitty heavy! Why don't I shovel and you carry out? Sooner we get it done, the sooner we'll be pardoned. Or do you think they'll lock us in here for years?"

"No, they'll hang us at dawn." Toby handed over the shovel, heaved a bag onto his shoulder, and left.

The shoveling took longer than the carrying out, and while the two of them were together, a boyish treble kept up a steady musket-fire of chatter.

"Can you lift two of those bags at arm's length?"

" 'Spect so." Yes, he could.

"How 'bout one of them?"

That was harder, of course…

"Wow! You shave every day now, Toby?"

"Yes."

"Why not grow a beard?" He was implying that real Highlanders had beards, most of them. Only pansy Sassenachs shaved, and not all of them, even.

"Because it's too curly. I'd look like a sheep."

Hamish sniggered. "Biggest ram in the glen!" Quieter: "How far have you gone with girls ?"

Toby dared not even smile at a girl in the glen or he would get her in trouble — but why ruin the boy's dreams by saying so? "None of your business."

Hamish was undeterred. "You going to beat Dougal Peat…? Think the smith'll make a comeback…? Can you carry two sacks? How many rounds to knock out Dougal…?"

The chatter was all right; the hero worship soon began to grate as much as the shovels. Toby had met it before. His size and fighting skill had made him the paragon of manhood for all the youngsters in the glen. There was nothing wrong with Hamish that another three or four months' growing wouldn't cure; he was just going through the stage when boys discovered they were turning into something different and worried what it would be.

Nonetheless, Toby found the adulation so unsettling that he was tempted to linger on his trips through the guardroom, gabbing with the soldiers. He didn't — it would have been unfair to the kid shoveling his heart out downstairs — but when they ribbed him about the stench that came with him now, he bantered right back at them. Often he found the Sassenachs easier to talk with than the folk of the glen, who had known him all his life. That might be because he was half Sassenach himself.

With two on the job, the work went faster. In an hour or so the dungeon floor had been scraped bare to bedrock and swept, the final load of refuse had been thrown on the bonfire outside the gate, the last rodent hunted down. Nothing remained except the repellent chains and shackles.

"Well, they didn't lock us in after all," Hamish remarked, inspecting himself in the guardroom mirror on the way out. "You look zitty uncivilized!"

"You're not too smart yourself," Toby said. His nose and mouth were choked with rank dust, his head had acquired more bruises. "Let's report to old Bryce."

"Um. Why don't just you go?" Either Hamish was worried that he had not yet done enough penance, or he had thoughts of hiding out with his book again.

"No," Toby said firmly. "You come with me."

"Looking like this?"

"Why not? It's his fault if we stink up his office."

Hamish found that idea amusing and grinned again.

The steward was still busy at his accounts. He looked up, tightening the wrinkles around his nose in disgust. Doubtless his cramped little office had taken on unpleasant airs all of a sudden, but he might be more annoyed that his pugilist had brought a witness to the meeting.

"All done, is it?"

Toby wanted to ask how often people were shut up in that underground kennel. He wanted to ask if that was where his mother had been confined when she was a prisoner of the English, being systematically raped, night after night. He wanted to ask if that was why he had been sent there today. He dared not ask such impertinent questions; he feared what the answers might be. So all he said was: