Lyall was barely ten that day when he sought escape from the dark moods of home and fell asleep in the deep woods, cradled against the thick, sinewy trunk and sprawling roots of an ancient river tree. Between those roots was his favorite fishing perch and next to an outcrop of flat rocks where a narrow, clear and swift running section of the River Tay cut through the dense forest to the south of Dunkelden Castle.

Above him, through gaps in the crown of dark and lacy yew leaves, the sun grew warm and bright and speckled over the ground like the skin on the sweetest trout. He opened his eyes then yawned. His hound Atholl lay next to him, the wolfhound snoring, snout resting on his lap.

Before Lyall could move, a bee buzzed near his nose, so he stayed perfectly still. The bee lit on his hand, which was resting on his ribs, and Lyall held his breath. Someone once warned him if he held still, a bee would never sting him, but instead it would realize he was not sweet clover and fly away.

The bee sat as still as he did, wings down, tail up, then it dropped and stung him. He yelped and jumped up, dancing around and shaking his hand with the stinger in his skin. Atholl awoke and frowning up at him as if he were mad. He pulled the stinger out and stuck his hand in the cold river water. “Hold still,” he muttered. “And a bee won't sting you.”

When his hand stopped burning he pulled it from the river. Atholl sat waiting, watching him from familiar trusting brown eyes while his thick tail began to thump on the damp ground. Lyall stood, gathering his things. “Come, you worthless hound,” he said with affection, rubbing his pet’s ears before he bent and picked up a sack full of freshly caught trout and tied it to his belt. “We are late.”

Looking up, he studied the sun moving across a wedge of blue sky, which told him they had been gone from home too long. “Mother will be worried. Come, else she will send Malcolm to prod me home with the sole of his boot and he was in a foul mood this morn. If he has to spend his time searching for me, then he will be angry and blustery and refuse to play draughts with me.

Atholl sat at Lyall’s feet, head cocked and listening. “You know how Malcolm’s anger swells and then he’s as impossible to live with as the English.” He laughed out loud, because he was jesting, preparing his sharp words for nightly bantering with his older brother. The truth was he worshipped Malcolm, who would be ten and three and was not all that much older. In less than a fortnight, Malcolm was due to leave Perthshire and Dunkelden for Angus, to Castle Rossie, where he would be fostered. The agreement had been drawn and sealed before their father was killed—the reason why home was uncomfortable and why their mother hovered around them all too closely of late and sometimes looked as if she was in a place far, far away from the rest of them. Without their father, Mother was not the same woman and added to her fretfulness was the fact that too soon her first born son would be leaving.

After their father’s body was brought home and buried in the small lime washed chapel at Dunkelden, Malcolm wandered the whole castle with his hands in fists because he did not want to leave and fought with everyone who would listen and even those who did not. Still he lost his frantic bid; all said Malcolm must do what his father wanted and foster with Ramsey. His brother was repeatedly reminded of the honor and respect of following their father’s wishes. Now that Ewane Robertson, the great warrior and friend of the king, was dead, the agreement he'd struck for Malcolm was even more important.

That same night of the death of their father and under the light of a full moon, Malcolm had dragged Lyall up to the tower parapet, pricked his hand with a knife, and made him blood- swear to protect their mother and sister in his absence.

Lyall understood that his brother would be gone all too soon. His heart grew heavy and he slowed his steps, thinking about his father’s wishes. He, the younger, did not know what his father had wanted from him, other than to grow into a man of honor. He did not like to think of his father, who had always talked to him as if he were not too young to understand, and who oft times rested his strong hand comfortably on Lyall’s shoulder as he spoke to him and told him of the world in which they lived and about the kinds of men who inhabited it.

Those moments when he forgot his resolve and thought too long about his father, his grief came back hard and strong. He would not shame himself and weep again like he had done when they buried his father’s body deep in the bowels of the small family chapel. Someday he, too, would be a great knight; he would be like the men his father spoke of, the proud and the good, and knights did not cry. He stomped faster through the woods, the mulchy leaves soft beneath his heavy boots, Atholl panting faithfully at his side.

Once Malcolm was fostered at Rossie, everything would change. He did not know what he would do when he was left at Dunkelden with naught but his flea of a sister, who shadowed him almost everywhere and drove him away this very day with her pestering, and his mother, who would coddle him and watch over him like a babe and want to know his every move.

He kicked a stone. How would he practice his bow? Who knew when he could get away to go fishing again? Now he could spy a trout and pierce it with a single draw of an arrow. His hard won skills would grow slow if he were stuck to the sides and shadows of his womenfolk.

Soon he was running, Atholl at his heels, as he played a war game and wove and spun and leapt his way home through stands of larch and pine, running faster and dodging as if they were each his enemies coming at him with lance and sword, shield and mace. His feet were quick, he knew, but not as quick as his brother’s. He swore to himself he would practice his footwork. When Malcolm came home at Yuletide, Lyall vowed he would be the faster.

With his free hand outstretched, he moved swiftly toward an old and infamous yew tree, his fingers grazing the ancient wood as he passed. Some said the old tree with its huge, clawing roots had been planted by Druids to mark a sacred well. He did not know of sacred wells, but he knew as surely as the sun rose each morn, that if he passed by the yew and touched its trunk, he would catch as many fish as he needed, which always pleased his mother. And served to irritate his older brother, who couldn’t catch any fish at all. His brother could spend from dawn to dusk at the stream or at the loch and would come up with nothing. Malcolm accepted his inability, though it frustrated him, especially when fish seemed to land in Lyall’s hands. Malcolm swore that if a stream full of leaping salmon were swimming right toward him he would come up with empty hands.

Their sister Mairi said the best way for Malcolm to catch a fish was for someone to throw one at him.

Lyall proudly patted his day’s work—a sack full of fat, speckled river trout, but froze when he heard the sudden loud crack of a branch behind him. Atholl barked. Nerves suddenly raw, Lyall’s heart beat loudly in his ears.

“Ach!” Came a worried cry. And a familiar voice.

He turned slowly, angrily, and planted his hands on his hips and looked up.

His sister’s feet and plump legs dangled from the huge yew tree above him.

“Mairi! “ He shouted at her. She was sitting on a high branch but he could not see her face. “When will you cease following me? Come Atholl.” He started to stomp away.

“Lyall! Wait! “ She swung down lower, holding the branch by her hands as she hung from the tree. “Stop! Please!“

He heard the panic in her voice.

“Stop, Lyall!”

Was she crying? He moved back to her, concerned. “What is it?”

Her face was pale and she was truly frightened. He reached up and lifted her down.

“Malcolm told me to hide here. To wait for you.” She clung to him, clutching his tunic in her tight fists and burying her face against his chest. “Oh, Lyall. They are attacking Dunkelden.”

“What?”

“Look there!” She pointed into the air, where above the tall trees a dark cloud of smoke billowed into the blue sky.

“Who?”

“I do not know, but they say Papa was a traitor and those men hung the traitor’s flag on the gates. They said that he died a traitor’s death and he betrayed the king.”

“Our father was no traitor,” he said fiercely. “Where’s Malcolm? And Mother?”

“Malcolm took me out through the back caves and made me swear to wait here in the tree for you. He went back to get mama. But, Lyall, that was a long, long time ago.” She began to sob.

“There, Mairi. Stop crying. We need to be brave.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Come,” he said easily, but feeling as frightened as she. He knew his father would be shamed if his youngest son showed fear to his sister, who he was so recently sworn to protect and not scare witless. He took a deep breath. “Stay close. I am here to protect you. That’s why Malcolm brought you here to wait for me.” He took her hand and moved more stealthily through the woods, his dog at his side. He wanted to run, he wanted to see what was happening, he wanted to try to help his brother, but sense told him to protect his sister and move cautiously. Glancing down at her, he took some bit of comfort in the fact that she had stopped crying.

Dunkelden was of motte and bailey construction, the bailey serving as the heart of the timber castle. For protection, a water ditch and spiked-wood curtain palisade encircled its raised motte, and the deep woods of Dunkelden surrounded the rear half and stood some distance away to the east and south. The back two caves had been dug at his father’s command and led out toward the east with the escape plan that one could run the few yards of open land into good cover within the dense woodland forest, which was how Malcolm had escaped with their sister.

Their father had made them practice the route repeatedly. Once, when Malcolm had asked why they needed escape caves if they were all under protection of the king, his father told them he took no pledge of protection or fealty for granted. He said that to trust was a gift you could give, one which you might not receive in return and only a fool, a dead fool, would believe otherwise. “Be aware. You must be prepared to save your own neck, my sons, and not to depend upon someone else to save it for you.”

Those words held even more meaning now that their father was gone. Why and who would do this? Who would falsely accuse their father--a great and loyal friend of the king--of betraying him, a man he loved as a brother? Lyall moved onward, his heart pounding in his chest and sweat beading on his brow, acutely aware Malcolm had not returned with their mother. Not a good sign.

Although still some distance away, as they neared the edges for the forest, he would stop, every few feet and listen sharply. But he did not hear the chaos he expected, and only once did he hear the distant thunder of horses. He turned to his sister. “Stay here. You sit. Atholl will stay with you.” He knelt down in front of her and took her small hands in his. “Do not be afraid. I will come back. Do not follow me. Do not move. You stay here. You must swear to me.” He untied the sack of fish and let it drop to the ground.

“I swear on my eyes,” she said solemnly, and he knew not then the irony in her words.

“Atholl. Stay,” he commanded. His dog sat next to Mairi, so he left them without looking back and crawled through a berry thicket, his bow catching on the branches but he was afraid to be too much in the open this close to the castle. He carefully threaded his way through another copse of trees, and edged toward the rim of the woods, moving from trunk to tree trunk, using them as shields.

He came down a small rise and over a rock outcrop where he could finally see the whole scene. Motionless in horror, he sagged against a tree, staring at something he could never imagine, before his knees gave out and he sank to the ground on his hands and knees. His breath was coming so fast he became light-headed. He crawled to the edge of a rocky rise and stared at the unbelievable scene below.

All was afire. The watch towers were gone. The drawbridge spanning the ditch was down and abandoned. No guard, none of his father’s men, though since his death many had gone back to their own families at his mother’s urging.

Flames flared from the high palisade built of huge, dense logs close to four times the height of a man. The logs had been carved to sharp points and stood as the first defenses past the ditch and surrounded the whole of the motte, there to protect the inner buildings. The roof and upper parapet of the tall wooden hall was burning, and what structures hadn’t burned nearly to the ground inside the bailey were pluming up into the air in bright and deadly flames, sending huge clouds of black smoke into the air. He saw a few of the servants leaving the castle and running down the road, their arms filled with chickens and geese or other supplies.

On the west side of the hall was his brother running down the outside stairs of the burning building, pulling along their mother, her familiar dark green hooded cloak floating behind her as they ran. They reached the third story landing and Lyall watched in horror as her cloak caught fire, the flames fanning out behind her and creeping up her clothing. He shouted but they could not hear him.

Without thinking he leapt to his feet and jumped down to the soft ground below the rocks, pausing only to catch his balance, and then he ran as if the Devil were after him, toward the edge of the forest directly across from the castle cave. He looked quickly then burst out into the open and leapt into the ditch, where he hit hard and rolled down, his arm tangled in his bow and his quiver dug into his back. The stench of pitch and the oil used to burn down the wood wall was all around him. He scrambled up the side, clawing at the dirt and rocks and mud with his hands, ash swirling about him and smoke stinging his eyes.

Once inside the dank cave, he slowed down, his breath coming in pants and his chest tight from the harsh pitch. It was dark and growing darker with each step, until there was almost no light left from the small opening now far behind him. The air was smoky and his eyes teared. He reached the wooden ladder by rote and touch, and thought then of their father’s constant demands that they practice escape every fortnight, which he and Malcolm resented, tedious as it was to them, but now proved worthy beyond all possible thought.

The ladder rungs ended at a wooden trap door and he stopped and listened closely, then pushed it open a crack and scouted the back cellar doors of the ale room, the building closest to the main hall. He swiftly pulled himself up and out and closed the trap, then scrambled to the wall and moved stealthily to the arched door, which stood open, smoke billowing inside and flames just beginning to burn dangerously through the overhead rafters. He had expected to meet Malcolm and his mother by now, on their way to the caves.

Where were they? He shot out of the door and to the shadows on south wall of the hall, edging toward the corner where the outside stairs ended. He heard a pitiful sobbing. It came not from ‘round the corner, but from the burning stables.

Inside was an inferno, the stalls all open and empty, the stock gone, flames licking up the walls. His mother lay atop a sprawled form, his brother’s blue tunic sleeve showing beneath her and her cloak hood half-covering her head. The other half of the hood and some of the cloak was burned away; she was crying hysterically.

“Mother! Malcolm?“

She looked up, his beautiful mother. Half of her face was red and blistered, her eyes tearing and red and swollen. “Lyall!”

“Who did this?”

“They are gone. The cowards threatened all at the castle, then lit their fires and left. Come. Quickly! Help me. Help your brother.” She reached out blindly toward him. “I cannot see clearly. My skin is burning and there is ash in my eyes. Malcolm lies here and he speaks not. Help me waken him.” Her hands were on his brother’s chest. “He wanted to help me and thought ‘twould be quicker to ride with me to seek help for my injuries. He tried to mount your father’s horse and was thrown.”

The horse was nowhere to be seen.

“He has not spoken or come awake since he fell. Please son, help him. I dared not leave him.” Her voice caught and she was crying again. “Lyall. I cannot hear his breath.”

Lyall stared at Malcolm and took a long deep and shuddering breath. He could tell by the angle of his brother’s neck he was dead. Around his broken neck, but lying in the dark muck of the stable was the precious golden cross Malcolm always wore, a gift from their father, who was given it by his father, passed from oldest son to oldest son for generations.

“Come, Mother,” he said gently and set his hand on her shoulder. “Where is everyone? The guards? The servants?”

“They all left. Ran for their lives after it was clear why those men came. Some tried to stay, but I told them to leave or they would be named traitors themselves. They dared not rise up against them. They came in the name of the king Lyall…your father has been accused of betraying the crown, and they hung the flag of treason at the gate, and then with torches and oil burned everything. But it is not possible, what they say.” She shook her head. “It is not. Ewane would never betray the king’s trust.”

The fire raged around them and a burning truss fell hard to the ground behind her, sparks flying upward and over them. His mother gasped and flinched, cowering on the stable floor. Hot ash flicked up into the air and spat painfully into his eyes. He groaned and wiped them, blinking. He knew he had to get her out of the building before all the rafters fell in. “Come. We must get out of here.”

“Not without Malcolm. Please. Take him first.”

“No one can save him. Not now.”

The wail that came from his mother was the worst sound he had ever heard.

“Mother, Mama…Please. Come. We must get out of here,” he said quietly, and he managed to lead her weeping form outside and across to the castle well, where he rested her hand on the rocks. “This is the well. Stay here. I will go back for Malcolm.”

She clung to his hand, still crying. “Who is this God? This God who takes all that I love?”

Oh Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? The words echoed in his head and he could not answer her, so he just pulled his hand away. What God? He thought angrily. He dropped his bow and quiver to the ground.

Two deep breaths and he ran back inside, arms up and fighting the ash and pieces of burning wood that came at him. Hot wind from the fire howled around him, and his eyes burned and teared. He grabbed his brother’s arms and dragged him out of the stable just before it all collapsed.

Outside, Lyall fell backwards to the ground, choking and coughing. His eyes felt gritty and his breath was shallow and uneven. Malcolm lay dead where he had dragged him, barely a foot away. The fire crackled and spit around him and he heard the crash of another building collapse. But worst yet was the sound of his mother’s pitiful crying.

Around him, his whole world melted into the flames. He stood and led his mother into the woods and farther still. He took Mairi and his mother all the way to the stream, where he used cool water to soothe her burns. He told them he would return, exacting a promise from Mairi to stay put, and assured them they would be safe with Atholl sitting between them. Then he left.

As he passed by the old yew tree, he did not touch the trunk again. The ability to believe in anything, especially foolish things such as luck and wishes and sacred places had left him.

Lyall walked back to Dunkelden without thought or care, out of the cover of the woods and out into the open. He walked to the front entrance and over the bridge, but paused when his eye caught a muddy scrap of yellow that lay in the ditch. He hopped down and picked it up--the traitor’s flag, a banner of yellow with a red ‘S’ for the serpent from the Garden of Eden painted over his father’s emblem. He climbed back up to the bridge with the flag in his fist and forward through the burned out gates and the cinders of the guardhouse.

Nothing stood before him but blackened ruins, buildings collapsed, and smoldering fires, the burnt remains of chickens and caged hares that were not taken by the servants. The upper floors of the hall were naught but a huge skein of wood and were still smoldering.

There was no one left in the place but him. Not a chicken, a cow, a lamb or a dove in their mother’s cote, even the rats that had oft times been in the cave had fled. His was the only heart that beat in the midst of what once was theirs.

Gone, too, were the men who had done this. The servants, the animals…at least the ones that weren’t dead and burnt. He let the banner fall from his numb fingers...the loneliest boy in the world, standing in what felt like hell, with everything he had known as safe now destroyed and burning down around him.

He had two choices: he too could melt under the weight of it all, crumple into a ball and sob himself silly like a wee child. Since his legs were quivering and his blood was racing ‘twould have been all too easy. Or he could choose the path he knew his father and brother would have chosen. His age and years were only sums—numbers that had naught to do with anything. His choices and actions were all that mattered. When faced with the choice of cowardice, to just run, run away to anywhere as fast as his legs would carry him, he could not; his true heart could not go there. His father was no traitor, and he vowed he would prove it so, and his brother’s life had been uselessly ended. Malcolm would be avenged. Someone had lied, and those lies had set all of this in motion.

Moments later he dragged his brother’s limp and broken body toward the smoldering ruins of the chapel and searched the bailey until he found a shovel in the embers of a shed near the stables. The handle was hot, and he used his tunic to pick it up and then dropped it into a nearby trough where it singed and spat when it hit water as if it were just cast by the smithy. Soon he was back standing amidst the black ash and waning smoke next to Malcolm’s lifeless body and the flat carved stone marking their father’s crypt. Lyall wiped his eyes and began to dig.

It was a long time before he placed the last rock on a stack of stones where Malcolm lay. Exhausted, he fell to his knees beside the graves, his brother’s golden cross in his hand, his face heavenward, his arms outward and his head thrown back, and he swore in his brother’s name, in his father’s name, he would right the wrongs done this day to the house of Robertson.

He picked up his bow and quiver and left; he never looked back, but walked slowly, deliberately. What he carried in his heart was heavy on him. What he carried in his soul and memory affected him through every inch of his blood and bone, down to the very meat of him, and he thought then that he understood the man who carried his own cross to Golgotha.

By the time he joined his mother and sister in the woods, his sister was sitting against the tree as he had been earlier that day, her head nodding forward, looking exhausted. He knew she was frightened. Today she had seen too much of life. He picked up the sack of fish, tying it to his belt as he studied his mother. Her clothing was burned, her face red and swollen, one cheek puckered with burned and blackened skin, one of her eyes unseeing, one hand holding the damp cloth he had torn from their clothing. She sat on a rock by the cool water of the stream as serene as if she were not scarred and half-blinded and mourning. Her lack of emotion said how truly broken she was.

His need for vengeance overcame him in almost uncontrollable waves. His body felt thick with anger. It ran hotly through his blood, firing the need in him to want to kill the men who did this. Keeping his control and his sanity was not easy, but he needed to be able to see his mother and sister who needed him, not the red heat of revenge.

He knelt down by his sister. “Mairi come. Climb onto my back. I will carry you.” He shifted her small, exhausted body, bow and quiver, and stood with her on his back. The silk of her fine hair brushed his face as she laid her sleepy head on his shoulder. Her shallow breaths quivered in her chest and her silent tears dripped onto his sore, fire-scorched neck.

That almost broke him; his own throat choked suddenly with the urge to cry, but he clearly understood his duty and walked over to stand by his mother.

She reached out for him and touched thin air, her good eye spilling with tears and the other naught but a blank stare in the burnt and puckered skin on one side of her once- breathtakingly beautiful face. “Lyall?

“I am here,” he said.

She turned to look at him from her good eye. “Where’s Mairi.”

“She is asleep. I have her here on my back. See?” He turned. “ Take my hand. ‘Tis time to go.“ He helped her to her feet and together they slowly walked away.