SHATTERING LIGHT POURED over Chieftain Brennus Skaraven, scrolling over his skin and dragging him from the darkness. He opened his eyes to find himself standing knee-deep in snow atop the high, flat plateau of the Am Monadh Ruadh. Winter had come to the red hills to freeze the wellsprings into mirrored coins. Ice veiled the granite tors, making the ancient rock pillars glitter with the false promise of silver ore.

He could not remember coming here.

Yesterday he had led his men against the famhairean, the giants even more terrifying than the Skaraven Clan. The battle had been brutal, savage, and had ended in darkness, but not in this place. They’d fought in summer, not winter. And while the bitter climes of the highlands had rarely troubled Brennus, thanks to his towering, muscled-padded form, here he felt no chill at all. The snow clinging to his powerful legs might have just as well been sand.

The dead dinnae grow cold.

As Brennus looked up he saw five ravens circling through the sun’s tremulous beams. The ink on his chest should have responded to the birds with surging power. But there was only the faintest crackle of his raven battle spirit, as if it were far away. When he knelt to offer proper reverence, the black birds hurtled down, only to dissolve like so many phantoms. His lips drew into a hard line.

Tree-knower tricks.

He rose from the drift and drew his sword, his bicep bunching under his dark cloak as he held the heavy, razor-sharp blade ready.

“Show yourselves.”

His deep voice rumbled around him in muffled echoes, but no one appeared.

Brennus’s big hand knotted around his blade hilt until his knuckles whitened. He recalled everything that had befallen him: the hard life, endless battle, the brief taste of freedom, and then the final sacrifice. He could not be in the highlands. He’d died yesterday, as had his entire clan. The man who had been Brennus Skaraven lay rotting somewhere with them. The unanswered wrongs that seethed in his heart boiled out of him in a furious bellow to the gods.

“What do you facking want of me?”

Without warning the snow beneath his boots dropped away, and Brennus fell again. He smashed his fists against the sides of the dark, whirling tunnel, but he could find no handhold or even slow his plunge. Beneath him he saw an ocean of white stars laced with golden magic, but when he landed he found himself crouching in a bed of thick ferns.

“Oh, wonderful,” a young, elated female voice said. “You’re going to do great things for us.”

Across from him not a hand reach away knelt a slender, flame-haired lass. As Brennus stared at her, the oddness of her faded trews and heavy plaid coat perplexed him. She wore some kind of satchel against her back. But it was being so close to her and not hampered by chains, that made him hardly dare to breathe. She paid no heed to him as she plucked the feathery greens and stowed them in odd sacks made of thin glass that moved as fabric would.

What new trick was this?

Brennus could not utter a word. All Skaraven had been forbidden to speak to females. But to look at her filled him with wonder. Surely, she belonged to a king, for she had the delicate, unmarked skin of high nobility. Her uncovered hair had been tied back from the lovely oval of her face, and flashed with all the colors of candlelit copper. As she worked, she pursed her lips, as soft and curvy as flame flower petals, to kiss the air. Her downcast eyes remained hidden, but the sweep of her sable brows and gold-tipped eyelashes promised something rare and treasured. She wore a heart-shaped crystal on a fine silver necklace, both of a like he had never before seen.

The beauty that filled his eyes also made his gut knot. Gods, who had been mad enough to let such a splendid creature roam the highlands alone?

She frowned as she pressed aside some fronds to examine the ground beneath them, and pressed her palm atop the soil. “Can’t be. Jamie said it wasn’t an earthquake.”

Her strange accent and manner of speaking finally registered. She sounded neither Caledonian nor Pritani to Brennus. He knew nothing of the peoples across the sea, so she might be Francian or a Gaul. The soft timber of her voice made heat bloom in his chest, just beneath his skinwork, which startled him anew. His battle spirit had never once responded to the presence of a female.

All of his confusion scattered as the ground shook beneath him. A mound of earth rapidly piled up at her back. Without thinking he abandoned the old forbiddance and shouted, “Behind you, the famhair.”

The lass didn’t react to his warning. Two huge wooden hands shot out of the soil and seized her by the arms. Her head snapped up and her eyes, the clear blue of sky topaz, went wide as she screamed.

“No,” Brennus shouted.

But when he lunged for the female his hands passed through her flesh. He roared his fury as the giant dragged her into the earth. He hurled himself after her into the mound, and became engulfed. The soil piled higher and higher, collapsing on top of him and burying him deep. Brennus fought to free himself, dragging his arms through the shifting earth and ramming his fists above him. Dirt exploded over and around him as he punched his way out of the loose, cold soil, and hoisted himself to his feet.

His raven buckler, now as badly cracked and silvered as bog-wood, tore from its rotted leather straps and fell away from his wide chest. A damp, icy breeze rushed over his bare body and shed the sharp-sweet scent of mistletoe flowers, prodding his temper. He saw nearly a hundred druids standing in a wide oval and watching as the ground shook and heaved. Earth fountained up in violent sprays as dozens of other tall, powerful men clawed their way out of the ground, each warrior as naked as their chieftain. The only thing each wore was a wooden ring carved from sacred oaks. Though blackened by time, each still held the likeness of a raven.

Brennus didn’t have to look at their faces to know who they were. Since boyhood he could feel the other men of the Skaraven Clan. He held up his right fist, brandishing his clan ring.

“Bràithrean an fhithich,” he shouted in the old tongue. Brethren of the raven.

As his brothers echoed their chieftain’s call to arms, they quickly fell into their ranks on either side of him.

This was not where they had died, either, Brennus thought. Nor were the tree-knowers that now encircled it the same who had sent them into battle. Their unfamiliar, dark blue robes concealed their faces with hoods.

Aye, but he’d been right in guessing this their work.

“War Master,” Brennus said, keeping his gaze locked on their watchers. “Counsel.”

The command brought Cadeyrn, Brennus’s second, to his left side. Soil still pelted the Skaraven War Master’s broad shoulders and powerful chest, and his sun-streaked umber mane hung down to his waist. He looked, as ever, ready to kill something.

“One hundred strong,” Cadeyrn murmured for his ears alone as he kept his fierce bronze eyes fixed on the dru-wids. “No wounds or garb. Seventy-seven tree-knowers enclose the field. The famhairean have vanished.”

Brennus knew the giants would not have willing left the battle, and as he scanned the land for their tracks he saw more disturbing signs. He recognized the river bordering the land to the west was the Enrick, but its course had subtly altered. The oaks at the forest’s edge he recalled as saplings had somehow grown into colossal trees. Beyond the river the rocky slopes of the mountains had rounded and spread, as if melting back into the earth. Knots of heather patches and thick grasses now entirely covered the floodplain’s bare black soil. As he turned his head, Brennus felt his own night-dark hair brush the small of his back, and recalled how he and the clan had shaved their heads bare before engaging the giants.

All of it told him that more than a day had passed since their deaths.

He glanced down at the sword he still gripped, but it, too, had changed greatly. Rust and soil encased the crumbling iron blade, so thickly that he could no longer make out the lines of the fuller. His Weapons Master, Kanyth, had forged the sword for him only last winter, and yet it looked as if it had been buried for centuries. But why did he hold the blade when the clan stood unarmed?

Chieftains are always put in the ground with their swords.

One of the tree-knowers used a cane as he left the circle to hobble toward Brennus. Several others carrying piles of folded trews and tunics followed. Behind them, four hauled a low, long cart filled with boots, belts, and thick checkered cloths in every color.

Beside him Cadeyrn’s stance shifted from observer to defender. “They carry no weapons.”

“They dinnae need them,” Brennus reminded him.

The lame dru-wid halted a short distance away, and held up a gnarled hand to stop the others trailing him. “Chieftain Brennus, I am Bhaltair Flen, headman of the Dawn Fire tribe.” He pulled back his hood to reveal a gaunt, wrinkled face. His piercing dark eyes remained averted from the clan’s nudity, as did all the other druids’ gazes. “We welcome your return to the mortal realm.”

Bhaltair Flen had been a young man with a different face when last they’d met, which meant at least a lifetime had passed. That they now slurred their race’s name together hinted at more than one. Temper burned in Brennus, as hot as a whiskey-soaked torch, but he kept it off his face.

“What have you done now?” Brennus demanded.

The old man gestured toward the garb his people held. “Might we first clothe you and your men?”

Like the property they’d once been, Brennus thought. “You’ll do naught for us.”

After Brennus raised his hand to signal his first-ranked, the nine clansmen strode forward to retrieve the garb and cart. They efficiently distributed the clothing and boots among the other men before dressing. Cadeyrn left and returned with two sets, placing one on the ground beside the chieftain before donning the other.

Brennus made no move to dress himself. “Explain, Tree-Knower.”

Temper flared red across Bhaltair’s hollowed cheeks, but he kept his tone civil. “As you ken, we’ve long owed a debt to the Skaraven Clan.”

That explained why none of his people would look straight at them: what they cunningly called their debt. “How long since we fell?”

“Some time.” The druid cleared his throat. “The spell we used to awaken you and your clan bestows immortality. You’ll be stronger and heal faster. You’ll no’ age, and be near impossible to kill. You can bond with water and travel through it to another place just by thinking of it–”

“How facking long?” Brennus demanded.

The old man recoiled a step before he regained his composure. “’Tis been twelve centuries since the day.”

None of the clan reacted with sound or movement, but Brennus could feel their silent shock like a hail of blunt arrows bouncing off his back. His own roiled inside him, and if he set it free now druid blood would spill.

Clenching his jaw, Brennus breathed deep until he could speak without shouting. “You didnae do this to repay a debt.”

“We did.” Bhaltair’s stern expression softened. “We’ve always meant to return you to life, Chieftain. When we did the same with another murdered clan, we created a terrible enemy only recently vanquished. Before we awakened you, we had to be sure ’twould no’ happen again.”

That much Brennus believed, but then tree-knowers made a practice to add a pinch of truth to every kettle of their lies. “What more?”

Before the old man could reply some of the druids gasped and pointed. Brennus turned his head to see a stag the color of snow standing on the other side of the river. It stood watching them in turn, and then swiveled its head to stare at the chieftain and Bhaltair. A moment later it bounded off and disappeared into the forest.

Brennus felt unmoved. Even if great change was coming, as foretold by the sight of a white stag, the Gods would have to wait their turn.

“Sevenday past, the quislings, Hendry and Murdina, and their giants escaped their imprisonment and returned from the future,” Bhaltair said, his face almost as white as the prophetic deer. “They’ve encamped somewhere near Beinn Nibheis to take up their evil work again. Yesterday they slaughtered an entire village of mortals outside of Lochabar.”

A curious ache swelled in Brennus’s chest as he thought of the flame-haired beauty in the forest. If she had been real, the giants had already killed her. “Use your tricks on them again.”

“Even if we dared approach them, ’twill no’ work anymore. To prevent the quislings from reincarnating we– Chieftain, please,” he begged as Brennus turned away. “The details matter no’. You ken what the giants shall do, and naught can stop them but the Skaraven. ’Tis why we bred your clan.”

The tree-knower spoke of them as if they yet served as the property of the two Pritani tribes that had created them. By pairing their cleverest males and females with their strongest, the dru-wids of that time had helped the tribes deliberately breed one hundred boys to serve as protectors. As the eldest, Brennus had been the first to be trained for their cold, grim lives as indentured warriors. Years of battle and hardship followed, until a plague had killed both tribes. That had dissolved the indenture, and the Skaraven had lived for the first time as free men. Too soon that had ended. The druids had come pleading for their help, and sent them to their deaths. Now they had brought them back to use them again.

If nothing else, the old bastart had baws the size of Orkney.

Brennus suddenly knew why the white stag had appeared. A time for change was upon the Skaraven, and as chieftain to see it done fell to him. He handed his rusted blade to Cadeyrn before he tugged on the garb and boots his second had brought for him. His long black hair settled over his shoulders and back like a heavy cloak as he retrieved his sword and faced the dru-wid.

With a single thrust he drove the blade it into the ground between Bhaltair’s sandals, where it shattered into a dozen pieces.

“We’re no’ your slaves anymore,” he told the old man. “Clean up your own cac.”