Chapter Eleven: The Ashes and the Oath
Talon held his brother through the day and long night, the scent of blood and ash clinging to the cold air like damp wool. His arms never slackened, even as his legs numbed and the fire outside the tent crackled low.
He did not sleep.
As dawn stretched slow across the sky, the mist retreated from the loch like a spirit dismissed, the frost retreating in glistening beads from stones and leaves. The sun rose, bleeding gold across the water and hills, and finally, Talon stirred.
He gently laid his brother's body down upon a cleaner section of furs, straightened his arms, closed his eyes.
“I’ll bring you home, brother,” he murmured. “You died a laird. And you'll be buried as one.”
The Pyres of Justice
The fallen soldiers—usurper’s men, killers cloaked in silence—were not given the rites of the north.
Talon dragged them one by one, stacking bodies and shattered gear into a mound. He tore down the tents, snapped spearshafts over his knee, and scattered their banners to the wind. He poured oil taken from their satchels and sparked it to flame with a torch from their own fire.
The pyre rose into the sky with greasy black smoke, curling like judgment up toward the gods.
He watched them burn in silence. No prayer. No farewell.
“Let the crows finish what fire cannot.”
The Return
He rounded the loch’s curve at a brisk pace, slipping back into the treeline with the ease of a ghost. His Highland horse, broad-shouldered and sure-hoofed, stood where he’d left it—grazing on rich green grass beneath a birch tree, ears flicking lazily. It raised its head at his approach but did not startle.
Talon stroked the beast’s mane, forehead pressed to its brow for a quiet moment.
“We’ve more to carry.”
He cut and stripped a few young birch saplings, binding them together with leather cord and cloth torn from the raided camp. From this he fashioned a crude but strong funeral cradle, slung behind the saddle. Carefully, reverently, he lifted his brother’s body and settled it in the frame, wrapping him in his own cloak.
Then, Talon mounted and rode east—the cold wind at his back, the whisper of Cu Sith in his bones.
The Burial Ridge
He didn’t return to the keep—not yet.
Instead, he climbed northward to the high cliff that overlooked the glen, a place where the land met sky, and the air seemed thin with memory. Here, he laid the others to rest—the loyal hounds, the fallen horses, and the six housemen who had ridden at his brother’s side.
He dug the graves by hand. Each one cut into the stony soil, rimmed with frost. He laid them in a circle, heads facing the cairn far off in the distance, the sacred heart of O’Coyle land.
When he placed the last stone, he raised his sword to the sky, the sun glinting off the blade, and spoke the old words—the warrior’s farewell, in the tongue of the old Gael:
“Mo chairdean, mo bhràithrean, a’ tuiteam le urram. Gun siubhail ur n-anaman le gaoth na Gàidhealtachd.” (My friends, my brothers, fallen with honour. May your souls travel with the Highland wind.)
Then he knelt, head bowed, and let the silence settle in.
The Road Ahead
Talon rode west as the sun began to fall. His jaw clenched, eyes steady, thoughts heavy.
He was a rebel now.
He had spilled royal blood. The crown would not care for cause or justice, only for vengeance. Word would travel. The survivor would speak. The king’s messengers would come, first as whispers… then as riders. Talon O’Coyle, heir of the highlands, had defied the law.
And Cu Sith would walk with him.
He knew that from now on, he would be hunted—not just for what he had done, but for what he now represented. The Highlands had stirred. The old blood, the mountain blood, was waking.
And across the lochs, the glens, the stone-ringed courts of the northern clans, the name of Talon O’Coyle began to travel.
A ghost in green tartan.
A howl in the fog.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
Chapter Twelve: The Rotten Throne
Far to the south, beyond the narrow mountain passes and the Loch Gate Fortress, where the wind ceased to stir and even the birds flew silent, the southern capital festered in its own summer heat. The Citadel of the Crown, once a marvel of stone and gilded banners, now rotted behind its high walls. Moss climbed the gutters. Flies buzzed above the grain wagons. The smell of sweat, smoke, and city filth thickened with each step toward the palace gate. No wind blew here. The air lingered, rank and still—as if the land itself refused to breathe beneath the usurper’s heel. Inside, amidst a hall of polished marble and velvet tapestries, the King , known to some in whispers as The False Chieftain, paced with growing fury.
The Whisper A southern agent—Ser Linton Garse, cloak still travel-dusted—stood stiff beneath the king's gaze. “The O’Coyle boy,” he said, voice low. “Talon. He… he slaughtered the unit. Eight men. Gone.” “Where?” the king snapped, his hand tightening on a carved serpent-headed cane. “A ruin on the northern loch. We had taken his brother. Meant to break him. It was… efficient. Until—” “Until a ghost tore through them.” “Aye, Your Grace. The men call him Cu Sith reborn.” The king’s face turned waxen pale, then red, then something darker. He strode to the high table, knocking over a goblet of wine. It spilled like blood on the rug. “Do you fools think I’ve forgotten that name?” he bellowed. “Do you think I don’t know what stirs in that cursed soil?” He turned to his council chamber, filled with southern lords and sycophants in perfumed coats, none of them Highlanders, none of them born with wind in their lungs or stone beneath their feet. “They’ve always hated us. Always waited. Brooded in those crags, clutching their gods and dogs and ghosts.” He slammed his cane down. “And now you tell me a wild boy with a sword and a howl kills my men and rides free?” A long pause. No one dared speak. “Traitors.” “All of them.”
The Decree The King turned to his chamber scribe. “Write it down. Have it carried by raven and rider alike.” He paced again, faster now, cloak billowing. “The Clan O’Coyle is dissolved. Their lands, title, and name are revoked. Their blood is branded rebel, their graves unmarked. Their keep is forfeit to the Crown. Any who shelter them shall share their fate. Let it be known across the Five Holds.” The room fell utterly silent. “I will not lose the north. Not like my father did. Not like his father nearly did. My grandfather took those lands back by blade and fire, and I—” he pointed a shaking hand toward the mountains, far beyond sight—“I will finish the work if I must do it myself.”
The Fire Beneath
He approached the map wall—an old thing of stitched hide, inked rivers, and faded clan symbols. His fingers hovered over the north, the area marked Còille Mhòr—the Great Wild. “You don’t understand,” he muttered to himself. “Those lands are not just soil. They are… power. They are gold they are blood memory and something older. The O’Coyles are not farmers. They are something worse. They remember.” “And now their youngest has teeth.” He looked to his gathered lords. “Send riders. Every road, every pass. Seal the lochs. Light the watchfires. Offer coin for his head.” “And burn that cursed keep to the ground.”
****The Quiet After
Later that evening, as the southern city slept in heat and murmured gossip, the king sat alone in his chamber, staring at a small stone carving held in his palm. It was weather-worn, the shape of a hound curled in sleep—an old trophy taken from a Highland shrine. He turned it over. And for a flicker, in the mirror behind him, his reflection did not move.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
