Chapter Two: Homecoming
The boat whispered across the loch.
Its prow cut silently through black water slick with mist, the ripples like scars trailing behind them. The ferryman said nothing, only worked the long pole in steady rhythm, guiding them forward as the sun began its crawl over the eastern ridges.
Above, a flock of highland geese flew low, their calls sharp and fleeting, slipping under the clouded sky like omens.
Talon stood at the bow, wrapped in a faded cloak, his face gaunt and wind-burnt. He stared across the water to the north where the Highlands broke free of the lowland gloom, a jagged wall of pines, stone, and ancestral silence. That ancient land, still wild and unruled, had pulled at him every night he lay awake in foreign tents beneath foreign stars.
He had never left it willingly.
The Loch Gate
Far ahead, rising out of the mist like antlers from a stag’s brow, loomed the Timber Gates of Loch Gaothach — the southern-most entry through the Fàradh na Còinneach, the Barrier of Moss. The great wooden walls curved like ship hulls on either side of the channel, framing the only waterway into the highlands for miles. They were southern-built, clan-stolen, manned by the Usurper’s guards — lowlanders with foreign accents and steel-polished armor, enforcing the crown’s chokehold over a land that had never bowed.
But Talon had passed through. The token he carried — taken from Edrin’s corpse — had granted him safe passage at the departure point. The ferryman and guards had looked at it, then looked away. It was enough. They believed him one of theirs.
Fools.
Now the gates yawned open with slow groaning effort, thick chains clanking beneath the water. A black opening welcomed the boat — and Talon — into the highlands once again.
He said nothing, but his fists clenched around the wooden railing.
The Thistle Trial
His thoughts drifted — not to the war, not to the blood — but to a summer six years past, when the mountains had first called his name in truth.
He had been fourteen. His brother Fionnlagh was fifteen, tall, proud, and surefooted as a deer. That morning, the two of them stood barefoot on the cold stones of the inner circle with a handful of other O’Coyle boys. Their father, Laird Cathal, a bear of a man with eyes like flint, paced before them with arms crossed.
“Run.”
That was all he said — and they ran.
North into the misty passes. Up through birch woods and stony gullies. Higher still into snow-tipped crags where the sun rarely reached. Each boy was to retrieve a wild thistle, a sacred flower known only to grow near the summit cairns of Ben Dòrain — the place where the old gods whispered.
Most would not make it. A few would return broken. One or two, lost.
Talon had lagged behind Fionnlagh early, his breath short, legs aching — but he never stopped. His brother led the way, always looking back, always urging him on with that fierce, quiet smile. Near the summit, Fionnlagh slipped, one boot losing purchase on a frost-slick rock. He fell sideways toward the cliff’s edge.
Talon lunged — and caught his arm.
The moment stretched. His hand burned. Their eyes locked.
“Don’t let go.”
He never would.
Together they reached the cairn, bloodied, freezing, and thistle in hand. When they returned to Grimreach two days later — limping, proud, ragged and starving — the clan howled their names beneath the stone arch. They were warriors now.
That night, bonfires were lit. Ale flowed. Pipes were played. Talon remembered the warmth of the flames, the cold taste of his first stolen drink, and the way his brother laughed with arms around his shoulders.
He remembered thinking:
This is the beginning of everything.
But morning brought horsemen.
The King’s Takers
The Usurper’s men rode in like they owned the dawn — helmets crowned with brass, voices loud, and hands resting too easy on their blades. They came for bodies, not tribute. The king needed more flesh to hold the frontier. A new war had begun — the usual kind, fought over salt, pride, and maps.
Their father refused at first, stone-faced and unbending.
“Take none from O’Coyle lands.”
The captain of the levy smiled.
“Then we’ll take the land too.”
A whisper of fire. A subtle threat. Then a quiet talk behind the stone table — angry, restrained, desperate.
In the end, the choice was made.
Fionnlagh was the heir. Talon was... not.
And so they took the boy who had just become a man, dragging him south behind horse lines, through weeping glens and ash-strewn border towns. Talon had looked back once, eyes full of smoke and betrayal, watching his brother — his clan — grow smaller in the distance. He remembered the guards chuckling.
“Fresh highland meat.”
He never forgot those words.
Return
The loch narrowed. The gate swallowed them whole.
The ferryman said, “Almost there.”
The ferry thudded gently against the dock, the loch behind them now still as slate. Talon stepped off without a word.
He was home, the highlands.
But his brother was missing.
And the land had changed.
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Chapter Three: The Edge of the Wild
The ferry thudded gently against the dock, the loch behind them now still as slate. Talon stepped off without a word, boots hitting warped timber planks slick with dew. Around him, the town stirred — slowly, groggily — as though it, too, had been dreaming of better days.
This was Baileclach, the “Stone Town,” the southernmost threshold of the true Highlands. Once a proud center of trade, diplomacy, and unity, its heart now beat slow and false. Stone buildings leaned in over narrow streets, their walls scarred by moss and disrepair. What was once a place where clans sent their finest men to barter and resolve dispute at the Stone Table now reeked of lowland influence — and fear.
Banners still hung above the thoroughfare, but the vibrant clan colors were faded, patched over, or torn. Usurper guards lounged in corners, eyes half-lidded, hands never far from steel. Their southern accents grated against the highland wind like rusted chains dragged through a mountain stream.
Talon pulled his cloak tighter and passed unnoticed. Dirt-streaked and quiet, he looked like any other northern ghost walking southward in regret.
He needed rest. One night only.
He found the tavern still standing — though just. Once named The Heather’s Crown, the sign had been scorched and rebranded: The King’s Boar. Inside, a dim fire crackled, and the barkeep didn’t ask names. Talon slid a few coins across the worn counter and took the corner table by instinct.
“Bed upstairs, first on the left. Watch the window. It leaks.” “Thanks,” Talon muttered.
He drank stale ale, ate colder stew, and slept with one eye open and his hand on the hilt of his blade.
Tomorrow, he would begin the long walk home.
The O’Coyle Lands
The O’Coyle keep lay nearly a month’s journey from Baileclach — deeper into the highlands than any other clan dared settle. While others built near roads, lochs, or glens, the O’Coyles had chosen height, distance, and seclusion by water.
No other clan lands lay beyond them — only frost and stone and stars.
And at the heart of it all sat Grimreach, their ancestral stronghold — not atop a peak, but upon an island in a black-water loch, locked in mist for most of the year. There was only one bridge that reached it, a narrow stone crossing just wide enough for a wagon and aged with frost cracks. It was said to groan like a dying stag when crossed at night.
Even among other highlanders, there was unease.
“That’s Cu Sith land,” they’d say, voice dropping. “No birds sing there.” “You’ll hear a howl across the loch and think it’s the wind.”
It was said that the true thistle, the sacred flower of the warrior's trial, bloomed only on the high cliffs surrounding Loch Firn, whose dark waters mirrored the sky but revealed nothing beneath. The journey to reach Grimreach was trial enough. But for the O’Coyle boys, the Thistle Trial required a further climb into the crags that loomed above the keep.
And centuries ago, they had not borne the hound as their crest. They bore a raven, like many of the other first clans. But that changed.
The Debt
The stories say a bargain was struck.
A great war. A grandfather. Alone, wounded, left for dead at the edge of the world. The others had abandoned the battle. The O’Coyle lord, loyal and stubborn, stood with his few remaining warriors until the last. On the snow-drenched shores of Loch Firn, with the sun gone and night creeping in like rot, the Cu Sith came.
It should have carried him away. The green-eyed hound was, after all, a harbinger of warrior death — not a companion. But instead, it circled his body, sat beside him, and howled.
The enemy fled the howl. And when morning came, the lord still breathed.
What deal was made that night, no bard truly knows. Only that the raven was retired, and the Cu Sith became their banner, their watcher, their debt.
It shocked the clans.
“You would dare claim that as your emblem?” “You call the herald of death your guardian?” “You court misfortune.”
But the O’Coyles bore it proudly.
And ever since, strange things were said to happen on their lands — disappearances, phantom lights across the loch, howling with no moon, and the sense that no one ever truly walked alone on the island beyond the bridge. Visitors came rarely, and when they did, they did not linger.
Their keep, Grimreach, sat in silence above the water — surrounded by thistle fields, standing stones, and the forgotten cairns of old warriors.
They were the poorest of the clans.
But they were not the weakest.
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