Chapter Five : The Long Road Home

The Highland road wound like an old serpent through the mountains, rising ever higher into mist and memory. Talon’s boots struck the packed earth with rhythm and purpose, the weight of weeks in the wild carried with the ease of a man who had long since grown used to solitude. He passed familiar markers carved into rock and tree, and with every step, the air grew cleaner, crisper—older.

He was moving through the Six Foundation Clans’ lands, each holding their corner of the ancient pact, even if that bond had long begun to fray.

First, the MacBrans: warriors and weavers, their lands were sharp ridges dotted with blackface sheep and narrow streams that ran cold and clear from the peaks. He stopped to drink from one such stream, cold enough to sting the teeth, and he smiled.

Then, the Dunnachs, who lived in pine-thick hollows where hounds roamed freely and wooden shrines to forest spirits marked the trails. He rested a while, watching a stag and two red deer graze high above a moss-laden cliff.

The Kinnards’ lands came next—deep green valleys of old stone cottages and carefully tended orchards. Smoke curled from chimneys like secrets. He passed quietly, unseen but not unnoticed.

Next, the ** Caibre**, whose lands held sacred glades where no trees were cut. It was there that he saw the eagle, dark and huge, riding the mountain currents like a ghost of the sky.

Then the Blaers, whose paths were carved by traders but whose hearts were still clan-bound. He bought a flask of berry whiskey from an old woman by the road and shared a nod of silence with a weathered clansman leaning on a stick of rowanwood.

And last, the Muirnaths, watchers of the border hills, whose lochs were deep and dark like unspoken oaths. He passed an old Druid on their edge, cloaked in raven feathers and sea-wool robes. The man halted, muttered a prayer in the old tongue, placed two fingers to Talon’s forehead.

The Druid’s eyes rolled back, and his face blanched. His breath caught for a moment, and he whispered: “Death walks near you, O’Coyle. But not for you—yet.”

Talon thanked him, tossed him a copper, and moved on. He’d received that reaction since he was a child. He had no answer for it. But O’Coyles, in truth, made most folk uneasy.

His thoughts wandered to his mother—a memory dulled by time and pain. He remembered only flashes: The scent of cardamom and burnt sugar. Her warm smile as she stirred a pot of stew. The sound of quiet sobbing through the stone wall. Then, the day they found her, face down in the loch that cradled the keep.

No one spoke of it, but everyone knew. It was her own hand. Perhaps it had been the cold. The grief. The weight of being bound to a man who listened more to Cu Sith’s whispers than to her. His father had screamed that day. Screamed like something inside him had broken for good.

Talon had been raised by cold stone and his father’s stern gaze. Raised in silence and rituals. Raised in the shadow of the black hound.

He grunted to himself, almost smiling. Warm thoughts are for warm lands. The O’Coyles lived in stone and storm.

Two weeks in, the scattered travelers had vanished. The road narrowed, and soon, to his left, the land climbed into a mist-wreathed plateau. He paused, heart stirring.

There stood the Meeting Stones.

A wide, flat rise of land where ancient monoliths crowned the earth like jagged teeth. Among the swirling fog, he could make out the old slab, worn smooth by generations of bare feet, blood, and law. Here the Founding Clans once gathered. Here they set aside feud and oath to pass judgment, to raise new chieftains, to speak with one voice.

That was long before coin ruled men. Long before the fattened chiefs sold oaths for titles. Long before the Usurper’s banners flew at the loch gate.

Now, the slab lay quiet. Forgotten by most. But Talon paused, watching it disappear again into fog like a memory fading behind the veil. He moved on.

By the third week, the road grew thin, a worn track curling beneath towering slopes.

He camped under starlight, built a small fire in the lee of a wind-cut hill. He hunted a red deer and gave thanks in the old way—cutting a braid of his own hair and placing it near the animal’s heart. He ate well, slept with one eye open, and dreamed of the keep. Of stone walls in the fog. Of Cu Sith standing on the threshold. Waiting.

The next day, he rose and saw the land shift again. The wind was colder now. The trees were old-growth pine, hunched and twisted by endless gales.

He was close. One day’s march. His blood stirred. O’Coyle lands awaited.

And if the tales were true, so did the hound.

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