Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) by N. Gemini Sasson Read Free Book Online

fire and a scrap of bread, I would have suffered the sea another whole day. I crawled onto a dune and rolled up inside my wet cloak amidst the rocks with the other men. Although I was certain I would never sleep, so utterly cold and hungry I was that somehow I did.
    At daybreak, I pushed away my still sodden cloak and stood at water’s edge, while the tide lapped at the toes of my boots and dawn’s bold light shone upon my sea-weathered, sand-encrusted face.
     
     
    Dunaverty. There it was. A jumbled pile of stones tossed on top of a cliff. No beauty in its lines or welcome in its form, but oh, it was the eagle’s eyrie on the crag. On a cloudless day you could see all the way to Ireland and beyond from its tower. While we should have been shouting joyfully at its appearance, instead we merely kept rowing toward it, pull after pull in a mindless rhythm, just as we had done all the way from Loch Long – an event that now seemed decades past. Dully, the men dropped over the sides of the boats and lugged them ashore.
    “Ho there, fine fellows! Chins high!”
    Perched jauntily atop a rock that butted out into the crescent bay stood a man in flamboyant checkered trousers. The top of his hair was lopped short while the back of it flared out full behind him like a stallion’s mane. His twining golden-brown moustache cascaded from the corners of his mouth all the way down to his chest. Below him, a long line of MacDonalds were arrayed, swords sheathed and shields resting at their feet.
    He opened his arms up in a broad flourish and announced in Gaelic, “I am Angus MacDonald, Lord of Islay! Welcome to humble Dunaverty, brave Robert, King of Scots!”
    “Ah, but hardly humble yourself, Angus Og,” I returned.
    He leapt from the rock onto the beach before me, swept a sleeve-bare arm, clanking with bronze and silver bracelets, across his body and bowed to me.
    I clasped his hand and said to him in English, “And not the babe I remember you as.”
    “Not so young yourself, if I may say respectfully,” he returned in his whimsical accent.
    “Your honesty is reflected in your wanton arrogance, MacDonald,” Edward gibed, approaching us.
    “Hah, Edward,” Angus hailed. “You’ve finally outstripped your older brother in muscle. Thomas and Alexander are waiting in the castle.”
     Edward eyed him in annoyance. “Food and drink? It was a tedious long way from Perth. Or did your heathens lick the storerooms clean upon arrival?”
    “Plenty to spare, my lords. Plenty to spare. This way.”
    We climbed beside Angus Og along the footpath up to the fortress. My men trudged behind, dragging their feet, all of us fighting the urge to let our knees buckle beneath us and fall to the earth.
     
     
    Thomas and Alexander glowed with health. Our own deplorable condition, however, was obvious in their reaction to our feeble embraces. Angus Og saw to it that we were all properly dried out, warmed and fed. Although my bones cried for a bed beneath them, I joined the revelry in the hall that afternoon. The ale had begun to flow early. Thomas was topped to his eyeballs by the time I took my seat.
    My mouth watered as the smell of cooked pork, dripping with fat, curled inside my nostrils. The servants raced in and out of the kitchen door, dodging the wobbling, drunken soldiers that careened through the hall. A platter crashed to the floor. No one took any notice except me. It was the pork. A disappointment. I settled for some mutton that came my way.
    “Thomas, you’ve let your beard grow long,” I observed. “Hand me your knife and I’ll take care of it.”
    At his seat, Thomas shrugged and mumbled, then hoisted his cup and called for another fill. When a pair of young maidens glanced at him from behind a column and giggled, he flocked to them, sloshing cup in hand.
    Alexander, who had been sharing tales with Angus, came to sit beside me in the seat Edward was noticeably absent from. “Not to fear,” Alexander said aside. “Thomas