Midnight Honor

fell off the bone.
    Colin Mor heard sounds in the glen long before he ventured out of doors to identify them. Hearing what started as a low, distant rumble, he had initially closed the shutters against an approaching storm. But when the disturbance grew louder and closer, it started breaking into patterns that were distinctly man-made; the rolling of wheels on the rutted earth, the shuffle of many footsteps, the creak of saddle leather and the muted jingle of harness traces.
    Colin stood outside his clachan, the door open and tilted on its rope hinges. Dusk had come early on this January evening, and there was just enough ambient light to turn the heavy mist into a gray, soupy miasma. Cold and wet, the fog had settled into the bowl of the glen earlier and rendered anything beyond the reach of a child's throw opaque. It was certainly not the kind of night that would inspire travel, nor was Colin's tiny glen anywhere near a main thoroughfare. His small sheep farm was, as his wife often lamented, in the middle of nowhere, with high craggy peaks to the north, dense tracts of fir trees to the east and west, and a swampy elbow of the River Dee at their backs. The closest kirk was Kildrummy, with the city of Aberdeen another thirty miles down the river.
    His wife, Rose, was standing behind him now, a bairn on her hip, two more clinging to her skirts.
    “What is it, Colla?” she asked in a terrified whisper.
    He shook his head, tilting it to one side as if that would help him hear more clearly. The fog was distorting the sound and the direction, making it nearly impossible to tell if there were ten men or a hundred, if they were a hundred paces away or ten. He did not have to work half so hard to hear Rose's fearful breaths puffing into the mist; she was superstitious and had seen a raven with a bloody beak fly over the cottage earlier in the day. It was a clear harbinger, so she said, that death would be coming to their door.
    “Take the bairns an' get back inside,” he ordered quietly. “Tell ma sister tae ready the trapdoor.”
    “Holy mither, ye dinna think it's the English sojers, dae ye?”
    The thought had occurred to him, but he dismissed it almost as fast. Nearby Inverurie Castle was a Jacobite stronghold and the
Sassenachs
had not proven to be stupid enough to wander too deeply into the thickly wooded glens thereabout. Moreover, with news of Wade and Cumberland's forced delay, most of the government troops had been withdrawn to Edinburgh.
    “Just get inside an' be ready tae stow yerselves in the hidey-hole if need be.”
    He waited until she had gone, then edged closer to the corner of the low-slung roof of his clachan. His firelock was hidden beneath the thatch, an arm's reach away, as was his
taugh-cath
, an ax forged in the hills of Lochaber. The musket was kept loaded, but it had rained earlier in the day and the powder would be damp. Or it might be just dry enough to misfire and take out his eye; then how well would he be able to protect his wife and family? Only last week he'd heard of a good woman raped by the English and left naked for her husband to find when he came home from the fields. And just last month he'd had to bury a brace of
Sassenachs
in a nearby bog after they had insultingly offered his sister a penny to spread her legs for them. The slut had been willing and the penny would have been welcomed, but he reasoned their purses would yield more if they were dead.
    This sounded like far too many for the bog to hold.
    Perhaps whoever it was would ride past. His sod clachan was built into the hillside and was difficult to see even in bright sunlight. Perhaps there was no one out there at all; no one in human form, at any rate….
    As if the druids had read his mind, the enormous rumbling slowed, then stopped altogether.
    Something detached itself from the main body and plodded slowly forward. The gray of the mist took on the sickly yellow tinge of a torch that throbbed and bloomed into a larger circle, pushing great swirls of mist forward, bathing Colin's face with the wet stink of pitch.
    His hand inched upward toward the thatch roofing.
    “Is this the home of Colin Mor?”
    The sound of a woman's voice froze his hand, froze his mind.
    “Colin Mor of Dalziel?”
    His lips parted, but no sound came forth as a huge black-eyed monster began to emerge from the banks of gray swirling mist. He held his breath as the beast took on the shape and substance of a huge mottled gelding; his eyes widened