Knight Triumphant. Heather Graham

John was at first acclaimed and accepted. But the overlord made the demands, and when the puppet king disobeyed, he was brought low. The great neighboring king folded his hands and nodded with pleasure. The prize, he thought, was his.

      The land was cast into years of war.

      Years of hell.

      A desperate purgatory, at the very least.

      Heroes rose to fight in the name of their absent king when he was broken by the overlord, dishonored, and forced to abdicate. They fought for freedom from the overlord’s brutal rule for they were a country of their own people, proud and separate. The greatest of these heroes was a man named William. He brought the would-be conquering army low. But in time, the great wrath of the neighboring king fell upon them, and William Wallace, champion of the people, fell to treachery and lost his life—head, limbs, innards, and more—to the fury and vengeance of the English king.

      Two men would now vie for the questionable treasure of the Scottish crown: John Comyn, kinsman of John Balliol and a powerful baron, and Robert Bruce, grandson of Robert Bruce the Competitor, who had made the original claim.

      The two would make a pact, the one giving the other his lands and riches in exchange for the other’s support in his quest for the crown. The neighboring king was now growing old and ailed, and, they thought, they could seize back their own country at his death. The churchmen knew of this plan, and they were pleased.

      But treachery again struck: The one betrayed the other, seeing that the neighboring king knew of the plan. Edward, self-proclaimed “hammer” of the Scots, failed to die as all had hoped, and instead, vowed his wrath and vengeance once again.

      John Comyn conspired against Robert Bruce, telling the neighboring king of Bruce’s compact with him and great churchmen.

      The neighboring king was again in a fury.

      And Robert Bruce, hearing of the betrayal, rode hard in his wrath to find the man who had betrayed him. They met within a church, and there, upon the altar, Bruce spilled the blood of Comyn. If he did not murder his distant kinsman with his blow, it did not matter, for his men finished the deed.

      In 1306, Bruce was crowned king of the Scots at Scone. The English king had stolen the great stone of Scone, upon which Scottish kings had been crowned for eons, but still, Robert the Bruce was anointed in the ancient tradition. He was crowned not just once, but twice, for Isabel, a daughter of the house of Mar, came rushing to perform the hereditary duties of her family at a coronation as her brother, the earl, was a lad, and held by the neighboring king, Edward of England. She was but nineteen and married to the earl of Buchan, an ally of the English king, but in her devotion to her land, she was heedless of her marriage. And the consequences.

      She arrived for the coronation a day late, and therefore, so that tradition and propriety might be maintained, the ancient rites were performed again on Palm Sunday, the twenty-sixth of March, 1306. Now none of the people might doubt that Robert Bruce was king.

      And so, in name, he had risen at last to claim his great quest.

      But the new king had many enemies, among them the kinsmen of the slain John Comyn, powerful barons of the land.

      And then there was Edward I of England, who had ruled long, and hard, and brutally.

      And who, most annoyingly, had failed, thus far, to die.

      When he heard of Bruce’s coronation, Edward I had his son honored as Prince of Wales. Hundreds of hardy young Englishmen were knighted at the ceremony, giving vows before the altar of chivalry and valor.

      The English king’s wrath was such that no such vows might be maintained. There would be few prisoners taken by the English, for all men captured who supported Robert Bruce were to be treated as outlaws, executed without trial, hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, or dragged through the streets to meet various forms of torture, humiliation, then a grisly death. Heralds proclaimed throughout the land that the women—the wives, sisters, even daughters of the valiant patriots—should be treated little better. The English knights were given leave to rob, rape, and murder as they saw fit. They were the outlaw kin of an outlaw king.

      Within months of his coronation, Bruce had met savage defeats, and many of his finest men had been captured and executed, including three of his brothers. His wife had become a hostage of the vengeful English king, along with two of his sisters and his daughter. Only his great prowess, at times against incredible numerical odds, kept patriotism and loyalty alive among those who would serve him. He was not a ruler with a great army, but a tattered bandit fighting from the rich forests in which he could find shelter. Troops had to be raised from those loyal to this new king, and to the dream of freedom. Help was sought from abroad. The highlands of Scotland were far from the English, but the lowlands had been brought to their knees.

      The borderlands remained a form of Hell on earth. In this purgatory and chaos, men and women, the great and the small, struggled to survive.

      Robert Bruce was king of Scotland.

      But it was treachery that reigned.

      Once upon a time . . .

      There lived a man who would be a great king.

      But in the year of our Lord 1307, his battle for the land, for the freedom of his country, had only just begun.

      CHAPTER 1

      They were surely madmen.

      From the hill, Igrainia could see the riders coming.

      They flew the flags of Robert the Bruce.

      They had to be mad.

      She rode with a party of twenty men, selected carefully for their skill and courage—and, of course, the simple fact that they were still alive and well. They wore full armor and carried well-honed weapons with which they were very adept.

      There were less than half that number coming toward them, a pathetically ragtag band, racing up the hill.

      “My lady . . . ?” queried Sir Morton Hamill, head of her guard.

      “Can we outrun them?” she asked.

      Sir Morton let out a sound of disgust. “Outrun them!” He was indignant. “They are but rabble; their so-called king runs to the forests while his family is slain in his stead. The Bruce is aware that he is an outlaw to most of his own people. My lady, there is no reason to run.”

      “No reason,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “except that more men will die. I am weary of death.”

      The riders were still gaining on them at a breakneck pace, racing from the site of the castle, where surely even they had realized that the black crosses covering the stone were no ploy of the enemy, but a true warning of the situation within.

      Sir Morton was trying hard to hold his temper. “My lady, I am aware of the pain in your heart. But these are the very renegades who brought the terror to your home, who cost you . . . who cost you everything.”

      “No man, or woman, asks for the plague, Sir Morton. And indeed, if you ask Father MacKinley, he will tell you that God sent the sickness in his anger that we should brutally make hostages of women and children, and execute our enemies so freely. We were warned of the sickness; we refused to believe the warnings of our foes. So now, if we can outrun the renegades, that is my choice. It was not my choice to leave Langley. I want no more death laid at my feet.”

      “Alas. We cannot outrun them,” Sir Morton argued then. “They are almost upon us.”

      She stared at him angrily. “You would fight them rather than do your duty to bring me to safety.”

      “My lady, you are beside yourself with grief and cannot think clearly. I would fight such upstart rebels, aye, my lady, for that is my duty.”

      “Sir Morton, I am in my full senses, quite capable of coherent thought—”

      “My lady, watch! Your position here on the hill is excellent; you