Page 8 of Steel & Surrender

Meanwhile, Greig Maclean had stepped back from his parents, letting them share their grief without intrusion.

Davy moved to stand alongside him, but neither brother touched nor gave the other comfort.

Instead, both their faces were carven from stone.

3: YE GAVE ME YER WORD

“A TOAST TO my brother!” Davy slurred, lurching to his feet and knocking over the jug of ale in front of him. It spilled across the table in the hall’s center, and some of the men seated around him cursed, leaping aside so they didn’t get soaked.

But Davy was too deep into his cups to notice.

Swaying, he lifted his cup high. “Alistair was the best of us … steadier … wiser,” he shouted.

His hawkish features were flushed, his eyes glassy. Twisting, he then raised a cup to where his parents sat behind him. Loch and Mairi had been subdued during the dregy so far.

Davy was the only one amongst them who really got into the spirit of it.

The dregy would go on late into the night—feasting, drinking, and swapping stories. The revelry had already gotten rowdier as barrels of ale were rolled out into the Great Hall. Singing erupted then, echoing high into the rafters.

Seated beside the smoldering hearth a few yards away from his brother’s table, Greig didn’t join in. Instead, he took another draft of ale, his mood growing ever darker and more maudlin.

Unlike the burial, which was always a somber affair, the dregy was a time for the living to release the tension that had built up over the past days. It was tradition, and Greig understood its purpose, but the noise was getting too much.

“Why is it that such a good man should die so young?” Davy shouted above the singing, his voice cracking as emotion battered its way in. “Why?”

Bitterness flooded Greig’s mouth. Why indeed. But then, why did anything ugly ever happen? His maiming a year before had shown him how the world worked. And then the Bean Nighe had come for his brother.

But Davy was right. Alistair was the best of them. Greig was a shadow of the man he’d once been, and Davy was a young hothead. But Alistair had been steady.

“I should have been there.” Davy’s fingers tightened on his cup, his mood darkening in a flash. “To watch his back.”

Greig couldn’t help it; he shifted upon his stool, his gaze going to where his parents sat silently behind Davy.

Their father’s lips pursed at this comment, his dark eyes hollowed in the flickering light of the sconces burning on the walls around him.

Loch had sent his son out on that day, and no one blamed him for it.

Alistair had wanted to lead the escort alone. He’d bid Davy to stay behind this time. At eighteen, their youngest brother was old enough to fight. He and Alastair were close too; they did everything together. Not on this occasion though. And just as well, or Duart would have been grieving the pair of them.

“It should have been an easy enough task,” Davy continued, his voice growing harsh. “Escorting a merchant cog to Mull. If it wasn’t for those dog-humping MacDonalds.”

Seated at the clan-chief’s right, Finn MacDonald shifted uneasily in his seat. Greig’s aunt Astrid cut her husband a sidelong look before putting her hand on his thigh. Of course, Davy wasn’t insulting all the MacDonalds, but the MacDonalds of Sleat, who hailed from the Isle of Skye, the ones who followed Callum MacDonald. And Finn wasn’t from that group of the clan, but from the MacDonalds of Dunnyveg on Islay. All the same, being a lone MacDonald in a hall of angry and grieving Macleans likely put the captain on edge.

Duart had been his home for a long time, and he’d married into the clan too, but there were still times when none of that mattered.

“They will pay for this,” Davy roared. “I swear it.” He shoved his cup high, ale sloshing over the side. “Let us all swear it.”

Everyone present, Greig included, lifted their cups high in a salute.

“Aye, revenge!”

The shouts shook the hall.

Moments passed, and then the piper in the corner struck up, rousing the tune once more. The mourners refilled their cups, and one of the warriors started singing tunelessly. Davy slumped back down onto the bench seat, as if grief had just barreled into him, robbing him of defiance.

Fingers clenching around his own cup, Greig cut his gaze away from his youngest brother and glared at the flickering flames. He wanted revenge as much as Davy did. It burned like a pulsing ember under his ribs.

How he wanted to make Callum MacDonald pay for what he’d done. He wanted to make him suffer.