The Claiming of the Highlands Read online

  The Claiming of the Highlands

  By

  Peter Wacht

  Book 7 of The Sylvan Chronicles

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright 2020 © by Peter Wacht

  Cover design by Ebooklaunch.com

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

  Published in the United States by Kestrel Media Group LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-950236-12-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-950236-13-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020912186

  Also by Peter Wacht

  THE SYLVAN CHRONICLES

  The Legend of the Kestrel

  The Call of the Sylvana

  The Raptor of the Highlands

  The Makings of a Warrior

  The Lord of the Highlands

  The Lost Kestrel Found

  The Claiming of the Highlands

  The Fight Against the Dark (forthcoming)

  The Defender of the Light (forthcoming)

  Contents

  Also by Peter Wacht

  CHAPTER ONE: Ambush

  CHAPTER TWO: Unexpected Shade

  CHAPTER THREE: Decisions

  CHAPTER FOUR: Nagging Doubt

  CHAPTER FIVE: Dangerous Option

  CHAPTER SIX: Darker Presence

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Stories

  CHAPTER EIGHT: A Challenge

  CHAPTER NINE: Hidden Meaning

  CHAPTER TEN: A New Pawn

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: A Dance

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Point Taken

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Deeper Meaning

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Marcher Mettle

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: All Smiles

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Black Widow

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Shocking Surprise

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: At What Price?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Scrubbing Pots

  CHAPTER TWENTY: A Good Sign

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE: Pursued

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: Attempted Escape

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE: A Drink

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR: Change in Plan

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE: Sleepless Night

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: Quick Circuit

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN: Final Preparations

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT: Riders

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE: Desperate Melee

  CHAPTER THIRTY: Shifting Skirmish

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE: A Debt Paid

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO: A Revelation

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE: Frustrating Experience

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR: Unexpected Lesson

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE: Teasing Conversation

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX: A Symbol

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN: Unwanted Reminder

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT: Marauders

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE: More to Learn

  CHAPTER FORTY: New Strategy

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE: Empty Promises

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO: Quick Visit

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE: Homeward Bound

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR: Request for Help

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE: The Key

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX: The Search Begins

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN: Bounty Found

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT: The Game Begins

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE: Plans Revealed

  CHAPTER FIFTY: No Excuses

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE: Loose the Marchers

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO: Cat and Mouse

  CHAPTER FIFTY THREE: Fair Fight

  CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR: Inspired Idea

  CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE: Changing the Game

  CHAPTER FIFTY SIX: Fearsome Allies

  CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN: Schemes

  CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT: Unexpected Help

  CHAPTER FIFTY NINE: Arrayed for Battle

  CHAPTER SIXTY: Tremors

  CHAPTER SIXTY ONE: Poor Odds

  CHAPTER SIXTY TWO: Orders

  CHAPTER SIXTY THREE: Soaring Confidence

  CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR: Defending the Front

  CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE: Mounting Frustration

  CHAPTER SIXTY SIX: Orderly Retreat

  CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN: Claiming the Crag

  CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT: Just Ahead

  CHAPTER SIXTY NINE: The End

  CHAPTER SEVENTY: Accountability

  CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE: Change in Command

  CHAPTER SEVENTY TWO: Playing Her Role

  CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE: Final Maneuver

  CHAPTER SEVENTY FOUR: Last Order

  CHAPTER SEVENTY FIVE: Turning Tide

  CHAPTER SEVENTY SIX: A Little Help

  CHAPTER SEVENTY SEVEN: Swirling Black

  CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT: His Hands Alone

  CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE: Back From the Edge

  CHAPTER EIGHTY: White Light

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ambush

  “Steady, lads. Steady, lasses. Steady.”

  Nestor, a grizzled Highlander with a white beard trailing halfway down his chest, whispered his instructions to the men and women hidden among the trees, Marchers all. Trained as the warriors of the Highlands beginning at the age of ten, they were a hard people. But such a practice proved necessary. They lived in a harsh environment. The Highlands were a beautiful sight, but also dangerous. The rugged land hid untold riches — gold and silver, precious jewels and more — among its craggy, snowcapped peaks. But throughout their history the Highlanders had little use for the wealth that could be mined in their homeland. Rather, the people of the Highlands remained focused on a cold, stark and unforgiving reality, one of constant threats and peril, particularly from the north.

  For Nestor and the other Highlanders that reality had crashed down upon them just a decade before. In a valley to the east of where the squad of Marchers now hid rose the stronghold of the Highlanders, the Crag, a monolithic rock that thrust up out of the earth and the surrounding forest. Carved from the mountain, the redoubt was a formidable sight. The Highlanders had built their fortress on top of a long-dead volcano, taking great slabs of black stone from the plateau to form its walls. During the night, the citadel receded into the darkness, indistinct in the gloom. The Crag had never fallen to an enemy. Many an army had learned that lesson the hard way, leaving behind crushed bodies and broken spirits. Until that fateful day ten years before, when a traitor among the Marchers had aided the reivers during their surprise attack on the Crag. Supported by warlocks and dark creatures, as soon as the Ogren and Shades broke through the Crag’s outer curtain, the reivers grasped that they had won, and that the fate of the Highlands was sealed. Nestor and many of the Marchers standing with him now and shivering in the early morning cold had lived through that day, a day of shame and infamy. Talyn Kestrel, the Lord of the Highlands, had died that day. Refusing to escape, he fought until the very end in the Hall of the Highland Lord. His son, Benlorin Kestrel, met a similar fate at his camp in the northern peaks. Consequently, the Kestrel line had been broken, or so it had appeared.

  Led by the Dunmoorian Lord Johin Killeran, who served as the High King’s regent, from that point forward the reivers had assumed control of the Highlands. The High King had wanted the Highlands outright for himself, but there were still questions about the grandson. Did he die that night as well? Or had he survived the attack? A body had never been found. Therefore, according to the law set down during the time of the first High King,
a decade-long regency was required. If no legitimate claimant stepped forward prior to the end of the stated time period, then the Highlands would revert to the High King for administration and rule. Although unhappy with the forced delay, it did not stop the High King, through his selected regent, from doing as he wished within the Highlands, much to the detriment of the Highlanders themselves, who reeled from the shock and loss of what had happened that fateful night and set the Highlands on a path of terror and oppression.

  Nestor smiled to himself, remembering those not so long ago dark days. Hope had been lost during that desperate time and he, much like many of his people, had felt cast adrift, their thoughts only of survival, not vengeance. For with none of the other Kingdoms strong enough or willing to aid the Highlands against the expanding dominance of the High King, Killeran and his so-called Army of the Black Sword had been given free rein by Rodric Tessaril to do as charged. Enslave the Highlanders and force them into the mines so that the High King could extract the wealth that he needed to increase his power and achieve his larger objectives. For almost ten years the scheme had worked well for the High King and his sycophants. Until the boy appeared. The boy first known as the Raptor. The boy who aided the Highlanders whenever possible and killed dark creatures with ease. At first, Nestor, staying close to family in the passes of the northern Highlands, had taken the stories that had begun to spread among the peaks as no more than the fantasies of a desperate people, a people slowly being crushed under the heel of the High King. Even though the Marchers had the will to continue the fight, they didn’t have the numbers to defeat the thousands of reivers that had flooded into the Highlands as part of the Army of the Black Sword and, more importantly, they had no way to defend against the Dark Magic of Killeran’s warlocks.

  But with time, as the stories continued to proliferate among the Highland towns and villages, and Nestor began to find evidence of the Raptor’s work sprinkled among the Highland peaks – a small village saved from a reiver patrol thanks to the sharp shooting of a near perfect archer or the remains of several Ogren hamstrung and beheaded – he had started to believe, his hope returning once more. For Nestor and many others, that boy who had become the Raptor had shifted from myth to reality, in fact a new reality that held the promise of a better future for the subjugated Highlanders. The same boy who became a constant thorn in Killeran’s side, burning down his primary fort and in the process reigniting the fire for freedom that now blazed in the breast of every Marcher. The boy who just a few months before had become the Lord of the Highlands. The Lost Kestrel was no longer lost. The grandson of Talyn Kestrel had returned to the Highlands to take his rightful place, and woe to any who opposed him, as the honorable Marchers had a saying: “A debt is owed.”

  With the return of the Lord of the Highlands, the Marchers began collecting on those debts, starting with the Army of the Black Sword, which had pushed deeper into the Highlands seeking to quell the uprising before it gained a momentum that could not be stopped. Killeran’s reivers had failed miserably. What a glorious day that had been, thought Nestor, allowing his mind to drift just for a moment even as his eyes scanned his surroundings in an unerring arc, paying particular attention to the gulley that ran beneath where the Marchers hid among the evergreens. With the last of night still upon them, there was nothing but shadows to stare at among the bracken below.

  Even though Ogren and Shades had been used in support of the reivers, the Marchers under the command of Thomas Kestrel had destroyed the Army of the Black Sword against the walls of a Highland village named Anselm, which was located at the very edge of one of the northern passes. Since that time, the Marchers had harried and harassed any reivers foolish enough to remain in the Highlands, driving them out or, as Nestor preferred, killing them. For the Marchers sought to pay their debts, and they owed the reivers a huge sum for the pain, misery, and death Killeran’s lackeys had spawned in their homeland since the fall of the Crag.

  Yet even with one victory attained, other challenges remained. Dark creatures from the Charnel Mountains continued to cross the barren Northern Steppes, seeking to gain a foothold in the Highlands for their master, who stirred once more. It was because of that threat, one that had troubled the Highlands for centuries, that Nestor and his Marchers waited patiently among the trees, bows in hand, several long, steel-tipped arrows stuck point first into the rocky soil and within easy reach. The Shadow Lord sought the Kingdoms for his own, and when his Dark Horde descended from the north the Lord Thomas and every other Highland chief, Nestor included, believed that the black-hearted bastard would seek to avoid the Breaker, the massive, granite wall to the west that ran from the Highlands to the coast and the Winter Sea. Three hundred feet in height and one hundred feet in width, the Breaker was constructed after the Great War by the Kingdoms as a way to defend against the Dark Horde, believing that the massive barrier would prevent the Ogren and Shades, Fearhounds and Mongrels, and the other terrifying, monstrous dark creatures that obeyed the Shadow Lord from threatening the Kingdoms once again. Yet Nestor scoffed at the naïve and misplaced hopes of those who had thought a stone wall would eliminate the need to defend against such an ancient evil. The Shadow Lord was not a fool. He had simply adopted a different strategy, seeking different routes into the west that would allow him to bypass the Breaker. Thus, the importance of the Highlands to his plans as an alternative path into the Kingdoms. Because of this threat, the new Highland Lord had charged Nestor and his Marchers with protecting the northern Highlands while he made his formal claim to the Highland throne during the Council of the Kingdoms.

  Nestor hoped that all had gone well in Eamhain Mhacha, understanding the danger that Thomas, Coban, Oso, and the other Marchers had ridden toward. A danger that was difficult to defend against because more often than not politics hid your enemy in plain sight up until the instant you felt the dagger slide into your back. Much better to be here in the Highlands where you had no doubt about what you were fighting for and what you were fighting against.

  “On my command,” whispered Nestor, his eyes tightening as he glimpsed finally the movement that he had been expecting. The several dozen Marchers raised their bows in unison, the pull back on their strings barely making a sound as the biting wind swept up from the Northern Steppes, finding a path through the ravines and gullies leading up to the higher passes.

  Large shapes had appeared just below the Marchers in the gloom of the early morning, the sun yet to find its way over the towering, rugged mountain peaks to the east. Bunched together, the huge creatures struggled up the slope of broken brush and loose rock, unaware or uncaring of what waited for them at the top.

  “Release!”

  The arrows flew through the morning mist, almost all finding a target. Roars of anger and pain echoed off the surrounding spires of rock. Below the Marchers some of the large shapes had fallen to the ground, never to rise again. But only a few, as these creatures were difficult to kill because of their armor and toughened hide, often requiring an arrow through the eye to ensure a clean kill, and to ask that of the Marchers in the dim light of the morning would have been unfair.

  “Nock!”

  The Marchers immediately heeded Nestor’s command, pulling free the arrows they had stuck in the dirt by their feet and fitting them to the taut strings of their bows.

  “On my command!”

  The Marchers pulled back on their heavy bows, now seeking individual targets. The dark creatures below them had separated, their once orderly march having dissolved into a maelstrom of uncoordinated activity. Several of the beasts roared in rage and began to climb the slope toward their attackers.

  “Release!”

  A second flight of arrows arced through the air, all striking true this time as the monsters emerged from the grey murk in their rush to confront their tormentors. The dark creatures roared in rage as they struggled up the loose rocks of the incline, several using the broken brush to pull themselves up in order to avoid sliding back down the steep
slope. Twice the size of a man, their heavily muscled bodies covered in fur, Ogren were truly hideous creatures. Their massive shoulders and upper body sometimes proved too heavy for their spines, forcing them to walk hunched over. Their chiseled, beast-like faces looked as if they had been carved from rock. Long, sharp tusks protruded from their lower lips to curl around their cheeks. They lacked intelligence, but their strength and viciousness more than made up for that shortcoming. Ogren were efficient soldiers. They enjoyed killing, and given the opportunity they ate what they killed, no matter what it was. A single person did not willingly fight an Ogren, not if they wanted to live. But the Marchers had mastered how to fight dark creatures such as these.

  “Nock!”

  The Marchers responded a third time to Nestor’s command, ignoring the Ogren as they hauled themselves closer, several resembling pin cushions as arrows sprouted from their chests and thighs, the wounds seemingly having no effect on the enraged beasts.

  “On my command!”

  The Marchers raised their bows once more, sighting on individual targets, selecting the Ogren that had scrabbled closest to the Marcher line.

  “Release!”

  The third wave of arrows had a devastating impact at such a close distance, the steel-tipped shafts of wood tearing through Ogren eyes and mouths as the Marchers targeted where the beasts were most vulnerable. Almost all of the Ogren closest to the Marchers fell to the ground, an arrow embedded in their brains. But not every dark creature unfortunately. Therefore, Nestor judged that it was time to go.

  “Retreat!”

  The Marchers quickly began pulling back, following Nestor as he trotted off to the south. The Highland chief took great pleasure in the fact that they had hurt the Ogren raiding party badly with none of his Marchers the worse for wear. But the dark creatures were too many for the Marchers to stand and fight, and the beasts would be after them in an instant. In fact, he could hear several of the Ogren already pulling themselves to the top of the slope, their roars of triumph sending a shiver through his body and giving him a greater sense of urgency as the monstrous beasts began the chase.