Wed to a Highlander

Chapter 1

Dust particles visibly floated in the golden rays of sunlight above the beautiful and famous Highlands of Scotland. The dewy air began to dry, the moistened grass covering the war grounds drying rapidly under the sun's heat.

And the stench of death was heavy in the air.

Green strands had been reddened from the blood drenching the earth. Bodies of warriors lay massacred across the plain. The battle had been bloody... out of control.

Two clans had been at war with each other for decades, before this generation was born.

It was easy to identify the McLellans' from the McVeighs' as their men lay dead across the great field. The McLellans' wore a deep red tartan, indicating the colour of blood and war. The McVeighs' donned green kilts, the colour of grass of the hills, an opposite colour to their rival clan.

This battle started when sixty years prior, James McLellan took Blair McVeigh as his wife... without her family's permission. The couple have been dead for over a decade, but Grant McVeigh's grandfather, Blair's brother, never saw it as a simple love story and convinced his son and his grandson that the McLellan clan deserved to be only wiped out completely, resulting in war long after the older generation had died.

Kane McLellan, James and Blair's only grandson, now Laird of the McLellan lands, had led his warriors into battle the day before, knowing full well that if he died, there would be no heir and the land would be left with no-one to protect them. Fortunately, God smiled on them and every few of his men died that day.

"My Laird! We must go now."

Kane turned to Reagan, the man who had been at his side for years. "Aye, I ken," he answered quietly.

His men had mounted their horses, ready for a long ride home. Reagan looked down at his Laird, unsure of what the man wanted to do. Looking down at the saddening scene before them wasn't something these tired men wanted to do at this point. The McVeighs' had fled in the time of dusk, leaving their dead to rot in the field instead of burying them. Barbarians thought Reagan angrily.

The McLellans' dead men were carried properly in carts so that they may be buried on ceremony on their own lands, by their own families. The injured were properly taken care of, set in separate carts, away from the dead.

Through the dense forest they travelled, away from the place of rotten air and foul earth. A morning of mourning, t'was; the brightening skies did nothing to lift their depressed souls.

"How much longer is this gonna go on for?" Reagan asked, as he glanced at his fellow comrades in the carts behind him, some of them suffering from a horrific cut to the flesh, some of them who will never breathe again.

Kane shook his head regrettably. "I donna ken, Reagan."

Reagan turned back around to look at his Laird's broad back as he rode ahead of him. "Mayhap when ye' finally marry the lowlander McGraw wench, eh?"

Kane contemplated the idea in his head. "Mayhap."