Except, as Frank Randall had recounted it, this strategy would work only so long as the attackers were kept at a distance. Let them get too high, too close to the wee meadow, and Ferguson would switch to bayonet tactics at that point. But the problem was that the attackers who’d survived to get high enough and had eluded the bayonets would come over the edge with their weapons loaded and mow down the Loyalists who were fighting with unloaded guns equipped with butcher knives for bayonets. According to the damned book, Ferguson had little experience in battle—he’d been shot in the elbow in the only battle he’d fought, and the wound had crippled him—and he’d not understood either the terrain or the character of the men who would be climbing that mountain.

Randall hadn’t mentioned it, but Jamie was sure that Ferguson would have been using his own patented breech-loading rifle—he’d always use it, being unable to load a regular gun with his crippled elbow.

Strange to think of this man, this Ferguson, minding his own business somewhere just this minute, having no notion what was coming for him.

But you know the same is coming for you. A strange quivering ran down the backs of his legs, and he tensed his back and curled his fists to make it stop.

“Nay, I don’t,” he said defiantly to the shade of Frank Randall. “Ye’ve not been here; ye won’t be here. I’m no going to believe you just because ye wrote it down, aye?”

He’d spoken aloud and the deer had vanished like smoke, leaving him alone in the gathering twilight.

The evening was peaceful, but not the meadow. He’d brought his own disturbance with him, and the wind made long, rippling furrows through the grass, as though small creatures were being chased, running for their lives.

There ought to be some ritual for facing one’s death—and in fact, there were many, but none seemed quite appropriate for this situation. Lacking any other notion, though, he turned sunwise and walked the edge of the grass, making a circle completely round the mountaintop and the shades of the battle to come. The first sun charm to come to his mind was the deasil charm, said to bless a new child and protect him from harm.

William. Of course it would be William, always there in the back of his mind, the inner chambers of his heart. This might be the only thing of value that he could leave this child of his, and he let the prayer fill his heart as he said it aloud: