6 Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “Two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages, and six pounds of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

7 When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!”

8 I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death…

Chapter One

Chapter One

Northern Scotland

15 June in the Year of our Lord 1589

Cain Sinclair surveyed the mist-shrouded battlefield from atop his white charger, standing on the eastern rise of the moor. The field lay like a giant chessboard, his pieces moving according to his perfect strategy. To the north lay the sea. To the southwest lay his prize, Dunrobin Castle, seat of Clan Sutherland.

His gaze swept along the lines of Sinclair cavalry flanking north and south, and the warriors charging through their foes in the valley. He could see his father, the chief of the Sinclairs, down in the middle of it all, slashing away at Sutherland warriors on foot.

Gideon, Cain’s younger brother, sat mounted next to him on his black charger. “Put your bloody crown on before Da sees ye’ve taken it off,” Gideon said. “Half the Sutherlands will piss themselves when ye swoop down there wearing God’s crown, unleashing your arrows from atop a white steed.”

“Bàs is likely doing that already with his sickle and mask on the eastern ridge,” Cain said, tipping his head toward the far bluff where his youngest brother rode with his army of pale-colored horses. The plants they rubbed into the horses’ gray coats gave Bàs’s herd a distinctive green tint, enough to bring the biblical prophecy of the four horsemen to life.

Gideon nodded but didn’t break a smile. “Just put the damn crown on, else we must endure Da’s wrath afterward.”

Cain’s gaze caught enemy movement in the west. He raised two fingers to his mouth, whistling. The shrill call brought his falcon, the loyal raptor flapping her black-and-white-lined wings over his head. Leather jesses dangled from her sharp yellow talons as she alighted on his gloved arm. Yanking an orange-dyed scrap of fabric from the back of his targe, Cain held it to his bird’s curved beak. She snapped it up and crouched, and he lifted her into the air as she sprang upward to soar low over the field of battling men. The orange flag flapping down would alert his father and two other brothers that the enemy was organizing to advance in the west, opposite from their current positions.