“Let us ride,” Cain said, his voice more like a growl, not because of the battle before him, for he’d been raised on battles, but because Gideon was right about their ferocious father. Cain pressed the steel crown, forged in the smithy at Girnigoe Castle, down upon his head. Its familiar pinch around his temples made him curse low.

“Ye go,” Gideon said, drawing Cain’s gaze. Third in age and trained to pass judgment as well as battle, Gideon was as lethal as the other Sinclair brothers and never stayed back from helping them smash their opponents.

“Blast it, Gideon,” Cain said as he spotted blood seeping down from a slash along Gideon’s upper arm. Cain hooked his bow and targe onto the back of his horse, Seraph, and jumped down. “Ye are injured.” He grabbed a leather satchel and yanked the cord open.

“Just a bit of a slice before I skewered the unlucky bastard.” Gideon dismounted to pull his bloodied shirt away from the gaping flesh. “Merida will sew it up back at Girnigoe.”

“Aye, but if it gets tainted, Da will have your hide,” Cain said, glancing back out at the battle he yearned to join but not before plastering some of his aunt’s poultice onto his brother’s arm. “We can die in battle with honor, but no horseman from God would die of taint.” It was one of their father’s favorite bellowing lectures as he schooled them in the biblical promise of victory over their enemies. They’d all heard it repeated thousands of times.

Cain’s falcon returned to glide overhead, dropping the orange signal flag onto the ground at her master’s boots. Looking toward the battlefield, Cain watched his second brother, Joshua, signal his cavalry, seated on bay horses, to ride west to meet the Sutherland challenge while Bàs drove his smaller army forward to keep guard in the east, along with Cain’s white-seated cavalry. Gideon’s men, who rode black horses, remained in the middle of the moor, supporting the mighty Sinclair chief.

Their father, George Sinclair, fourth Earl of Caithness, slashed away at the oncoming men on foot from his position in the middle of the summer meadow. Even from the rise, Cain could hear his war cry as he let his wild bloodlust rage against his hated enemy. Spinning to slay foe after foe, his blood-slick sword moved like a familiar dance. The man loved battle and always commanded his sons to give him room to slay his enemy on his own, even now in his advancing years. Some thought him insane. Actually, most thought him insane, but they knew enough to hold their tongues, or the wildness of Chief Sinclair could turn against them.

“Go,” Gideon said, adjusting the poultice around his arm. “It will be over too soon, and ye will miss the victory.”