The attackers met resistance at Ian’s croft, four strong fighters. He called his three sons to arms and sent his grandson to warn their closest neighbors. Fortunately, Ian was a bad sleeper and was awake to see the newlyweds’ croft set on fire.

Old Ian lived there with his three grown sons, a daughter‑in‑law and grandson, and a servant. The third croft faired a little better, though not by much. It was too late to wish she had not defied her brother and married her beloved. Smoke gathered in the thatched hut, suffocating her. He forced her to hide beneath their box bed, and then he went out to meet the attack. She woke to the war cry with terror, terror that doubled when she saw her husband’s anguished face. There was no blessing in that, for imprisoned in their inferno, their deaths were more agonizing.Ī newly married couple lived in the second hut, the wife fifteen years old. Their livestock was butchered, but the crofter and his family were saved the sword. The family in the first croft were barely awake before their small but was put to the torch. Seven crofts were in their pathway, but the assailants expected to attack only three, for MacKinnion crofters were skilled warriors as well as farmers, and the few attackers had only surprise on their side. And in a moment, a bloodcurdling war cry split the still night. The five men moved away from their hiding place and gathered their horses. And dinna kill all, or there’ll be no one left to say whose cry they heard.”

The cry will be the Clan Fergusson cry, no’ our own. “So it is,” he said, and began to pass out the green‑gold‑and‑gray‑striped plaids he had ordered made for that night. Then the tallest of them would set them on their task‑‑a task conceived out of bitterness. They were waiting for the moon to reach its zenith, when it would cast no shadow.

They crouched behind the crag, cold and wet from their river crossing. The five men heard only the melodic sound of water far below and their own ragged breathing. This thick stream traversed Glen More, where MacKinnion crofts dotted what little fertile land there was.Īll was quiet in the crofts. The river was a silver thread winding its way through the wide valley between the Cairngorm mountains and towering Lochnagar.Ī burn turbulent with melted winter snow passed below, joining the Dee. Five men waiting behind a steep crag far above the great Dee river. A BRIGHT moon broke through fleeting clouds, lighting the Highland moors and casting five men into dark shadows.

A gentle feuding