Falkirk, January 1746
The sleet came sideways across the moor, driving into eyes and mouths, soaking plaid and wool until they clung like lead. The ground was sodden, each step sucking at boots, every pace forward a fight against the earth itself.
Yet still the Highland host advanced.
At the head of one knot of men strode Donald Gunn and his son Seumas, their plaids belted high, targes strapped, claymores gleaming dull in the pale light. Around them thirty Gunns marched, their breath steaming, their boots black with mud. Pipes keened above the roar of weather, a sound both mournful and savage.
Across the field, red lines formed. Government troops, muskets levelled, bayonets glittering. Drums thudded, steady as a heartbeat. Their coats shone crimson even through the storm, banners snapping.
Seumas's chest burned with a fire no rain could quench. He gripped his claymore tight, the leather grip rough against his palm. His pistols were primed, his powder-horn half empty. The dirk at his hip waited like a snake.
Donald's voice carried over the roar of the storm. "Remember the line! Wait for the signal!"
But Seumas felt the pull already — the fury that lived in his blood, the prophecy that had followed him since birth. Blood and steel.
The pipers wailed. A signal flag lifted. The word passed down the Jacobite line like fire on heather.
"Air adhart! Air adhart! Forward!"
The Highland charge began.
The host surged, a roar rising from thousands of throats. "Bàs no Beatha!" The words rolled like thunder. The ground shook under pounding feet.
The red line answered with musket fire. A crack, a roll, smoke boiling white across the field. Men fell, cut down in mid-stride, the wet earth drinking their blood. Still the charge came on.
Seumas fired his first pistol, the recoil jarring his arm. Through the smoke, he saw a redcoat jerk, fall, his musket spinning from his grasp. Seumas dropped the empty weapon, drew the second, fired again. Another fell. The acrid stench of powder filled his nose, sharp and choking.
Then he was among them.
The claymore swept in a great arc, biting into musket and man alike. A redcoat screamed, his arm severed. Another thrust with a bayonet; Seumas turned it aside with his targe and answered with his dirk, the narrow blade sliding under ribs. Blood spurted hot, steaming against the cold air.
He fought like a storm. Claymore rising and falling, pistols discarded, dirk stabbing in close. Around him the Gunns pressed forward, roaring, cutting, dying.
Donald's voice rose in the din, steady, commanding. "Hold the line! With me, lads!"
Seumas could barely hear. His world had narrowed to steel, mud, and blood. A bayonet ripped his plaid, grazing his ribs. He swung in reply, the claymore biting deep into the man's shoulder, cleaving bone. His arms ached, his breath tore in his chest, but he did not falter.
The red line buckled. Their ordered ranks broke under the fury of the Highland charge. Men screamed, fled, threw down muskets. Some stood and died where they stood. The field was chaos — smoke, mud, bodies trampled underfoot.
Seumas cut down one, then another, his face spattered red. His eyes were dark fire, his breath ragged.
When the fighting ebbed at last, when the red line was broken and the Jacobite host stood panting among the fallen, Seumas realized his claymore was dripping, his hands slick. He looked down. Three men lay at his feet. One still twitched.
Donald came to his side, his beard dark with rain, his eyes grim. "Are you whole?"
Seumas nodded, though his chest heaved. He had no wound but the graze at his ribs.
Donald's gaze swept the field. "Then remember this, son. Remember what steel costs."
But others had already begun to whisper.
"The Black Gunn," a Cameron murmured, eyeing Seumas with awe and unease. "He fights like a demon. Did you see him? Not a man could stand against him."
The name spread, passed from lip to lip even as the dead were stripped, even as the wounded moaned.
The Black Gunn.
Seumas said nothing. He only cleaned his blade, the steel whispering as he drew it through wet grass, and stared at the broken field. His heart pounded still, not with fear, but with something darker.
Blood and steel.
The prophecy had woken.
By nightfall, the Jacobite host camped on sodden ground, victory theirs. Fires burned low, men huddled under cloaks, eating what scraps they could. The moans of the dying carried through the dark, mingling with the keening of pipes.
Seumas sat apart, his claymore across his knees. He cleaned it with slow, deliberate strokes, though no cloth could wipe away the feel of what it had done.
Donald came and sat beside him. For a long time, neither spoke. The fire snapped, the wind moaned.
At last Donald said, low, "You fought like a man possessed."
Seumas did not look up. "I fought as I was taught."
Donald's hand tightened on his shoulder. "Aye. But see you never forget — prophecy is not destiny. You are not a ghost yet. You are my son, Seumas, and a Gunn. That is enough."
Seumas met his father's eyes. He wanted to believe those words. But he remembered the Cailleach, her voice dry as ash: Iron will mark him. Ash will follow him. He will think himself a ghost.
And as the wind howled over Falkirk Moor, Seumas could not shake the fear that the prophecy had already begun to carve his path in blood.
Culloden, April 1746
The months after Falkirk were cruel.
The Jacobite host, though victorious, marched south into England and then back again, their hopes dwindling with each weary mile. The Prince's promises grew hollow, his coffers empty, his men starving. By the time spring came and the redcoats met them on Drummossie Moor, the Highland army was worn to bone.
Rain lashed the field that morning. The sky was iron-grey, the ground sodden, every step a sucking mire. Smoke drifted low from the redcoat guns, hanging thick across the moor. The Government army waited in ranks: artillery set, muskets levelled, bayonets gleaming. Their line stretched far, their discipline unbroken.
Seumas stood among the Gunns, his claymore strapped, pistols primed, dirk at his hip. His stomach was hollow; they had eaten little but handfuls of oatmeal for days. His boots were soaked through, his plaid heavy with rain. Yet his eyes burned, black fire beneath the storm.
Donald stood beside him, face grim, beard dripping with water. Around them their kin muttered prayers in Gaelic, hands tracing crosses or touching charms hidden in plaid folds. One cousin kissed a sprig of rowan, another pressed lips to the hilt of his dirk.
The pipers began. Their keening rose above the cannon's rumble, sharp as a knife, wild as a wolf's cry.
The Prince rode along the line, velvet soaked, face pale but determined. His voice strained in Gaelic and French both, urging courage. Few heard him. All eyes were on the red line across the moor.
"Bàs no Beatha!" Donald roared, his voice carrying over the din.
"Bàs no Beatha!" the Gunns answered.
Then the order came.
The Highland charge surged forward.
Through mud and smoke, through sleet and grapeshot, they ran. Muskets cracked, cannon thundered. Men fell in rows, torn apart, blood spraying the wet earth. Yet still the clans charged, voices raised in fury.
Seumas fired his pistols, smoke choking his throat. He flung them aside, drew his claymore, and pressed on. Around him men screamed, fell, rose again. The ground was slick with blood and rain.
A cannon roared ahead, grapeshot tearing through ranks. A Gunn clansman to Seumas's left vanished in a spray of red. His brother Ewan staggered, a musket ball through his chest, and fell into the mire. Another brother, Alasdair, charged beside Seumas only to be run through by a bayonet. His scream tore through the storm.
Seumas roared, swinging his claymore in a great arc, cutting down the redcoat who struck his brother. Blood sprayed his face, warm against the rain. He pressed forward, fury drowning grief.
Donald fought like a stag at bay, his claymore flashing, his targe splintered by musket balls. He cut down two, three, then a bayonet pierced his side. He staggered, coughed blood, but swung again, his blade biting deep into a redcoat's neck.
"Father!" Seumas cried.
Donald turned once, his eyes locking with his son's. Pride shone there, and sorrow. Then another volley tore through. Donald fell, his claymore dropping into the mud.
Seumas roared, a sound more beast than man. He fought like a man possessed, claymore carving through muskets, through men, through everything. His dirk flashed, stabbing, twisting, killing. His plaid was ripped, his arms bloodied, but still he struck.
The red line shuddered before him. Men shouted, "It's him! The Black Gunn!" Some faltered, fear in their eyes even as discipline held their ranks. Word had spread from Falkirk — of the storm-born Gunn who slew without mercy.
But the Highland charge faltered. Exhausted, bloodied, their fury broken on cannon and bayonet, the clans fell back. Men fled into the heather, pursued by cavalry. The moor was a slaughterhouse, bodies strewn, groans of the dying drowned by musket fire.
Seumas stood amid it, chest heaving, blade dripping. Around him lay his father, his brothers, his kin. Dead, all dead. The cause was broken. The Prince fled, his banner trampled.
A redcoat officer pointed, shouting above the din. "There! That one! The Black Gunn! Ten guineas to the man who takes his head!"
Seumas's blood ran cold.
He turned, saw cavalry bearing down, sabres raised. He ran, plunging into smoke and sleet, into the bog where bodies sank. Muskets cracked behind him, balls whistling past. He stumbled, slid, rose again, sprinted for the heather.
The moor swallowed him, the cries of the dying fading behind. He ran until his lungs tore, until his legs faltered. He threw himself into the gorse, panting, bloodied, shaking. Rain poured down, washing red from his hands.
In the stream beside him, he saw his reflection — pale, hollow-eyed, spattered with blood not all his own. He whispered, hoarse, "I am no longer Seumas." His hand clenched. "I am Flint. I will not shatter."
The Fugitive
The moor still stank of blood when the redcoats began their work.
Seumas watched from the heather, hidden in gorse, as Government troops moved among the fallen. Some they bayoneted where they lay, wounded men crying out, cut short by cold steel. Others they stripped of tartan, piling plaids in heaps to be burned. A few they took alive, bound with rope, to be dragged south in chains.
He lay still, breath shallow, every nerve aflame with the need to run. But he did not move. To move was to die. He waited until the screams dulled, until smoke from the pyres drifted thick, until the last drumbeat faded into rain. Only then did he crawl on his belly, inch by inch, away from the slaughter ground.
For days he moved like a hunted stag.
He crept through burns to mask his tracks, slept in caves and heather hollows, drank rainwater from leaves. His stomach knotted with hunger; he ate roots, raw oats, whatever he could steal from abandoned crofts. His plaid, torn at Culloden, hung in rags, his boots split. Still he carried his claymore, though its weight dragged at his back. He could not cast it aside. It was all that remained of his father.
Everywhere he went, he saw ruin.
Villages burned, black smoke curling from roofless crofts. Women weeping among ashes, children shivering naked in the rain. Old men hanged from trees as warnings. Redcoats patrolled in packs, their bayonets bright even in mist, their officers barking orders with cold precision.
Once, Seumas came upon a row of bodies nailed to barn doors — men of the clans, their faces frozen in pain. Over them hung a sign in English: No quarter to rebels.
He turned away, bile rising in his throat, and pressed deeper into the glen.
The bounty came like a whisper, then a roar.
At first, a crofter's wife, trembling, pressed bread into his hand. "They say your head is worth fifty pounds," she whispered, eyes darting. "The Black Gunn. They call you a butcher of redcoats. Go — go before my man sees you, or he'll be tempted."
Later, a shepherd spat in the dirt when Seumas passed. "I should hand you over. Feed my bairns for a year, your price would. The Butcher of Culloden, they name you. Too many redcoats dead by your sword. You've cursed us all."
Seumas said nothing. He only walked on, his shoulders heavy with silence.
The bounty posters spread — nailed to kirk doors, hammered onto tavern walls. Some called for "James Gunn, known as the Black Gunn," others offered coin simply for the head of "the rebel Gunn." The name already becoming a cloak for myth.
But with each telling, the price grew higher. And with it, the danger.
One night he found shelter in a ruined bothy, its roof half fallen, the wind hissing through the stones. He lit no fire, for fear of patrols. Instead he lay in darkness, his claymore across his chest, listening to the night.
In the silence, he heard again the Cailleach's voice: He will think himself a ghost.
And so he was. His kin were gone, his name hunted, his cause lost. He lived only in shadow, unseen, unnamed. He was no longer Seumas mac Dhomhnaill Ghunn. He was Flint, a man made of blood and steel, and of nothing else.
He pressed a hand to the cold blade. His breath rasped in the dark.
"Ghost or man," he whispered, "I will not bow."
The months dragged on. Summer came, but the Highlands did not green as before. Smoke hung over glens, the song of the pipes was silenced by law, the wearing of tartan forbidden. Clans scattered, broken, their chiefs in exile or hanged. The Highlands bled, and Seumas bled with them.
Yet he endured.
Through hunger, through fear, through loneliness, he endured. His name, whispered with dread, spread farther than his footsteps. Some cursed him, some prayed for him, some swore they had seen him cut down whole patrols alone. He became less a man than a shadow-story, told by firelight when the wind moaned.
The Black Gunn. Flint. The ghost of Culloden.
One evening, standing on a ridge above a ruined village, Seumas watched the sun sink red over the sea. The heather stretched endless, the gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the waves pounded their eternal hymn. He was alone, utterly, and yet the land itself seemed to whisper to him.
Blood and steel.
It was not prophecy now. It was his truth.
He turned from the ruin, from the smoke, from the past. He wrapped his tattered plaid tighter and walked into the heather, his shadow long in the dying light.
Behind him, the Highlands wept. Ahead, only the unknown waited.
And Seumas — Flint — walked on.