Blood Horn: Chapter 29
The Wrath of Man Made Monstrous
Welcome Back to Bloodthirsty Thursday!
CHAPTER 29
Highlanders charged the government’s infantry.
Muskets and bayonets collided.
Pistols fired.
Broadswords swung.
Government soldiers thrust right, catching Highlanders off guard. Their charge dissolved. Flesh squelched. Skin tore. Ribs shattered. People screeched. Some cried for retreat. Others barked to hold the lines. Jacobites fled. Irish Picquets covered them. Regiments withdrew, and the government let those who could run escape.
Above the mayhem, Bonnie Prince Charlie roared, “They won’t take me alive! Charge!” But there was no one left to charge.
Over a thousand Jacobites dead.
And only a hundred or so government soldiers.
The prince retreated; the government didn’t follow. His defeat was easy, child’s play, and they saw no use in chasing a child.
In violence’s wake, the Horn staggered. He retreated, too, a lone beast amid a mist of blood. He was shaky, trembling, and he didn’t know why. War was his nurse, battle his mistress. He was meant for this. It was his curse, yes, but it was also who he was, who he always had been.
Take us with you.
Oscar’s voice chimed in memory. Something snapped inside him. Then the Horn’s ears rang with others’ memories as time fractured, a chorus of sins.
“O, ye’ll take the high road, and I’ll take the low road…”
The Horn hadn’t heard the words before, didn’t know the haunting melody, but it burrowed in his bones, an eternal, ageless dirge.
“…and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.”
The song grew in his head, branching through his skull, digging roots in his mind. He wanted it gone.
It didn’t leave.
“But me and my true love will never meet again…”
He galloped from Culloden, past government soldiers who killed all wounded on the field, around fleeing Jacobites.
“…on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”
Violence was supposed to sustain him, not unhinge him, and there had been so much wonderful violence, a veritable banquet of blood and cruelty.
“O, ye’ll take…”
The song continued. A hymn of suffering. Then another melody wove with the first, a keening wail that cleaved the Horn.
“Carry the lad that’s born to be king over the sea to Skye.”
It clanged in his head, a rattle of metal—of knives, daggers, and swords.
“Many’s the lad fought on that day. Well the claymore did wield. When the night came, silently lay dead on Culloden’s field.”
Out, he begged. He wanted it out. The songs folded around each other, a writhing mass of anguish. He galloped faster, shredding bog beneath his hooves.
“Billow and breeze, islands and seas, mountains of rain and sun.”
Tears steamed in his eyes. Shit. He was not this mess. He was a monster, a mistake, but he couldn’t afford to be a mess, too.
“All that was good, all that was fair, all that was me is gone.”
This made no sense. Violence had sated him. The battle had strengthened him. He was a demon. A beast. A force to be reckoned with.
“But the broken heart it kens, nae second spring again, though the woeful may cease from their grieving.”
No.
He was not a demon.
Nor a beast.
Nor a force.
He was grieving.
Grieving who he had been with the twins.
Grieving what he could have had with Orsa.
The songs stopped.
And he realized something.
Not once in the battle had he searched for the coin.
Oh this makes me weep....omg
Oh, my heart. I wondered about the coin…and I wish he could find peace. ♥️