Kings Pinnacle Read Free Page A

lowlands, away for the prying eyes of the
authorities. There were a few other raiders milling about in a
small group and some of them had ridden right out into the stream
to water their horses.
    “He’s is a baud one, and
he’ll nae forget the fasherie,” continued John, referring to the
confrontation with Patrick and Alex’s escape.
    “Weel now, if it isn’t Lord
March Hare mingling amongst the plain and common folk,” said a
young Scot who walked up to John and Alex.
    The interruption had come
from one of Alex’s older brothers, Hugh, who had arrived unnoticed
while Alex and his father were engaged in the conversation. The
raiders were typically badly behaved in camp, and respect was
seldom given and hard to earn. Hugh liked to inject a lot of
“Weels” into his conversation with anyone, and especially with his
comrades, as if he were an elderly Scot, even though he was only
eighteen years old, two years older than Alex. Hugh was one of the
fiercest raiders, or riders, as they called themselves, and
commanded high respect among all the members of the outlaw band.
Physically, Hugh was a giant who stood about three inches less than
seven feet tall and was stronger than any man in the band or any
man in the lowlands as far as he knew. He and Alex had been close
as young lads and were still very close.
    “What in the devil is a
March Hare and what are you talking about?” asked Alex with a
perplexed expression.
    “It’s in every newspaper and
written on posted bills nailed to every tree in the
shire.”
    Alex still had a puzzled
look as Hugh went on, “Every soldier, reef, and constable in the
territory is looking for ye Alex, lad.”
    “What in blazes for? What
did I do?”
    “Ye have a knack for finding
trouble, don’t ye ken, lad? You’re an outlaw, Alexander Mackenzie;
a wanted man, or boy in yer case. The posted bills say ye are a
horse thief and ye took a horse from Sir James Murray where ye
worked. He has sworn out a warrant for yer arrest after ye lit out
from his manor. The posted bills also say that yer a skinny wee
runt who rides through the Marches as fast as a bonny hare,” added
Hugh with a grin.
    The arrest warrants didn’t
really say anything about a hare; Hugh was making it up as he went
along. And even the term “Marches” that Hugh was using to describe
the area in the lowlands where they lived had been largely
discouraged and replaced with “Shire”. The Marches and March
Wardens had been abolished by King James I of Scotland and England
in the 1600s, but Hugh liked to use the old terms for things. He
was a kind of throwback who should have been born a hundred years
earlier.
    Hugh was just giving his
younger brother a hard time, as he usually did. Also it was high
time that Hugh pinned a nickname on Alex, and the “March Hare” was
fairly suited to him. They all knew that Alex wasn’t a horse thief,
but there was little they could do about it. The law was firmly on
the side of the nobility, and the common folk had little recourse,
and even less justice, in the lowlands, unless they took it into
their own hands.
    The nickname that Hugh had
given Alex was a bit too appropriate and it had a double meaning.
The saying “as wild as a March Hare” was centuries old. It had
originated in Europe and described the behavior of male hares
during their courtship rituals that usually occurred during mating
season in the month of March each year. Male hares darted around,
leaped into the air and generally cavorted around in order to
attract the attention of female hares. The females attempted to
fight them off before actually mating with them. Hares are normally
shy and reclusive animals, so this unusual behavior led people to
believe that hares went mad or wild in the month of March; hence
the saying became “mad (or wild) as a March hare”. The other
meaning, of course, was that hares in the March or Shire of
Scotland were considered to be very fast and very wily creatures
that were hard