Tom MacLeod stepped out of the trees and fell into step beside him with a quiet “Mac Dubh.” It gave him an odd feeling, sometimes, when one of his Ardsmuir men called him that. Memories of prison, the hard things—and they were hard—but also the fleeting, regular pulse of the kinship that had kept them alive and would bind them for life. And at the bottom of his heart, always, a faint sense of his father, the Black One whose son he was. “Dean Urnaigh dhomh,” he whispered. Pray for me, Da.
