My deepest thanks to my family for their unwavering support of a life-long passion.
I could not have done this without you.
And my deepest thanks to my readers, without whom I would not have realized a dream.
It is the Year of Our Lord 1453, and Sir Clegg de Lave, a battle-scarred English knight, begins his search for a life that will bring him glory and riches…
After years as a mercenary in France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire, Clegg returns to Scotland to establish the most powerful and profitable gambling guild the world has ever seen, modeled on the gladiatorial schools of ancient Rome.
The Ludus Caledonia quickly becomes the center of battles for entertainment but also for opportunity—if a warrior wins, a lord may offer him a lucrative military position.
The lure of money and position makes men from all walks of life into fighters and some into winners, but only a rare few find something beyond the love of a fight.
The love of a good woman.
This rare few will know their happily ever after.
This is the world of the Ludus Caledonia…and business is booming.
The Sacramentum
I faithfully swear to do all that is commanded of me,
All that is required of me,
And all that is asked of me.
May I live both to fight and to protect my brethren.
May God smile upon me and grant me courage
So that I may not fail myself nor those around me.
Thus it is spoken, thus it shall be done.
—Fionnadh Fuil (Blood Oath) of the Ludus Caledonia
Part One
Sic Incipit (It Begins)
Prologue
Vale of Morning, the Scottish Highlands
Year of Our Lord 1476
Fat, fat, the water rat,
Thirty daggers in his back!
He heard the chant.
Terror filled him.
Then came the stones: small stones, larger stones, and stones of every size raining down on him in the vale that had been calm and peaceful until the deluge of rocks began. He’d made a mistake by cutting through this little valley, green like the emeralds his grandfather used to describe, knowing full well what waited for him there. Everyone in his village knew, and that was why they avoided this particular glen.
But not him.
Now, he was going to pay the price for that arrogance.
A rock hit him squarely on the head, right above the eyebrow. Already, he felt the trickle of blood.
“Halt!”
Someone was shouting at him, but now there was blood in his eye. Ooch, it stung! He was still trying to run, like an idiot, but soon there were bodies all around him. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Someone shoved him onto that emerald-green grass.
“Where are ye going, gòrach?”
A man-boy voice spoke, thumping on him as he tried to wipe the blood from his eye. Gòrach, they called him. It meant stupid in the Gaelic.
Indeed, he was very stupid.
“Home,” he said bravely. “I just want tae go home. Leave me be.”
The gang around him began to make crying noises, like a baby, and he determined that he was surrounded by children for the most part. Oh, he knew who they were. This glen he was traveling through was called the Gleann Gadainn, or the Vale of Morning, but it also had another name—
Gleann Deamhain.
The Vale of Demons.
On this sunny day, the demons had found him. A gang of children and youths who had claimed this vale as their particular hunting ground. Young or old, man or woman, it didn’t matter to them. A victim was a victim. As he sat on the green earth, blinking up at the children surrounding him, a young lass with bright-red hair plopped down beside him.
“What’s yer name, gòrach?” she asked.
He’d just managed to clear the blood from his eye. “Lor.”
Her gaze drifted over him, studying him. “Where do ye come from, Lor?”
He gestured to the east. “Careston.”
The lass continued to study him. She was a pretty thing even though she had a dirty face and matted red ringlets. At perhaps eleven or twelve years of age, she still had that spindly but tough body that girls in the Highlands had. Figures honed by hard work and the scarcity of food.
It was survival of the fittest.
“What do ye have for the taking?” she asked.
She was straight to the point. That’s what these demons wanted—food or anything of value. They’d been known to take animals, too, or whatever caught their fancy. Rumor had it they were part of Clan Ruthven, or even Clan Keith, a lowly clan that was the enemy of Clan Lindsay. This vale was part of Lindsay lands, but that didn’t matter to the demons. They had claimed it.