Author's Note: Someone did the math and got on to me about the fact that it's unlikely Penance would've spent so many years wandering around after his 'first death' without making any contact with another Immortal, what with the Highlander 'buzz' and all. The short answer is that there are different rules for child Immortals in this story, and I'll get to them in the next chapter. Long story short: kids like Penance get a little bit of an edge in the Game. The Source isn't so terribly unfair, it seems…

.

.

"The Heart of Savagery"

Letterewe, Scotland – 1650

Morning rays streaked through gaps in the thatch wall. His body stirred on the leather mat, and he tried to bring up one arm to shield his eyes. That arm, however, refused his request to move.

He opened his eyes and sat up, grabbing his left arm with his right hand. He ran that hand along his arm. The arm was wrapped in cloth, and a wooden dowel was bound across its length, preventing him from moving it. Penance squinted at this curious arrangement, and in his sleepy daze he spent a good minute just trying to make sense of it.

Suddenly a small girl toddled into his tiny room; she was about eight years old— freckle-faced and raven-haired— and she carried a ridiculously oversized basin of water between her slender hands. The girl managed to set the thing on a wooden tabletop with great difficulty, but when she was done she turned to the boy and gave him a polite, sunny smile, flashing an adorable little gap between her front teeth. Her eyes were massive green things, and they shone like brilliant emeralds. When she spoke her words came out in the most extreme accent possible; it was positively drenched in a Celtic brogue so thick that Penance was surprised she wasn't accompanied by bagpipers at all times, ready to belt out a tune whenever she parted her lips.

"They didn't take you!"

Penance squinted at the girl.

"Uh, who didn't?" He asked.

"The faeries in the deep woods, naturally!" She replied. "They're known to snatch a weakened spirit, says my mother, at least. I'm happy they didn't take yours!"

The girl tittered, grinning ear-to-ear. This was all a little much for Penance to process this soon after waking up. It'd be a lot to process wide-awake, too, he thought.

"Um, who are you?" The boy asked.

"I'm Struana!" The girl happily thumped her chest.

Penance cocked his brow; he waited for the girl to elaborate, but she didn't.

"Hi, Struana," he mumbled.

"Hi! What's your name?"

"Penance."

Struana furrowed her tiny brow and pressed one reed-like finger to her lips:

"'Penance'? That's an odd name, isn't it?"

"No, it's not. 'Struana' is an odd name..."

The girl wagged her head back and forth:

"Not in the Highlands, it isn't—"

"It is. And so's believing in 'faeries'—"

"Not in the Highlands."

Penance stared at the girl for a moment, and then finally Struana remembered the basin of water. She gestured to it:

"If you wish to wash," she explained. "Mother says you were awfully smelly, but that you likely wouldn't appreciate being bathed while asleep. She did clean your arm, though. How'd you break it, anyway?"

He blinked.

"Uh... break?"

Before he could make any sense of this the girl started, hands to her face. Her green eyes widened:

"Oh! I forgot to collect the firewood, didn't I? Bother!"

She darted from the tiny room, but then peeked her head back in:

"You're an odd boy, Penance," she smirked. "But I'm still glad the faeries didn't take you. So's mother and Uallas, too!"

After the girl disappeared a pallor crept over Penance's face. He remembered that gray-haired curmudgeon: his reason for coming to this god-forsaken corner of Scotland in the first place. What an idiot he'd been: lured into a spider's web with such honey promises! Honestly, Penance acted just as reasonably as if the man had dangled a piece of sweet-smelling candy behind the boy and led him by the nose! Now Penance didn't know what that prick intended to do with him, but he wasn't sticking around to find out.

He got to his feet and found his shirt bundled up beside the leather mat. When he picked it up he was surprised to discover it had been laundered, and as he pulled it on he noticed a faint scent of lilac coming off it, instead of the mounds of crusty sweat that once coated the insides.

He should be grateful, but somehow his clothing didn't quite feel 'right' on his body without a healthy coating of his own stink on them. He couldn't really explain it. His clothes just kind of felt more a 'part' of him, that way.

Beside his clothing he found the one personal effect he kept on his body: a grimy set of rosary beads. They were a fine thing in their time, each bead a glittering chunk of oiled mahogany wood, but all the years on the road were unkind to them, and they were in a state of pronounced disrepair.

As he approached the basin of water he looked down on the far edge of the table: a small knife rested there, very shabby and with worn edges. Penance looked to the door, and seeing no one there he quickly grabbed the rusty weapon. He curled it up in one hand, the blade hidden against his wrist.

Penance crept to the edge of the room and poked his head out: a small hallway ran down the center of the house, framed not in thatching but in heavy oak wood, and small rooms branched off that corridor. He crept a few feet out of his room, but only made it that far before a stern hand clamped down on his shoulder and spun him about:

"What're you doin' on your feet, then? Damaging that splint, no doubt! Careless fool of a boy!"

The woman before him was in her late twenties, and in her green eyes he saw nothing but that little girl— Struana. The woman's face was similarly-formed, with a certain lanky wispiness that didn't exactly give off a sense of frailty, but rather delicacy. Her face lacked the freckles, of course, and her hair was done up in a sensible bun, in contrast to the little girl's wildly-flowing locks. The woman looked him up and down, grunting loudly:

"Well, you seem fit enough to stand, I suppose. But little else, I'd wager." She wagged her finger in his face. "Don't you be breaking that splint, child: you'll not be getting another, you hear?"

Penance could only nod, dumbfounded. He stood with his free hand behind his back, doing his best to hide the blade in his hand. He stammered a bit, and then finally got his words out:

"Y— you're Struana's mother?"

The woman again grunted. She backed away from the boy, smoothing out the lines of her plain cloth dress.

"Aye. That I am. Cadha is my name, lad. You'll be thanking me for that splint now, I assume?"

Again he blinked dumbly. Eventually he nodded:

"Uh— y— yes. Thank you very much, ma'am. I, uh—"

"You'll be thanking Uallas next, I'd wager." Cadha motioned down the hallway with her head. "The man's actions rise above and beyond the requirements of Christian duty, they do. I don't need that man getting himself hurt fighting brigands and bandits, mind you. But when he saw you so beset the man's heart overrode his head. Still, to come to a small lad's aid against such ruffians is a noble thing, in my estimate, and I am not displeased to see you doing so well this morning. All thanks to our Uallas, of course."

Penance grit his teeth, trying to hide his snarl:

"Yeah," the boy muttered. "He's just great, isn't he?"

Penance was directed down the hall, and he found Uallas sitting in a chair beside a table in the residence's great room. The man ate chunks of bread off a plate while absently stirring the flames of a smoldering hearth set into the wall. He didn't turn around to face the boy.

"Pull up a chair, will you, child?"

Penance did not. Instead he stood rather awkwardly behind the man, glaring at the back of his head.

"Or would you rather dig that knife you're carrying into the small of my back?" Uallas chuckled. "That might hurt, you know. I'd be rather cross with you—"

"Cross with me?" Penance said. "You snapped my neck in two! How could you—"

Uallas began to chuckle uncontrollably.

"How could I? Well, it was rather easy," he said. "There's barely more to the bones in your neck than there is in a baby bird's."

"And did you break my arm, too?"

Uallas faced the boy:

"Yes," he nodded. "Right before I presented you to dear Cadha. And, oh, how she fussed over you. She spent so long fastening up that splint over your arm that she neglected to notice the wound had already healed up by the time she was done. Why, she even broke her own cardinal rule of the household, if you can believe it: that no unwashed male may enter, period. I'm even required to rinse myself in the stream before coming home for dinner. Then again, forge work doesn't exactly make a man smell rosy, I suppose. That Cadha, though! Woman's got the nose of a pedigree bloodhound..."

"Why did you do all that, bastard?"

Uallas leaned back in his chair, taking a large bite of bread:

"I figure that if I'm going to be schooling you in the ways of... well, our ways, that I best have some security you won't go running off. Dear Cadha may seem gruff, child, but she's got the heart of an angel beating beneath her breast. Add to that the stubbornness of a bear, and you've got a most determined creature. So long as she thinks that you're helplessly lamed then she'd go to the ends of the earth to keep you from harm. And if you're keen on disappearing on us, and decide to go running off, then I do not envy you. She'll be dragging your back to the homestead by your ears before you'd gone three miles. And I can only imagine the pain of bein' dragged those three miles back by the ears..."

Penance's scowl softened. He looked back at the hallway, and then he slowly pulled up a chair to the opposite side of the table. He sat down slowly, still alert, and he didn't let go of the rusty knife in his free hand.

"Your wife doesn't know?" He asked. "About you, and how you are? And she isn't, uh, you know..." the boy motioned up and down his body with his free hand.

Uallas absently shook his head:

"Cadha is not one of us." He motioned between himself and Penance with his fingers. "She knows nothing of our 'situation', boy, and I'd prefer to keep it as such. And she's not my wife, point of fact. And little Struana is not my daughter. Ah, but you met Stru, did you not?"

Penance nodded.

"She's very, uh, spirited."

Uallas smiled as he stared down into the flames:

"Aye. She's quite the 'wee bonny lass', as they might say around these parts." He drawled these words with a different, mocking tone; the accent was very gruff, but somehow flowing, almost like a mixture of German and French, but not quite.

"Were you born in Scotland, originally?"

Uallas shook his head:

"No. I was born in a place called Évreux."

"I don't know where that is. Is it far away?"

"No. Not by distance, at least. By time? Well, perhaps it is. My Évreux, at least. Haven't been back there going on, well, what is it, now?" Uallas stared down at the tabletop, and then he scoffed. "Perhaps 500 years, I think. Give or take a few score."

Penance's moody countenance changed; suddenly his face burned with awe. The boy tried to hide it, but he failed; Uallas looked at the boy with a wry smile, and he slowly nodded at him. He was quite serious, it seemed.

"And you, child?" The man asked. "Where is 'home' for you? And when was home, for you? I know that I can hear the hint of a Spaniard's tongue in your mouth..."

Penance nodded. "I was born in a place called Zaragoza—"

"Ah," Uallas nodded. "So that would explain those rosary beads in your shirt. And Zaragoza, you say? Yes. Yes, I know this place. There is a very lovely palace there."

"Aljafería." The boy nodded.

Uallas chuckled and he looked over at Penance with an amused smirk:

"There's the Spaniard's tongue," he said. "You sound like you're coughing up a hairball—"

Penance quickly flushed; he snarled at the man, reverting back to his 'normal' accent:

"That's what it's called." His face softened. "When were you in Zaragoza?"

The man shrugged, tearing off another chunk of bread.

"Oh, it'd have been some time ago, I think. I was in the ranks with good ol' Alfonso the Battler's crusaders when they took the city. Now, that'd have been, uh—"

"1118," Penance whispered, staring down at the tabletop.

"Ah, a student of history, are we? Did we come from a noble household?"

Penance stared down at his feet. Eventually he shrugged.

"'Noble'? No, not really. But kinda of a certain station, I guess. I was educated, a little. History was always my favorite subject..."

"Never cared for it much, myself," Uallas played with a small bread-carving knife on the table, spinning it against the tabletop. "It all just tends to blend together, after a while. Of course, the nice thing about 'education' is that it can be a lifelong pursuit, can't it?"

Penance furrowed his brow. He slowly looked up at the man:

"Tell me: why are we unable to be kill—"

The man held up a hand and shook his head. His wild gray hair whipped about as he did so, and he had to brush a few ratty strands from one shoulder before he spoke:

"The questions can wait, boy. As can the answers. At least for a time." The man stood up and cracked his back, moving with all the spryness of a withered 50-year-old man. "Before all that I'm afraid that I have to—"

Penance leapt to his feet, eyes intense:

"Crack my neck again?" He growled, brandishing that rusty knife.

Uallas smirked:

"I was going to say, 'visit the neighbors to barter a sheep', but I suppose if you really want—"

The boy frowned:

"A sheep?"

"Mmm. Cadha has it in her mind to whip up a little feast for your benefit. Maybe she's afraid that you're so out of sorts after your run in with those nasty 'brigands' that you're too spooked to eat." His smile widened. "She must think that you're a real baby bird!"

The man stepped into a pair of very large, study boots and cinched up the leather straps:

"I'd advise you to stay around the homestead, least you want Cadha on your tail. That woman'll swoop down on you fast, and she'll drop you back in the nest before you know you've been plucked up. Want to make yourself useful? I believe you could help Struana bring in some firewood with your 'free' arm..."

Penance let his guard down a bit, but not much. He slowly nodded.

"Okay..."

Uallas scratched his chin in contemplation as he stood before the door.

"Hmm. There was something else, wasn't there? Oh, yes! Of course. Just the little things, like names. I suppose I should have yours, shouldn't I? Unless you want me to keep calling you Flath Beag."

The boy put his free hand on his hip and cocked one leg, defiant:

"First: do I call you 'Uallas' or 'The Norman'?"

"Either," the man said. "Neither is my given. I was born with the name 'Ferrant', but it's quite out of style, I should say. 'Uallas' is in vogue these days, and I can't say I don't like the ring of it."

Penance looked to one side, and he nodded:

"Me? I've used a lot of names," he muttered, "in my time."

"And just how long is 'your time', if I may very rudely ask?"

Penance looked up at the man, and it was quite some time before he whispered an answer:

"I was born fifty-one years ago."

The old man smiled, wagging his head:

"Incredible, that. So that would make a grand total of, what, 40 years wandering, more or less?"

"I never counted—"

"Sure you did," the man said. "Every day, I'll bet. Just like the Israelites in the desert, no doubt. Well, when Cadha's done cooking for you, child, no doubt you'll feel like you've landed in Canaan." Uallas took a step forward, and Penance barely avoided tensing his body as the man approached. He laughed at this. "Heavens, boy: you've all the skittishness of a fox in the hunt, haven't you?" The man extended a hand to the boy: "I am Uallas of Letterewe, so very pleased to make your acquaintance, young..."

The boy slowly took his hand and shook it.

"Penance," he said.

"Ah, we picked an unassuming, conventional name, did we?" The man chuckled. "No doubt named for you father?"

The boy shook his head:

"It's not the name I was born with. It's just... well..."

"Your favorite. One you found that suits you," Uallas nodded. "I know a bit what that's like. Now, then: get going with that firewood. Do you want to keep poor Struana waiting forever? Unlike us, the poor lass hasn't got the time, has she? And keep that arm splinted up, too. It may be a tad absurd, I know, but our appearances are important to keep, are they not?"

Uallas tromped through the doorway and out of the house, leaving Penance by himself in the great room. The boy spent a moment looking around, uncertain, before finally moving to that same doorway. Before his feet could cross the threshold he paused and stood still for a time. Finally he tossed the rusty knife on the tabletop, and it clattered loudly in the quiet of the room.

X

X

X

He only managed to help Struana with one bundle of firewood before Cadha spotted him awkwardly lugging it around with his free arm. She dragged him back into the house, roundly chastising him for 'trying to ruin my expert work on that bone o' yours!' Instead she had him collect some herbs growing behind the house, and by the time Uallas was back with the butchered sheep remains the woman turned the entirety of the house into a well-oiled machine, driven towards the sole purpose of serving up a grand little feast.

Penance was allowed to help Cadha with the cooking while Uallas and his neighbors visited the man's forge up on the hill, presumably to talk 'shop', but the reeking stench of whiskey on their breaths when they retuned hinted at the real reason for the journey. It was just as well: Cadha ran her kitchen like a military base, and Penance quickly learned to jump at her commands or get pulled along with her by the ear.

And by the end of the whole process he had a very smart ear, indeed.

She started with a great pot of boiling salt water, where a mess of all the stinking organs of the sheep cooked for some time. Penance thought this strange, because it all looked like offal to him; there wasn't a bit of butchered muscle in the mix. Heck, he thought he could even see the creature's tongue sticking out of the mix. He mentioned this to Cadha, only to get a wooden ladle to the skull for his effort.

He did not question the woman's cooking habits again.

While Penance chopped onions and herbs Cadha tended to a certain rubbery-looking part of the sheep, massaging it in cold water while also tending to a batch of dry oats that were set out to toast over the fire. Once the boiling pot of offal was 'done' Cadha drained it and took her knife to it all, mincing the steaming organs into fine bits. She rudely pushed Penance away from his onions and herbs and began sprinkling handfuls of the stuff into the minced offal, her hand steady and eyes wide with concentration; she had all the countenance of a surgeon tending to a grievous wound. All at once, and with no explanation at all, she declared the mixture 'done', and then the seasoned offal got stirred up with those toasted oats and the whole thing was poured into that strange rubbery vessel, now stretched thin from its long massage in the cold salt bath. Penance watched with great confusion as Cadha bound the vessel closed with twine and then dumped the whole thing back into the boiling salt water, where it would cook for some time.

His confusion was understandable: Penance was just trying to figure out when Cadha would actually start cooking the dinner they were all going to eat. He kept his doubts even as he helped prepare potatoes and carrots to go along with the concoction. Even after he was forced to take an early seat at the table in the great room (so as not to further 'strain' his poor arm) Penance wondered how such a meal as this could possibly be considered edible. At the very least, he thought, the meal should be memorable.

About that, at least, he was right.

That night Penance dined on the finest meal he could ever remember eating in his life. The offal, oats and herbs came out of that rubbery vessel as a delicate, steaming pudding, and the flavor was ungodly savory. It had a spicy kick up front, with a strange and nutty taste after that. The whole thing was amazing, almost 'caressing' the boy's palate and hitting all his taste buds in a wonderful little cadence, like a fine orchestral arrangement. He was given an entire finger of whiskey to drink with it, and the smoky liquor burned against his tongue; it was the perfect complement to the nuttiness of the dish.

He could barely move after dinner, but he did his best to help Cadha and Struana clear the table, while Uallas and his neighbors commiserated some more outside the house. Finally, with night long-since covering the land, and the neighbors having begun their journey back home, Penance found Uallas up near his hilltop, leaning against that giant, curious stone with all the strange carvings in it.

"Tell me: why are we what we are?" The boy asked.

Uallas chuckled, looking up at the great mass of stars in the moonless sky:

"Ah, is that really all you want to know? I encountered another of us, once, when I was still learning my trade, and we wondered the same question. His answer was: 'Why does the sun come up? Or are the stars just pinholes in the curtain of night'?" The man looked down at Penance. "I suppose his answer meant that you are what you are because you are. Tautological, isn't it?"

"Meaningless," Penance growled. "And stupid."

"Oh, yes. But, then I think the trick is to find some meaning in the meaninglessness of it all. When I look up at the stars I don't wonder why they glow so long; I instead wonder why some of them fade away into darkness. I cannot answer either question, but instead I do what I can to accept that both circumstances are the right and just course of nature."

He looked down at the boy, and he must've registered Penance's displeasure with the answer. Uallas sighed and slumped down against the giant carved stone, resting in the grass. Penance got to his haunches in response. The boy absently toyed with the rosary around his neck, fingers limply shuttling along the wooden beads. It was a subconscious move; Penance didn't even notice he was doing it. Uallas noticed, but he said nothing.

"Let me put it another way: this land around you is beautiful. Enchanting, really. But it is also most savage and cold. It is a hard land to live in, and by most standards civilization is quite limited, here. To call oneself a 'Highlander' is to embrace that primordial savagery, and accept that one is of a certain constitution: that they will do whatever is necessary to survive when their back is to the wall. I have not lived in Scotland long, by my standards, but I do have the ego to consider myself a 'Highlander'. Now consider the meal you ate just this night, and the care you've been given since you awoke; Cadha is a beacon of warmth in this savage land, and Struana a little ray of sunshine. They exist even in the heart of all the bleakness and hardship around them. This is a world that takes all kinds, my dear Penance, and we are merely of a certain kind. One of many."

Penance stared at the grass, still dissatisfied with the answer.

"But mostly," Uallas continued, "I think that my friend's answer was simply a warning. He was telling me that, in this Game, there are no points awarded for being philosophical."

"What is the 'Game'?"

"A test. A grand challenge, Mo Flath Beag, to see who among us has in them that certain constitution; to see who will do whatever is necessary to survive when their back is to the wall."

"What are the rules?"

Uallas smiled:

"For an adult Immortal? There are several. For you? There are very few. It doesn't completely make up for your natural disadvantage, I suppose. And it doesn't change the overall outcome one bit. The Game is guided by one rule which supersedes all, and it is the first thing you must learn, because whether you choose to play the Game or not, there are those out there who would not hesitate to play the Game with you."

Penance looked up at Uallas, his iron blue eyes trembling in the moonlight. Something about the way the old man spoke these last few words set a chill in his blood, and not even the fine dinner in his stomach, nor the whiskey coursing through his veins, could warm his body up again.

"What is that rule, Uallas?"

The man looked down at the boy, and in his face was all the seriousness of death:

"The rule, my dear Penance, is that 'there can be only one'."