Last night I took the old roads and heard the old speak. I listened again to the sdll voices and felt the sting of the wind on my cheek. And it was good, like a home-coming.

The old track is grass-grown, almost obliterated by the years, and I am a stranger now where the old wind wanders, where it reeshles the dry broom and tugs at the tufted grass. The hill is quiet, shorn of voices.

Time has mellowed the stones, as it has sutured the hurts of the heart; hallowed them as the last reminder of the folk who once had their life and their being here. They rest, stilled forever in their coffin'd sleep, and now on the hill nature has reclaimed her own.

McQaid is a sword - and occasionally dagger - for hire in the turbulent Highlands, as disillusionment grows against the Hanoverian regime. On a fine summer night in 1745 he is summoned to the bedside of the dying laird of Auchlour and commissioned on the most secret errand of his life ...