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Not quite Scotland

It was a land of shadows and ice

Of gray And grayer And black

Deep in the shadows lurked inhuman creatures, twisted of lis one did well to avoid seeing

Should the creatures enter the pale bars of what passed for light in the terrible place, they would die, painfully and slowly As would he--the ht--should he succeed in breaking the chains that held hied cliffs of ice towered above hih dark labyrinthine canyons, bearing a susurrus of desolate voices and faint, hellish screams No sun, no fair breeze of Scotland, no scent of heather penetrated his frozen, bleak hell

He hated it His very soul cringed at the horror of the place He ached for the warered for the sweet crush of grass beneath his boots He would have given years of his life for the surety of his stallion between his thighs and the solid weight of his clayrip

He dreas by retreating deep into his mind--of the blaze of a peat fire, scattered with sheaves of heather Of a woolden-crusted bread hot fros

For the son of a Highland chieftain, who’d passed a score and ten in resplendent mountains and vales, five years was an intolerable sentence; an incarceration that would be withstood only by force of will, by careful nurturing of the light of hope within his heart

But he was a stronghot and true in his veins He would survive He would return and reclaihtful place, woo and win a bonny lass with a tender heart and a tempestuous spirit like his mother, and fill the halls of Dun Haakon with the music of wee ones