Earth.

“I will make a request of one or another of you in times to come. Will you honor those requests?”

There was a massed stare. Did he think they would not? Then there was a concerted roar of assent. It took minutes for it to quiet.

Jonnie said, “I am leaving you now. I am taking this boy to Scotland. To be buried by his own people.”

Jonnie got down off the car.

The pilot whose ore carrier had been readied for the Russians was pointing it out to the Russian Coordinator.

They loaded Jonnie's horses. They found Stormalong's kit in the ground car and put it aboard.

The Russians took over the body of Dmitri Tomlov to take it home.

Jonnie climbed to the cockpit of the big ore carrier, still holding Bittie.

Before he closed the door, he looked down at the crowd and said, slowly and clearly, “It is not the time for revenge.” And then he added a bitter, grim "Yet!"

The crowd nodded. They understood. Later it would be an entirely different matter.

The huge plane rose and turned in the gray, storm-discolored sky. It dwindled and was gone.

A much more serious crisis awaited him in Scotland, one that threatened to wreck all his plans.

Pilots on the ground talked the ore plane down through the dark swirling mists of autumn. The Scots had begun to rebuild Castle Rock in Edinburgh, cleaning up and trying to restore the ancient buildings that two thousand years before had been the seat of

Scottish nationalism and that was now being called its original Gaelic word: Dunedin, “the hill fort of edin." Jonnie landed in a park below the Rock, just in front of the ruins of the ancient National Gallery of Scotland.

Swarms of people had been there to meet him and gillies had been hard pressed to clear space in the throng for the plane to land.

Unfortunately, the drone pictures of the compound fight had come in on the Cornwall minesite recorders, and they had been rushed by mine passenger plane to Scotland long before Jonnie's arrival. The Scots were making good use of the vast amounts of transport taken from the Psychlos, and flatbeds were being used as buses now that trainee machine operators were back home.

Bittie's mother and family were there and Jonnie gave over the corpse to

them to dress and prepare for a funeral. Pipers were wailing a lament, drums beating its slow and doleful cadence. Women in the crowd were openly crying and men were beating their fists together as they dwelt on what they conceived to be the necessity of war.

It was nearly dark. An honor guard of kilted Highlanders approached and its officer courteously told Jonnie he was there to escort him through the crowds to a meeting of the Chiefs. They had not yet restored the parliament house on the Rock; the Chiefs, brought hastily in from the hills, were meeting in the nearby open park before the ruined Royal Scottish Academy.

To the mournful cry of pipes, Jonnie walked toward the space. It was lit with a towering bonfire in its center. The flame's glow was flickering over the buckles and swords of Clanchiefs and their retainers. It was an assembly with only one, single-minded purpose:

WAR!

Belatedly, Robert the Fox, just in from Africa, rushed to Jonnie's side. They were already on the outskirts of the assembly, the honor guard opening the way, heading for some raised stone slabs that served as a rostrum. Clanchief Fearghus was coming forward in courtesy to escort him to this rostrum.

“Do you want war?” said Robert the Fox into Jonnie's ear. “I think not! It would ruin all your plans.”

“No, no,” said Jonnie. “That is the last thing we want. Without it we have a chance.”

“Then why,” said Sir Robert, “didn't you change your clothes before this meeting? You might have known it would take place!”

Jonnie had not thought about his clothes. He glanced down. The buckskin shoulder was dark red from the bleeding of the superficial wound at the side of his neck, long since staunched by coagulation. The entire front of his shirt and his trousers down to the knee were saturated with Bittie's blood.

At that very moment the Chief of the Campbells was speaking to the assembled Chiefs. “...and I say this is a blood feud that can only be settled in

There was a savage roar of agreement. “War!” “War!” Lochaber axes were flashing in the light of the leaping flames. The slither of swords coming from their sheaths was a deadly, martial declaration.

Jonnie stepped up on the stone rostrum. He held up his hand for quiet. They gave him a silence electric with tension and punctuated by the crackling flame of the bonfire.

“We want no war,” said Jonnie. It was the wrong thing to say. A clamor of disagreement rolled at him.

“By the very blood on his clothes,” shouted the Chief of the Argylls, “this cries out for war!”

“The murderer of the boy is dead!” said Jonnie.

"What of Allison?" cried the Chief of the Camerons. “His vile murder has not been avenged! The chief of the Brigantes, he that brought it about, still lives! These are matters of blood feud!”

Jonnie realized they were out of control. They were demanding pilots and transport. Their target was the obliteration of the entire force of Brigantes. And now! He knew this had all been decided before his arrival on the slow ore carrier. He could see all their labors going for nothing. If that area in America were wiped out, that would end their plans!

He looked for the face of Robert the Fox and found only this sea of enraged Chiefs and retainers. He did not dare tell them so openly and in public of his plans. Lars had shown there could be traitors.

He tried to tell them the planet was under a much greater threat, that they did not really know what had happened to Psychlo, that there were other races out in the stars, but not one single word he said was heard in the tumult.

Finally the big and lordly Chief of Clanfearghus leaped up beside him and bellowed at the throng: “Let the MacTyler speak!”

They quieted under that, tense, determined.

Jonnie was tired. He had not slept for days. He summoned up reserves of energy and spoke in a strong confident voice: “I can promise you

SUCCESSFUL war! If you will let me guide you, if you will each one contribute men and time to a daring enterprise, if you will but plan with me and work in preparation for the next few months, we will have war, we will have revenge, and we will have a chance of everlasting victory!”

They heard that. After a moment, while it sank in, they burst into a savage din of agreement. The lochaber axes were raised higher; claymores flashed back the light of flames. The pipes suddenly burst into the stirring tunes of war. They hailed Jonnie until they were hoarse. As he stepped down and was led away by Robert the Fox, big hands clapped him on the back as he passed, others sought to grip his. Men leaped before him, claymores held before their faces in devoted salutes. Somebody started a chant of "MacTyler! MacTyler! MacTyler!" The pipes screamed and drums added to the din.

“Count on you, laddie,” said Robert the Fox fondly as he led Jonnie off to temporary quarters in an old house, a bath, clean clothes, and rest. “But I’m only hoping we can deliver!”

They buried Bittie MacLeod the next day in a crypt in the old Cathedral Saint Giles. The funeral procession was over a mile long.

To the Chief of Clanfearghus Jonnie had said, “He died a squire. We must bury him as a knight.”

Placing a robe on the corpse, Fearghus, as titular King of Scotland-and now the entire British Isles-knighted Bittie with the tender touch of a sword.

A rock carver had worked straight through to complete a sarcophagus-a stone casket– and it was ready.