A Bride Worth Billions by Tiffany Morgan Page B

do battle with them. Da would see me and fall out of his chair laughing, but I drove Ma to her wits end, particularly when I would whip plates at my sister’s heads and giggle madly when they’d scramble.
     
    Da took this as a sign that even though I wasn’t a boy, I was definitely a warrior born and he took it upon himself to teach me the way of the sword. I’ll tell ya, you’ve never seen a man prouder or happier, and to be blunt, I couldn’t have been happier either. I understood that a woman’s work was vital to the community, without them there wouldn’t be a community, it would just be a bunch of men in nay a stitch of clothing and living in caves or up in the trees smelling like their leavings with beards down to their belly buttons. Highlanders needed their women just like they needed men to protect what they made (Not that most highlander women needed protecting. My Ma was just as handy with a sword as any man I’ve ever met, which is the reason why I think Da fell in love with her.).
     
    But women’s work just didn’t come naturally to me and no matter how much time and effort Ma put into training me was going to change that. But when it came to the sword, I was an absolute natural. Da put my first blade in my hand at the age of five—a real blade, not just a wooden one like my friends trained and played with—and by the time I was eight, I could match most men twice my age at swordplay. Next Da but me to work with a bow and arrow, I wasn’t quite as skilled with it. Its weight and feel were awkward in my grip. Plus, a bow felt like a coward’s way of killing or injuring a man. I needed to have the man I was fighting right there in front of me; I needed to see his face as I sank my blade into his flesh. I needed to see the pain and anguish. Aye, I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it’s how I felt. Of course, at this young point in my life, the only things I’d killed were horseflies and a squirrel or two.
     
    It took me a long time to master the bow, nearly five years’ time all told. And I wouldn’t exactly say I mastered it, it was more like I’d become efficient enough to bring down a deer with a single arrow as opposed to shooting my entire quiver at it. It would do just as well against a man as well, but probably not so good against something larger like a bear. Of course, I’d have to be daft to shoot at something like a bear. If I saw one of those giant beasts come charging at me, you can betcha that I would be running as fast as I could in the other direction.
     
    When I turned sixteen just as other girls are beginning to receive suitors, Da decided to have me join my first war party and go and hunt some English.

 
    It’s a bit of an understatement to say that my clan doesn’t play well with others. It’s a sad state of affairs, but the fact is we just can’t get in bed with England like the rest of the nobles have. My clan’s thinking is that if you’re not Scottish, ya don’t have a bit of a right to step foot on our lands. So when it comes to the English, well, we think of ‘em as nothing more than the dirty invading and pillaging hoard that they are. The rest of the clans don’t exactly agree with our point of view and would rather keep the peace at any cost, including colluding with the English and accepting their titles and lands as bribes. As far as we’re concerned, the other clans is just as English as the Englishmen, the only difference being that their mothers plopped them out on Scottish soil.
     
    So for as long as I’ve been alive, we’ve been at war with one clan or another who try to keep us in line, or we’ve been at war with the English. Alright, then, we’ve always been at war with the English long before I was even in a glimmer in my Ma’s eyes, or even when my Da was but a glimmer in his Ma’s eye. And I suspect that we’ll always be at war with them in one way or another. The only way to stop us from killing the English is if they burn us all