Rej had seen combat in his days. He was old enough to remember when he was a young lad, when the Highland Unification Wars had torn the mountains asunder and left any arable land shelled and barren. He was one of the many within the Estate that understood the cost of war and what it really brought you; which was nothing but hard times. He had seen the atrocities committed on all sides, though the sides themselves were often boundless and shifting like the animals that inhabited the men who fought for decades, claiming territories and lives like children claim plots on the beach to build sandcastles; the blood of children who were too innocent for battle, and women who had no say in the matter of their men who had been reduced to savagery over dirt. Rej knew what he and others — especially Corey — had done were immoral, if not completely ungodly; but what would the Highlands be if Clanranald had not conquered the Campbell’s and Cameron’s and Chattan’s? They certainly wouldn’t be MacDonald, that was for sure, but they also may not be as peaceful as Corey had gotten it to be, where men with different surnames could coexist with each other to the extent that conflict was a distant worry, and where towns and parishes did not need to employ garrisons of their own men to defend themselves from foreign threat, as the MacDonald Estate was there to do it for them.

If only these Lowlanders knew the history of their neighbors, and if only they cared enough to recognize their privilege on these islands. They should be honored to be under the MacDonald name, Rej thought. But now he understood that these decadent bastards who had never seen the blood of war needed to learn a few things more than ever.

[The Trìgàidheil, and by extension, the MacDonald Estate declares war on the Republic of Moray.]