The Guardian

From Jack Whyte, the master of the sweeping historical epic, comes the continuing story of two heroes who reshaped and reconfigured the entire destiny of the kingdom of Scotland by defying the might and power of Edward Plantagenet, the king of England, who called himself the Hammer of the Scots. Wallace the Braveheart would become the only legendary, heroic commoner in medieval British history and the undying champion of the common man. The other, Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick, would perfect the techniques of guerrilla warfare developed by Wallace and use them to create his own place in history as the greatest king of Scots who ever lived.
In the spring of 1297, the two men meet in Ayr, in the south of Scotland, each having recently lost a young wife, one in childbirth and the other by murder. Each is heartbroken but determined in his grief to defy the ambitions of England and its malignant king, whose lust to conquer and consume the realm of Scotland is blatant and unyielding. Their combined anger at the injustices of the invading English is about to unleash a storm in Scotland that will last for sixteen years-and destroy England's military power for decades-before giving rise to a new nation of free men. "Whyte's prose is punctuated with moments of tension that contrast perfectly with the book's somber tone." - Winnipeg Free Press Jack Whyte was born and raised in Scotland and has lived in Canada since 1967. He has been an actor, orator, singer, poet, and businessman at various stages of his life, and he holds an honorary doctorate of letters for his contribution to Canadian popular fiction. A resident of Kelowna, British Columbia, he is the author of the internationally bestselling Dream of Eagles series and the Templar Trilogy. The Renegade is the second instalment in the Guardians series, set during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
CHAPTER ONE
FATHER JAMES WALLACE, 1343
I discovered many years ago that Sir Lionel Redvers was the first English knight ever to die at the hands of my cousin William Wallace of Elderslie, and while the discovery pained me at the time, it also gave me a moment of vengeful satisfaction. I have confessed that sin on many occasions but it remains within me unforgiven, for I have never really regretted the satisfaction I derived from it.
Redvers was an undistinguished knight from the county of Suffolk. I only ever met him once, and briefly, and had immediately dismissed him as a nonentity. But within minutes of our encounter he proved how strange are the ways of God, for even a nonentity may be a catalyst. That headstrong, zealous fool changed every life in Scotland and plunged the whole of Britain into chaos because he brought about the deaths of a woman, her small son, and her unborn second child. The woman was in my care at the time and her name was Mirren Wallace. She was William Wallace's wife and therefore cousin to me by marriage.
My name is Wallace, too, and I am a priest. A very old priest. I was born in 1272, which makes me seventy-one years old. Sir William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, was my first cousin and my dearest boyhood friend. Thirty-eight years ago, on the day he died, he asked me, as his confessor, to bear witness to the manner of his dying and to attest to it should men seek to malign him in times ahead. I swore I would, and that is why I am writing this today, so long afterwards.
For nigh on thirty years I had no reason to recall that promise to Will. From being greatly out of favour with his fellow Scots before his death, he was reborn as a hero during King Robert's struggle to unite Scotland, when the Bruce himself chose to adopt the tactics Will had used against the English, turning the land itself, as well as its folk, to the task of defeating England's plans to usurp our realm. And from the King's open admiration of my cousin's single-minded struggle, a new recognition of Will's worth and integrity grew up in Scotland.