“Stone,” said the old man, as he scooped up a handful of pebbles in one hand and let them trickle down into the other, “our old friend.”
He repeated the motion without dropping one, as effortlessly as if he were playing with flour. “Stone to the west holds those wretched Gaels back,” he said, letting a few pebbles fall from his hand to form a line on the ground. “Mountains.”

“And to the north,” he continued, dropping another line of stones on the ground, “more mountains – keeping the folk of Fortriu at bay.”

“But aren’t they Picts like us?” asked the boy.

The man scowled and tossed a pebble that struck the boy lightly on the forehead.

“Oww,” he protested.

“You’ll get worse from others if they hear that word from your lips. We are the Pritani, those in Fortriu too, but we are often at war with them.

“Picts are what the Romans called us. It meant painted savage… something like that. Use that word here or up north and they’ll treat you like a Roman; lop your head off and mount it on a stick.

“Stone was the Romans’ downfall as well you know,” he said after a pause. “We’d lure their legions deep into the mountains and then come tearing down the slopes at them like a rock-fall.

“They had to build two huge walls in the end to hold us back.”

The boy laughed bashfully and looked away.

“The other use stone has,” the man said, fingering the last remaining pebble in his hand, “is that it remembers us when we’re gone.” With that he flung the pebble and it struck a great sandstone slab engraved with strange symbols which stood behind the boy.

“And,” he said, as he looked down at the game board that lay on the ground between them, “today stone is a friend to me indeed.”

“You have three of my playing pieces but of yours I have formed two mountain chains and had two left over to throw. I think that means I’ve won.”