The Lion Rampant (24 page)

‘My folk believe it. Myself, though, I am after being more concerned about the time it is taking to get these carts to Kilmory. There are MacDougalls loose.’

Kirkpatrick’s head came up at that and he was sharp with Campbell when he spoke.

‘You kept that close to you – mark me, I can see why. Having your enemies stravaigin’ as they please through your lands is not a matter to trumpet.’

Campbell admitted it with a nod and no sign that he was put out.

‘They are like lice,’ he declared. ‘Ye think ye have combed them all out and suddenly they are back, annoying ye with their wee itch.’

He glanced at Kirkpatrick.

‘It is because I am taking so many of my own to join Sir Neil. There will be long hundreds of Campbell men standing with the King when he fights and little or none to protect our lands. My castle is safe, but these MacDougalls will plooter about for a while, causing trouble, then go home – bigod, most of them are fled to Ireland as it is but, mind you, if they see a chance at a lumbering great slorach of over-laden men and carts they will take it.’

Kirkpatrick acknowledged the commitment of the Campbells and fell silent, staring at the popping fire and knowing the lord of Craignish was right – if it hadn’t been for the arrival of Hal, Kirkpatrick and all this cargo, the Campbell men would already be in their galleys and sailing for the Ayrshire coast to join the army at Stirling.

A little way away, Duncan lay on one side of a fire and contemplated the sight of his lord in conversation with the dwarf-dark man called Kirkpatrick. The other, the brooding and wounded lord
from the Lothians, sat apart even from that – even from himself, Duncan thought.

These southrons were different, right enough, and he had been away from the droving roads long enough to feel and see it almost for new. These men could not enjoy life as it moved through them; they wanted to take it and make something, as if they could shape it to their own way.

They did not talk of deer and cattle and hill, or let themselves soak in the weather; they spoke of crops and power and business and did not notice the different greens of leaves, or even the sun until its lack was enough to chill them.

Once, on the drove road, he had been sparking a southron woman at Carlisle and they had walked out beyond the gate, which he knew was a great daring for her in the first place, never mind to be doing it with a strange creature from beyond the Mounth.

He knew then, as now, that he could whisper filth in her ear in the True Tongue and she would wriggle and blush, for it was just a liquid trill to her ear, as seductive as it was strange. He recalled, as he spoke and slid an arm round her soft waist, that his free hand had found a winter-woken toad on the rock next to him.

It was sluggish and still cold, hoping for the sun on the rock to give it new life. It blinked its great gold-coin eyes, iridescently green throat pulsing and as beautiful as anything he had ever seen. So he was surprised when the woman, presented with the sheer jewel of it, screamed and ran away.

No woman of his own people would have done so, but the southrons were strange – even their names. But, then, names were dangerous matters and the knowing of a man’s true name gave you power over him, for he lay deep inside his name, underneath his talk and his acts, moving like everyone else, yet living in secret and alone. He wasn’t concerned that they knew his name was Duncan, for they did not know the whole of it, nor in the tongue of the True People.

The Lothian lord, he had decided, noticed nothing at all, as if some veil had dropped between him and the world. As if – and Duncan shivered at the thought – he is moving with unseen
sidhean
, who are lifting him quietly out of the midst of us and into their timeless kingdom.

He took comfort from the quiet murmur, the men sitting crosslegged or lolling round the flames, attending to a blackened pot and wiping smoke tears from their eyes. Somewhere, an owl screeched and Duncan lay back, tasting the woodsmoked night and letting his eyes close.

Tomorrow they would be at Kilmory, loading this southron matter on to the galleys and away from this place of faerie shadows.

When it came, the next day, the working of the
sidhean
was harsh and sudden.

Hal was stumbling along in the ruts of a cart which seemed to be his own particular curse, a wheeled imp of Satan which stuck more times than it rolled. He was enjoying the roll of it now, the fresh breeze on the sweated bruise of his face and the piping of peewits, while quietly marvelling at the bulging calf muscles of the bare-legged man ahead, the one called Duncan.

I find it hard enough to walk in serk and braies, burdened only by a baldric and sword, he thought, yet this one carries his own weight on his back.

The man, wearing only a sweat-darkened saffron tunic, belted so that a dirk could be thrust through a ring on it, hefted the waterproofed burden a little higher on his back and strode on. Then he gave a yelp, a stumble and fell over.

Hal moved to him, thinking he had tripped, bending to help him to his feet; the flick of the shaft over his head was like the crack of a whip and he knew the sound well, felt the clench and sickening plunge of his belly as he flung himself to the ground beside Duncan. The arrow that had felled the man was now clearly revealed, buried deep an inch below the man’s collarbone.

More arrows flew and men tumbled and yelped.

‘Sluggorm. Sluggorm.’

The call echoed, the bundles flew away as the Campbells went for their weapons and Hal, raising his head, saw the arrows had been only the heralds of a leaping mass of shrieking men, wild-haired, wet-mouthed and armed: the MacDougalls.

Kirkpatrick, a few carts down from the fallen Hal, heard the cries of ‘
sluagh-ghairm
’, the gathering cry. Campbell of Craignish hauled out a hand-a-half, waved it in a circle above his head and bellowed ‘Cruachan’; men flocked to him like a pack of wolves. He looked right and left to see how many he had, grinned at Kirkpatrick and then plunged exultantly forward. Wearily, cursing, Kirkpatrick was dragged in his wake.

Hal was half-crouched and rising when the wave of MacDougalls fell on him and the snarling Campbells round him, though Hal could not tell one from the other and did not care when faced with an armed man wanting to poke sharp metal in him.

The first one tried to spear him, clumsy and running, so that Hal only had to bat the shaft to one side, dip a shoulder and let the man run on to it; braced, he knocked the man off his feet and drove the wind out of him, so that the sword stroke that took him in the neck barely managed a last squeak from him.

Hal barely heard, half turned for the next rushing man, ducked the flail of a spear slash and cut back so that the man stumbled past, bewildered as to why his stomach was emptying out and tangling his ankles.

They were desperate with fear, Hal realized, too few and relying on speed and rush to overwhelm. They should not have done it at all, he thought wildly, but they were madmen from beyond the Mounth, as strange as two-headed calves. The saving Grace of God in all of this was that he was fighting alongside equally mad men, who had recovered from the shock of attack and flung themselves forward with eldritch screeching and a sheen of ecstasy.

Hal cut and parried and made a space round him – but then there was a sudden flurry and a new rush of men, so that Hal spun and slashed to keep the swordlength of space until, through the bewildering whirligig of faces and bodies, he saw one he knew.

Kirkpatrick held up his hands and Hal, sucking in breath in ragged gasps, let the swordpoint drop; gore slid greasily from it and pooled round the tip.

Christ betimes, Kirkpatrick thought, he can still find a fight in him, can the wee lord from Herdmanston. He said as much and had back a pouch-eyed stare from the yellow-blue side of Hal’s face.

‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled and then stopped, for it was not Sim he spoke to, would never be Sim again.

‘If it is like this all the way to Stirling,’ Kirkpatrick growled, watching the lamb-leaping, blood-howling Campbells pursue their hated enemies over the bracken and heather, ‘we will deserve earldoms at the least.’

Hal did not answer and, when Kirkpatrick turned, he saw the lord bend, then crouch down amid the spilled litter of pack which had burst from dead Duncan’s back. He peered and saw, with a sudden shock of poignancy, what Hal had found.

Wrapped and stowed when the stuff was packed, Sim’s ruined, scarred arbalest winked back into the light, carefully laid up for the day it could be repaired.

Kirkpatrick politely turned away from the sound of weeping.

St Mungo’s Kirk, Polwarth

Feast of Sts Marcus and Marcellianus, June 1314

The Hainaulters were drunk, which they claimed was a pious celebration of the martyrs whose day it was, even though most would not know the first thing about them. Addaf was betting sure that they would embrace the holiness of the next saint’s day as piously as this.

They were, as a result, a red-eyed, stumbling uselessness against the kirk, though they formed up raggedly enough, weaving in rough ranks, the spearshafts clacking like tree branches in a high wind.

‘Get it done,’ the old Berkeley had thundered to his son and Sir Maurice, red and tight-lipped, with his own smirking boys at his back, had snapped the same to Addaf. And all because some
cont gwirion
had shot off a bolt from the kirk; it had hit a horse in the flank and set it to plunging in the trace, upsetting a two-wheeled cart.

It would have been nothing at all, Addaf thought sourly. The
coc oen
who had done it as the English, still damp from fording the Tweed at Wark and straggling past the chapel door, could have been found, bruised a little and sent back to his monk’s cell with a kick up his arse.

Save for the fact that the cart held the royal banners, great folds of rich silk and brocade in the long hundreds. And the King was close enough to witness it, rounding on the Earl of Pembroke to ask, bland as frumenty: ‘Has this place not been secured, my lord?’

De Valence had spoken harshly to old Sir Thomas Berkeley, who was still smarting over the return of his own bloodied and torn banner, lost by Addaf and brought back by that gloomy walrus Thweng as a sneering gift from the Bruce. And so the chain of scowls came down to the Welsh and the drunken Hainault spearmen.

Addaf was already exhausted and the maille hung heavy on him. His arms ached and the sun was too hot in a day that stank of leather and sweat, dung and horse piss. His face, to the waiting archers, was haggard, dark shadows drawn round his eyes, his iron-grey hair plastered to his skull.

‘Smart yer bows,’ he called and there was a flutter of sound as the men nocked arrows. Addaf gripped his sword and wished it was a bow, but he was the captain here and his rank was marked by a sword. His Hainault counterpart, swaying a little, belched.

‘My men will cover your advance,’ Addaf said. ‘Break the bloody door down and be done with the business.’

The Hainaulter nodded and licked dry lips; Addaf was not sure he had been understood, but both men were old hands at this and the Hainault men were seasoned in long battles against the Flemings and knew the way of matters well enough.

‘Wait, wait – I beg you, in the name of Heaven.’

The voice brought them round, the big Hainaulter frowning in a slow, blinking way at the unshaven desperation of face looking up at him from the kneeling monk.

‘The man who shot the bolt was our reeve, a foolish man. There are only two monks within, old Fathers who could not find it in themselves to leave this place. They have been here thirty years and more.’

‘You are?’ Addaf demanded.

‘Father John,’ the man answered. ‘I also live here, but fled. Now God has brought me back to plead for the lives of those in His house. I beg the blessing of Heaven on you, your honour – let me go to them. Spare all this blood, I beg you.’

Addaf considered it. The Hainaulter shrugged, belched again and wiped the ale-sweat from his fleshy face; he didn’t understand all the English in it, but he knew what the little monk was doing.

‘Door vill opened be,’ he said and he made a good point; Addaf nodded.

Father John scuttled off. There was a hammering sound and everyone waited in the afternoon heat, filled with the creak and grind and shuffle of the edge of the army, passing up Dere Strete and headed for the pass through the Lammermuirs. Anxious about it, too, because this road was the only practical one for the great long trail of wagons and they expected the Scots to spring some surprise.

God curse it, Addaf thought, the train of wagons must stretch for leagues, filled with all manner of stupidity; he had seen a score of them full of the furnishing for a chamber and hall and eight score, no less, were packed with nothing but poultry. Wine and wax and saddlery, dancing slippers and candle-holders – the English were going not to war but a revel, Addaf thought. There was even a mangy old lion in a cage.

He had 104 archers under his command, with 126 horses and three carts – one for the men’s baggage, one for the saddlery, a firebox forge and anvil and one for fodder. And that was three too many as far as Addaf was concerned, for if you could not ride and fight with what you had in, around or under your saddle, you were of little use.

He glanced at them, this rough family, feeling the sweat run down the grooves etched on either side of his nose, filtering itchily into the grey of his beard.

They were relaxed, chaffering each other and the big oxen Hainault spearmen, who broiled in their leather and wool. One or two of the Welsh had dug out strips of dried beef and venison from under their saddles, where they had been marinading to softness with the animal’s sweat; they chewed with relish and fell into the old argument of whether gelding, mare or stallion sweat made the meat tastier.

Y Crach, as always, was poised like a trembling gazehound. He will hang these with his own hand, Addaf thought sourly, as his own offering to God; Addaf did not care to be reminded that there were too many who would stand with Y Crach.