To the right and slightly ahead was another Battle of similar size, commanded by Edward Bruce, to the left yet another with Randolph’s arrogant banner waving about it.
Flitting in and out, as if wandering lost, were Selkirk and Gallowegian bowmen and the tribal caterans from north of the Mounth: MacDonalds of Angus Og, Camerons, Campbells, Frasers, MacLeans, a wildness of men who did not fight in a great square of pike and glaive and bill but preferred leaping about with little round spike-bossed shields, long knives and axes. Scowling in with them came the strangest of all, the Irish of the O’Neill, O’Hagan and others, more interested in finding their English-supporting counterparts and settling old scores. The best of them had great jingling coats of mail to their ankles and fearsome long-handled axes.
Nearby, squeezed tight together, was the small – ludicrously small, Dog Boy thought – huddle of Keith’s horsemen.
It was all small, Dog Boy knew, seeing the golden horde ahead of him. It had been better in the days when he had not been cursed with knowing that he stood with a third or less men than the enemy opposite, that good men who might have made the difference had been turned away and left to mutter their displeasure in the baggage camp, because they could not be fed, or equipped, or trained in time.
Then he heard, above the rasp and mutter, clatter and creak, the incongruous plaint of birdsong, a fluted throating furious at being disturbed from praising the dawn. A moment later the sudden blare of horns drowned them out, sending them flurrying skywards like swirls of black smoke signalling the advance.
He saw the two Battles ahead of him shift and roll forward ponderously, thought of his son and laughed for the sheer, birdlike joy of the moment.
Hereford, a pillar of dull iron clanking towards his splendidly trappered warhorse, paused briefly as the figure wriggled through the throng like a pup through a fence. John Walwayn, he thought sourly, come a little late. Everyone was a little late – Gloucester, he had heard, had even ridden off without his surcote. Rather than permit me to get to the Van first and start ordering it about, he thought moodily.
Walwayn was breathless with rush and self-importance, ignoring as best he could the sneers from the squires, scornful of this ink-finger with his dagged tunic and dun-coloured hose.
‘Well?’ Hereford demanded and Walwayn knew his lord was eager to be up and away, though he was pouch-eyed from lack of sleep and had spent the night in prayer beside the body of his nephew Henry; somewhere nearby they were boiling him down to the bones, which would be carried home. Walwayn knew that his news had arrived late – but not too late, as he pointed out.
‘My lord Percy’s man has failed,’ he said in a low, hoarse whisper. ‘I have word from Alnwick that the Templar Knight he sent is dead in Spain and Bruce has succeeded in gaining a cargo of weapons. If they encountered no other trouble on the way, my lord, then the Scotch have Templar arms and armour aplenty. That message was at Alnwick a ten-day ago.’
Hereford blinked and pursed his lip, the scowl of his face framed in metal links. If that was true … He glanced briefly at Walwayn and knew it to be; the man had never failed him before with intelligence. It also meant that Percy had not bothered to inform the King of his failure and the possible delivery of arms and armour to the Scots. It would make all the difference, Hereford knew. Well, there would be a reckoning with Percy after this was all done with.
‘The Scotch will stand, then,’ he mused and waved for a squire to leg him up on to the tall horse – the new leg armour made it awkward to mount unaided. Settling himself, he looked down at Walwayn.
‘You have done well. When this is done, come to me for reward.’
Walwayn wondered if Hereford had understood and almost said as much, but broke into a sweat at the near error and forced a smile. It was not for him to question whether his lord and master had fully grasped the import of the news he had brought.
The Scotch would stand and fight, was no ragged army of trailbaston, but one which had had weeks to train and was now armed and armoured with former Templar weapons – perhaps even captained by former Templar Knights, the most formidable fighters of the day and now raised to righteous fury at what had been done to them.
He moved away, jostled to a stagger by squires and men-at-arms mounting and trailing after their earl; after a moment, he realized he was alone, with the sickly sweet smell of Henry de Bohun’s boiling seeping into the air like the worst of omens.
Somewhere, Walwayn heard shouting, drifting on an errant wisp of morning breeze and, for all it was a faint ghost of sound, it made him shiver, so that his long shadow trembled.