Thweng arrived in time to see Gloucester rise up in his stirrups, the fewtered lance squivering like a tree in a gale and his face dark and flushed.
‘Be damned to you. I command here, by order of the King, and while you argue, de Bohun, the enemy laugh their way to a slaughter and king’s carp of treachery. Well, I will not wait for defeat and dishonour.’
He savaged the horse’s head round so that it squealed and thundered off, trailed by Badlesmere and others of his mesnie. Payn Tiptoft looked at Hereford and then at the disappearing back of Gloucester; when he had no guidance from the former, he flung up his shielded hand in exasperation and spurred away. With a sharp bark from under his full helm, de Maulay, the King’s steward, announced that he had joined the Van to fight, not run, and thundered after, trailing more men with him.
Badenoch and his kinsman, the Comyn of Kylbryde, looked pointedly at Thweng, who gave Hereford a pouch-eyed mourn of stare, and then put his helm over his head, as clear a signal as any shout. With a whoop, Badenoch and his kinsman thundered off, hauling all the other Knights of the Shadow after them and, a reluctant last, Sir Marmaduke.
Hereford, his temples thundering, watched them ribbon their way obliquely across to the dark line of Edward Bruce’s Battle and felt the tic kick under his eye as he saw another line, this one to the left of the Bruce brother and more distant. It had the blazing banner of the lion rampant marking where Bruce himself marched. Beyond that, further to the left of it, was another growing line, the banners in it proclaiming a third command.
The Earl of Moray, Hereford thought, coming up on his master’s left. The Scots were in an echelon of Battles, as steady ranked as any Macedonians of Alexander, and Hereford, with a sickening lurch, knew that Gloucester was right – there was no time left. No time at all.
Hew stumbled and fell to his knees, had curses and kicks for it as the ranked men baulked and tried to get round or walk over him. A hand took him by the collar and hauled him up as he struggled like a beetle in the forest of legs and feet.
He tried to mutter thanks, but the sweating mass was an animal that did not care, simply hammered him in the back with a curse and a call to keep moving.
He kept moving, spearless, the axe in one hand, the dirk in his belt and in his free hand a fist of the dirt and grass he had grabbed when he fell. Bad soil for digging, Hew thought. Not stable. Looks fine now, but it will be as dangerous as scree when it rains here; the ground will seep water. If you came here after rain, he thought, and thumb-tested the ground as was proper, you would lose most of the digit up to the first joint.
Cannot dig a ditch in such, he thought, half falling again, the motes and dust swirling with the grunt and clack and clatter of the sweating press. You need no more wet in the ground than a thumbnail-length entry for a good ditch. Incline the walls away, to prevent fallins. Most folk did not know that a square ell of soil weighs as much as a full-armoured knight on his big stot and if that falls on you, you are in the grave, certes.
He heard the men next to him shout out and grunt, saw hands flex and heard the great bawling roar that was Edward Bruce, the King’s brother himself, standing in their sweating, stinking midst and bellowing for them to keep going, that it was only a wee man on a big horse.
A square ell of soil, Hew thought, moving fast on four legs and about to fall on someone …
There was a noise like a clatter of cauldrons on a stone path and the great block Hew was in trembled like a fly-bitten horse’s haunch; men rippled away from the front. Someone shrieked, high and loud, and voices called out, but they kept moving, forcing Hew onward.
You should properly shore up steep sides – wood if it is no more than a ditch, but good stone cladding if it is a decent, perjink moat …
He stepped on something that moved and groaned, fell forward with an apology as he tried to skip round it, appalled that he had put his foot on a wounded man.
‘Kill him, man,’ someone growled, forcing past him and Hew saw the groaning figure was a knight, helmed and mailled and lying on his shield. There was blood on his metal links and he had no surcote. Hew started to try and turn him, to see the device on the shield – there was a lot of expensive war gear on this one for him to be a simple man-at-arms – but feet trampled and baulked and cursed him.
‘He has no mark, is of no account. Kill him and be done with it,’ the voice savaged at him and Hew looked up, blinking into the great, broad, red face, sweat-gleamed and truculent as a thwarted boar. He saw the surcote beneath it, stained and torn but blazing with the device of Edward Bruce.