Badenoch saw Hal, saw the smith behind him and the scatter of men, coming up hard from their plunder and trying to make up for their shameful greed by being first back to Sir Hal’s side. He sprang for Kirkpatrick’s horse like a hare, was in the saddle and reining round in a fluid movement.
It was all the spur needed; before he had thought, Hal was after him.
He raked Cornix into a jagged canter, weaving as best he could between the scatter of bodies; once or twice the big horse swerved and hare-hopped before struggling on after the fleeing Badenoch.
Headed the wrong way, Hal thought triumphantly. Keep going and you will run into the Forth …
There was a great growling roar and a sudden flash which jerked Hal’s head up and made the horse falter and stumble. Thunder and lightning, he registered, and then they were bursting through some low bushes, into the kicked-up haze still swelling from Badenoch’s mad gallop, the motes dancing in it. The light had gone strange and yellowed.
Badenoch realized his mistake, turned sharply and lost his balance, reeling a little in the saddle; Hal turned more sharply still, gained a stride or two, leaped a bush and thumped down with a jar that banged his belly into the pommel and rattled his teeth.
They burst from the bushes to where the bodies started to clot again, horses among them this time. Hal saw Badenoch veer to avoid a still-kicking one, guided his own to the left of it and heard the beast’s iron hoofs clatter off something – skull or helmet he did not know.
They were coming to a crease in the ground: the Pelstream, by God, Hal thought. Now he will have to come at bay …
It took him a moment to realize that Badenoch was not coming to a halt, but checking to a canter, turning and riding parallel to the steep-sided stream – looking for a narrow part, Hal realized. By God’s Hook, he plans to leap it.
Badenoch suddenly spurred; Hal heard the horse squeal in pain, saw it surge and knew Badenoch had chosen his leaping point. He watched as the beast flung itself in an ungainly four-legged sprawl of jump, hit the far side, stumbled forward to safety and collapsed like a burst bag, spilling itself and the rider.
He cantered up and checked; the point was narrow, right enough, which was why all the fleeing Welsh archers had tried to use it. Hal had no idea how deep the narrow wedge of the Pelstream was – at least the height of a tall man – but it was choked to a bridge by bodies.
Hal saw Badenoch struggling on the ground, trying to free himself from a tangle of reins and realized what he had to do if he wanted to get to the man. Did he want it that badly? Kirkpatrick was dead … the thought burned him. Mea culpa, he voiced, savage with the loss and the horror at being the cause of it.
The horse could not leap the stream and would not step on the bodies, so Hal slithered off and put out one foot, only to draw it hastily back when he heard the farting gasp from the body. Dead air, he said savagely to himself. Only dead air …
He walked the bridge, three, four ungainly steps, no more, feeling the sickening roil of soft death, hearing the groans which might only have been the last gasp of the dead or men still dying.
Badenoch was up, weaving, sword at the guard and his eyes rat-desperate.
‘Different,’ Hal said coldly to him, ‘when you face a knight who actually knows the ways of sword and lance, my wee lord.’
‘You saved me,’ Badenoch blurted out, his voice harsh and rasping in breath. ‘The day my father was slain in Greyfriars.’
‘I did,’ Hal replied and then moved forward, de Bissot’s sword arcing round. ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’
Badenoch’s sword stopped the blow, glissaded away and the echoes were lost in another growling roar of thunder. Hal realized the world had darkened, wondered if the battle had lasted so long that it was now night.
Doggedly, Badenoch gathered himself and came back, lashing right and left, sweeping blows that thrummed the air; Hal countered, hitting nothing. They circled like wary dogs.
‘You could yield,’ Badenoch offered suddenly. ‘No shame in it. You are ower old for this, after all, and I will kill you if you do not, for all I owe you my life.’
‘I own your life since that day – now I have come for my due,’ Hal answered flatly and moved in as the wind hissed down on them, whirling up the tired, torn grass. Badenoch crouched, half turned and struck, the sword whicking the last flat of itself on to Hal’s mittened fist; even through the maille he felt the blow of it, the numbing that spilled the sword from his grasp.
With a howl of triumph, Badenoch went for the killing strokes, but caught his gilded spurs and stumbled a little; Hal scuttled away, staggered over a body and made for a nearby spear, stuck point down in the hard ground.
He had no feeling in his right hand; he gripped with his left and wrenched, but the spear was buried deep and would not come loose. Behind him, he heard Badenoch closing in like a panting hound.