Hal lurched forward, still gripping the spear, so that it bent – but it still stuck fast. He let it go just as Badenoch rushed in, snarling – and the shaft sprang back and took the man in the chest and face, a smack like a hammer; he went flying backwards, his own sword spilling free.
Ahead, Hal saw a shield and made for it; a man with a shield had a weapon yet. He fumbled it up – and cursed, for the straps had been sheared and it was useless. Badenoch, back on his feet and his face a twisted mask of blood, sprang forward and wrenched the spear free.
Now it comes free, Hal thought bitterly. He lurched to one side as the point of the spear stabbed at him. He kicked out, hearing himself squeal like a horse.
The blow took Badenoch in the thigh, made him cry out and reel away. Then he hurled himself back into the fight, the spear flicking out like a snake’s tongue; Hal spun, found the shaft under his right armpit and himself with his back to Badenoch; in a panic he gripped with his arm and heaved sideways, hoping to tear the spear from the knight’s grasp, or spill him to the ground if he held on to it.
The shaft snapped, which came as a shock to them both. It cracked like an old marrow bone, so that Hal found himself with the last foot of wood and the wicked tip couched under his armpit like a silly lance.
Badenoch, left with four feet of splinted shaft, flung it down in disgust and hurled himself at Hal, all mailled fists and vengeance.
Hal whipped the shattered spearshaft from under his arm with his left hand and drove it into Badenoch’s face. The man ran on to it like a charging bull, impaled himself through his open, snarling mouth and staggered on past for a few reeling steps before falling forward; Hal saw the bloody point burst from the back of the skull.
He stood for a long moment, and then something inside seemed to give up and he fell on to his knees, rolled to one side and, finally, on to his back, staring at the sky and listening to Badenoch’s mailled feet kick wetly in his own blood.
Like his da, Hal remembered. He wanted to get up but could not move, only stare at the sky, which had turned bruised and ugly. It is all over, he thought dully. Badenoch is dead. Kirkpatrick … bigod, the world is slain this day.
The thunder rolled, sonorous as a bell.
He lay like that for what seemed an age, until the spatter of water made him blink. It grew and started to hiss like a nest of adders: rain, sheeting in a curtain which suddenly parted to reveal a limping grey figure who reached out a sodden hand to haul Hal to his feet.
‘Bigod,’ said Kirkpatrick. ‘That was well done – but you should have let me end him in Greyfriars and saved the pair o’ us all this bother.’
Goliath was dead. Thweng had not known when the horse had been hit, only the moment it had checked, coughed and started to sink, slowly, like a deflating bladder. He had time to kick free of it and drop with a jar to the ground, watched it fall to its knees and finally on to one side, blowing blood out of its nose; the arrow that had killed it was buried so deep, just to the rear of the girth, that only the span of peacock fletchings could be seen. A great spreading stain of blood soaked the trapper.
Welsh archers, Thweng thought bitterly, God curse them. That horse was worth more than fifty of those dark mountain dwarves put together …
Men flooded round him, splitting right and left, away from the sword-armed, mailled figure and his dying horse. Our foot, Thweng thought moodily, running like chooks; he hoped John and the others had managed to get away – and, with a surprising detachment, wondered if he would manage that himself.
He walked away from the horse, stepping over bodies. Archers had let loose here and felled a deal of Scots horse; there were little shaggy ponies down, kicking and squealing among the ragdoll shapes of men. Arrows littered all around, in beast and man and turf, broken, splintered and trampled – and one hit Goliath, he added bitterly, though there was no telling if it had been an accident or some vicious last Welsh swipe at the English.
A man rose up suddenly with a whoop of sucked-in air and Thweng took a grip of his sword as the man felt himself, as if in wonder at finding no injuries. Thweng saw the stained gambeson and the two roughly tacked strips of cloth in the shape of the St Andrew’s cross on one breast. A Scot …
Dog Boy hauled himself up from the ruin of his horse, could not help but run his hands over his body, amazed that he had escaped the sleet of arrows.
He had thought he had done enough for this day when he had stopped chasing fleeing Englishmen – but then Jamie Douglas had come up, mounted and grinning, streaked and stained and joyous.
‘Get yerself legged up on this, Aleysandir,’ he ordered and Dog Boy, weary and sick of it all, saw the others and the extra garrons they had.