But folk are fickle and forgetful, he thought, slowly, gently, drawing his knife. That was then and this is now and the wee beastie craves what once it enjoyed.
It does not deserve this, he added sorrowfully, feeling the blade of the knife cold as poor charity. The animal gave a choke, no more, as voice and life were cut from it, and before it could take its last wheeze of breath, Dog Boy had it by the scruff of the neck while its heart pumped thickly out of the gaping throat, trailing like ribbons as he threw it over the wall.
Below, the rush and thump of it falling made everyone jump and Sweetmilk, spattered with blood, had Jamie’s hand clamped on his mouth to muffle the curses.
‘Gardyloo,’ Jamie growled. ‘That will be our signal.’
‘Not yours,’ Hal replied flatly. ‘You are forbidden to set foot on the wall …’
‘Away with you,’ Jamie said, releasing Sweetmilk so suddenly that the man stumbled. ‘I did not come to this jig to stand at one side and admire you lassies.’
Hal looked from him to Kirkpatrick, but any help he sought from there was stillborn with the man’s weary shrug.
They started up the ladder.
Hal led the way, panting and sweated by the time he reached the top. Wet inside and out, he thought laconically as he heaved himself as quietly as he could over the crenellation. The misery of Dog Boy’s face brought him up short and he stared as the man looked bitterly at his bloody palms and then wiped them on his tunic.
‘I am ill named,’ he growled to Hal. ‘I am the curse of dogs. Every one I meet dies.’
Never mind the men – aye, and women, too – that have regretted bumping into you, Hal thought, but he held his tongue in his teeth and merely patted Dog Boy on his sodden shoulder, glancing up and down the length of gleaming, empty walkway as he did so.
A distant brazier glowed to his left; to the other side was the bulk of a tower, one of the nine Berwick’s fortress possessed and the one they wanted: the Hog Tower. Below, the bailey courtyard flickered in the dancing shadows from stray lights, pale as corpses in the sea-haar – forge, brewhouse, bakehouse, Hal recognized. The dark mass would be the stables, where no light was permitted. No one moved.
Jamie Douglas slithered to his side and grinned, before wiping his streaming face.
‘Bigod,’ he hissed. ‘I should have brought more men. We could capture it easy.’
‘We could not,’ Hal flung back at him. ‘We could try and capture it and it would be hard and bloody. It would also ruin any rescue. Mind that, Sir James, when your heid is bursting with glory.’
‘In and out,’ added a panting voice as Kirkpatrick came up alongside them, ‘quiet and quick.’
He beamed mirthlessly at Jamie Douglas.
‘Like you were taking the favour of someone else’s wife,’ he added.
‘You might have thought of another way to put that,’ Hal glowered back at him and Kirkpatrick acknowledged his lack of tact with an apologetic wave.
‘Aye, weel – the husband is long deid, Devil take him …’
‘Whisht, the lot of you.’
Dog Boy’s glare froze them all and they obeyed him, regardless of station and suddenly, shockingly, aware of where they were perched. Like eggs on a high ledge, Hal thought, and cackling like gannets.
‘Bide here,’ he declared to Jamie, who scowled and looked about to protest.
‘We need to protect the way out,’ Hal pointed out. Besides, he added to himself, you should not be here at all and your lust for glory and your bloody-handed temper will carry you away when we least need it.
Jamie, unused to taking orders from the likes of Hal, looked about to protest and Dog Boy thrust himself into the path of it.
‘I will also stay,’ he announced, ‘to guard our way to safety.’
Jamie, suddenly realizing that this was not his quest and given a suitable task of bravery and honour, nodded and grinned. With a brief look of raised-eyebrow relief, Kirkpatrick passed Hal and led the way towards the Hog Tower, skulking along the walkway, pressed to the crenellations.
There was a door and he imagined it would be shut and barred, which was the way if the castle was guarded, all perjink and proper. He tested it, heard the bar behind it clunk softly in the pins and did not know how they would get it open. He turned to say so to Hal, found that man’s face turned up and pebbling with moonlit rain.
Hal stared up at the cage, clamped like a barnacle to the outside of the tower. She was there, the thickness of a wall, a few long strides away …
Kirkpatrick saw it, too, and blinked the rainmist off his eyebrows.
‘A quick and strong young man’, he hissed, ‘could be up on that and inside in no time.’
It took a moment for Sweetmilk to realize Kirkpatrick was staring at him and he blenched when he did so.
‘Aye, right,’ he whispered back scornfully. ‘In through the door it does not have, for what would be the point of that on the outside of a cage hung a long drop from the ground?’