Beside him, Jamie crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet; in three more steps they would be seen.
Jamie darted forward, lunging out of the shrouding water in the hope that surprise would conquer all – but the guard was a good man and trained well enough that the spear he was holding in one fist came down and level before he had even registered who or what was coming at him.
Jamie, armed only with a long dirk, skidded to a halt, fell backwards and scrabbled upright; for a long moment they stared at each other, the guard with water dripping off the rim of his iron hat, studded jack soaked black, the spear pearling water from shaft and tip.
Then Dog Boy came up and the man blinked out of the numbing shock, opened his dry mouth and bellowed.
‘Ware afore. Ware afore.’
‘Christ and His bliddy saints …’ Jamie hissed and threw the dirk. It whirled, struck the man in the face haft first and sent him staggering. Dog Boy, with a grim grunt, hurled forward and rammed the man to the wet walkway; the spear flew free, rolled off the edge and clattered noisily on to the cobbles below.
The guard struggled and spat and cursed, but Jamie was on him now too and helped pin one arm and a leg, leaving Dog Boy, fighting the mad, fluttering panic of the man, to free up his dagger hand and drive the weapon into the man’s ear, the most vulnerable spot.
For a moment he was years back, leaping on the back of a man fighting the Bruce – and winning – in a dark corridor of a leper house. He had knifed into an ear then, too, felt the same gush of blood over his hand, so hot he was amazed it did not scald him …
Panting, slick with blood and rain, the three of them wrestled and grunted and gasped until, at last, one kicked frantically and then was still. Jamie, dashing rain from his eyes, grinned and got to his hands and knees, was about to say how Dame Fortune was smiling when the bitch betrayed them with the iron clang of an alarm.
Dog Boy looked at the cage, where Sweetmilk clung like a barnacle, then to where men were spilling out of butter-yellow doorways below and up the stone stairs, more coming along the ramparts so that they would pass through the Hog Tower and along to where the ladder snaked to safety. There was no way he or Jamie could stop them.
‘Away,’ Jamie declared, clapping Dog Boy on the shoulder and half dragging him to his feet. ‘Or we are taken.’
‘We cannot leave them,’ Dog Boy spat and Jamie whirled him until they were face to face.
‘Too late, Aleysandir. All we can do is give them the best chance of escaping on their own.’
Dog Boy did not see it. If the guards already spilling up to the Hog Tower passed through it they would send some up one level, to check on the prisoner. When they did, all would be lost for the trapped Hal and Isabel, Kirkpatrick and Sweetmilk.
Jamie saw all that in the Dog Boy’s face. He grinned and sprang along the walkway towards the guards, spreading his arms wide and bawling like a rutting stag.
‘A Douglas. A Douglas. The Black is here. Come ahead if you think yourselves warriors.’
Even as he sprinted for the ladder, two steps behind Jamie, Dog Boy knew that the guards were elbowing each other to get through the door of the Hog Tower, desperate to close with the legendary Black Douglas, to capture or kill him, for ransom or reward. All of them, Dog Boy thought with a savage moment of exultation as he slid down the ladder, his palms and fingers scorching.
Hal and Isabel clung to each other, breath pinched off. Kirkpatrick, half-crouched and with his knife out, looked from their gleaming faces to the dark shape of Sweetmilk, hanging on to the outside bars of the cage. It was so quiet Kirkpatrick could hear the hiss of the rain – and the loud shouts of ‘A Douglas’.
Clever Sir Jamie, he thought as the thunderous clatter of men below spilled through from one walkway to the next, too eager to think; the throat-cut body of the guard below only spurred them on to more vengeance.
There were loud shouts – but no one came up. Everyone clattered on through, bawling loudly about the castle in danger from the Black Douglas. They would be balked at pursuit, all the same, for the White Wall had a postern gate at the foot of a set of steps known as the Breakneck Stairs, with good reason. The only other way was to follow the Black down his own ladder in the dark.
‘We must go,’ he hissed and Hal looked, agonized, at Sweetmilk. He is doomed, Kirkpatrick wanted to say, but the nun groaned and focused all attention on her.
‘Strip her.’