‘We will make them dance,’ he bawled out and Addaf saw the men who agreed, grinning and nodding between sick belches. Too many sick belches and more so than last time.
Reluctantly, Addaf signalled for his men to dismount, the younger ones grabbing handfuls of reins and dragging the horses away as the old hands slid easily into familiar ranks and heeled their bows, running the string up to the nock in a smooth movement.
Addaf looked at his own bowstave, the ribbon on the tip fluttering softly so that he knew the wind speed and direction. Twenty men oppose us, he thought, no more. Twenty and a handful of dogs for driving the kine – five to one he outnumbered them and one single volley would pin them to the turf.
So why was he so fretted? Because Y Crach seemed to have taken charge of this? He eyed the black ruin of the tower, the weathered cross and the battered chapel and did not like the omen of this place at all; his men, bows smarted and drooped to the ground, waited for the command that would lift the arrow points up, draw back the braided horsehair and silk string to the ear and release an iron sleet on the enemy.
There was a flurry from the spearmen then and heads turned from watching Addaf to anxiously scan the enemy, for everyone knew that the only hope for the rebel Scotch was to run at the archers instead of standing like a set mill. They did not want these shrieking caterans closing on them, with their rat-desperate bravery and sharpened edges.
But there was no frantic, screaming rush. Instead, bewilderingly, the front rank seemed to have melted away, scurrying for cover behind the carts, leaving the others to face the arrows. One of them, dunted by a hurrying shoulder, tilted and fell over, the spear falling. Another leaned slowly sideways as if drunk.
False. Addaf saw it the same time as everyone else. A front rank of men, now under cover, had hidden the truth of hastily made dummies of lashed crosspoles and twisted grass, capped with a helmet, draped with a tunic.
False.
Even as it rang in him like a bell, he heard the savage shrieking yell, that blood-chiller the archers knew so well.
Then, behind them, the ground drummed with the mad gallop of garrons, every one with a nightmare of wet-mouthed savagery wielding that wicked Jeddart staff, with blade and spear and dragging hook.
And in front, wild dags of black hair flying, bearded face twisted in a snarl of anger and utter hate, a rider swung a hooked axe in one fist, split the skull of young Daiwyn and scarcely seemed to notice.
Addaf did not know who it was, only what it was. It was time to be somewhere else and in a running hurry.
Irish Sea
At the same moment …
It is, Niall Silkie declared in a shrill yell from the nest, showing a deal of smoke from the sterncastle. And it has lost its flag for another, a red horsehoe.
The cog was so close that Hal and everyone else could see that for themselves, peering out from behind the hastily lashed mantlets that provided cover from arrows. A thread of smoke and a red flag with a downward curve, like a droop of moustache.
Pegy went red-faced and furious then, bawling and screaming orders that sent men lurching at ropes; the sail banged down and filled, heaving the Bon Accord ponderously forward. Others of the crew fetched out long knives and two near-identical brothers, copper-haired and wiry, sprang up to the sterncastle, one with a bow, the other with arrows.
‘Not a horseshoe,’ Pegy growled at the grim assembly beside him. ‘A crab.’
He managed a mirthless smile at the anxious faces round him.
‘A wee jest on his name. Jack Crabbe was yin o’ Red Rover’s better captains afore the Rover embraced the Kingdom’s cause. Now Jack Crabbe’s ship, the Marrot, is a skulking moudiewart in the service of any who will pay – or more likely his own self.’
‘Hardly his own, I fancy,’ Rossal answered in steady, unaffected French. ‘He is not here by happenchance, flying a banner of the Order.’
He was not, Hal thought, and the thread of smoke nagged at him while the brothers, Angus and Donald, argued about who should shoot first.
‘The range is too great,’ Angus declared. ‘Give it to me – I have the muscle for the work.’
‘You? Ye couldna hit a bull’s erse if ye clung to its tail.’
‘In the name o’ Christ an’ all His bliddy saints – God forgive me – will yin o’ ye shoot.’
Pegy’s exasperated bellow made everyone wince, but Donald drew back until the bow creaked protest, then almost flung the arrow from him. It splashed a score of feet short.
‘Ye see? Ye bummlin fruster – wait until she closes.’
The brothers scowled at each other, but Hal had finally worked out what the smoke was and the chill of it tumbled the words from him like frost.
‘They will not close, nor have need to. They will fire off that engine they have up the sharp end and drop carcasses on us until we burn.’
‘Christ’s Blood.’