The Lothian lord, he had decided, noticed nothing at all, as if some veil had dropped between him and the world. As if – and Duncan shivered at the thought – he is moving with unseen sidhean, who are lifting him quietly out of the midst of us and into their timeless kingdom.
He took comfort from the quiet murmur, the men sitting crosslegged or lolling round the flames, attending to a blackened pot and wiping smoke tears from their eyes. Somewhere, an owl screeched and Duncan lay back, tasting the woodsmoked night and letting his eyes close.
Tomorrow they would be at Kilmory, loading this southron matter on to the galleys and away from this place of faerie shadows.
When it came, the next day, the working of the sidhean was harsh and sudden.
Hal was stumbling along in the ruts of a cart which seemed to be his own particular curse, a wheeled imp of Satan which stuck more times than it rolled. He was enjoying the roll of it now, the fresh breeze on the sweated bruise of his face and the piping of peewits, while quietly marvelling at the bulging calf muscles of the bare-legged man ahead, the one called Duncan.
I find it hard enough to walk in serk and braies, burdened only by a baldric and sword, he thought, yet this one carries his own weight on his back.
The man, wearing only a sweat-darkened saffron tunic, belted so that a dirk could be thrust through a ring on it, hefted the waterproofed burden a little higher on his back and strode on. Then he gave a yelp, a stumble and fell over.
Hal moved to him, thinking he had tripped, bending to help him to his feet; the flick of the shaft over his head was like the crack of a whip and he knew the sound well, felt the clench and sickening plunge of his belly as he flung himself to the ground beside Duncan. The arrow that had felled the man was now clearly revealed, buried deep an inch below the man’s collarbone.
More arrows flew and men tumbled and yelped.
‘Sluggorm. Sluggorm.’
The call echoed, the bundles flew away as the Campbells went for their weapons and Hal, raising his head, saw the arrows had been only the heralds of a leaping mass of shrieking men, wild-haired, wet-mouthed and armed: the MacDougalls.
Kirkpatrick, a few carts down from the fallen Hal, heard the cries of ‘sluagh-ghairm’, the gathering cry. Campbell of Craignish hauled out a hand-a-half, waved it in a circle above his head and bellowed ‘Cruachan’; men flocked to him like a pack of wolves. He looked right and left to see how many he had, grinned at Kirkpatrick and then plunged exultantly forward. Wearily, cursing, Kirkpatrick was dragged in his wake.
Hal was half-crouched and rising when the wave of MacDougalls fell on him and the snarling Campbells round him, though Hal could not tell one from the other and did not care when faced with an armed man wanting to poke sharp metal in him.
The first one tried to spear him, clumsy and running, so that Hal only had to bat the shaft to one side, dip a shoulder and let the man run on to it; braced, he knocked the man off his feet and drove the wind out of him, so that the sword stroke that took him in the neck barely managed a last squeak from him.
Hal barely heard, half turned for the next rushing man, ducked the flail of a spear slash and cut back so that the man stumbled past, bewildered as to why his stomach was emptying out and tangling his ankles.
They were desperate with fear, Hal realized, too few and relying on speed and rush to overwhelm. They should not have done it at all, he thought wildly, but they were madmen from beyond the Mounth, as strange as two-headed calves. The saving Grace of God in all of this was that he was fighting alongside equally mad men, who had recovered from the shock of attack and flung themselves forward with eldritch screeching and a sheen of ecstasy.
Hal cut and parried and made a space round him – but then there was a sudden flurry and a new rush of men, so that Hal spun and slashed to keep the swordlength of space until, through the bewildering whirligig of faces and bodies, he saw one he knew.
Kirkpatrick held up his hands and Hal, sucking in breath in ragged gasps, let the swordpoint drop; gore slid greasily from it and pooled round the tip.
Christ betimes, Kirkpatrick thought, he can still find a fight in him, can the wee lord from Herdmanston. He said as much and had back a pouch-eyed stare from the yellow-blue side of Hal’s face.
‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled and then stopped, for it was not Sim he spoke to, would never be Sim again.
‘If it is like this all the way to Stirling,’ Kirkpatrick growled, watching the lamb-leaping, blood-howling Campbells pursue their hated enemies over the bracken and heather, ‘we will deserve earldoms at the least.’
Hal did not answer and, when Kirkpatrick turned, he saw the lord bend, then crouch down amid the spilled litter of pack which had burst from dead Duncan’s back. He peered and saw, with a sudden shock of poignancy, what Hal had found.
Wrapped and stowed when the stuff was packed, Sim’s ruined, scarred arbalest winked back into the light, carefully laid up for the day it could be repaired.
Kirkpatrick politely turned away from the sound of weeping.
St Mungo’s Kirk, Polwarth