The memory of that great hook, swinging down to try and grab the siege tower, made him whimper even now. It had missed its target and snagged him like a fish, catching in his surcote – the thought that it might have been his flesh still made his hole pucker.
Like a giant hand it had lifted him up and swung him, arms and legs flailing like a pathetic insect, to batter into the walls – but Gray had leaped forward, risking arrows and showers of stones to grab and hack the hook out of the surcote. Just then a springald bolt had taken Gray in the helmet, straight through it and into his face, so that they’d needed smithing tools to cut him free.
Guiltily, Beaumont glanced at Gray now, seeing the great scar like an accusing beacon that flushed more heat through him, composed of shame and gratitude. Gray should have died, Beaumont thought. He had lain under a pile of dead until Beaumont had come to his senses and gone back with men to look for him, expecting a corpse and finding what he thought was one; it was only when they paraded him back, all solemn and sorrowful for burial, that he had groaned and moved, shocking everyone – especially those who had tugged and heaved at the helm and then given up because it was skewered fast to his head.
He should have died anyway, Beaumont thought, from a horror wound like that – but he had recovered and Beaumont knew he should have been pleased for his saviour, should be sending prayers to God to preserve the life of this man who had preserved his.
Yet that face only reminded Beaumont of his bowel-loosening fear on that day, his utter helplessness and what he had babblingly offered to God for deliverance, which no man nor saint could possibly have fulfilled.
He wanted this business done with, so that he could put Gray behind him and if it meant riding across this strange terrain into the gates of Hell itself, he would spur on.
The Carse was strange, no doubt of it. They had all been told how treacherous it was, a sward that looked firm yet was a soft and sinking bog. Not now. Not after weeks of summer sun. Now it was like fresh bread, slightly spongy and new-toasted so that it crumbled; Clifford voiced this and his mesnie laughed dutifully, but they were nervous. They had started out slightly later than the Van, knew nothing of what was happening in the New Park away to their left and Clifford was apprehensive. The distant sound of cheers and shouting did not help; who was celebrating and why?
Yet, if he was to achieve his king’s orders and ride round to cut off the retreat of the Scots, he needed speed. That was why he had three hundred mounted knights and men-at-arms, all flogging expensive warhorses in the heat to come up on St Ninian’s little chapel; the nearest foot were miles away, slogging desperately up with the baggage.
Clifford eyed the wood to his left, which had some outlandish name, as did the plain they rode across; they were coming up on another steep-sided stream and Clifford slowed to a walk, Gray and Beaumont coming up alongside.
‘The Pelstream, my lord,’ Gray offered. ‘Tidal, like all the rest. We are leaving the Carse of Balqhuiderock and heading out into the Dryfield. As the name suggests, it is firm ground even in bad weather.’
No one could tell the difference; the plain looked exactly the same, though Clifford beamed, the beads forming on his fleshy nose and pouched cheeks.
‘Good ground for horse,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘The King will be pleased – this is where the army wants to be, my lords.’
Gray looked dubiously at the constrictions of wood and stream and mentioned them; he and Clifford fell to arguing the merits of the place as a ‘good field’.
‘God-cursed place,’ Beaumont growled into the middle of their polite debate, wiping his face with a corner of his surcote. ‘What’s that there?’
He pointed one mittened fist and everyone followed it, some rising in the stirrups to try and see better.
It was a line, a scar on the landscape, seeming to undulate and sparkle. Gray laughed, which made Beaumont’s scowl all the darker.
‘That, my lord,’ Gray said, almost joyously, ‘is the enemy.’
Bruce had blinked and shaken himself out of the daze, ruthlessly forcing it away along with the memory of that fury, that great, crunching crack as he brought the axe down – hard enough to snap the shaft, by God’s Wounds. His hand and arm hurt, wrenched with the power of the blow.
Like a blown egg, he recalled with a shudder. On the back of the boy’s head as he rode away … he quelled that, too, stuffing it in the choked chest along with all the other sins.