Then he was on his knees spitting blood, the world a whirl of sky and trees and torn earth that smelled of autumn.
‘Up,’ said a voice, as mild as if lifting a bairn from a puddle. Hal leaned in the iron grasp, looked up into the blood and mud of Wallace’s face and had back a grin.
‘Aye til the fore,’ the Guardian said, then glanced back over his shoulder, to where the milling riders were slaughtering the slow. ‘Into the woods.’
No sensible knight risked a good warhorse by forcing it into a tangle of undergrowth and trees, where his vision, already no more than a narrow slit, was arrowed down to nothing by leaves and branches, so that it was impossible to resist the temptation to rip off the heavy constriction of helm. Vulnerable, slow, unable to use weight and power, a man in his right mind knows woods are not for heavy horse.
Hal knew, as soon as he heard the great crashing, that sanity had run from this part of the world, with a frightened look over one shoulder at the madness of God which rode in to replace it.
Hal, following the stained gold surcoat with the red lion snarling defiantly, turned to see a white camilis billowed, ripping apart on the snatching talons of tree and bush as Brian De Jay, Master of the Templars and righteous with the power of the Lord in him, closed with a triumphant roar on the running fox of Wallace, that offence to God.
Hal did not think. He turned, stepped to one side as the warhorse plunged, De Jay reeling in the saddle, half pulled out by the snag of the treacherous white robes. The German Method, Hal heard himself say aloud, though the voice did not seem to be his at all – then he half crouched and spun, putting all the weight in a backhand cut, the sword grasped in both hands.
It broke the warhorse’s hind leg with a crack like a snapping branch and the shriek of it falling was high and thin, piercing as any blade. Brian De Jay went out between the ears of it, smashing into the mulch and the briars, rolling over and over until he slammed into a tree with a sound like an acre of tin kettles falling off a cart.
Pulled off balance by his blow and the weariness of a hard day, Hal tipped sideways and fell his length, then started to scramble up. De Jay, struggling weakly, also started to rise, bellowing rage and pain out in bloody froth; then a shadow fell on him and he looked up.
‘Ye were seeking a wee word with me?’ Wallace asked mildly and De Jay tried a cut, so weak that Wallace only had to put his sword out for the Templar blade to ring a soft chime, then fall limply to the ground.
‘Aye, weel,’ Wallace said softly, ‘here I am, my wee lord. May God forgive ye for what ye have done to Templar honour this day – argue your case when ye see Him.’
The hand-and-a-half, clotted to the hilt already, came round in a vicious two-handed swipe that took De Jay badly.
It was meant to be a neck kill, a single-stroke beheading that men would later marvel at, but rage and fear and the black howl of defeat made Wallace poor with it; the blade slammed into the Templar Master’s expensive, new-fangled plate gorget and skittered upwards, taking the man in the jaw and carving through into the tree beyond, where it stuck.
With a pungent curse and a frown, Wallace put his foot up – he had taken off his boots, Hal noted dazedly – on De Jay’s chest and began to work the blade out, his toes flexing in the vomited mess flooding from the Master of Templars’ ruined face.
The forest crashed and a new rider, like the ghost of De Jay himself, came bounding out like a stag on the run. Hal, halfway to his feet, saw that Wallace was trapped, saw the Guardian let go of the wedged sword and whirl, fumbling for a dagger.
Brother John De Sawtrey, his white robes shredded and stained, his helmet and bascinet, maille coif and all flung away, whirled a little fluted mace in a circle and his purpled face under a thorn-crown of sweat-spiked tonsure was a vicious snarl.
He saw the fallen De Jay and howled at the outrage of it until his throat corded. His head was a storm of vengeance and he dug in his spurs; the warhorse’s great rump bunched and it squealed – Hal levered himself to his feet, knowing he was between Wallace and this charging knight.
He tried to brace, but his legs trembled and his arms felt as if they had two anvils on the end; De Sawtrey rocked as the great warhorse shot forward – four strides and it would plough Hal into the forest floor.
One stride. Hal saw small twigs and acorns bounce up off the ground with the powered weight of each hoof.
Two strides. Something flicked at the corner of Hal’s eye, but he could not turn his head from the sight of the warhorse’s snarl of yellow teeth, the angry pink flare of nostrils and the great, slow-motion rise of massive feet.