Kirkpatrick hirpled up and into the saddle of Malenfaunt’s horse, an agonizingly slow process to Hal, bouncing on the back of his own maddened garron. He could not believe his eyes when he saw Kirkpatrick pause, take the cord that fastened his lacerated wrists and loop it carefully round the cantle of the saddle.
‘In the name o’ God, Kirkpatrick,’ he bellowed, ‘ride, ye sow’s arse – we do not have all this day.’
They rode, breaking from the fray while Dirleton Will, Sore Davey, Mouse and others closed round them protectively. In another minute they were forging back up the slope, riders joining them in dribs and drabs as they broke off from the fight.
It took Hal another minute to realize that Kirkpatrick’s horse was ploughing harder than the others because he was towing something behind him, heavy as a log, rolling backwards and forward and shrieking.
Malenfaunt.
They rode on at a flogging canter for a few more minutes, then Hal brought them to a panting, sweating halt, the garrons splay-legged. Men dropped from the saddle on buckling legs; Hob o’ the Merse puked, bent over, hands on knees and Sore Davey was weeping like a bairn, his pustuled face twisted.
‘Find how many are missing,’ Hal ordered Sim and he nodded grimly.
‘We dinna have long,’ he warned. ‘They are good serjeants, who will be black affronted to have been bested by hobby horse like us. They will be after us when they have collected their wits.’
Hal nodded, crossed to where Kirkpatrick wobbled by the side of the horse; he cut the man’s wrists free with a swift gesture.
‘Ye are hurt?’
Kirkpatrick’s head echoed and he felt sick, while he only knew he was standing because he was upright, for his legs felt like wood, but he waved one hand and managed a grin. He could not understand why Hal had done what he had done and said so.
‘I am wondering the same,’ Hal answered grimly. ‘When I ken the cost, I will give ye an answer.’
‘Regardless,’ Kirkpatrick answered in French, ‘I am in your debt. I rescind our quarrel and am grateful to do so.’
That was something at least, Hal thought, stepping through the bracken to where the moaning figure writhed at the end of the cord. Malenfaunt looked up through a mist of blood and fire and saw the face.
‘Aeel,’ he said mournfully. ‘Aeel.’
‘What’s he say?’ demanded Chirnside Rowan, all bland curiosity.
‘He yields,’ Hal answered, then frowned. ‘I think.’
He was distracted by a knot of men riding in, including Rossal de Bissot and Jamie Douglas, still grinning from his sweating face and reliving the fight with the Dog Boy, the pair of them laughing as they did so.
‘Fower are gone,’ Sim muttered in Hal’s earshot. ‘Nebless Sandie, Andra, Roslin Rob an’ Blue Tam. Nebless an’ Andra are corpses, certes an’ the others will no’ survive the Heron’s hatred.’
Which accounted for Sore Davey’s snot and tears – Andra was his brother.
Kirkpatrick heard it, looked up and into the grey haar of Hal’s eyes. Four lost to save him; it was a harsh price for the Herdmanston lord and Kirkpatrick knew it. He heard de Bissot murmur ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena’ and found the Templar’s eyes with his own.
‘My thanks for your part in my rescue,’ he said in French. ‘I am afraid I am hardly suitable escort now.’
De Bissot looked at the figure, tattered and bloodied, his hands lacerated and his face lashed and scarred. There was a rib or two suffering in there, too, he thought and nodded.
‘I will make my own way, with the help of God,’ he said and turned to Hal.
‘You have the thanks of the Order,’ he said. ‘We will meet again, you and I.’
Then he rode away, leaving Hal staring at his back and wondering, chilled, if that had been some blasphemous Templar prophecy. Malenfaunt’s moans broke him from it and Sim’s voice, urging movement, was sharp.
Kirkpatrick lumbered stiffly over to Malenfaunt, bent and searched, then came up with a smile and his fluted dagger.
‘My knife – I thought so,’ he declared, blood welling from his lips with his burst grin. ‘Murderer and weapon both, to be presented in triumph to English Edward.’
He glanced at the misery that was Malenfaunt, now climbed to his knees and swaying.
‘How the world turns, Malenfaunt,’ he sibilated in blood-spitted French. Then, before anyone could move, the dagger flashed. Hal heard a hiss, like the puncture of a bloated sheep and Malenfaunt cried out, wide-eyed and staring, one hand clamped to the side of his punctured neck and blood spuming through his fingers. No-one else made a move, Hal saw.
‘I have ruined that part of you called “the heart in the throat”,’ Kirkpatrick said softly, almost dreamily as men stared, horrified, at the whimpering Malenfaunt, his mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.
‘You will die and only God can halt it, though I doubt He will. They say you experience visions o’ great wonder an’ beauty, dyin’ in this slow, peaceful fashion.’