Hal and Kirkpatrick came up, sleekit as thieves and all unaware until the shapes materialized from the shadows and hailed them with growls.
It was the matter of them coming from inside that saved them, Hal thought, for the guards were looking for folk from outside trying to get in, so these were no threat. That changed when Hal swung up the sword and slashed one man’s forearm with it, the blow hitting leather and mail, slicing through both in a spray of metal rings and breaking the bone with the force.
The man screamed like a girl, high and shrill, so that Hal, cursing, rammed the point in his mouth, snapping teeth and driving straight to the back of the man’s skull and out the far side; the falling weight dragged Hal in a half-stumble and he wrenched and tore at the now trapped sword, while the dead man’s head flopped and jerked.
Kirkpatrick went for the other one, the adder’s tongue dagger flicking, only to hiss off the man’s maille. Shocked, the guard staggered away, losing his spear and fumbling for a sword even as he brought his shield up. No chance now for fancy dagger work, Kirkpatrick realized and hurled himself bodily on the man, bowling the pair of them over; the guard bellowed.
Hal saw them rolling, the guard frantic to shove Kirkpatrick away and the shield now a liability as Kirkpatrick fought to grab the sword hand. Hal put his blood-soaked foot on the dead man’s face, two hands on the hilt and hauled the sword out like Excalibur from the stone, the sudden release scattering a spray of bone and brain.
The second guard was wild and whimpering, flailing madly with the shield to keep Kirkpatrick at bay; a lucky blow whacked a knee and Kirkpatrick felt the white pain explode in him, the dazzling burst of it blinding. Scrabbling madly, he managed to get to his feet, the knee thundering with agony, saw the guard’s triumphant snarl and the sword in his other hand like a long bar of deadly light.
Then there was a hiss and a thump, the guard’s head bent sideways on his neck, a peculiar slew that was all wrong for his body; then he was gone and Hal stood over the fallen shadow, panting like a mad dog, the sword bloody in his fist.
‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled, his grin sharp in the clear moonlight. Kirkpatrick moved shakily, his knee buckling and lancing pain into him. There were shouts and lights – then the dread sound, like a knell, of someone beating an alarm-iron.
‘Said ye were the man for that sword,’ Kirkpatrick growled, limping to the postern and throwing up the bar on it. ‘Now we had better make like a slung stone.’
Their progress was more of a slow-rolling pebble and Hal had to help the hirpling Kirkpatrick along most of it until, stumbling out of the riggs of a back court on to a rough track at the edge of Closeburn he stopped and sank down. Even allowing for moonlight, Hal thought as he glanced at him, that is a milk-pale face. Behind, bringing both their heads round, they heard the bark and bay of dogs.
‘Hounds,’ Kirkpatrick said, hoarse with pain. ‘Go. Fetch the horses here. Hurry.’
It was as good a solution as could be found, so Hal did not argue and paused only to force his soaked, sticky feet into his boots, then moved off in a half-crouch to where Donald was supposed to be waiting, feeling the ooze of other people’s blood between his toes.
The loom of the horse, like some dark nemesis from the shadows, almost made him scream and lash out, but he saw the figure leading it, caught a glimpse of her pale, anxious face and stopped the blow with an effort that left him shaking and panting.
‘Sir Hal.’
Annie was fretted and shivering and Hal knew something was badly wrong, so that when she laid the weird of it out, he was less stunned by it than he should have been.
Donald and Annie and her man had waited with the horses and even then Annie had known something was wrong. Then the alarm went and Donald announced he was leaving, though he could only manage the horse he rode and two others – the other two he left with Nichol and Annie ‘for mercy’.
‘Nichol is wild over Roger,’ she went on in a panicked, shrill whisper. ‘He waited only to tackle him – he heard us … exchanging auld whispers in the coal house. He cast loose the horse he held and has gone hunting Black Roger in the dark.’
She had brought this mount a little way, hoping to meet her old lover first, Hal thought and cursed them both.
‘Oh, Christ’s Mercy,’ Annie declared, giving up the reins to him and sinking down in the slush. ‘I did not want either of them harmed. In the name of God, I did not want any of this.’
Hal felt the rush of it – they were not so different, he and Annie, caught up in madness. He patted her awkwardly, as you would a sick dog, then left her there and went back to the road, trailing the one horse and looking for Kirkpatrick.
He was where Hal had left him, still hobbling desperately, but he stopped when he heard the hooves ring on the frozen ruts. Then his face got grim through the pain.
‘One?’