Hal told him, swiftly and Kirkpatrick groaned and hauled himself to the stirrup leather.
‘Aye. Well, there ye have it. Now ye can say that I am mainly for sense, save ower that wummin and have yer revenge.’
‘Haul yourself up,’ Hal declared. ‘We can ride double. Get settled while I have a listen for the hounds.’
He moved off, cocking his head and straining to hear deep into the dark, judging by the questing bell of the dogs whether they were on the scent or still looking. There was a sudden movement behind him and he turned, in time to see the dark figure spring out of the shadow between two howfs and run at Kirkpatrick’s back.
Kirkpatrick, laboriously hauling himself into the saddle of the patient mount, heard the final boot scuff too late; the blow smacked him in the back, slammed him into the horse, which skittered away and let Kirkpatrick fall and roll in the slush.
He knew he had been attacked and by whom, knew he had been stabbed, too, and was astonished by it, for he had never been in all his life so far. So that is what it is like to have the knife in, he thought, that terrible feeling of steel violating a place it should not be, that sickening, sucking grip of his own flesh, as if reluctant to see the blade withdrawn. Then the burn hit him and he struggled to rise.
‘Ye filthy boo,’ Nichol was spitting, breathing hard and standing straddle-legged. ‘Ye golach gowk-spit. I will learn ye to get on my wummin …’
He was cursing half in triumph, half in horror at what he had done, then turned and bellowed at the top of his voice.
‘Here. Over here. I have Black Roger …’
Then he remembered the reputation of the man who was struggling back to his weaving legs and whirled to face him, uncertain of what to do and afraid to close and finish it. The sudden clack of boots behind him made him whirl again, in time to see Hal come running up, the great blade of the sword bright in one hand.
Nichol yelped and fled, shrieking; Hal let him and darted to where Kirkpatrick, down on his one good knee, was gasping.
‘Christ and all His Saints,’ he panted. ‘That is sore.’
‘You are alive yet,’ Hal said, lifting him so that he grunted with pain.
The hounds were close, their baying loud. Hal forced Kirkpatrick up into the saddle, then looked steadily into the man’s pain-filled eyes.
‘Get gone back to your king,’ he said flatly. ‘Tell Dog Boy what happened here.’
Kirkpatrick knew that the horse would not outrun the dogs with two, knew what Hal was going to do and almost railed against it, but the hand came down on the horse’s rump and it sprang away into the night, leaving Kirkpatrick with all he could do to hang on as it went.
Hal was aware of what he had done, what was coming, with the small part of his mind not calculating the trajectory of the arrowing dogs. If he thought at all of whether Kirkpatrick deserved this, or whether this was some martyr’s posturing in the Kingdom’s Cause, it never registered more than a flicker.
He was here. He was a knight, defending the back of a weaker man who, for all his faults, had more to offer his king. It was enough …
The first dog darted out like a slim wraith and Hal stepped sideways, slashed once and left it tumbling behind him, yelping. The second he speared, but the wrench of it tore the sword from his grasp and then the rush of men came up, led by Fitzwalter and the Hospitaller, the fat young Ross lad peching up behind.
‘Alive,’ roared Fitzwalter. ‘Alive …’
Hal fought with fists and boots and teeth, until something crashed on him, a world of pain and dark scarlet, as if he had dived into a bloody pool that grew black and old the deeper he fell.
Then there was darkness only.
EPILOGUE
Crossraguel Abbey, Ayrshire
Feast of St Drostan, July, 1307
The fields lolled, the forest was still, both breathing in the hot air of noon through leaves and grasses, sifted with dragonflies, green frogs and brown toads all looking to the relief of water. There were curlews and hares and squirrels – but most of all, there were flies.
They came to feast on the bloat of dead cattle and sheep, rising off the carcasses as thick as the smoke that curled from the abbey buildings. Folk moved with cloths over their mouths against the stink and even the hardiest of them winced at the smell.
‘Bad cess to them,’ Jamie Douglas said and the Dog Boy, looking at the bloodied, snarling muzzles of the abbot’s dead hounds, could only agree. Bad cess to the English, who had viciously swiped one petulant claw at the defenceless, as if to reassure themselves that they were still in charge despite being beaten at Loudon Hill scant weeks before.
That had been the garland on a new spring. There had been a long hard winter of exile and then, as the thaw melted everything to drip and yellow, the news went out, leaping from head to head like wildfire.
The King was back.