He turned and looked at the scout. ‘Ride clear all the way to the Inn. Take two horses so that you can change. Ride like the wind, yunker – they may already be in the High Country. Don’t come back unless you can bring a hundred swords with you.’
The other men with him in the vanguard loosened their swords in their scabbards. A few checked bows, and one took off his arming cap, replaced it, and went to his mule for his helmet.
‘Bad luck you boys are with me, this day, and not in the rear with the drag,’ Hector said. ‘None of us will be dining this evening, I fear.’
Ian Cowpat, a big man with a muddy brown face, gave him a grin. ‘Bah. Never met a loon I couldn’t kill.’
‘Outwallers,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll meet them in the woods where they can’t shoot us down. Make a fight of it as long as we can. When I sound the horn, every man to me, and we form a shield wall and make a song of it.’ He looked around. The duty changed every day, because working the back of the herds was so much worse than walking in front, and so he didn’t have the oldest or the youngest, or all the best fighters, or even all men he knew. He had a scattering of his own and the Keeper’s men; but they were well armed, fifty strong, and not a face betrayed the terror that every one of them must feel. Good men for making a song.
By which hillmen meant dying well.
He thought of his new bride, and hoped she had kindled with him because, while he had a few bastards, he didn’t have a son to avenge him. He caught the stirrup of his messenger.
‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Tell my wife that if she has a son he is to grow tall and strong, and when he is rich and well-loved, he is to take an army north and cut a bloody swath through the Outlanders. I’ll take five hundred corpses as my wergild. Tell him when he’s old enough. And tell her that her lips were the sweetest thing I ever knew, and I’ll die with the taste of them on my own.’
The young man was pale. He’d watched a boyhood friend die, and now he was being sent to ride a hundred leagues alone, quite possibly the only survivor of the drove.
‘I could stay with you,’ he said.
Hector grinned. ‘I’m sure you could, boyo. But you are my last message to my wife and kin. I need you to go.’
The messenger changed horses. A bull was lowing, and the cows were turning, the rear of the column was already moving north, away from the line of enemy that was out there somewhere.
Then he turned back to his men, most of whom were helmed and mailed and ready to fight. The lone priest, his half-brother, lifted his cross in the air and all the men knelt, and Paul Mac Lachlan prayed for their souls. When they all said amen, the priest put the cross back into his mail cote and put an arrow on his bow.
His cousin Ranald had a great axe – a beautiful thing, and he was cutting the air with it. He also had steel gauntlets; having served the king in the south he had fine gear like a knight.
‘Ranald takes command if I fall,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll go forward into the woods – the youngest ahead as skirmishers. Don’t get overrun. Shoot when you can and then retreat. When you hear my horn, retreat. We have to hold until the sun reaches noon, and then Donald will be away and we will have died for something.’
Ranald nodded. ‘Thanks, cousin. You do me honour.’
Hector shrugged. ‘You’re the best man for it.’
Ranald nodded. ‘I wish your other brother were here with us.’
Hector looked out into the trees. He could all but feel the oncoming enemy. Perhaps – perhaps they would wait in ambush too long, or balk at a close fight.
But there was too much movement out at the edge of the meadow. The Outwallers were coming.
‘Me, too,’ Hector said. He looked up and down the line. ‘Let’s go. Spread well out.’
They went forward into the woods, moving quickly. His greatest fear was that the enemy was already at the woods’ edge – but they weren’t, and he got his fifty into the deep woods where the irises bloomed like crosses in a graveyard.
He put two men at every tree, and his ten youngest and swiftest a spear’s throw in advance of his very open line, and then the bull roared again in the distance and suddenly the arrows began to fly.
Hector almost died in the first moments. An arrow hit his bassinet, spinning him, and a second arrow hit the nose guard of his helmet and bent it in – a finger’s width from an arrow in the eye and instant death.
His men did well, although the boys in front were overrun and killed – and it was his mistake. The Outwallers were faster, bolder, and more reckless than he had imagined – but they still took a fearful toll among the savages. When his loose line retreated, running from cover to cover in their heavy mail, the Outwallers hesitated for a moment too long before following them, allowing them a clean break and leaving another thin line of kicking, wounded and gutted corpses.
One lone Outwaller, painted red from head to toe, stood between two great trees and called, and then sprinted forward. He tackled Ian Cowpat, and Cowpat never rose again – but only a handful of the painted men followed the red one.
Thanks be to God, Hector thought.
His men had been forced back into the last cover before the meadow, and the sun was not yet halfway into the heavens.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter
Peter was out of arrows, and he had a great cut across his right shin – he’d been caught by the very end of a wild cut from a fleeing man’s sword, but it was enough to send him to the earth for several long minutes.
He had a dead man’s big dagger, almost the size of a short sword, and he had a buckler from the same corpse. He was no longer close to Ota Qwan – the black painted warrior had vanished early – and now Peter was close behind Skadai, who moved with more grace than any warrior Peter had ever seen.
Whomever they were fighting, the men were brave, big, silent, and far too well-armed.
The Sossag were dying. There were fifty men down already, perhaps more. Peter thought perhaps it was time for the Sossag to admit defeat. But Skadai didn’t agree, running right into the enemy line, tackling a huge warrior and slitting his throat with a knife.
Peter couldn’t hang back when such daring was shown.
The next time the enemy turned to run, Peter joined his wild yell to Skadai’s, and saw Ota Qwan, who suddenly appeared just an arm’s length away, do the same. The three of them rose from their cover, where they had lain to avoid the arrows – and charged. To Ota Qwan’s right, Skahas Gaho also rose to his feet, sword in hand, and others joined them – not many, but a dozen all told.
An arrow flicked out of the sunlight like a hornet and hit Skadai in the groin. He stumbled, tumbled, and lay still.
Peter kept running. The man who had loosed the arrow had lost a step on his companions, and Peter ran for him, his whole self concentrated on that man, a red-haired giant in a fine mail shirt that gleamed in the woodland shade. He had an iron collar, a gorget, and long leather gloves.
Peter opened his mouth and screamed. The man dropped his bow and drew his sword – an arrow stung the inside of Peter’s thigh as the head cut his skin, before flitting away between his legs, and Peter reached out with the buckler and the man’s sword slammed into it. Peter pushed forward, the buckler pinning the sword, and his own short blade cut hard into the man’s face, teeth sprayed and an eye was cut before the man turned away but Peter ’s sword was past his head, and he grabbed the blade with his buckler hand, locked the blade against the man’s throat and sawed back and forth until he crushed his windpipe through the mail and iron collar.
Arrows hit his dying opponent – a dozen shot by his friends. But they had loosed unthinking, Peter’s rush had spun him around, and every arrow intended for him hit the red-haired man.
He fell through Peter’s hands, dead before he hit the ground, and Peter dropped his long knife and stooped to pick up the great sword from the grass. Ota Qwan screamed in triumph, and the scream was taken up along their line.
Otter Creek Valley, East
of Albinkirk – Hector Lachlan
The priest, Paul Mac Lachlan, died badly, because he’d never been much of a swordsman, and one of the painted devils was through his guard and into him, slicing his face, choking him, using his body as a shield.
It demoralized them to watch one of their own carls die so easily, in single combat against an essentially unarmoured man.
On the other hand, Hector thought, they’d inflicted an incredible number of casualties. All the stories said that Outwallers were averse to taking casualties, and his people had killed fifty, perhaps more.
And their red leader was down.
Give the priest that – he’d shot him.
Hector grinned at the men around him. ‘We all have to do better than that,’ he said.’
‘Fucking Paul,’ Ranald said. One of the savages paused to scalp the priest, and Ranald flicked a shaft into the painted bastard. He screamed.
Hector held his horn over his head, so all the men left were ready.
‘We’re going to charge through their line and make our shield wall over there,’ he said. Retreating any further, into the open ground, was foolish.
The Outwallers were gaining courage from the success of the last rush, and they were coming forward now. His men were loosing their last shafts. Even as Hector watched, all the Outwallers went to ground again. If he had more woods, he’d retreat again. But he didn’t. The wildflowers of the long meadow were at his back.
He held his horn to his lips and sounded it.
Every man left to him turned and sprinted towards him. It only took heartbeats for them to join him, and in that time, only a bare handful of enemy shafts flew.
He didn’t wait for the laggards. When he had enough carls to make a song, he started forward.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter
Peter was running out of courage.
Ota Qwan was not. He rose to his feet and dashed forward even as one of their warriors bent over the corpse of the red-haired man, knife in hand, and died for it.
‘Gots onah!’ Ota Qwan roared.
But the warriors didn’t follow him.
Peter could scarcely breathe. The lightning nightmare of the close fight with the red-haired man had taken all his breath, all his energy, all his courage. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep.
The wound in his leg ached, and worried how deep it went.
Ota Qwan went bounding forward as the mail-clad men sounded a horn.
Peter forced himself to follow the black-painted man. As he looked back, he saw Skahas Gaho and Brant rise from the grass as well.
They were following him, and there were ten more with them. They loped after him, and he ran as hard as he could after Ota Qwan.
To the right, the enemy shocked all of them by charging – not a handful of them, but a solid wedge, which ran right for the centre of their line.
Peter was so far to the right that the end man of the wedge wasn’t even close enough to fight – the wedge ran by him in him moment of indecision and then there were cries deeper in the woods.
Ota Qwan continued to run forward. Peter didn’t think he’d even seen the enemy charge, but he followed.
Skahas Gaho stooped and scalped the red-haired man.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Hector
Hector was fresh and unblooded, and the first clump of Outwallers died on his sword point and edge as fast as he could roar his war-cry three times, and then they were down and his wedge was alone in the woodlands.
The essence of warfare is to force the pace and hope your enemy makes a mistake. That was his father’s law of war, and his own. So he didn’t stop and form a shieldwall.
‘Follow me!’ he roared, and continued on.
On, and on.
The Outwallers were faster but not fitter than the drovers, and tricks of terrain and bad luck – pulled muscles, wounds – left them at the mercy of the hard-faced armoured men, and their mercy had nothing of mercy in it. A dozen Outwallers died in a hundred paces.
Hector ran on, his sides heaving and his legs burning. Running any distance in mail was an effort.
Running five hundred paces was more than an effort. It was like a test.
Most of his men stayed with him. Those few who paused, died.
The Outwallers fled, but even in panicked flight they ran like a flock of swallows or a school of fish, and those ones unthreatened by the charge recovered first, and arrows started to lick through the trees.
‘Keep going!’ Hector cried, and his men gave him everything they had.
An Outlander boy tripped over a root and fell, and Ranald beheaded him with a flick of his wrists.
On and on.
And then Hector had to stop. He leaned on the hilt of his great sword, and his sides heaved.
Ranald put a hand on his armoured elbow. ‘Water,’ he said.
The length of a barn away they found young Clip, the farmer from the Inn, pinned under his dead horse with his throat slit. A bowshot farther on they came to the ford that they would have crossed. Outwaller arrows had begun to fill the air again, and Hector had perhaps thirty men left when he crossed the ford and won a respite. His men drank water, spread out in the trees, and caught their breaths. Those that had shafts left, or who had pulled them from the ground, began to pick their targets carefully – and it began again.
Ranald scratched his beard. He’d taken an arrow in the chest – it hadn’t penetrated his fine mail, but it had cracked a rib, and breathing was hard. ‘That was worth a song, that run,’ he said.
Hector nodded. ‘It’s noon and we’ve led them back a mile, anyway. When they come at us across the stream – well, Donald’s away.’ Hector shrugged. ‘If I’d kept all the boys together, would we have beaten them?’
Ranald spat some blood. ‘Nah. They’re too canny, and we didn’t kill nearly enough of ’em. Hector Lachlan, it’s been a pleasure and an honour knowing you, eh?’ Ranald held out his hand, and Hector took it. ‘Don’t fash yourself, man – I reckon there’s five hundred of the loons out in the woods. This way, if you put a boy in that lass – well, he’s got a fortune and fifty good men to start him off.’
Hector shook his head. ‘Sorry I am I brought you here, cousin.’
Ranald shrugged, despite fatigue and the weight of his chain mail. ‘I’m honoured to die with you.’ He smiled at the sunlit sky. ‘I’m sorry for a certain lass I love, but this is a good way to die.’
Lachlan looked up at the sun. Arrows were flying thickly, and a few were starting to come from their own side of the stream – the savages had found a crossing too.
Despite it all the sky was blue, the sun was warm and golden, and the flowers of the forest were beautiful. He laughed, and held his sword in the air. ‘Let us make a song!’ he roared.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter
Peter followed Ota Qwan until his lungs were starved for air, and then he slowed. The black-painted man slowed, too, as if they were attached by a string. They had reached an open field, and there was a small herd of cattle, every head facing them – a single horse, and dozens of sheep.
And no men.
Ota Qwan leaped for joy, dancing on the grass. ‘We have beaten them! All their herds are ours!’ He embraced Skahas Gaho.
The taller warrior didn’t address Ota Qwan, but Peter. ‘Where?’ he asked. He mimed swinging a two-handed axe or sword.
Peter pointed back the way they’d come. He was bone weary, the wound in his leg was now a cold ache, and all the fury of combat had ebbed away to leave nothing behind. But Peter, having started something, couldn’t give it up.
Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘The cattle! We need to get the cattle, or this is for nothing.’
Peter looked at the black-painted man wearily. ‘Have you not seen the numbers of our dead, Ota Qwan? This is already for nothing. Skadai’s death means there is no one to tell the Sossag to stop attacking.’ He shrugged. ‘And this is only a tithe of their herds.’<
br />
Ota Qwan looked at him. Understanding dawned slowly.
‘We must stop it. We can shoot down anyone who still stands – take our time.’
You can be war leader. Somehow Peter knew that this was Ota Qwan’s only thought.
But together with their two hands of followers, they turned and began to walk back towards the distant screams that marked the current edge of the battle. No one, not even Ota Qwan, had the energy to sprint, so they ran and walked fitfully.
The sun was just past its height when they scrambled down the last part of the steep glen and crossed the water on rocks slick with blood.
There were still men fighting.
A dozen of the armoured giants stood in a ring, and some two hundred Sossag stood around them in a ring, and between the inner ring and the outer ring was a wall of corpses, some of which still moved. Even as they crossed the stream, a pair of bold youths leaped at the circle of steel and died, one beheaded by an axe, the other spitted on a four-foot sword.
Their bodies were cast on the growing barricade of the dead.
And then the blood-spattered daemons began to sing. They weren’t very good, but their voices rose together, and the Sossag paused a moment in respect. A death song was a great thing – a magic not to be interrupted. Even Ota Qwan was silent.
Their song went on, many verses, and when it was done their faces, which had been lit with passion, seemed to slump.
Ota Qwan leaped up on a stump. ‘Shoot them! Back into the trees and shoot! My curse on any man who tries to rush that circle!’
Some men listened. Arrows began to fly, and when a Sossag arrow hit a mail cote, dust flew, at least, although few shots from their short bows were powerful enough to penetrate.
But there were many arrows.
Peter saw Sossag die from arrows shot from across the circle. The arrows flew faster and faster, striking hillmen and Sossag alike and the hillmen began to sing again, and they charged and the Sossags ran – again.
The Red Knight Page 49