The Lion Rampant (The Kingdom Series)

by Robert Low

  Which is at least a mercy, he thought, blowing frantically upward to try and dislodge the sweat coursing down his face and over his lips, for I would not know Scotch from Welsh in here.

  It was idiocy to go on – stupidity to be this close to start with – so he started to turn the head of Durandal, who did not like putting his back to an enemy and resisted, baiting on the spot. Cursing, de Bohun savaged his mouth a little to get his attention – and then froze.

  The rider had moved, was shouting and waving a little axe. He was on a palfrey and wore a splendid jupon of gold, blazoned with a red lion, a bloody replica of the gold ones Henry himself wore. On the man’s head, clapped atop the open-faced bascinet, was a little domed cap in red leather surrounded by a circlet of spiked gold.

  A crown.

  The King himself and without a coterie of knights, only spearmen and only one or two in maille and plate to show that they might have been nobiles – but afoot. Not another horseman in sight.

  The blood shushed in Henry’s ears, thundering deafeningly inside the cave of his steel helm and he almost cried out. Then he fumbled the lance round, battering it through the clutch of branches until he could couch it, kicked Durandal so that he squealed and rode out at as fast a trot as he could manage, cursing the tangle of his tippets.

  ‘Ogre!’ he yelled, for it was only chivalrous to announce his presence and not ambush like an outlaw. ‘Face me in single combat. I am Henry de Bohun, knight. It will be glorious …’

  Bruce was anxious and fretting; he was sure that the English Van had balked at turning to their left and were pushing straight ahead, which was to the good.

  Yet Jamie and his riders, now dismounting to fight on foot, had reported that the Van and the Main were coming up together and the third Battle was further to the right of the English, coming up by another road which would bring it out along the Way, to St Ninian’s and the castle itself.

  That is fine, he consoled himself while the sweat coursed off him. That is where I want them all, round to my left, in the Carse to the north and east – though I wish I knew where this third Battle was now and if Randolph has them under watch. He glanced at the sky and the great relentless ball, slowly, slowly, swinging down to the horizon.

  Too late for the English to force matters this day, if we hold firm here – and find out where this other Battle is. Clifford, he said to himself. It will be Clifford. Or Beaumont. Hereford is here in front of me and Gloucester with him; that is an unnatural mating, Bruce thought, which may work to my advantage. Yet he is not short of good commanders, is the Plantagenet …

  Too many ifs and buts and peering at heraldry, trying to work out who and where and with what. A battle lasts as long as the first steps of a plan, Bruce thought; after that, you may just as well try herding cats.

  Bruce shouted at the rearguard, about half of his own Battle, chivvying them into a barrier against the English Van when – if – it debouched from the trees, while the archers flitted back and forward like midgies to buy them time. Behind, the rest of the Scots army reordered itself at right angles, marching along under the great hump of Coxet Hill.

  Dangerous, dangerous, Bruce thought to himself, to move in front of an advancing enemy – yet they are not in a position to do me harm and all I need do here is discourage them, make it clear there is no easy passage into the New Park. Buy time for the end of this day and then, having taken the measure of them, decide what to do on the morrow …

  Which would be run, he decided. I do not have the men or the arms to risk anything else.

  The shouting brought his head up and he stared, amazed, at the vision which presented itself. He knew the gold lions on blue at once; for one heart-stopping moment he thought it was the Earl of Hereford himself, but then saw the red diagonal slash on the shield. A sprig from the tree, he thought and frowned, because the man was yelling, incoherent under the muffle of great helm.

  ‘The King. Protect His Grace …’

  Gilbert de la Haye, commander of the bodyguard and frantic for his king, stumped forward on his thick legs like an armoured toddler, screamed his fear loudly. The mass of foot surged forward as the blue and gold knight spurred on and Bruce, for the first time, felt a spasm of alarm, for he knew the knight would reach him first; the sight of the lance, big as an axle and wickedly pointed, made his belly clench and all his skin try to harden with gooseflesh.

  The point was almost at him; he heard his own men yelling in desperation, as if they could throw shouts to deflect the horror of the English knight’s descent on their king – and then he nudged the palfrey sideways, more by instinct than conscious thought and watched, almost dispassionately, as the blue and gold figure hurtled harmlessly past him in a snorting thunder, a flap of embroidered trapper.

  The German Method, he thought triumphantly. Wins every time. Then he reined round and stood while the blue and gold knight scarred up clods of sere turf, narrowly missed colliding with a tree and spun the horse almost on the spot. Good, well-trained beast, Bruce thought and suddenly recognized the rider. Henry de Bohun – he had met the youth once, though he had clearly grown since. The new breed of Edward’s warriors, he thought, young, fierce and hot for tourney, as he had been himself once. He felt a strange, mad exultation welling up in him, so that he laughed.

  Henry could not believe he had missed. By the time he had wrenched Durandal round, he could see that the foot were running up and would be on him in another minute, a band of open-mouthed screamers frantic to protect their king.

  Yet he would not give in – could not. Here was Bruce – and laughing at him. But if Henry wiped the laughter off his face, the entire affair was done, battle, rebellion, all; he launched himself forward, even as a fourteen-foot pike-spear was flung in desperation, skittering under the warhorse’s plunging hooves like a giant snake.

  Bruce waited, nudged – and the blue and gold knight sailed past him again; he thought he heard a howl of anguished frustration and he laughed so hard he had to lean on the cantle, little forgotten axe clutched in one maille-mittened fist.

  Henry routed the horse round, flung the lance at the nearest of the spearmen, wrenched off the confectionary helm and hurled that in a fury, so that another of them bowled over backwards, taken smack in the face by it.

  ‘Face me like a warrior!’ he bawled at Bruce, his face a bag of sweat-streaked wine.

  Bruce lost his humour in a moment. He knew Henry de Bohun only slightly, but he knew the family only too well. The de Bohuns had been given the Bruce lands of Annandale and Lochmaben by Longshanks and were smarting at having been flung off them since. He did not like this little lord’s insults on his manhood and his chivalry – did the popinjay think this was a tourney? A neat little joust with a friendly clap on the shoulder and commiserations to the loser at the finish?

  ‘Get you gone,’ he roared back and de Bohun unhooked a mace from the cantle and flung it in a mad temper, so that Bruce had to duck. The spearmen crabbed towards Henry, their long weapons up and forcing him back. He shrieked and pounded the saddle with one metal fist.

  ‘Coward,’ he yelled, the spittle flying. ‘Coward for a king.’

  The fury rose in Bruce then, a great overweening tidal surge of red rage, swollen and festered with all the worry heaped on his shoulders. It burst like a plague boil and he gave a sharp bellow, like the coughing bark of a boar charging. De Bohun, contemptuous of the spearmen, turned his back on them all and trotted Durandal away.

  He heard Bruce at the last, heard the tight drumming of fast, small hooves and half turned into the ruin of a snarling face, the sight of the King almost on tiptoe in the stirrups and his arm raised high. The axe in it winked briefly in a shaft of sunlight.

  ‘Chivalry is it? Here is war, you fool.’

  The axe crashed down and Bruce felt it crack like a twig, plunged on with the shaft and fought the maddened palfrey round. When he looked up, he saw the proud blue and gold warhorse cantering on with a swaying Henry briefly upright, the las
t quarter of shaft and axe buried in his skull, through the bascinet and the maille and down to the brow. He seemed like a strange-crested beast with a face masked in blood.

  Henry de Bohun swayed, tilted and then slid from the saddle with a crash; there was a huge roar from the Scots foot and Bruce, sick and bewildered at what he had done, saw them leap forward like crows, stabbing with the beaks of their spears, battering the fallen body with the butts.

  The frantic, half-weeping squire who rode up was dragged off his horse and beaten, stabbed and bludgeoned; the tight, coiled heat grew thick and heavy with the iron stink of blood and flies droned in like a host of praying monks.

  Then hands grabbed the bridle of the palfrey and forced it away to safety, but Bruce did not know much as they led him back into the blazing sunlight; he came to his senses only when his brother and Randolph were shouting at him for having so exposed himself.

  ‘You are the Kingdom, brother,’ Edward was yelling, purple-faced. ‘You must take more care, for we all hang from your crowned head – and we will all be hanged with it if it falls.’

  ‘I broke a good axe,’ Bruce said dazedly, staring at the splintered shaft. Those nearest laughed aloud, even the furious Edward, and spread the word of it, of how the King had defeated the English champion, a full-panoplied knight, armed only with a little axe and royal courage. The New Park sounded and resounded to the cheers.

  The English saw Durandal as he thundered out into the sunlight, the saddle empty save for blood. He veered sideways and plunged and kicked, frantic with bewildered fury and fired with the stink of gore and battle in his nostrils, so that it took long minutes to capture him. By then the distant cheers, like surf on a rocky shore, were surging through the dying heat of the day.

  Hereford seemed dazed by it, disbelieving. He peeled his own helmet off and dropped it, sat slumped on his horse and stared at the empty, blood-spattered saddle as if the mount itself had contrived some trick or magic spell to hide the rider. It was Gloucester who shook himself from it, turning to the others and raising one hand.

  ‘De Clare,’ he bellowed. ‘The Van, to me.’

  There was a surge, like a sluice gate opening; Thweng fought to control Garm as the knights surged past him and Buchan, reining in, turned and pirouetted his horse, his entire demeanour a question. Wearily, Thweng let Garm have his head and the joyous horse bounded after the others; he found himself, briefly, alongside Hereford, the Earl helmetless and dazed, jouncing like a half-filled sack and carried along by the plunging madness of his own warhorse into the whip of trees.

  Addaf felt them before he heard them, saw the acorn and twigs at his feet tremble and knew, from old, what that meant; the blood rushed up in him and he roared like a bull.

  ‘Scatter – scatter. The mochyn saesneg are coming.’

  The pig English ploughed through the fleeing Welsh archers like maddened boar; Addaf ducked round a tree, saw another that was thicker and made for it, ran into the shoulder of a yellow-toothed, snapping horse and bounced to the leaf-littered roots.

  He rolled and scambled up, saw Crach Thomas vanish with a despairing scream under the great steel hooves of a knot of riders, saw a knight in green and white skewer young Ithel Mawr like a skinned rabbit on a spit, and then he ran, blind with panic.

  The Scots heard the screams, felt the tremble and those who knew warned the others to brace, brace.

  ‘Hold to the line,’ screamed Gilbert de la Haye and, since he was commander here, the King’s bodyguard planted themselves like the trees in front of them and braced, the armoured front rank bent at one knee, the second rank, equally mailled, shouldering their long spears and planting one foot firmly on the spear butt dug into the ground in front of them.

  A man ran out of the trees, looking frantically behind him and carrying a bow; he turned to see where he was running, spotted the massed ranks of spears and skidded to a halt, screaming. There was a pause, and then he hurled himself at the feet of the astonished front ranks and started to wriggle between the forest of legs, until one of the lurking knifemen in the dark of that sweating thicket grabbed him by his hair and cut the Welsh shrieks from his throat.

  They were still echoing when the first elements of the English horse plunged out of the trees, chasing panicked Welshmen out of the dim and into the sunlight. Blinded by the transition, horses and riders balked and wavered, but the next wave was thundering on after them and horses collided, screaming and snapping.

  Forced forwards, eyes scarred by light, the leading horses rode up to the ranks of spearmen at no better than a trot, with half of them trying to veer right and left, banging shoulder to shoulder with others. The ones at the fringes discovered the Scots archers on the flanks of the spearwall and the first to find them was Gloucester.

  An arrow hit him on the placket, a reeling clang on his breastbone that drove the wind from him, made him jerk the rein and tear his horse’s head back. Half-blind, half-mad and totally confused, the animal veered sideways and ran on to a knot of sharp points and glaive blades, worked by furious-elbowed men with screaming mouths and desperate eyes.

  The horse’s shriek was even louder and the young Earl felt it go, felt the sickening plunge of dying animal and tried to kick free. He only half succeeded – the horse fell and rolled, kicking and shrieking, tangling itself in the long, golden tippets trailing from its rider’s helm.

  Gloucester rolled free – was snatched up short, as if grabbed by his hair, and collapsed back choking as the helmet thongs dug under his chin. Frantically, howling with frustration and anguish, he wrenched at the great helm, as if the padded gryphon was a living beast which had seized him in its claws.

  He saw the adder-tongue flick of spears kill the horse, saw the horror of how close he was to the spear ranks: the legs like a tangled copse; mailled braies, leather shoes, bare horny feet and filthy calves. Scuttling from the dark, fetid depths of them came the dirk men on all fours, moving like mad-grinning spiders to finish him.

  He bellowed and tugged, but the helm stayed on and the treacherous tippets chained him to the dead horse; he fumbled frantically for his sword.

  Thweng saw it in the instant he broke from cover, saw the dead horse, the shackle of tippets, the frantic struggles of the man, the dark vengeance scrambling out towards him. He bawled at Badenoch and waved his sword in case he could not be heard and plunged forward into the haze of dust and grass motes chewed up from the dry earth by hundreds of hooves.

  The darting little figures scampered back under the protective hedge of spears, which started to stab at this new warhorse. Thweng let Garm rear and strike, the neck stretching like a snake as he snapped and squealed; Sir Marmaduke felt the impact of the spears on the padded barding and saw the straw wisp out from the ruin of it, then he threw his lance into the grimace of faces and hauled out his sword.

  He slashed once, twice, and the Earl staggered as the tippets parted and freed him. Then, as Badenoch and others rode forward, pressing and cavorting against the wicked hedge which stabbed and slashed at them, Thweng flung one leg over the front cantle of the saddle and slid to the ground, feeling the jolt on his knees. Too old for this, he thought …

  He cut backwards and forward with his sword, keeping the spears away from him – though one clattered and skidded off his shield as he grabbed the Earl and flung him towards the plunging Garm who remained, obedient and blowing, near his master.

  Dazed, fevered, frantic, the Earl knew what Thweng was doing and clambered up into the saddle, sobbing with relief. Thweng flung him the rein, slapped Garm on the neck and the pair of them were suddenly gone from him.

  A figure launched from the undergrowth of the spearwall, naked dirk stabbing for Thweng’s helmet slit; he stepped into it, shouldered the man to the ground with the shield and cut the throat from him as easy as parting cheese rind. A hooked bill caught his surcote and tore it, pulling him further forward and off balance, so that he half fell at the feet of the Scots.

  Another figure came at
him and Thweng had time to see that he was bareheaded and part-bald so that the hair left to him stuck up in tufts like a moulting owl. The man collided with him, trying to wrestle him to the ground and thrust the narrow-bladed dirk inside the great helm, but Thweng got his shield in the way and heaved.

  The man flew over Thweng, landing on the Earl’s dead horse with a thump that drove the air out of both of them with a great farting groan; before he could recover one of the Shadows stabbed him repeatedly with his lance until it stuck and he had to let it go.

  Thweng staggered back from the spearwall just as Badenoch forced himself between them, throwing his lance. He would, Thweng was sure, have hauled off his helm and hurled that, too, save that arrows were flicking at him.

  Then he heard a horn blast; Hereford had recovered himself and was ordering the Van to break off the attack. Sir Marmaduke trudged away, seemingly contemptuous of the enemy at his back but, in reality, too staggeringly weary to care. He saw Badenoch canter up, salute with his sword and then remain a little way away as a polite escort; Thweng was grateful and made a vow to thank the little Scots lord personally.

  A little way into the forest he saw two knots of sweating knights, half dragging, half carrying the bodies of Henry de Bohun and his squire and he wondered how many lives had been lost to achieve that. Yet he knew it was something rescued from the stunning disaster of a knight’s death. It was an almost unheard-of event, even in war, for a knight of such high degree to be slain.

  The stun of it was already being felt, Thweng thought, seeing the trembling horses and the sweat-soaked, disbelieving riders trail back through the trees, chased by the flickering shadows and the arrows and the jeers of the men they had failed to best.