The Lion Rampant (The Kingdom Series)

by Robert Low

  Then they would have hit me, he thought when he found the body of the fallen Vipond. As they had hit him – the knight lay on his back, metal face pointed to the sky, a shaft so deep in the bicep of his right arm that Kirkpatrick knew it had gone through and then snapped off in the fall. A second arrow was buried almost to the fletch in his right side.

  Kirkpatrick’s legs were buckling as the weight of maille fell on them. He lumbered up to Vipond, not knowing what he was about to do with a dead man – and then he heard the metal rasp of breathing from the faceless creature and dropped his sword. He grunted his way down to one knee, fumbling with the knight’s helmet lacings; when he drew it off, Vipond’s sweat and gore-streaked face stared up at him, the smile on it crimson; he had vomited blood, Kirkpatrick saw.

  ‘Thank … you,’ Vipond wheezed and Kirkpatrick looked him up and down, went to touch the arrow in his side, thought better of it and grasped the one in the knight’s bicep; the man groaned and Kirkpatrick let it go as if it had been on fire.

  He sat down with a hiss of maille links and the clank of pauldron and ailette, aware that he was as useless at physicking this man as he was at knightly combat, that he was flapping his arms like a hopeless chicken and no help to anyone.

  ‘I will get help,’ he muttered. ‘Water …’

  He found Vipond’s fierce clutch on his wrist.

  ‘Stay.’

  The knight’s eyes had become hot and afraid.

  ‘Do not … let … me die … alone.’

  You are not alone, Kirkpatrick wanted to say. God is watching. But it sounded trite and hollow, so he said nothing at all and sat there holding Vipond’s hand while his destrier cropped contentedly, picking delicately at the grass not trampled or soaked to muddy gore.

  Vipond’s own mount had vanished, but three others moved across the sprawled bodies, their trappings torn and streaked. A fourth limped back and forth, every now and then making a plaintive screaming whinny from a snaked-out neck, as if shouting for help.

  Somewhere, time slipped away. Kirkpatrick was half aware of the sudden increase in the noise of battle to his right but it did not seem important enough to turn and look. He was fixed, frozen, staring at nothing at all, yet aware of surge, like a flood tide, as the fighting moved away from him. The heat beat on him, melted him to dull lethargy.

  When he snapped out of his daze, it took him a moment to realize that movement had done it; a horseman was coming, wavering through the heat haze, all faerie and stretched.

  ‘A rider – help is coming,’ he said, turning to Vipond. He had intended to remove his hand from the knight’s clutch and pat it soothingly, reassuringly – but the death grip was fierce and Kirkpatrick had to prise it free, shocked at the fact that the knight had died and he had not known when it had happened. He might as well have died alone, Kirkpatrick thought bitterly, for all the help I have been; he smelled the rankness of himself, remembered what he had done and felt sick shame.

  The rider stopped. Kirkpatrick was suddenly aware that there was only himself and the man on the horse in this part of the world; to the left was the great hump of Coxet Hill where, incongruously, birds sang and insects whined and hummed, headed for the feast. To his right, the battle was a carpet of dead and the moaning dying, with a great mass of heat and dust haze beyond where figures flitted and roared sullenly.

  The English have been forced back … We have won, Kirkpatrick realized with a sudden heartleap of exultation. We have actually won …

  The rider was closer and now Kirkpatrick saw that the warhorse was plodding, head bowed with weariness, the trapper on it stained and torn so that dags and tippets of material trailed on the ground. The rider had lost all head coverings – torn them off, Kirkpatrick thought, as I have done, to get some relief from the heat – and his surcote was streaked and splashed with fluids. He had no shield, but held a sword in what appeared to be a tired fist, dangling dangerously close to the horse’s unsteady feet. He looked as if he had ridden out of some ancient barrow mound.

  Kirkpatrick watched the rider pick a careful way round the litter of dead here – mainly archers, he realized. So we did as we were bid, he thought bitterly, even though I had no good part in it. He stood up, levering himself to his feet and feeling the dragging weight of maille chausse and hauberk; the horse stopped a moment later, the rider straightening in the saddle and bringing the sword up.

  He thinks I am a danger, Kirkpatrick thought to himself and laughed with the irony of that. He opened his mouth to call out – but froze, gaping as the sword came up and pointed at him.

  He knows me, Kirkpatrick thought, and felt the blood in him stop, had a surge of mad panic as he saw, through the blood-spatters and stains, the man’s device; three gold wheatsheafs on red. No cadet marking of any lesser branch of the Comyn, so this was the lord of Badenoch himself.

  Red John, he thought wildly. I killed you. At least I slid a wee dagger into your heart, though the Bruce had already done the work. I watched your vain wee raised bootheels spatter up the tarn of your own heart’s blood in Greyfriars, years since …

  He caught himself. No ghost, he told himself firmly and looked round for his shield and sword. Worse than that.

  The son, delivered by the Devil to the one part of the field of struggling men where he would find Kirkpatrick, the man he hated above all others.

  The man who had murdered his father. Aye, Kirkpatrick added bitterly, and would have done for the boy, too – the boy now grown to stand opposite me – if Hal had not intervened.

  Badenoch sat for a moment and Kirkpatrick, glancing wildly left and right to see if any help was close, saw his sword sticking in the sere turf like a grave cross. He eyed it, but did not move; like a mouse to the cat, the act of going for it might spring the puss forward and Kirkpatrick did not want that. Not a man on a warhorse, he thought desperately, with blood in his eye …

  Then Badenoch, slowly – painfully, Kirkpatrick thought with a sudden thrill – clambered off the beast, which stood, legs splayed and head bowed. The man patted it fondly before he turned, straightened, twirled the sword lightly in one hand and started forward.

  Not wounded then, Kirkpatrick thought, just weary, though not as done up as his mount. He sprang then, tore out his sword and turned. Badenoch stopped, close enough for Kirkpatrick to see his face, which was straw-coloured and sheened slick with sweat so that the beard seemed darker and was pearled with droplets. Perhaps he is injured after all, Kirkpatrick thought. Or heatstruck. Not that he was in any better state himself, stiff with sitting and crushed by the unfamiliar weight of maille and pieces of plate steel.

  ‘You,’ Badenoch declared curtly. Kirkpatrick managed a grin.

  ‘It was when I rose this morning,’ he replied, and could not resist the vicious stab, for all that prudence told him to toggle his lip: ‘You will be the new Badenoch. I knew your father. I knew you, too, when you were a stripling and would have known you better if someone had not got in the way of it.’

  The whey face flushed and then drained to an almost unnatural white; Kirkpatrick saw his knuckles tighten on the hilt of the sword.

  Clever Kirkpatrick, he cursed silently, who never could keep his tongue still … the man’s savage rush drove whimpering panic into him and a thrill of shock like a bolt of lightning that seemed to spear through his groin to the soles of his feet.

  He barely managed to block the first cut, almost lost the sword parrying the second and slashed wildly right and left even as the echoes of the steel faded and Badenoch drew away.

  He knew then, in that first exchange, that a sword was no dirk and that Badenoch, trained knight that he was, younger as he was, would kill him.

  Badenoch knew it too, and smiled.

  The King wanted to turn and fight. Which was laudable and courageous, but no bloody help at all, de Valence thought bitterly.

  ‘Your Grace is best kept from the grip of the rebels,’ he explained, though it was hard to seem reasonable and pragmatic when yo
u had to bawl to be heard above the din of an army gone to a baying horde of runners.

  Around them, kept away by the hard-faced mesnie, the fleeing mass surged and jostled, battering up to the walls of Stirling, clambering – and falling – from the rock it hunched on, already clotted thick with the peasantry who had run there long before. Perched like gulls on a cliff, they defied the roaring soldiery, who begged and shrieked for entrance at the stubbornly closed gates.

  ‘My lord de Mowbray,’ the King said and de Valence heard the mix of astonishment, anger and bitterness. There was no point in replying that Mowbray was right to shut the gates of Stirling Castle to everyone, King included – the battle was lost and now he would have to hand Stirling over to the Scots, as agreed. To do other risked slaughter of everyone in it, as per the accepted rules of war, so refusing to let the King into a cage where he was sure to be taken was only sense.

  King Edward had none of that left, de Valence saw, only stubborn courage and the surety that they had been, somehow, betrayed. We have been, de Valence thought. Betrayed by our own arrogance, which has been enough to irritate God.

  They beat a path through the maggot-boil of infantry, cursing and flailing at them until they parted. They breasted through them, down from the castle, into the coiled loops of the Forth, which forced them back across the littered dead and the howling vengeance of Scots who ruled there now, hunting in wolf packs. De Valence, looking round him, saw a handful of knights and the last remnants of mounted Welsh archers.

  ‘My lord earl …’

  De Valence turned to where old Thomas Berkeley pointed one mailled fist; riders were picking a determined way over the dead and dying, coming at them fast. Like magpies, de Valence thought, attracted to the glitter of that bloody crown.

  ‘Get His Grace the King away,’ he growled to Vescy, and then detailed off the knights he needed and lowered his helmet visor.

  ‘Bonne chance, Pembroke.’

  De Valence acknowledged the King’s fading cry even as he spurred the weary warhorse, followed by a tippet of riders. He felt rather than saw the men on either side of him as he cantered up to a low bush and popped a jump, cruel spurs raking his tired horse up to a gallop; he had the surge of exultation, familiar and strangely comforting as old shoes, as the enemy came closer.

  Someone streaked ahead – de Valence saw the labelled lion device and noted it for later censure at this outrageous breach of protocol. A Kingston, he registered. Sir John or Sir Nicholas … I shall have words with them later.

  They clattered into the riders and swept halfway through them with a series of shrieks and bell-clangs. De Valence took a sweeping blow on his shield, answered it with a pointless one of his own, and then was wheeling round and round in a mad pirouetting dance, striking blows and being struck in turn. Little shaggy men on little hairy horses, like all the Scots, de Valence thought. Knights who ride deerhounds to a battle …

  Suddenly, the beating stopped and de Valence, blinking through the sweat-blurred slit of his helm, stopped flailing with his sword, turning his head this way and that to see.

  The Scots had all been downed or were running – but more were coming and, worse than that, de Valence saw the mad scramble of axe-wielding foot, with their wild northern cries and bare legs. Rats, lice and Scots, he thought savagely, you can keep killing all three, but no matter where you turn, there they are again …

  ‘Back,’ he cried, waving his sword in a circle and reining round.

  They cantered off, leaving the pursuing Scots floundering and yelling insults. A long way away, riding hard on blowing horses to catch up with the King, de Valence stopped and tore off his helm, whooping in air while the rest of the mesnie cantered up. Some were laughing, mad with excitement still. One – young Hastang – was hauling off his helm and pouring the puke out of it, trying to wipe his face with the decorative mantle dangling from the crest.

  It took a moment to find out who was missing: Sir Thomas Ercedene, the Lovel of Northants and the Lovel of Norfolk both – and the brace of Kingstons. Well, de Valence thought dully, no need to find out which of them dared to ride in front of me then.

  And old Thomas Berkeley. No one had seen him fall. Back with the King’s party, de Valence broke the news to Maurice, Thomas’s son, and offered up the slim hope that he was captured and not killed – though the memory of those leaping axemen welled in his mind and almost robbed his mouth of the words.

  Maurice said nothing, though Addaf saw the tight-lipped tension in the man and hoped he would not do anything mad-brained, like try and avenge his old father. If he did, Addaf thought, he will do it alone – all me and mine want now is to be gone from this place.

  ‘Protect the King.’

  The cry went up and the armoured riders closed round Edward to force another great surge of milling foot to part like the Red Sea.

  Protect the King. Addaf hawked and spat.

  Let God protect the King of the English, he added to himself, though it was clear to everyone that He had removed His Hand from them this day.

  And the Welsh. Addaf found out how poorly the Welsh stood in God’s Grace less than an hour later.

  That was when they turned at bay to face the pursuing Scots riders, who had been closing in for some time, held up by knots of scattering foot. Those running spearmen contributed less than nothing to the day, Addaf thought bitterly, and now they are getting in everyone’s way, us as much as the Scots.

  ‘Dismount.’

  Addaf heard the shout and cursed; Maurice was speaking earnestly to de Valence, who trotted after the knights huddled round the hunched figure of King Edward. Addaf watched the blue and white striped trapping of the de Valence’s horse flap heavily, sodden with blood, streaked and torn. None of the knights left to the King looked any better, he realized, which is why the work is now given to us. Welshmen protecting the King of the English – the savage irony of it was not lost on anyone, as Addaf saw from the sullen embered looks.

  ‘Nyd hyder ond bwa,’ he shouted and the Welsh laughed, though it was bitter, as the horse-holders took the mounts and the others sorted themselves out.

  There is no dependence but on the bow – Addaf had always held that to be a fundamental truth, but he did not think there were enough bows now. He looked at the line of them, counting: twenty shooters, perhaps, no more. Ahead he saw running men and recognized them as Hainaulters, trying to scatter from the path of the oncoming riders.

  He raised his bow so that he could judge the wind from the trail of ribbon – there was one, by God’s hook, a blessed breeze suddenly blowing cool in the sweating dragon’s breath day. Addaf turned to where Sir Maurice sat like a sullen sack on his big horse.

  ‘Dduw bod ’n foliannus,’ he grunted – God be praised. Maurice, who had been around the Welsh long enough, stared unpityingly from eyes miserable with loss and gave him the rote response in Welsh.

  ‘In ois oisou.’ For ever and ever.

  The last Hainaulters staggered out of the path of the riders – sixty, Addaf thought with a sudden bowel-curdling chill. Or more. He saw the banner flying above the sweat-foamed garrons they were riding and anger burned up in him – stars on blue, the mark of the Black Douglas himself. He remembered his men, dead and dying in puddles of their own blood, spilled from the stumps of the right wrists Douglas had chopped off with an axe.

  ‘Draw.’

  There was the familiar sound of drawn strings, that creaking-door rasp.

  ‘Shoot.’

  The air quivered and thrummed. Addaf saw horses and men fall, saw the others veer left and right, reining round and flogging their mounts out of range. He looked up at Sir Maurice and had nothing back but a poached-egg stare and knew they would stay here for a time, letting the King put some distance between himself and his enemies.

  He looked at the sky, saw clouds building up like bulls herding in a paddock, felt the breeze, a freshening balm on his face. It was a good day, he thought, to stand peaceful and cool …

&n
bsp; The Hainaulters staggered away. More men followed, a few riders, a handful of horses – all fleeing from the Scots, who stayed out of range, waiting. More of them came up.

  ‘Mount.’

  The sigh was audible.

  ‘Dduw bod ’n foliannus,’ Addaf grunted, but did not turn around or move, deliberately waiting until everyone else was in the saddle and already moving off. Last to leave the field of battle, he thought to himself proudly. Does no harm to let folk see that …

  ‘In ois oisou,’ said a crow-harsh voice and, surprised, Addaf turned.

  He had time to see the twisted knot of savage vengeance that was the bruised face of Y Crach before the scything arc of blade whirled into his ribs, driving air, sense and light out of him, all at once.

  Hal was left only with the smith, stolid and determinedly stumping along in the wake of Cornix; all the others had dropped off, one by one, half-apologetic, half-ashamed. Chirnside, Sore Davey, Mouse – all lured by the glint of gold spurs, or the sight of a ring on a dead finger.

  Hal shifted in the saddle and looked at Davey of Crauford, holding up the great silken Beauseant banner, so fine it rippled like maiden hair in the sudden breeze. Lay brother though he might only have been, the smith was proud as any deadly sin at being chosen to carry this, the famed Order banner, in what was its last flutter on a field of battle.

  ‘Tear that aff its pole,’ Hal said, more harshly than he had intended, but saw the sad regret in Davey’s eyes and felt a flicker of sympathy.

  ‘Fold it up,’ he added more gently. ‘I ken where to take it when this is done with.’

  Aye, and Rossal de Bissot’s sword as well. The anonymous black brothers of Glaissery could keep their venerated relics in secret, for they had no part left in the world of men.

  He heard the clang and spang of metal even as he rode on, leaving Davey to his task, the horse threading its own path through the groaning, slathered mass of spilled bodies, the blood making a sucking mud that stained the feathering on its hooves.