The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (142 page)

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 heat-struck. 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 you 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.