The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (66 page)

'Bastards!'

'They may be bastards, but we're the fools!' Sir William crouched beside his nephew, covering them both with his huge shield. To go back was unthinkable, for that would be running from the enemy, yet he could not advance and so he just marvelled at the force of the arrows as they thumped into the shield's face. A rush of bearded tribesmen, more nimble than the men-at-arms because they refused to wear metal armour, seethed past him, howling their wild defiance as they scrambled bare-legged across the heap of dying Scots, but then the English arrows began to strike and hurl the clansmen back. The arrows made sounds like bladders rupturing as they struck and the clansmen mewed and groaned, twitching as more arrows thumped home. Each missile provoked a spurt of blood so that Sir William and Robbie Douglas, unscathed beneath their heave shield, were spattered with gore.

A sudden tumult among the nearby men-at-arms provoked more arrows and Sir William bellowed angrily at the soldiers to lie down, hoping that stillness would persuade the English archers that no Scotsmen lived, but the men-at-arms called back that the Earl of Moray had been hit. 'Not before time,' Sir William growled to Robbie. He hated the Earl more than he hated the English, and he grinned when a man shouted that his lord-ship was not just hit, but dead, and then another hail of arrows silenced the Earl's retainers and Sir William heard the missiles clanging on metal, thumping into flesh and striking the willow boards of shields, and when the rattle of arrows was done there was just the moaning and weeping, the hissing of breath, and the creak of leather as men died or tried to extricate them-selves from under the piles of dying.

'What happened?' Robbie asked.

'We didn't scout the land properly,' Sir \Villiam answered. 'We outnumber the bastards and that made us confident.' Ominously, in the arrowless quiet, he heard laughter and the thump of boots. A scream sounded and Sir William, who was old in war, knew that the English troops were coming down into the bowl to finish off the injured. 'We're going to run back soon,' he told Robbie, 'there's no choice in it. Cover your arse with your shield and run like the devil.'

'We're running away?' Robbie asked, appalled.

Sir William sighed. 'Robbie, you damned fool, you can run forward and you can die and I'll tell your mother you died like a brave man and a halfwit, or you can get the hell back up the hill with me and try to win this battle.'

Robbie did not argue, but just looked back up the Scottish side of the hollow where the bracken was flecked with white-feathered arrows. 'Tell me when to run,' he said.

A dozen archers and as many English men-at-arms were using knives to cut Scottish throats. They would pause before finishing off a man-at-arms to discover whether he had any value as a source of ransom, but few men had such value and the clansmen had none.

The latter, hated above all the Scots because they were so different, were treated as vermin. Sir William cautiously raised his head and decided this was the moment to retreat. It was better to scramble out of this bloody trap than be captured and so, ignoring the indignant shouts of the English, he and his nephew scrambled hack up the slope. To Sir William's surprise no arrows came. He had expected the grass and bracken to be thrashed with arrows as he clambered out of the hollow, but he and Robbie were left alone. He turned halfway up the slope and saw that the English bowmen had vanished, leaving only men-at-arms on this flank of the field. At their head, watching him from the hollow's farther lip, was Lord Outhwaite, who had once been Sir William's prisoner. Outhwaite, who was lame, was using a spear as a stave and, seeing Sir William, he raised the weapon in greeting.

'Get yourself some proper armour, Willie!' Sir William shouted. Lord Outhwaite, like the Knight of Liddesdale, had been christened William. 'We're not done with you yet.'

'I fear not, Sir William, I do indeed fear not,' Lord Outhwaite called back. He steadied himself with his spear. 'I trust you're well?'

'Of course I'm not well, you bloody fool! Half my men are down there.'

'My dear fellow,' Outhwaite said with a grimace, and then waved genially as Sir William pushed Robbie on up the hill and followed him to safety.

Sir William, once back on the high ground, took stock. He could see that the Scots had been beaten here on their right, but that had been their own fault for charging headlong into the low ground where the archers had been able to kill with impunity. Those archers had mysteriously vanished, but Sir William guessed they had been pulled clear across the field to the Scottish left flank that had advanced a long way ahead of the centre. He could tell that because Lord Robert Stewart's blue and yellow banner of the lion was so far ahead of the King's red and yellow flag. So the battle was going well on the left, but Sir William could see it was going nowhere in the centre because of the stone wall that obstructed the Scottish advance.

'We'll achieve nothing here,' he told Robbie, 'so let's be useful.' He turned and raised his bloody sword. 'Douglas!' he shouted. 'Douglas!' His standard-bearer had disappeared and Sir William supposed that the man, with his red-hearted flag, was dead in the low ground. 'Douglas!' he called again and, when sufficient of his men had come to him, he led them to the embattled central sheltron. 'We fight here,' he told them, then pushed his way to the King who was on horseback in the second or third rank, fighting beneath his banner that was thick stuck with arrows. He was also fighting with his visor raised and Sir William saw that the King's face was half obscured with blood. 'Put your visor down!' he roared.

The King was trying to stab a long lance across the stone wall, but the press of men made his efforts futile. His blue and yellow surcoat had been torn to reveal the bright plate metal beneath. An arrow thudded into his right espalier that had again ridden up on the breast-plate and he tugged it down just as another arrow ripped open the left ear of his stallion. He saw Sir William and grinned as though this was fine sport. 'Pull your visor down!' Sir William bellowed and he saw that the King was not grinning, but rather a whole flap of his cheek had been torn away and the blood was still welling from the wound and spilling from the helmet's lower rim to soak the torn surcoat. 'Have your cheek bandaged!' Sir William shouted over the din of fighting.

The King let his frightened horse hack away from the wall. 'What happened on the right?' His voice was made indistinct by his wound.

'They killed us,' Sir William said curtly, inadvertently jerking his long sword so that drops of blood sprayed from its tip. 'No, they murdered us,' he growled. 'There was a break in the ground and it snared us.'

'Our left is winning! We'll break them there!' The King's mouth kept filling with blood, which he spat out, but despite the copious bleeding he did not seem over-concerned with the wound. It had been inflicted at the very beginning of the battle when an arrow had hissed over the heads of his army to rip a gouge in his cheek before spending itself in his helmet's liner. 'We'll hold them here,' he told Sir William.

'John Randolph's dead,' Sir William told him. 'The Earl of Moray,' he added when he saw that the King had not understood his first words.

'Dead?' King David blinked, then spat more blood. 'He's dead? Not a prisoner?' Another arrow slapped at his flag, but the King was oblivious of the danger. He turned and stared at his enemy's flags. 'We'll have the Archbishop say a prayer over his grave, then the bastard can say grace over our supper.' He saw a gap in the front Scottish rank and spurred his horse to fill it, then lunged with his lance at an English defender. The King's blow broke the man's shoulder, mangling the bloody wound with the debris of torn mail. 'Bastards!' the King spat. 'We're winning!' he called to his men, then a rush of Douglas's followers pushed between him and the wall. The newcomers struck the stone wall like a great wave, but the wall proved stronger and the wave broke on its stones. Swords and axes clashed over the coping and men from both sides dragged the dead out of their paths to clear a passage to the slaughter. 'We'll hold the bastards here,' the King assured Sir William, 'and turn their right.'

But Sir William, his ears ever attuned to the noise of battle, had heard something new. For the last few minutes he had been listening to shouts, clangour, screams and drums, but one sound had been missing and that was the devil's harp music, the deep-toned pluck of bowstrings, but he heard it again now and he knew that though scores of the enemy might have been killed, few of those dead were archers. And now the bows of England had begun their awful work again. 'You want advice, sire?'

'Of course.' The King looked bright-eyed. His destrier, wounded by several arrows, took small nervous steps away from the thickest fighting that raged just paces away.

'Put your visor down,' Sir William said, 'and then pull back.'

'Pull back?' The King wondered if he had misheard.

'Pull back!' Sir William said again, and he sounded hard and sure, yet he was not certain why he had given the advice. It was another damn premonition like the one he had experienced in the fog at dawn, yet he knew the advice was good. Pull back now, pull all the way back to Scotland where there were great castles that could withstand a storm of arrows, yet he knew he could not explain the advice. He could find no reason for it. A dread had seized his heart and filled him with foreboding. From any other man the advice would have been reckoned cowardice, but no one would ever accuse Sir William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, of cowardice.

The King thought the advice was a bad jest and he gave a snorting laugh. 'We're winning!' he told Sir William as more blood spilt from his helmet and slopped down to his saddle. 'Is there any danger on the right?' he asked.

'None,' Sir William said. The hollow in the ground would be as effective at stopping an English advance as it had been at foiling the Scottish attack.

'Then we'll win this battle on our left,' the King declared, then hauled on his reins to turn away. 'Pull back indeed!' The King laughed, then took a piece of linen from one of his chaplains and pushed it between his cheek and his helmet. 'We're winning!' he said to Sir William again, then spurred to the east. He was riding to bring Scotland victory and to show that he was a worthy son of the great Bruce. 'St Andrew!' he shouted through thick blood. 'St Andrew!'

'You think we should pull back, uncle?' Robbie Doug-las asked. He was as confused as the King. 'But we're winning!'

'Are we?' Sir William listened to the music of the bows. 'Best say your prayers, Robbie,' he said, 'best say your bloody prayers and ask God to let the devil take the bloody archers.'

And pray that God or the devil was listening.

Sir Geoffrey Carr was stationed on the English left where the Scots had been so decisively rebuffed by the terrain and his few men-at-arms were now down in the blood-reeking hollow in search of prisoners. The Scarecrow had watched the Scots trapped in the low ground and he had grinned with feral delight as the arrows had slashed down into the attackers. One enraged tribesman, his thick folds of swathing plaid stuck with arrows as thick as a hedgehog's spines, had tried to fight up the slope. He had been swearing and cursing, repeatedly struck by arrows, one was even sticking from his skull, which was smothered in tangled hair, and another was caught in the thicket of his beard, yet still he had come, bleeding and ranting, so filled with hate that he did not even know he should be dead, and he managed to struggle within five paces of the bowmen before Sir Geoffrey had flicked his whip to take the man's left eye from its socket clean as a hazel from its shell and then an archer had stepped forward and casually split the man's arrow-spitted skull with an axe. The Scarecrow coiled the whip and fingered the damp on the tip's iron claw. 'I do enjoy a battle,' he had said to no one in particular. Once the attack was stalled he had seen that one of the Scottish lords, all gaudy in blue and silver, was lying dead among the heap of corpses and that was a pity. That was a real pity. There was a fortune gone with that death and Sir Geoffrey, remembering his debts, had ordered his men down into the pit to cut throats, pillage corpses and find any prisoner worth a half-decent ransom. His archers had been taken off to the other side of the field, but his men-at-arms were left to find some cash. 'Hurry, Beggar!' Sir Geoffrey shouted, 'Hurry! Prisoners and plunder! Look for gentlemen and lords! Not that there are any gentlemen in Scotland!' This last observation, made only to himself, amused the Scarecrow so that he laughed aloud. The joke seemed to improve as he thought about it and he almost doubled over in merriment. 'Gentlemen in Scotland!' he repeated and then he saw a young monk staring cvorriedly at him.

The monk was one of the prior's men, distributing food and ale to the troops, but he had been alarmed by Sir Geoffrey_ 's wild cackle. The Scarecrow, going abruptly silent, stared ‘vide-eyed at the monk and then, silently, let the coils of the whip fall from his hand. The soft leather made no sound as it rippled down, then Sir Geoffrey moved his right arm at lightning speed and the whip struck to loop itself about the young monk's neck. Sir Geoffrey_ jerked the lash. 'Come here, boy,' he ordered.

The jerk made the monk stumble so that he dropped the bread and apples he had been carrying, then he was standing close beside Sir Geoffrey's horse and the Scarecrow was leaning down from the saddle so that the monk could smell his fetid breath. 'Listen, you pious little turd,' Sir Geoffrey hissed, 'if you don't tell me the truth I'll cut off what you don't need and what you don't use except to piss through and feed it to my swine, do you understand me, boy?'