The Guardian (43 page)

I had noticed them originally because of their boisterous laughter. It was loud, unrestrained, full of good humour, and impossible to ignore. But then three other men had come to join their group, and within a quarter-hour the laughter had dwindled and died, and several of the original group of nine had drifted away in search of other company. Curious, I had looked at the newcomers more closely, and had not liked what I saw. They were clearly Scots from Will’s following, for their dress and bearing showed that they were not Highland Gaels. Where the archers had been noisy and plainly enjoying themselves, these newcomers had brought a silent, menacing threat with them, standing shoulder to shoulder and glowering with sour disapproval at everything around them. I could tell that the archers knew who the trio were, and also that they wished the newcomers had gone elsewhere. There was no laughter now. No one was even smiling.

I was on the point of returning to my breviary when someone came running towards the knot of men. I recognized him as one of Alistair Murray’s men, a close-mouthed but likable young fellow called Callum who was Alistair’s favourite courier, gifted with astonishing speed and stamina. I had once heard someone joke that the young man had been born running and had never learned to walk. Now, as he came closer, I could see that he was not merely running for the enjoyment of it. He was lightly dressed, bare legged as always, and his feet were encased in well-worn brogans. He carried no sword, and I knew he never did, for he considered the weapon to be a hindrance to his running, but he wore a long-bladed dirk in a sheath at his belt, and I could see he carried his two-footwide targe across his back, made of studded, hard-boiled leather stretched over dense ash wood.

Now he swerved to pass the archers’ group, but as he did so, one of the three newcomers, the largest and most truculent looking, stepped away from his companions and directly into Callum’s path. I was amazed that Callum managed to avoid hitting the fellow, but
he did, thanks to an admirable combination of reflexes and alertness. He swayed sideways and passed smoothly by the stranger, less than a hand’s breadth separating them, and ran on directly to the fringe of the group surrounding Will and Andrew, where he stopped and grasped Alistair by the elbow.

Alistair swung around to savage whoever had dared to touch him, but the instant he saw Callum’s face, he frowned, took Callum firmly by the arm, and propelled him urgently away from any danger of being overheard.

I noted the urgency of the encounter even as my attention was transferred to what was happening with the fellow Callum had almost run into. The scowling ruffian was now behaving as though he had been hit and was glaring towards Callum, while Callum, completely unaware of the fellow, and propelled by Alistair’s grasp, was coming directly towards the fire where I was sitting. Alistair was practically pushing him along, gripping his arm tightly above the elbow and walking close beside him, his head bent to one side to catch what the young man was saying. He stopped, sensing his nearness to the fire, and I saw his body tense.

“Go and find Fillan and bring him here, quick as you can. I’ll talk to Andrew and Wallace. Quick now!”

Fillan de Moray was scouting on our left flank, far out ahead of our line of march, and hearing Alistair’s instruction intrigued me. Eager as a hare, Callum spun on his heel and broke into a flat run. But he had gone just five paces when the angry stranger lunged towards him, pivoting his entire upper body to smash his elbow square into Callum’s face, felling him instantly. Alistair had seen nothing; he was striding back towards Will and Andrew, oblivious.

I gaped down at Callum, shocked at the amount of blood gushing from his broken nose and mouth and stunned by the swiftness of the attack, and then I looked at the man who had done this to him. A single word,
berserk
, sprang to my mind. It was an ancient Norse word, used to describe the fighting madness, supposedly inspired by the gods, that sometimes consumed Viking warriors in battle, and I knew that this man was berserk. He was hopping from foot to foot,
clenching and unclenching his big hands as he grimaced and growled deep in his chest, radiating hatred and malevolence towards the man he had attacked so treacherously. He muttered something just as I looked at him, but I did not hear what it was. A moment later he repeated it more loudly, and a third time he screamed it. It was gibberish to me, a crazed outpouring of guttural noise.

Callum had somehow begun to collect himself and was attempting to stand up. I bleated something sympathetic and moved to help him, but before I could reach him he regained his feet and stood swaying, gripping his legs above the knees and looking at the ground between his feet, his head drooling ropy skeins of blood.

I stopped then, apprehensive. Turning my head no more than a fraction of an inch, I saw that the madman had backed away. But as I turned a bit more, to look at him directly, I saw him draw weapons, and I looked quickly back at Callum, still swaying and dripping blood. And still I made no move to touch him, for I dared not take that risk on his behalf unless he asked me to. Then, as now, the unwritten law governing witnesses to men in single combat was absolute: no spectator must ever touch a man fighting another for his life, unless requested so to do. The reason is obvious: the most innocent, unthinking interference might distract a fighter and cause his death.

Callum held no weapon, and I turned to point that out to the other man, who grinned at me as evilly as he had glared at Callum, with the same hatred in his dead, black eyes. I opened my mouth to speak and he spat at me, a mouthful of mucus that he had clearly been nursing for that purpose. The spittle hit the front of my tunic and hung there, but I was too busy looking at the madman’s weapons to care about that. They were common enough, but both were half the size I would expect. In one hand he held a single-bladed battle-axe, with a long blade no more than three fingers wide, but the other end of it was a heavy, flattened hammerhead, a bludgeon designed to shatter skulls. His other hand held a short flail, made from a net of tightly woven leather strips twisted around a thick handle, with a heavy, fist-sized pebble, or perhaps it was an iron ball, securely
bound inside the net. And then I heard the unmistakable slither of Callum’s dirk leaving its sheath.

There are moments in life that announce themselves, with absolute authority, as being catastrophic, and our minds accept them instantly, aware that we are utterly powerless to influence the outcome of whatever is about to happen. I saw young Callum, upright now, his face and neck slick with appallingly bright blood, advancing to confront his attacker with his long-bladed dirk in his right hand and his small, circular targe in front of him, covering his left breast. He never had the chance to raise his weapon. The other man whooped some kind of battle cry and sprang forward, high into the air, his flail whipping over and down to crash into Callum’s temple, sending the young man reeling, already dead. But before he could even fall, the war hammer in his attacker’s other hand swept over and smashed in the other side of his skull, driving the eye on that side out of its socket to hang by a length of something unspeakable. Callum fell sideways like a log.

My mind was empty. I saw the broken corpse at my feet, and I saw the crazed, grinning face of the killer leering at me. Then I felt myself hurled aside as Alistair de Moray straight-armed me out of his way, his long-bladed sword in one hand and his dirk in the other. He did not make a sound; he simply threw himself towards the three men now confronting him, because the other two had advanced to flank their friend as soon as they saw Alistair approaching. His long blade flickered out and across, too quick to follow, and the man on his right sprang back, barely in time to avoid being cut. And as he moved, so too did his companions, sidling backwards and moving apart to present a larger target and to give themselves room to fight.

Alistair straightened slightly from his fighting crouch and moved forward, ignoring the men on either side of him now, all his attention focused on the killer, who was still grinning insanely, still muttering to himself, and still brandishing the weapons he had used on Callum. He took a short step backwards, then another, and then sprang, leaping high into the air towards Alistair with another
of those blood-curdling screams, swinging both axe and flail. But Alistair leapt backwards, too, avoiding the other’s rush, and instantly launched himself forward, that long blade thrusting ahead of him.

I thought it strange that the madman’s arms flew up and apart a moment before the Highlander’s blade plunged into the soft flesh beneath his sternum, sinking in for half its length before its point jarred against the fellow’s spine. It all happened very quickly, and then, just as quickly again, it was all over. The assassin dropped to his knees like a spike-hammered bullock in a sudden, dead silence, then pitched forward full length, face down, and I saw the black metal handle of a knife projecting from the base of his skull. I raised my head to look for an explanation, and was unsurprised to see Long John approaching from behind the dead man. On either side of him, the madman’s two supporters were being close held, their arms pinioned to their sides.

My cousin was suddenly there, looking down at the two corpses. “Berry,” he said, almost to himself. “I always kent it would come to this.” He raised his eyes to Andrew. “I hae to ask your pardon, my friend, for lettin’ anythin’ like this happen at our first meetin’. I never knew the young man wha died here, but I can see he’ll be sair missed.”

I knew, because he was speaking in the broad, rural dialect called the Doric, that he was highly aware of the silent, gawking crowd that had gathered. He turned then to the two prisoners. “As for the pair o’ you,” he said, pitching his voice to be clearly heard, “d’ye no’ mind my warnin’ ye on what would happen gin ye didna mend your ways? Are you too stupid to ken a threat of death when ye hear it?” He shrugged. “It’s clear ye are.”

He turned back to Andrew. “Master Murray, you’ll nae doubt hae arrangements to make for your young man there, I suppose. Would you care to do that now?”

“Aye, and I thank you.” Andrew turned to Alistair, who was sheathing his sword after cleaning the blade. “Will you arrange a burial for Callum,” he said in Gaelic, “and tell Sandy you’ll need
money to send to his wife. Someone will have to go and tell her, but it will wait until we get home. That will save the poor woman months of mourning.” He nodded his thanks to Will.

Will nudged the dead man at his feet with the toe of his boot. “Hang this filth,” he said to Long John.

“There’s a knife wound in his neck, Will,” Long John said. “A rope would cut right through him.”

“Then loop it under his shoothers, but hang the whoreson. Hang him high, where everyone can see him. And hang these two aside him. They stood at his side when he was alive and murdering folk, now they can hang at his side when he’s dead and danglin’ frae a rope.

“The rest o’ ye!” His voice rose dramatically, ringing out clearly to the encircling crowd, which had grown larger with every passing moment. “Hear me now! Pay heed! This foolery is finished”—he pronounced it
feeneesht
—“it’s a’ done an’ there’s naethin left to see. We’ve had murder done here an’ justice rendered, blood for blood and a life for a life. So awa ye go now, back to what ye were daein afore a’ this started.”

Someone murmured to me, asking me to move aside, and a pair of men with a stretcher crouched in front of me and covered poor Callum’s mutilated corpse with a grey blanket before they lifted him onto the stretcher and carried it away, and as I watched them go I heard Will call my name. I looked in the direction of his voice and saw him standing with Andrew in the middle of a large group of their captains and lieutenants. Surprised at their numbers, for I had so far paid them no real attention, I estimated that there must have been close to two score of them surrounding their leaders.

Will was looking at me, frowning. “Are you well?” he asked.

We both knew I could not be well after witnessing such horrors as I had seen, but there was genuine concern on his face, and I nodded wordlessly, acknowledging his solicitude.

“But?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Will, except for what we’ve seen here. But I
need to talk to the two men you’ve condemned. They deserve an opportunity to confess their sins and be forgiven in God’s eyes.”

He drew himself up, and for a moment I thought he was going to refuse me permission to visit them, but he scowled and shook his head. “You think they deserve that, Jamie? You saw what they did. They knew Berry was raving mad, perhaps possessed by demons, and yet they chose to help him murder an innocent boy.”

“I know. I was there and watched as they did it.”

“And you can still say they deserve forgiveness?”

“In God’s eyes, Will, every man deserves forgiveness. I would never attempt to tell you they deserve forgiveness in yours, for your nature, like my own, is human and demands satisfaction. But I must offer them the solace of confession and last rites. That is my duty.”

“Then it’s a damnably foolish duty. But go ahead and do it if you must—later, though. After I’ve done speaking here.”

He strode to the stone-ringed fire pit and leapt up onto the largest of the upright seating stones surrounding it. From there, where he could both see and be seen by all his captains, he beckoned them to come closer, and beckoned to me as well, and when we were all gathered, he stood looking down on us for a time, his gaze moving from man to man, eyeing Andrew’s Highlanders as squarely as he did the familiar faces of his own men. Then he spoke into the profound silence surrounding him, in plain, intelligible Scots.

“Master de Moray’s scouts behind us in the southeast report that there’s a fleet of English ships headed up the Tay to Dundee.” He made eye contact with each man as he spoke. “We don’t know what they intend to do—whether they even intend to land—and neither Master Murray nor I have any wish to wait around here to find out. So we’ll break camp in the morning and be on our way west again come noon.”