P. Chisholm - A Surfeit of Guns

He elbowed his enemy in the face while neither of them had any nightsight, rolled to loosen the man’s grip and brought his sword hilt down on the white patch of face he could just see under the helmet. He tried to get to his feet, there was a blow on his side, the man was trying to grapple his neck, he managed to pull his dagger free with his left hand as he twisted away and stabbed under the man’s arm, heard the grating of metal and a gasp. This time he could get his legs under him, he raised his broadsword up and swung down, there was a satisfying meaty thunk and the man’s head came off. He hopped backwards quickly to be away from the blood.

Somebody still mounted came riding towards him with a lance, black shadow on a bigger shadow, the shadow of a lance. Carey’s world focused down to its point and time slowed. He waited until the last possible minute, then threw himself sideways into the horse’s path. The hobby reared, frightened of the movement, one of the hooves caught him a glancing blow on the helmet, he caught the nearest stirrup, reached up, hefted the man out of the saddle and onto the ground. They both tangled in the lance-haft and fell down together and just as Carey got on top of the man, and was preparing to stab him lefthanded in the throat, he realised it was Sim’s Will Croser.

For a moment he simply knelt there stupidly as his sight cleared. Then he got up.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded.

“Nay,” said Sim’s Will. “Sorry, sir, Ah mistook ye.”

Both of them were on their feet, Carey picked his sword off the turf, looking around for enemies but none were left. Hooves thudded off in the distance. He wiped his blade down with handfuls of grass and sheathed it. The body of the man Carey had killed was still bleeding into the ground, four horses were trotting around shaking their heads. Further off the shrieking was fading to gasps. Carey went over to the source of the sounds where two others of his men were standing by helplessly. Dodd cantered up and dismounted.

“They’ve run,” he snarled. “We got two of them, I think, but it seems my brother canna count. There were at least ten. And Long George is hurt bad.”

That was an understatement. Long George Little was kneeling on the ground, hunched over and making short gasping moans. He looked up at Carey like a wounded dog, his face spattered with black mud. With a lurch under his breastbone of sympathy, Carey saw George was cradling the rags of his right hand against his chest. All the fingers were gone, the thumb hanging by a piece of flesh with the splintered bone sticking out of the meat. Long George had his other hand gripped round the wrist, trying to slow his bleeding.

“Anybody else hurt?” Carey asked.

“Nay,” they all answered.

“Who’s got the bandages?”

All of them shrugged. Carey suppressed a sigh. “There’s a dead man over there,” he snapped, pointing. “Go and cut long strips from his shirt.”

Red Sandy trotted off with his dagger and came back a few minutes later with some strips of grey canvas in his hand. Carey tied up what was left of Long George’s hand and made a tourniquet with the rest of the strips. Long George gasped and whimpered as he did it, but managed to hold still with his eyes shut, while Dodd patted his shoulder. A trickle of blood came from his mouth.

“Well, we rescued the sheep,” said Red Sandy brightly. “That’s something.”

“Thank you, Red Sandy,” said Carey repressively. “Can you ride your horse, Long George?”

“Ay, sir, if ye give me a leg up,” whispered George.

Red Sandy and Dodd helped him over to his horse, lifted him on, while the rest caught the other loose horses and linked them together. Long George was already starting to shiver, something Carey had seen before: when large quantities of the sanguine humour were lost, a Jewish Court physician had told him once, then the furnace of the heart began to cool and might cool to death. Warmth and wine were a good answer, but they could give him neither until they got to Carlisle.

Carey rode up close to the shaking Long George. His face was badly hurt too, he realised now: what he had taken for mud on the right side of it was a mess of cuts and burns that had laid his face open to the gleaming white bone.

“Can you ride as far as Carlisle?”

“Nay, sir, take me home. My farm’s by the Wall, not far fra Lanercost.”

“Of course. Red Sandy, do you know where?”

“I know,” he said sombrely.

“Good. Red Sandy, you take the Elliots’ horses and help Long George get to his home.”

“Ah wantae go home, sir.” George didn’t seem able to register anything except his injury. Tears were running down his face as he spoke.

“Of course you do.”

“Only, there’ll be the harvest to get in and all…”

“Don’t worry about it. Here.” Carey found his flask of mixed wine and water and helped Long George to drink it. He choked and his teeth rattled on the bottlemouth. “Red Sandy, a word with you.”

“Ay, sir.”

Carey drew him a little aside. “If his wife’s got her hands full with sick children, stay and help. When it’s getting on for morning, take the horses into Carlisle castle, find the surgeon and send him back to George’s place. Tell him I’ll pay his fee.”

Red Sandy looked alarmed at that but only nodded.

“You’re in charge.”

Something very cynical crossed Red Sandy’s face and disappeared, though he nodded again.

“Ay, sir. Dinna be concerned, I’ll see him right. I’ll bring my own wife to nurse him if need be.”

“Good man.”

They rode off at a sedate pace southwards. Carey noted that the other men were letting the deer down from its tree. Dodd had seen to the rounding up of the sheep and, no doubt, the stripping of the two dead bodies. Carey had no intention of burying them: let Wee Colin Elliot see to it, if he wanted.

It was an enraging business, taking the sheep back to the Routledge farm they had been raided from. Carey was an innocent about sheep and was astonished at how stupid they were, wiry and rough-coated creatures though these were, in contrast to the smug rotund animals that milled their way through London to Smithfield market every week. Dodd and the others worked around them making odd yipping and barking noises, like sheepdogs, and the whole process took hours. It was past dawn when the sheep poured over another hill and began baaing excitedly at the smell of home and at last moved sensibly in a flock in one direction.

The farmer, who owned his own small rough two-storey peletower, already had a group of men around him, all talking excitedly, while the women saddled the horses.

Carey, who had left the experts to their business, said to Dodd, “Looks like we’re just in time to stop a reprisal raid.”

“Ay,” grunted Dodd. “It’s a pity.”

“Not if you have to deal with the resulting paperwork, it isn’t. This is simpler.”

It was, but not much. Jock Routledge seemed very offended that Carey had caught his sheep for him, no doubt because he had been planning to lift a few extra when he retrieved his own from the Elliots. He was also scandalised at the thought of paying the Wardenry fee.

“Ye canna take one sheep in twelve, ye’ll ruin me,” he shouted.

“I can in fact take one sheep for every ten, so you owe me an extra lamb,” Carey said. “I might remit the lamb if I get my rights quickly.”

“Oh ay, yer rights,” sneered Routledge. “Why did ye not stop them at the Border then, eh? Dinnae trouble to tell me, I know well enough. Well, ye’ll not…”

“Sir,” called Dodd from a few paces away. Carey looked round and saw he was slouching on his horse which was eating its way methodically through the pea-vines of a vegetable garden. In his hand was a lit torch. “Will I fire the thatch?”