Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

He heard the men next to him shout out and grunt, saw hands flex and heard the great bawling roar that was Edward Bruce, the King’s brother himself, standing in their sweating, stinking midst and bellowing for them to keep going, that it was only a wee man on a big horse.

A square ell of soil, Hew thought, moving fast on four legs and about to fall on someone …

There was a noise like a clatter of cauldrons on a stone path and the great block Hew was in trembled like a fly-bitten horse’s haunch; men rippled away from the front. Someone shrieked, high and loud, and voices called out, but they kept moving, forcing Hew onward.

You should properly shore up steep sides — wood if it is no more than a ditch, but good stone cladding if it is a decent, perjink moat …

He stepped on something that moved and groaned, fell forward with an apology as he tried to skip round it, appalled that he had put his foot on a wounded man.

‘Kill him, man,’ someone growled, forcing past him and Hew saw the groaning figure was a knight, helmed and mailled and lying on his shield. There was blood on his metal links and he had no surcote. Hew started to try and turn him, to see the device on the shield — there was a lot of expensive war gear on this one for him to be a simple man-at-arms — but feet trampled and baulked and cursed him.

‘He has no mark, is of no account. Kill him and be done with it,’ the voice savaged at him and Hew looked up, blinking into the great, broad, red face, sweat-gleamed and truculent as a thwarted boar. He saw the surcote beneath it, stained and torn but blazing with the device of Edward Bruce.

With a last, annoyed snort, the great lord moved on and Hew, swallowing, took his dirk and began to prise open the downed man’s fancy new visor. It took some time and he gave a sharp cry when it finally popped up to reveal the half-dazed, rolling-eyed face beneath. A young face, grimaced with pain and with blood on his teeth.

‘Yield …’ said the man, but Hew the Delver had been given his orders by the Earl of Carrick, who was James to Jesus as far as the ditcher was concerned. He hauled out his axe and blessed the man with the blade of it — the sign of the cross, writ bloody in a blinding stroke across the eyes and then one which split the face from brow to nose.

He looked up, wiping the sweat and a splash of blood from himself, saw the retreating backs of the block he had lately been in, saw it stop. More men came trotting up, a loose leaping of axe and dirk men, like a fringed hem to Edward Bruce’s battle.

‘What are you after having there, wee man?’ demanded a voice and Hew stood up into the gaze of a mailled and well-armed man with a proper shield and the air of a lord. One of the Gaelic spitters from north of the Mounth, Hew thought, and was clever enough to be polite.

‘I dinna ken, lord, He has no device. I was told to slay him.’

The north lord called out and men came running up, obedient as dogs, and bent to roll the dead knight off his face-down shield so he could turn it to see who he was; Hew glanced at the solid line of backs down the slope and licked his lips, wondering when he could get back to the dark, sweating forest of it. Wondering if he wanted to, while the sun shone here, on this sandy loam of hill.

‘Christ’s Bones.’

The curse jerked him from his reverie and he saw the Gaelic lord staring at the dead knight’s revealed shield. Then he turned to Hew.

‘Run to the King — that way. Look for the great lion banner and the man with a crown on his helm,’ the lord spat out in his sibilant, singsong way. ‘None of mine can speak your tongue well enough, so it has to be you. Tell him that Neil Campbell of that ilk begs to inform His Grace that the Earl of Gloucester has been slain.’

He paused.

‘What is your name?’

‘Hew. Hew the Delver.’

‘Tell him you did it.’

Neil Campbell watched the man trot off and shook his head. A great shout from his front made him look up and set his shield, feeling the heat beat on him like a fist.

A great lord is dead of a ditch-digger, he thought. There will be more of that this day.

Garm did not like the scattered bodies, the horses that were down, screaming and kicking in a frantic fury to get back on all fours, the slicked skid of entrails and slimed fluids. He had been trained to ride into anything if his master insisted, but was cat cautious and prancing over the bodies.

Thweng was grateful. He saw no sign of Gloucester, but caught the flash of blood-smeared jupons and dead eyes all around him, saw Badlesmere and others circling and bellowing, stabbing and throwing and as ineffectual as a breeze on a stone wall.

They suffered for it. As he rode up to the bristling, snarling dyke of spears, which had stopped and braced, Thweng saw the stained, crumpled heap that had once been Sir Payn Tiptoft, crushed and bloody underneath his still-kicking horse.

Thweng, moving no faster than a trot, turned sideways and rode the length of the hedge, stabbing with the lance, hearing the clack of it on the long spearshafts, felt the tremble of it up his arm. At the end of the line, he threw it like a javelin, wheeled left as he drew his sword, circled and came in again, avoiding the mad rush of Badenoch and a fat knot of the Shadows, forcing forward to impale themselves on the shrike’s hedge.

Then, suddenly, in the gilded haze of raised dust, he saw the bright flash of a familiar shield, raised aloft by some saffroned warrior at the rear of the wall of spears — the de Clare arms. Gloucester was there, on that slope of hillside behind the Scots, and Thweng spurred Garm mercilessly so that the horse chested into the ranks, then reared on command, striking out with his great iron-shod hooves.

Points lanced, clattering off his shield. A hook snagged in the horse barding and Garm crashed down on all fours with more force than intended, screamed aloud as he landed on a bloody hoof, speared through when he struck out.

Stabs and slashes spilled expensive cotton padding from the horse-armour, drove the breath from Thweng with a few well-aimed blows which did not penetrate, but reeled him in the saddle. Then he saw sense and turned Garm away, rode him hard for a few steps and reined in.

Sweating, trembling, Garm stood, the injured leg raised so that only the point of one hoof touched the ground. Cursing, Thweng levered himself out of the saddle, feeling his legs buckle as he hit the hard earth and the full weight of his harness fell on him. Too old, he thought. Too God-cursed old for this. And the Earl of Gloucester was down — taken, he hoped, but recalling the triumphantly waved shield he felt a sick horror at what that might mean.

He was examining Garm’s wound when he felt the sightless open eyes of a dead man staring at him. He turned to the gore-spattered ruin of a face. The arms on the tabard and shield belonged to the Comyn of Kylbryde, but Thweng would not have known the man after what spear and a tearing hook had done to his face.

‘Should not have thrown away his helm.’

The bleak voice spun Thweng round into the grim stare of Badenoch, his own face sheened with sweat and the loss of yet another of his kin. Yet his concern was all for Sir Marmaduke.

‘Are you injured, my lord?’

Thweng shook his head.

‘Need a new mount. I will lead this one off and find my squire.’

He paused, feeling the madness of the moment as he sought to find words of consolation while shrieks and bellows and dying whirled round them; the ground was now a churned red mud.

‘I am sorry for your loss.’

Badenoch nodded, as if he had expected no more. Then he took a breath, as if about to plunge underwater, slid the domed helm over his head and reined back into the fray.