Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

Badenoch realized his mistake, turned sharply and lost his balance, reeling a little in the saddle; Hal turned more sharply still, gained a stride or two, leaped a bush and thumped down with a jar that banged his belly into the pommel and rattled his teeth.

They burst from the bushes to where the bodies started to clot again, horses among them this time. Hal saw Badenoch veer to avoid a still-kicking one, guided his own to the left of it and heard the beast’s iron hoofs clatter off something — skull or helmet he did not know.

They were coming to a crease in the ground: the Pelstream, by God, Hal thought. Now he will have to come at bay …

It took him a moment to realize that Badenoch was not coming to a halt, but checking to a canter, turning and riding parallel to the steep-sided stream — looking for a narrow part, Hal realized. By God’s Hook, he plans to leap it.

Badenoch suddenly spurred; Hal heard the horse squeal in pain, saw it surge and knew Badenoch had chosen his leaping point. He watched as the beast flung itself in an ungainly four-legged sprawl of jump, hit the far side, stumbled forward to safety and collapsed like a burst bag, spilling itself and the rider.

He cantered up and checked; the point was narrow, right enough, which was why all the fleeing Welsh archers had tried to use it. Hal had no idea how deep the narrow wedge of the Pelstream was — at least the height of a tall man — but it was choked to a bridge by bodies.

Hal saw Badenoch struggling on the ground, trying to free himself from a tangle of reins and realized what he had to do if he wanted to get to the man. Did he want it that badly? Kirkpatrick was dead … the thought burned him. Mea culpa , he voiced, savage with the loss and the horror at being the cause of it.

The horse could not leap the stream and would not step on the bodies, so Hal slithered off and put out one foot, only to draw it hastily back when he heard the farting gasp from the body. Dead air, he said savagely to himself. Only dead air …

He walked the bridge, three, four ungainly steps, no more, feeling the sickening roil of soft death, hearing the groans which might only have been the last gasp of the dead or men still dying.

Badenoch was up, weaving, sword at the guard and his eyes rat-desperate.

‘Different,’ Hal said coldly to him, ‘when you face a knight who actually knows the ways of sword and lance, my wee lord.’

‘You saved me,’ Badenoch blurted out, his voice harsh and rasping in breath. ‘The day my father was slain in Greyfriars.’

‘I did,’ Hal replied and then moved forward, de Bissot’s sword arcing round. ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

Badenoch’s sword stopped the blow, glissaded away and the echoes were lost in another growling roar of thunder. Hal realized the world had darkened, wondered if the battle had lasted so long that it was now night.

Doggedly, Badenoch gathered himself and came back, lashing right and left, sweeping blows that thrummed the air; Hal countered, hitting nothing. They circled like wary dogs.

‘You could yield,’ Badenoch offered suddenly. ‘No shame in it. You are ower old for this, after all, and I will kill you if you do not, for all I owe you my life.’

‘I own your life since that day — now I have come for my due,’ Hal answered flatly and moved in as the wind hissed down on them, whirling up the tired, torn grass. Badenoch crouched, half turned and struck, the sword whicking the last flat of itself on to Hal’s mittened fist; even through the maille he felt the blow of it, the numbing that spilled the sword from his grasp.

With a howl of triumph, Badenoch went for the killing strokes, but caught his gilded spurs and stumbled a little; Hal scuttled away, staggered over a body and made for a nearby spear, stuck point down in the hard ground.

He had no feeling in his right hand; he gripped with his left and wrenched, but the spear was buried deep and would not come loose. Behind him, he heard Badenoch closing in like a panting hound.

Hal lurched forward, still gripping the spear, so that it bent — but it still stuck fast. He let it go just as Badenoch rushed in, snarling — and the shaft sprang back and took the man in the chest and face, a smack like a hammer; he went flying backwards, his own sword spilling free.

Ahead, Hal saw a shield and made for it; a man with a shield had a weapon yet. He fumbled it up — and cursed, for the straps had been sheared and it was useless. Badenoch, back on his feet and his face a twisted mask of blood, sprang forward and wrenched the spear free.

Now it comes free, Hal thought bitterly. He lurched to one side as the point of the spear stabbed at him. He kicked out, hearing himself squeal like a horse.

The blow took Badenoch in the thigh, made him cry out and reel away. Then he hurled himself back into the fight, the spear flicking out like a snake’s tongue; Hal spun, found the shaft under his right armpit and himself with his back to Badenoch; in a panic he gripped with his arm and heaved sideways, hoping to tear the spear from the knight’s grasp, or spill him to the ground if he held on to it.

The shaft snapped, which came as a shock to them both. It cracked like an old marrow bone, so that Hal found himself with the last foot of wood and the wicked tip couched under his armpit like a silly lance.

Badenoch, left with four feet of splinted shaft, flung it down in disgust and hurled himself at Hal, all mailled fists and vengeance.

Hal whipped the shattered spearshaft from under his arm with his left hand and drove it into Badenoch’s face. The man ran on to it like a charging bull, impaled himself through his open, snarling mouth and staggered on past for a few reeling steps before falling forward; Hal saw the bloody point burst from the back of the skull.

He stood for a long moment, and then something inside seemed to give up and he fell on to his knees, rolled to one side and, finally, on to his back, staring at the sky and listening to Badenoch’s mailled feet kick wetly in his own blood.

Like his da, Hal remembered. He wanted to get up but could not move, only stare at the sky, which had turned bruised and ugly. It is all over, he thought dully. Badenoch is dead. Kirkpatrick … bigod, the world is slain this day.

The thunder rolled, sonorous as a bell.

He lay like that for what seemed an age, until the spatter of water made him blink. It grew and started to hiss like a nest of adders: rain, sheeting in a curtain which suddenly parted to reveal a limping grey figure who reached out a sodden hand to haul Hal to his feet.

‘Bigod,’ said Kirkpatrick. ‘That was well done — but you should have let me end him in Greyfriars and saved the pair o’ us all this bother.’

Goliath was dead. Thweng had not known when the horse had been hit, only the moment it had checked, coughed and started to sink, slowly, like a deflating bladder. He had time to kick free of it and drop with a jar to the ground, watched it fall to its knees and finally on to one side, blowing blood out of its nose; the arrow that had killed it was buried so deep, just to the rear of the girth, that only the span of peacock fletchings could be seen. A great spreading stain of blood soaked the trapper.

Welsh archers, Thweng thought bitterly, God curse them. That horse was worth more than fifty of those dark mountain dwarves put together …

Men flooded round him, splitting right and left, away from the sword-armed, mailled figure and his dying horse. Our foot, Thweng thought moodily, running like chooks; he hoped John and the others had managed to get away — and, with a surprising detachment, wondered if he would manage that himself.

He walked away from the horse, stepping over bodies. Archers had let loose here and felled a deal of Scots horse; there were little shaggy ponies down, kicking and squealing among the ragdoll shapes of men. Arrows littered all around, in beast and man and turf, broken, splintered and trampled — and one hit Goliath, he added bitterly, though there was no telling if it had been an accident or some vicious last Welsh swipe at the English.