Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

Disadvantaged in every way, Hal thought, armed only with a knife, below a man with a longer weapon on a spiralling stair designed to suit him and not me. Sparks flew as the man struck and missed; Hal saw him glance wildly over his shoulder, saw the iron rod dangling from a hook, waiting to be struck like a ringing bell.

The man slashed once more and sprang back, heading for the alarm iron; Hal was after him, stumbling, stabbing wildly. He felt the blow up his arm, the grate of it on bone and the man gave a sharp cry and fell, slamming face-first on to the table even as he groped for a soothing grasp on his pinked heel. Hal leaped on him, heard the air drive out with a choking gasp and battered his own head on the table so that it whirled with bright light and stars.

Dazed, he rolled free, blood in his mouth, and felt the man scrabble up — and a dark shape moved past him like a wind from a grave; the man yelped as Kirkpatrick’s arm snaked round his neck and drew it back. The dagger gleamed in the guttering candle flame like a basilisk eye before the man’s throat smothered the wink of it.

‘Mak’ siccar,’ Kirkpatrick muttered and held the kicking man until the breath left him; there was blood everywhere, spattering in pats as the man struggled his last.

Hal rolled on to all fours, spitting, to see Kirkpatrick wiping his bloody hand on the man’s tunic, following it up with the dagger; his entire sleeve was sodden with gore.

‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled and Hal, blinking the last of his daze away, climbed wearily to his feet and started up the stairs, Kirkpatrick behind.

The shape was wraithed and black, hidden in the shadows and would have clattered the pair of them back down the stairs if a sharp warning voice had not called out.

‘Look out for her.’

Hal saw the black shroud of nun rush from the shadows and had time to stick out a fist so that the woman, already starting to shriek, ran her face on to the ram of it. Her scream choked off into a grunt, her legs flew out from under her and she clattered limply to the flags at the foot of the door.

That voice, Hal thought. It is her.

The door was barred from the outside and he lifted it easily and wrenched it open.

She saw the dark shape and felt her heart catch in her throat. There was so little light that he was all planes and shadows, might have been anyone — but she knew it was him. Hal. At last …

She was not ready for it, had always seen this moment in her mind as something much different, with her in barbette and sewn-sleeved gown, her face immaculate, her hair glowing like autumn bracken. Sitting in her little room with her hands in her lap, all composed beauty.

Not rousted from her bed, with straw in the greying raggle of her hair and barely dressed at all …

‘Lamb.’

The old term flung all that away like shredding mist and he took a step to where a shard of flitting moonlight sliced across his face. Lined, grey-bearded, even in a moonlight never kind to colour, but with the eyes she remembered, focused like flames on her.

‘Am I so changed?’ he asked and she heard the uncertainty, the tremble, and the inside of her melted with knowing that he felt exactly the same as she.

‘I would know my heart’s delight anywhere,’ she managed and then they clung, fierce as tigers. She tasted iron and salt on his lips — blood, she realized.

‘ Estat ai en greu cossirier, per un cavallier q’ai agut ,’ he said, husky and muffled into the top of her head and she smiled. ‘I was plunged into deep distress, by a knight who wooed me’ … the words, in langue d’oc , belonged to the famed troubairitz the Countess of Dia and Hal and Isabel had played this game of line and line about before, when they and the world were younger and each moment almost as precious as this.

‘ Eu l’autrei mon cor e m’amor, mon sen, mos huoills e ma vida ,’ she replied and looked up at him, a smile blurred by tears. ‘To him I give my heart and love, my reason, eyes and life.’

‘Bigod, be done with sucking kisses aff her and find a way to get me in …’

Isabel whirled, startled at a voice where none should be and saw the black shape clinging to the outside of her cage, outlined in rain.

‘Sweetmilk,’ Hal growled, and called out to the man, his voice hoarse and low: ‘Break the roof tiles, man, and keep yer voice down.’

Cursing, Sweetmilk clung with one hand and worried the slick, stiff wooden tiles with the other; one came free with a crack and he forced it between the grilled bars of the cage, not wanting to clatter it like an alarm iron into the bailey. Then he stopped, craned his head to see and then back to where Hal and Isabel held each other.

‘Jamie and Dog Boy are discovered.’

He came along the walkway through the rainmist, making kissing sounds and cursing between wheedles, wrenched from the comfort and warmth of his distantly glowing brazier and makeshift shelter. Dog Boy knew it was the owner of the hound he had throat-cut, wondering where his wee guard pet had got to. He shook his head, more at the bad cess of the dog’s revenge than to get the water out of his eyes.

Beside him, Jamie crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet; in three more steps they would be seen.

Jamie darted forward, lunging out of the shrouding water in the hope that surprise would conquer all — but the guard was a good man and trained well enough that the spear he was holding in one fist came down and level before he had even registered who or what was coming at him.

Jamie, armed only with a long dirk, skidded to a halt, fell backwards and scrabbled upright; for a long moment they stared at each other, the guard with water dripping off the rim of his iron hat, studded jack soaked black, the spear pearling water from shaft and tip.

Then Dog Boy came up and the man blinked out of the numbing shock, opened his dry mouth and bellowed.

‘Ware afore. Ware afore.’

‘Christ and His bliddy saints …’ Jamie hissed and threw the dirk. It whirled, struck the man in the face haft first and sent him staggering. Dog Boy, with a grim grunt, hurled forward and rammed the man to the wet walkway; the spear flew free, rolled off the edge and clattered noisily on to the cobbles below.

The guard struggled and spat and cursed, but Jamie was on him now too and helped pin one arm and a leg, leaving Dog Boy, fighting the mad, fluttering panic of the man, to free up his dagger hand and drive the weapon into the man’s ear, the most vulnerable spot.

For a moment he was years back, leaping on the back of a man fighting the Bruce — and winning — in a dark corridor of a leper house. He had knifed into an ear then, too, felt the same gush of blood over his hand, so hot he was amazed it did not scald him …

Panting, slick with blood and rain, the three of them wrestled and grunted and gasped until, at last, one kicked frantically and then was still. Jamie, dashing rain from his eyes, grinned and got to his hands and knees, was about to say how Dame Fortune was smiling when the bitch betrayed them with the iron clang of an alarm.

Dog Boy looked at the cage, where Sweetmilk clung like a barnacle, then to where men were spilling out of butter-yellow doorways below and up the stone stairs, more coming along the ramparts so that they would pass through the Hog Tower and along to where the ladder snaked to safety. There was no way he or Jamie could stop them.

‘Away,’ Jamie declared, clapping Dog Boy on the shoulder and half dragging him to his feet. ‘Or we are taken.’

‘We cannot leave them,’ Dog Boy spat and Jamie whirled him until they were face to face.

‘Too late, Aleysandir. All we can do is give them the best chance of escaping on their own.’