Randall Wallace - Braveheart

“So we fight the Highland way,” old Campbell said. “Attack and run. Retreat into the hill country. Burn everything as we go. Leave nothing behind us for Longshanks’s army to eat.”

“And leave nothing behind worth fighting for.” William said. “What if we could win a victory? What if we could stand against the king’s whole army with an army of Scots?”

“Did your uncle tell you to think such things?” old Campbell wondered, peering at William from beneath a thicket of red bushy brows.

“He mused upon it,” William answered.

“And what did he conclude?” old Campbell demanded.

“That we would be slaughtered,” William said, smiling.

Old Campbell, satisfied, took a long pull at the whiskey jug.

But William was staring up at treetops stretching into the night sky like spikes to skewer the stars.

“We have carpenters among he men that have joined us?” William asked.

Hamish shrugged; sure, they must have.

“I want them to make a hundred spears. Fourteen feet long.”

“Fourteen?” Hamish began.

But before he could question William further, they were interrupted by a cry from the sentries: “Volunteers coming in!”

They looked to see half-dozen new volunteers being led in, blindfolded. William stood, flanked by Hamish and old Campbell. Ever since the action at Lanark, they had been receiving volunteers, who came to them through the old clan networks of Scottish resistance. More and more young men had been trying to join them as the story of William Wallace’s revolt was told and retold. Handling so many would-be rebels was becoming a problem for the secret network of trusted men in each village, who supplied William and his roving band with food, shelter, and information as they darted from place to place to stay ahead of the pursuit of the soldiers and the potential betrayal of any Scot who might be tempted by the ever-increasing reward money to sell information of Wallace’s whereabouts to the English. Old Campbell had had set up the security procedures; any man wishing to join Wallace’s band had to be know to the trusted villager who vouched for him, this was not foolproof, of course; men who could be counted on to stand beside in a fight or face torture without blurting your name to a captor might not be the best judges of character. The singleness of heart that made some men instinctively loyal made them blind to duplicity in other. Old Campbell knew there could be flaws in his network; William knew it, too.

So they looked over the volunteers the sentries brought in. All looked fit; none looked so fell fed that his sympathies might be suspect. Finally old Campbell gave a nod, and the sentries removed the blindfolds.

As the new recruits saw William Wallace for the first time, their faces glowed like the firelight. He was dirty like the others, his hair wet and tangles with leaves, his arms scratched, his skin pale from hiding by day and raiding by night. But they saw the fire inside him.

They recognized it. It was what they had come to follow. They rushed to him.

One of them, a tall slender man with the thick accent of western Scotland, fill upon his knees at William’s feet. “William Wallace!” the new recruit said, almost weeping with joy. “I have come to fight and die for you!”

“Stand up man. I’m not the pope,” William said.

“I am Faudron!” the new man spouted. “My sword is yours! And –and I bring you this tartan—”

He reached into his cloak, but before he could produce whatever he had there, both Hamish and Campbell had drawn their swords and put the points to his neck.

“We checked them for arms,” the sentry told them.

Carefully, Faudron pulled out a beautiful tartan scarf and stretched it out to William. “It’s your family tartan! My wife wove it with her own hands.”

William looked down at the checked cloth — newer, more deeply colored, but the same design as the strip of cloth he had given Murron. For a moment all of William’s thoughts drained from his mind; his head felt like a bell struck by a phantom hammer, ringing with the echoes of his lost love. He stood mute as Faudron untied the tattered old woolen cloth that William had used for so long to keep the rain off the back of his neck and then urged the new one around his shoulders in replacement. Finally William found his voice. “Thank your wife for me,” he said to Faudron, and the new man seemed moved to see the gift so fondly accepted.

Then a new voice broke in. “Him? That can’t be William Wallace! I’m prettier than this man!”

They all looked at a slender, handsome young speaker, who spoke with the lilt of Ireland. He seemed to be talking not to any of them but to himself. The Irishman paused for a moment, frowned as if hearing instructions he could scarcely believe, and then burst forth again as if in reluctant compliance: “All right, Father, I’ll ask him!” The Irishman stared suddenly at William and demanded, “If I risk my neck for you, will I get a chance to kill Englishmen?”

“Is your poppa a ghost, or do you converse with God Almighty?” Hamish asked scowling.

“In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God!” the newcomer declared. Then, apparently hearing more instructions unperceived by everyone else, he shouted, “Yes Father!” Turning back to William, he announced, “The Almighty says don’t change the subject, just answer the fookin’ question.”

“Insane Irish –“ Campbell said.

The newcomer whipped a dagger from his sleeve, and with a speed that surprised everyone, he put the blade against Campbell’s throat. “Smart enough to get a dagger past your guards old man,” the Irishman said. But then he froze as he felt the steel of a broadsword against his own neck. Not daring to twitch, for the edge of the sword was already biting into his flesh and the sword had slipped from it’s scabbard with such speed it was frightening, the Irishman’s eyes traced the steel into the hard, hungry hand of William Wallace. Behind the sword’s hilt, Wallace was smiling.

“That’s my friend, Irishman!” Wallace said. “And the answer’s yes. You fight fro me, you kill the English.”

“Excellent!” the Irishman said, lifting his dagger away from old Campbell’s throat and stepping back from him. “Stephen is my name. I’m the most wanted man on Emerald Isle. Except I’m not on the Emerald Isle, of course, more’s the pity.”

“A common thief,” Hamish said in disgust.

“A patriot!” Stephen protested.

“Give me your dagger,” Wallace said and stretched his hand out for it. The Irishman stared back at him.

“Now.”

The Irishman shrugged and handed the blade over, handle first. Wallace shook his head and moved back to the fire. “When you prove you can last through the cold and the hunger and the lack of sleep, we’ll give you a chance to prove you can fight as well as you talk,” he said, and the sentries took the newcomers to find their own spaces.

A COLUMN OF ENGLISH LIGHT CAVALRY — A HUNDRED riders — moved in ordered formation across a field of bluebells, lush in the Scottish summer. At the head of the column was English Lord Dolecroft, and as he rode, he twisted in his saddle to admire the precision he had maintained among his men. For three cool wet months they had pursued William Wallace and his band of rebels through the counties between Edinburgh and Glasgow. They had felt themselves so close to their enemy, they had found fires still smoldering. Only a week before they had come upon a campsight so hastily abandoned that they discovered meat cooked but uneaten and knew, here in this hungry land, just how close that meant they had come. But they had never seen their prey. Still his men maintained their discipline; they kept their horses healthy, their weapons sharp; they did not straggle. Dolecroft knew that sooner or later this would pay off. It had to.