The Battle for Duncragglin (29 page)

“BRING THE BOY TO ME!” Duncan folded his arms, appearing like a man who expected his commands to be carried out.

The impression did not last long. Someone in the crowd shouted: “That's not Hesselrigge!” The word “impostor” leapt from mouth to mouth.

Hesitantly, soldiers started climbing the ramp toward Duncan. They knew that if this was the true Hesselrigge, one wrong move would be the end of them.

“Go!
Bring the lad to me!” Duncan commanded the advancing soldiers.

A soldier drew his sword. “That's not Hesselrigge!” he shouted. “I'm sure of it – seize him!”

Duncan bellowed threats to no effect. The soldiers came charging, swords waving and armor clanking. Duncan and the professor leapt back, looking for a means of escape.

Confident they had cornered their prey, the guards slowed their advance. They fanned out across the road to keep Duncan and the professor from slipping past.

Duncan bolted to one side, the professor sprinting right behind. Before a guard could cut them off, they leapt, screaming, over the stone barrier at the side of the road. They crashed through the roof of a market stall. The soldiers peered over the edge, watching with chagrin as Duncan and the professor emerged staggering and stumbling from amid the mounds of collapsed awnings and bundles of merchandise.

Duncan tore off Hesselrigge's cloak and flung it to the ground. He shook his fist up at the soldiers. “Come and get me, ye cowardly scum!” he shouted.

The soldiers needed no further encouragement. They
bolted down the ramp after him. One stayed behind, keeping watch over Duncan and the professor's progress through the crowd with a malevolent smile. He waved to his fellow soldiers and pointed to where Duncan and the professor jostled through the crowd without once looking back, oblivious to the soldiers closing in.

Alex caught Annie's eye. She gave him a nod and inched in next to the soldier, pretending to be interested in the goings-on below. Alex crept to the soldier's other side, trying to keep the loose stones on the roadway from crunching under his feet.

The soldier signaled for the soldiers to go left. Exasperated, he stepped right up onto the stone barrier and bellowed: “More to the left, ye idiots, that way!”

It was now or never. Alex and Annie lunged and gave the guard a hard shove.

His arms a blurry windmill, the guard teetered on the edge. His shout turned into a scream as he dropped. Alex winced as he heard the heavy thump. It was followed by silence.

The crowd was leaping with excitement. Its attention was diverted yet again by another extraordinary event: the stable master had charged up onto the gallows and was swinging his sword at the executioner. He swung again and again, forcing the executioner away from where Willie stood precariously.

The executioner grabbed the priest and used him as a shield. With each jab from the stable master, the executioner thrust the frail priest from side to side. The priest did the same, except with his Bible.

The executioner ripped the Bible from the priest's hands and flung it at Willie, hitting him on the back of the head. Willie fell, his shriek abruptly cut off when the noose clenched around his neck. His feet swung in the air and kicked frantically. The stable master leaped over and held him up by the middle to keep his weight off the rope. The executioner advanced, still using the priest as a shield.

All the while, the outraged document reader was shouting for soldiers, guards, anyone to come up onto the platform and seize the stable master. Soldiers rushing through the crowd were rapidly closing in.

The stable master abandoned his fumbling, one-handed efforts to loosen the noose. Still holding Willie with one arm, his sword with his other, he shouted to the crowd: “I am the stable master. Ye know me. I am one of ye. It's Hesselrigge and the English who are our enemies. Help me, my friends. Stop them from killing us. William Wallace is outside these walls preparing to attack. In the name of our exiled King John, I say we rise up against these tyrannical usurpers who take our lands and our lives! Who is with me?”

A deathly silence hung in the air. Suddenly, a daggered hand rose from the crowd, pointing up to the sky. “King Johhhnnn.”

“We're with ye, Stable Master,” shouted another. More and more daggers flashed as people held them high over their heads, chanting, “King John, King John, King John….” The chant became a roar.

The soldiers in the crowd found their path blocked. They turned back, but there, too, daggers were raised against them. The crowd closed in quickly. The few flashes from the
soldiers' swords disappeared as the crowd filled in over them.

Men were boosted up onto the gallows platform; others charged up the steps.

The document reader threw down his document and leapt off the rear of the platform. Still holding the priest before him, the executioner was surrounded by an angry mob. Seconds later, his black-clad body dropped lifelessly off the side of the platform onto the dirt below.

Alex struggled to find Willie in all this mayhem. He was overjoyed to see the stable master had lowered him safely, the noose no longer around his neck. The stable master stood at the front of the crowded platform, his arm around Willie and his sword raised high above the crowd. “The guards,” he roared. “Take down the guards at the gate!”

The crowd surged for the gates. A cluster of guards and soldiers moved quickly into a protective semicircular formation, their backs to the gate, their sharp pikes fanning out before them. These were well trained soldiers. It would cost more than a few lives to overwhelm them. But the soldiers faced a determined and vengeful mob – one that looked as if it would stop at nothing.

When the first of the attackers fell to the pikes, those behind leapt over the impaled to battle with small daggers against the soldiers' swords. Arrows rained down from the blockhouse. Alex watched in horror as arrows stuck into one person after another. With so many in the crowd, the archers could hardly miss.

Hasty barriers were erected from materials removed from market stalls. Awnings held up by poles provided some refuge from the arrows' deadly deluge.

Alex crouched against the stone barrier of the elevated roadway with Annie and Katie. He knew they were still exposed to arrows from some of the archers, but hoped they would be overlooked. Alex shielded Katie's body with his. Annie lay beside him, her arms over her head and eyes squeezed tight.

It sounded like the end of the world. Screams, moans, and battle cries mingled; arrows clattered against the stones. Through the chaos, a soldier cried out from within one of the guard towers: “The gates! Open the gates! Sir James approaches with his men!”

“Stop them! Close those gates!” The stable master rallied another charge, but the soldiers held them off and pushed open the gates.

Beyond were armored riders, dozens of them, dirt billowing around them as they careened towards them at full gallop. The stable master was the only one to stand his ground. He cried: “Fight! Fight! Charge!” but the falling back had turned into a stampede.

All was lost.

Riders thundered through the gates, the first bearing the standard of Sir James, plumage streaming back from his helmet and visor. Ignoring the carnage about them, they charged past the soldiers, the stable master, and the crowd as if they were not even there, their horses trampling without pause over the dead sprawled in the dirt.

The riders swept up the ramp, speeding past where Alex lay huddled with Annie and Katie. They stopped, their steaming horses stomping impatiently as they waited for the drawbridge to lower. One reared and a small barrel-shaped
rider with a short bow slung across his back struggled to keep it in check.

“Annie, that looks like one of Wallace's men.”

Annie shielded her eyes and looked from rider to rider. “Which one?”

Alex pointed furiously. “Him – that one. Traitor! Yes, you. Traitor!”

“Quiet!” Annie hastily pulled down his arm. “Are you trying to get us killed? Look, he's seen us! Oh, you've done it now.” She covered her head with her arms.

The rider was staring straight at them. There was no mistake: it was Donald. He raised a finger to his lips and winked.

Alex was shocked.
How could he change sides like that?
Perhaps he was one of Sir James's men all along and had been spying on Wallace the whole time. But Donald had fought alongside Sir Ellerslie and the others at the beach … could it all have been a sham?

Fists clenched, Alex fought back tears of outrage.

The horses jostled for position. One shouldered Donald's horse aside, blocking him from view. Horrified, Alex recognized first one, then several other men he was sure he had seen at Wallace's camp.

All was truly lost. Not only had Sir James successfully returned from his encounter with Wallace, it would appear that Wallace's men had deserted him or, worse, had been with Sir James all along. There was no hope for help from Wallace now.

A
lex crouched against the stone barrier with Sir James's horsemen towering over them. These horsemen did not care about the three terrified children huddling by the roadside, but Hesselrigge did. And Hesselrigge would soon be free: Sir James's first priority would be to find him and release him.

Hesselrigge would stop at nothing to hunt them down. And once he caught them, he would not be content to merely have them hanged. No, he would more likely be in the mood for torture: torture for the men who opposed him, like Don-Dun, the stable master, Duncan, and the professor; torture for those who aided Wallace, such as Willie, Annie, and Katie; and torture for the one who, in his mind at least, tricked him and his father into the caves and caused his father's miserable death. No doubt he would save the worst for that person.

Will Hesselrigge ever tire of inflicting all this agony?
Alex felt ill.

The drawbridge boomed and laid flat, a cloud of dust
rising from where it had slapped the roadway. Sir James and his men surged forward. Hooves thundered on the bridge, clattered on the stones of the blockhouse, and faded away altogether.

Annie sat up. “Where did they go?”

“I think they've gone to find Hesselrigge. They'll be back.”

Shouts came from within the blockhouse.

“Don-Dun?” Alex breathed. “Oh, no….” He blinked back tears.

Annie put her hand on his arm. “He might have gotten away….”

Alex pulled his arm away furiously. “And how would he have done that – with the help of some fairies?” Scowling, he stood to look over the stone barrier. The arrows had stopped. Below, the stable master had rallied some men to throw cobblestones at the soldiers guarding the gates. Nowhere did he spot Willie or the professor or Duncan.

“There!” Annie pointed excitedly.

Alex squinted. In amongst the cluster of people who had taken shelter under the gallows was Willie. “Let's go,” he said.

Annie was already up and running. “Willie!” she shouted. “Willie!”

Alex looked back up to the blockhouse. There was still no sign of anyone manning the arrow slits.
Where could they have gone?
He tugged on Katie's arm. Her glassy eyes looked up at him blankly.

“Leave me here.” She coughed.

Alex pulled her up and supported her with his arm. He wanted to run, but the best he could do with Katie hanging from his side was a hobbling walk. Annie and Willie were
with the professor and Duncan under the gallows. She rushed out to help Katie.

Ducking under the platform, Alex cuffed Willie on the shoulder. “Lucky you! How's that for the nick of time?”

Willie gave Alex a weak smile. His clothes hung in tatters. His eyes had a fearful, anxious look and his hands shook. Alex regretted having made light of the situation.

The professor clapped his hands. “Come, we'll have to make our way back to the caves now.”

“But, what about Craig?” Annie cried. “We can't leave without Craig!”

“I'll stay behind to look for him,” the professor replied. “But first you lot have to get out of here. It's impossible to get everyone together first.”

“Hesselrigge said the time chamber takes you back in time, not forward,” Alex said. “Who knows where we'll end up if we go there again!”

The professor paused. “Using the time chamber will be risky, make no mistake. But Hesselrigge has not made a study of it as I have. Where time crosses over with space and energy crosses over with matter, anything is possible. The creators of those caves knew how to bring together fundamental building blocks of this universe and, in so doing, rearrange them in ways our science is only beginning to fathom –”

“None of that matters if we cannae get out of here,” Duncan cut in impatiently. “We need to wait and see if the stable master and his friends can defeat the soldiers at the gate.”

“We must find our way into the caves from within the castle,” the professor said. “I know there is a way in, if we just –”

“The castle! We can't go back there!” Alex was aghast. “Didn't you see Sir James go in there with his men? He will have released Hesselrigge by now. Don't you know what he will do to us?”

“Ah, but the castle is where he won't expect to find us.”

Willie's head swiveled from speaker to speaker. “No!” he burst out, his voice shaky. “We can't just hide – we have to get out of here!”

“And find Craig,” Annie added.

“We should go back into the castle now,” the professor persisted. “I think I know where the entrance to the caves can be found.”

“The gates, we've got to get out of the gates!” Duncan shouted.

Alex put his hands to his head. He felt an overwhelming sense of despair. When they were working together, he was sure, at least, that they were taking the right direction. Now, every direction seemed impossible.

Hooves thundered on the bridge.

“Oh, no! They're back already,” Annie cried.