The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (8 page)

‘Sim …' he said, even as he kicked Griff, but the man had seen it for himself and spurred after Hal, bellowing for Tod's Wattie and Bangtail Hob. Buchan, bringing Bradacus miraculously back under control, watched them crash through the undergrowth in pursuit of Bruce and tried not to smile.

White Tam, hunched on the mare, ploughed on relentlessly while the hunt swirled and whirled around him, knowing the truth of matters – that he was too old and slow these days, so that he reached the hunt when it was all over bar the cutting up. White Tam knew the ritual of cutting up well now, talked more and more in a language gravy-rich with os and suet, argos and croteys, grease and fiants.

He was aware only of the vanishing of Bruce and the others as an annoyance by well-bred oafs who chased hares.

‘Go after the Earl of Carrick,' he ordered those nearest. ‘Mak' siccar he does not tumble on his high-born arse.'

Bruce, half-clinging on for dear life, finally got control of the rouncey and became aware, suddenly and with a catch of fear in his throat, that he was alone. He turned this way and that, hearing shouts but confused as to direction then, for fear his anxiety would cause the trembling horse to bolt again, he got off the animal and stroked it quiet, neck and muzzle.

The leveret was long gone and he shook his head at the shame of having let his mount bolt, even if it had been sorely provoked by a kicking
destrier.
Hares, he thought with a savage wryness. A husk of hares – he would take delight in telling her.

He looked round at the oak and hornbeam, the sun glaring cross-grained through branches, thinly prowling over his face like delicate, warm cat paws. The bracken was crushed here, there was a smell of broken grass and turned earth and the iron tang of blood, which made Bruce uneasy. The mystery of how a hare, which was not a forest animal at all, had been there at all nagged him a little and the worry of plots surfaced like sick.

Then he realised this was where the stag had been brought to bay by the deerhounds and relaxed a little, which in turn brought the rouncey to an even breathing. Even so, there was a musk that puzzled him, the more so because it came from the rouncey's sweat-foamed sides and the saddle; he had been smelling it all day.

The
alaunt
came out of the undergrowth like an uncurling black snake, a matted crow of snarls that skidded, paused and padded, slow and purposeful, the shoulders hunched and working, the slaver dripping from open jaws.

Bruce narrowed his eyes, then felt the first stirrings of fear – it was stalking him. Then, with a deep panic he had to grip himself to fight, he realised what the musk smell was and that hare scent, blood and glands, had been deliberately smeared on saddle and horse flank. A deal of hare scent, too, now transferred to himself.

There was a pause and Bruce fought to free the dagger at his belt, cursing, seeing the inevitable in the gathering tremble of the beast's haunches. Somewhere, he heard shouts and the blare of a hunting horn – too far, he thought wildly. Too far …

The black shape launched forward, low and fast, boring in to disembowel this strange, large, two-legged prey that smelled right and looked wrong. The rouncey squealed and reared and danced away, reins caught in the bracken, and the
alaunt,
confused by scent from two victims, paused, chose the smaller one and, snarling, tore forward.

There was a streak through the grass, a fast-moving brindle arrow, rough-haired and uncombed. It struck the flank of the
alaunt
in mid-leap and Bruce, one forearm up to protect his throat, reeling back and already feeling the weight and the teeth of the affair, saw an explosion of snarls and a ball of fur and fang rolling over and over until it separated, paused and then
alaunt
and Mykel surged back at each other like butting rams.

Their bodies whirled and curled, opened and shut. Fangs snapped and throats snarled; one of them squealed and bloody slaver flew. Bruce, shocked, could only watch while the rouncey danced and screamed on the end of its tether – then a second grey shape barrelled in and the ball of fighting hounds rolled and snarled and fought a little longer until the
alaunt,
outmatched even by one, broke from the pair of deerhounds and sped away.

Hal and Sim came up, trailing Tod's Wattie, the Dog Boy with a fistful of leashes and a cursing Bangtail Hob in his wake. They all arrived in time to see the
alaunt,
close hauled by the ghost-grey shapes, suddenly fall over its own front feet, roll over and over and then sprawl, loose and still. The deer-hounds overran it and had to skid and backtrack, only to find their prey so dead they could only paw it, snarling and whining in a thwarted ecstasy of lost bloodlust, puzzled at the leather-fletched sapling which had sprouted from the hunting dog's neck.

From out of a nearby copse strolled Kirkpatrick, latchbow casually over one shoulder.

A fine shot, Sim noted with a detached part of his brain. What was he doin', sleekit in the trees with a latchbow? He could not find the voice for it – did not need to – as the Dog Boy ran to secure the hounds and Hal and Bruce exchanged looks.

‘If you are allowed to search the saddle-bags of yon Malise,' Kirkpatrick said, in a voice as easy as if they were discussing horses at table, ‘you will surely find it full of hare shite. Terrifying for a wee leveret, to be shut up in the bouncing dark until needed. You will find also that the
alaunt
handler has been spirited away, though I will wager he'll not long enjoy the payment he had for releasing yon monster on cue. You will not find him at all, I suspect.'

No-one spoke, until Bruce turned to the snorting, panting, wild-eyed rouncey and gathered up the reins, the trembling fear in him turning to anger at what had been revealed, at the cunning planning in it and, if truth be told, his own secret attempt against Buchan.

In his mind's eye, for a fleeting, bowel-wrenching flicker, he saw the dog's great jaws and the long, leaping shape of it – he wrenched to free the reins from the tangle, felt them give then catch again; irritated, he hauled with all his strength.

Death ripped up out of the earth and leered at him.

Douglas Castle
The next day

The hunt ended like a trail of damp smoke, filtering back in near-silence to the castle. Bruce, too bright and brittle to be true, flirted even more outrageously with the Countess, though her exchanges seemed strained and she was too aware of Buchan's glowering.

No-one could stop looking at the cart which held the body – though Hal had seen Kirkpatrick, riding silent and cat-hunched with a face as sightless and bland as a stone saint. Here was a man who had just seen his liege lord under attack and should be head-swinging alert – yet he stared ahead and saw nothing.

He should, Hal said to Sim later, be like a mouse sniffing moonlight for more owls.

‘You would so think,' Sim agreed – but he was distracted, had come in from the dark night of the Ward to report that he'd seen the Countess, huckled like a bad apprentice across to the Earl of Buchan's tent by Malise and two men in leather jacks and foul grins. The noises that came from it then set everyone's teeth on edge.

In the comfort of the kitchen, old limbs wrapped to ease the ache, White Tam nodded approval; the Earl of Buchan had finally seen sense ower his wayward wummin.

‘A woman, a dog and an old oak tree,' he intoned. ‘The more you beat them, the better they be.'

‘Why an oak tree, Master?' demanded one of the scullions and Tam told him – sometimes such a tree stopped producing valuable acorns for the pigs, so some stout men, including the Smith with his forge hammer, would walk round it, hitting it hard. It started the sap up again and saved the tree.

Dog Boy, fetching scraps for the hounds, listened to the sick sounds and thought of the Countess being hit by a forge hammer. He did not think her sap would rise.

There was worse to come, at least for Hal, as the morning crept closer – the Auld Templar shifted out of the shadows like a wraith and, with a pause for a single deep breath, like a man ducking underwater, said:

‘I need to call on your aid.'

Hal felt the chill of it right there.

‘I am, as ever, fealtied to Roslin,' he replied carefully and saw the old man's head jerk at that. Aha – so I am right, he thought. He summons me as a liege lord.

‘Before my son came of age,' the Auld Templar said slowly, ‘I was lord of Roslin. I taught the young Bruce how to fight.'

Hal said nothing, though that fact explained much about the Templar's presence with the Earl of Carrick.

‘When my son was able, I handed him Roslin and gave my soul and arm to God,' the Templar went on. ‘I have never regretted it – until now.'

He stared at Hal, pouch eyes flickered with torchlight.

‘I cannot be seen to fight for one side or the other,' he went on. ‘But Roslin must jump.'

‘To the Bruce,' Hal said bleakly and had back a nod.

‘The Sientcler Way,' Hal added, hearing the desperation in his own voice. The Sientcler Way was always to have a branch of the family on either side of a conflict. That way, triumph or loss, the Sientclers always survived.

The Auld Templar shook his head.

‘This conflict is too large and the Sientclers are too thinned. This time, we must jump one way and pray to God.'

‘You wish me to serve the Bruce, in your stead,' Hal declared flatly; the Templar nodded.

It was hardly a surprise. Roslin owed fealty to the Earl of March, Patrick of Dunbar – and so, therefore, did Herdmanston – but Earl Patrick was lockstepped with Longshanks and, with a son and grandson held by the English, the Auld Templar was inclined to those who opposed them.

‘My father,' Hal began and the Auld Templar broke in.

‘Is at home,' he said. ‘He sent word that the Earl of March refuses to help return my boys to me. Just punishment for rebellion, he says. The Earl of Carrick has promised help with ransoms.'

Well, there it was – sold for the price for two men from Roslin. Hal felt his mouth dry up. Herdmanston was put at risk and his father with it – yet he knew the Auld Templar had weighed that in the pan and still found the price acceptable.

‘Then we are bound – where?' Hal asked, sealing it as surely as fisting a ring into wax. For a moment the Auld Templar looked broken and Hal realised the weight crushing those bony shoulders, wanted to offer some reassurance. The lie choked him – and the Auld Templar's next words would have made mockery of it in any case.

‘Irvine,' he said and forced a grin to split his snowy beard. ‘The Bruce is off to treat with rebels.'

Hal stared at the space where the Auld Templar had been long after the dark had swallowed the man – until Sim found him and, frowning, asked him why he was boring holes in the dark. Hal told him and Sim blew out his cheeks.

‘Rebels are we then?' he declared and shrugged. ‘Bigod -that puts us at odds with the chiel who has also just asked for our aid. I would not mention it.'

The Earl of Buchan was in the undercroft, coldest hole in Douglas and the resting place of the mysterious body. In the soft, filtered light of early morning, you could see why the body had drained the blood from Bruce's face when he'd had it torn from the mulch almost into his face.

Kirkpatrick, too, had looked stricken – but, then, no-one was chirruping songs to May at the sight of the half-eaten, rotted affair, undeniably human and undeniably a man of quality from the remains of his clothing and the rings still on his half-skeletal fingers.

Not robbed then, for a thief would have had his rings and searched under armpits and bollocks, the place sensible men kept most of their heavy coin. The dead man had a purse with some little coin in it still snugged up in a scrip with what looked to be spare braies, but no weapon. No-one, at first, wanted to go near the corpse save Kirkpatrick and, when he left it, he closeted himself with Bruce.

Grimacing with distaste, Buchan had assumed the mantle of responsibility for it and now beckoned Hal and Sim Craw to where the reeking remains lay on the slabbed floor. He spoke in slow, perfect English so that Sim Craw, whose French was poor, could understand.

‘White Tam has had a look but the most he can tell is that it is a year dead at least,' Buchan had declared. ‘He says he is just a huntsman, but that yourself and Sim Craw are the very men for looking over bodies killed by violence. I am inclined to agree.'

Hal did not care for this unwelcomed skill handed to him by White Tam, nor did he want to be closeted with Buchan following the events of the hunt and the Auld Templar, but it appeared the earl was not put out at having his plans foiled by a wee lord from Lothian and a pair of splendid dogs. Hal had to admire the blithe dismissal of what would have been red murder if he had been allowed to succeed – but he did not want to be cheek by jowl with this man, who held a writ from the distant thunder that was King Edward to hunt out rebels in the north.

He thought to refuse the earl, using the excuse of not wanting to go near the festering remains, but he had seen Kirkpatrick's face in the instant the effigy had been torn up by Bruce's reins and in the long ride back. Now such a refusal was a blatant lie his curiosity undermined. Swallowing, driven by the desire of knowing, Hal had looked at Sim Craw, who had shrugged his padded shoulders in return.

‘A wise man wavers, a fool is fixed,' he growled meaningfully, then sighed when he saw it made no difference, following Hal to the side of the thing, trying to breathe through his mouth to keep the stink out of his nose.

‘Christ be praised,' Buchan said, putting a hand over his lower face.

‘For ever and ever,' the other two intoned.

Then Sim poked his gauntleted hand in the ruin of it, peeled back something which could have been cloth or rotted flesh and pointed to a small mark on a patch of mottled blue-black.

‘Stabbed,' he declared. ‘Upward. Thin-bladed dagger – look at the edges here. A wee fluted affair by the look. Straight to his heart and killit him dead.'