The physician bucked and kicked. Behind him, Kirkpatrick heard clattering and cursing.
Hal caught Sir Roger round the waist an instant before the man’s hand reached the sword hilt, dragging him back and on to the floor. A candle holder toppled; the chess set scattered with a patter like rain and they wrestled, panting and growling like pit dogs, amid the sputtering wax.
Sir Roger was stronger, almost hurled Hal off, managed to get to his feet and was gripped again, so that they strained like locked stags; Hal felt the sinews pop, felt the burn of overworked muscles and knew he could not win by strength.
He had come up with a desperate strategy when his opponent suddenly coughed and all resistance went from him. Then he vanished from in front of Hal, who stood and blinked at the curled snarl of Kirkpatrick, dagger in one hand and the dragging weight of his namesake in the other.
Kirkpatrick let the last of the Master of Closeburn sink to the bloody litter of the floor and he and Hal stood facing each other, half crouched and panting raggedly.
‘Done and done,’ Kirkpatrick said hoarsely and was wrenched forward into Hal’s face by a fisted hand.
‘Ye cantrip,’ Hal hissed. ‘No Isabel — ye cozened me, Kirkpatrick
…’
‘Afore someone comes to find out the bangin’ in the solar,’ Kirkpatrick answered with a hiss of his own. ‘It would be better for us to be gone and argue this later.’
Hal burned with the rage of it, the sheer injustice of it — and the fact that Isabel was further away than before. In a cage, yet. A cage!
‘I hope this was worth it,’ he snarled at Kirkpatrick, who offered a shaky smile. Well, both men were dead and the secret of Bruce’s lepry, if that was what it was, was safe from the ears of his enemies. Mind you, Kirkpatrick thought, the wee physician did not deserve it — but the Master of Closeburn did. All the same, Kirkpatrick would have done in his kinsman namesake for the pleasure of personal revenge for old slights and the fact that he was an enemy of the Bruce was as good an excuse as any.
He said nothing all the same, only indicated for Hal to fetch the dead Sir Roger’s sword.
It was a fine weapon, with the Master’s arms emblazoned within the pommel circle — the blue cross of Bruce’s Annandale, surmounted by a blue bar with three glowing gold grain sacks, arrogant symbol of the source of Closeburn’s wealth; Hal offered it pointedly to Kirkpatrick, who grinned and shook his head.
‘You are handier with a sword than me,’ he declared. ‘I have little use for it.’
Then he was out, wraithing as silently as he had arrived on his deer-hide soles, leaving Hal to turn and look at the ruin they left, stinking with the fresh-iron of spilled blood, littered with the raggle of bodies. A slaughter, he thought bitterly, the wake Kirkpatrick always left.
He stuffed it into the great locked and iron-banded chest inside his head which was already creaking under all the sins put away in it. Pandora never had such a box, he thought.
Then he followed Kirkpatrick, sword in hand, felted sock-soles sticky with congealing blood, leaving only the gore and the bodies and the job done for a king. He had gone a dozen steps, back to the top of the spiralling stairs before he caught up with Kirkpatrick and they glided down together, back to the hall entrance, where they stopped and listened.
Breathing and snoring… and a shuffle below them, growing stronger. A jangle that Hal knew well enough, for the bruise it had left ached to the bone on his shoulder and he mimed the turning of a key for Kirkpatrick’s benefit, saw the man nod and felt the wind of him leaving.
There was a grunt and soft slap of sound and, a moment later Kirkpatrick was back, wiping the dagger on his sleeve; he gave Hal a feral grin and then moved quietly into the hall.
Jesu, Hal thought, that is four he has killed in less time than it would take to drink a stoup. He felt his gorge rise at the thought and quelled it with vicious panic — fine thing, to be caught because he bokked over his socked feet in the middle of a sleepin’ hall.
They got out of the hall because the small postern set in one of the big locked doors was unbarred and the servant sleeping near it could have been stepped on and never noticed, judging from the smell of pilfered drink seeping from him like heat.
They ran out of luck at the last. The main gate had its thick-grilled yett lowered, the great double doors heavily shut and barred, the guards awake and alert in the stamping cold — but this was Closeburn and Kirkpatrick knew it well; there was a postern sally-gate in a wall behind the stable and he led them to it unerringly.
Unguarded at every other time but this, he discovered, and cursed because he should have realized that the heightened alerts, the important captives, the swirl of English and the threat of Scottish raid would all have conspired to place two good men on this weak spot.
Hal and Kirkpatrick came up, sleekit as thieves and all unaware until the shapes materialized from the shadows and hailed them with growls.
It was the matter of them coming from inside that saved them, Hal thought, for the guards were looking for folk from outside trying to get in, so these were no threat. That changed when Hal swung up the sword and slashed one man’s forearm with it, the blow hitting leather and mail, slicing through both in a spray of metal rings and breaking the bone with the force.
The man screamed like a girl, high and shrill, so that Hal, cursing, rammed the point in his mouth, snapping teeth and driving straight to the back of the man’s skull and out the far side; the falling weight dragged Hal in a half-stumble and he wrenched and tore at the now trapped sword, while the dead man’s head flopped and jerked.
Kirkpatrick went for the other one, the adder’s tongue dagger flicking, only to hiss off the man’s maille. Shocked, the guard staggered away, losing his spear and fumbling for a sword even as he brought his shield up. No chance now for fancy dagger work, Kirkpatrick realized and hurled himself bodily on the man, bowling the pair of them over; the guard bellowed.
Hal saw them rolling, the guard frantic to shove Kirkpatrick away and the shield now a liability as Kirkpatrick fought to grab the sword hand. Hal put his blood-soaked foot on the dead man’s face, two hands on the hilt and hauled the sword out like Excalibur from the stone, the sudden release scattering a spray of bone and brain.
The second guard was wild and whimpering, flailing madly with the shield to keep Kirkpatrick at bay; a lucky blow whacked a knee and Kirkpatrick felt the white pain explode in him, the dazzling burst of it blinding. Scrabbling madly, he managed to get to his feet, the knee thundering with agony, saw the guard’s triumphant snarl and the sword in his other hand like a long bar of deadly light.
Then there was a hiss and a thump, the guard’s head bent sideways on his neck, a peculiar slew that was all wrong for his body; then he was gone and Hal stood over the fallen shadow, panting like a mad dog, the sword bloody in his fist.
‘Aye til the fore,’ he growled, his grin sharp in the clear moonlight. Kirkpatrick moved shakily, his knee buckling and lancing pain into him. There were shouts and lights — then the dread sound, like a knell, of someone beating an alarm-iron.
‘Said ye were the man for that sword,’ Kirkpatrick growled, limping to the postern and throwing up the bar on it. ‘Now we had better make like a slung stone.’
Their progress was more of a slow-rolling pebble and Hal had to help the hirpling Kirkpatrick along most of it until, stumbling out of the riggs of a back court on to a rough track at the edge of Closeburn he stopped and sank down. Even allowing for moonlight, Hal thought as he glanced at him, that is a milk-pale face. Behind, bringing both their heads round, they heard the bark and bay of dogs.
‘Hounds,’ Kirkpatrick said, hoarse with pain. ‘Go. Fetch the horses here. Hurry.’
It was as good a solution as could be found, so Hal did not argue and paused only to force his soaked, sticky feet into his boots, then moved off in a half-crouch to where Donald was supposed to be waiting, feeling the ooze of other people’s blood between his toes.
The loom of the horse, like some dark nemesis from the shadows, almost made him scream and lash out, but he saw the figure leading it, caught a glimpse of her pale, anxious face and stopped the blow with an effort that left him shaking and panting.
‘Sir Hal.’
Annie was fretted and shivering and Hal knew something was badly wrong, so that when she laid the weird of it out, he was less stunned by it than he should have been.
Donald and Annie and her man had waited with the horses and even then Annie had known something was
