Method, he thought again, seeing a warhorse leap entirely off the ground, as if trying to clear a fence. It smashed down and died almost at once, but the carnage it created broke the hedge of points apart.
Thweng hit the remnants, striking left and right, trotting through almost unopposed, a handful of knights trailing after him. The helmetless, white-haired man weaved out of the press, almost in front of him; behind him came a snarling, stocky figure in a torn, studded coat, who swung the tangle of a blue, white-crossed banner at the legs of Sir Marmaduke’s staggering horse and brought it down.
It was the tourney that saved him, the much-used roll from the saddle of a falling horse that had kept him in the fray many times before. He hit the scarred planks of the bridge and felt the pain lance into his shoulder – dislocated, he thought, perhaps even broken. Then he was up and on his feet, facing the white-haired man, who came at him, shield up, sword ready, his mouth open and gasping from weariness. Behind him, the man with the banner struggled to bring it upright in one hand and fend off the Angels clattering past.
A Sientcler, Thweng saw as his sword spanged off the cock rampant on the shield. Not the Auld Templar of Roslin, though – he took the weak return blow, stepped, half spun, smashed his shield forward despite the pain that stabbed him with and saw the old man go down, the sword spilling from his grasp.
‘My lord…’
An Angel had flung himself from his horse, his earnest bascinet-framed face flushed and concerned. He handed the reins to Thweng in a clear indication and Thweng felt a pang at the youthful, careless courage that put chivalry beyond life. He wondered where along the way he had lost it in himself -then the old man at his feet coughed and stirred.
‘Up,’ he said, dragging the man to his feet. ‘Sir Marmaduke Thweng.’
‘Sir John,’ gasped the man. ‘Herdmanston.’
‘Do you yield?’
‘My lord…’ the Angel said warningly, seeing men spill up the bridge to them. He cast the horse reins at Sir Marmaduke and moved to meet them, shield and sword up.
‘I yield,’ the old man declared.
‘Just as well,’ Thweng answered, dropping his sword and putting a supporting arm round him. He threw the reins away and, supporting the old man, hobbled after the ambling horse.
‘The pair of us are done up.’
Hal saw his father go down and roared. He hit the crush of men around the brig entrance, was caught and held by it like a fly in amber, struggled and cursed and raved to be free. He used his elbows and knees, snarling his way through them, stumbled and fell, found himself staring into the dead, blood-streaked face of John Fenton.
He forced himself up, there was a blow on his back that shot him forward, out of the press and on to his hands and knees again, then Tod’s Wattie was hauling him upright with one hand, the other still clutching the tangle of banner.
‘Yer da,’ he yelled in anguish and Hal followed his gaze, numbed.
Sir Marmaduke Thweng had hauled his father up and the pair of them were lurching away, like drunk friends from an alehouse. Hal screamed with frustration, for he knew his father had yielded.
The knight got in the way. He was off his horse, which wandered absently behind him and a brace of his friends stopped in the middle of the brig, uncertain as to whether to go to his aid, or continue protecting the back of Sir Marmaduke and his prisoner.
Hal knew, with a sinking lurch, that he was too late to free his father – then saw the knight in front of him, yellow surcoat stained and torn, the battered shield scarred, but up and set. Or, three chevrons gules, avec a fleur-de-lis – Hal had no idea who it was, only what it was.
‘Sim, Wattie – tak’ him alive. Alive, ye hear? Ransom.’
Sim heard and knew at once. Ransom this knight in exchange for the Auld Sire – he swung wide and Tod’s Wattie, cursing the flapping tangle of blue banner, went the other. Hal closed in, yelling, ‘Mine.’
Sim swore. If this chivalry matter was to be done right, it had to be Hal who did it, for he was a knight and Sim a commoner to whom no knight would properly yield.
They closed and the knight fell into a crouch, crabbing sideways; arrows wheeped and plunked round them – short dropshots, Hal realised, from the English bowmen on the far side, shooting overhead at their Scots counterparts.
He was fast and skilled, the knight. A tourney knight, Hal thought, used to rough and tumble, but not what was happening out in the pows and burns, where the kerns and caterans were butchering with no thought of ransoms, screaming ‘Berwick’ as a watchword.
Hal snarled and swung a sideways scythe that struck the knight’s sword and made the man yelp, the clang of it belling out. He fell back, hefted the shield and launched himself at Hal.
A point flashed, Hal twisted sideways, gasping as the cold slither of it rasped past his cheek, skidding along the maille coif, dangerously close to his eyes. He felt the skin-crawling lack of a helmet of any kind, turned fear to anger and swung; he felt the blow, heard the clang and then was away.
A cut left, then right; the knight whirled the sword in a fancy display of wrist and strength, closed in again, slammed his shield into Hal’s and staggered him, hooked it to one side, stabbed viciously so that his blade again glissaded along the maille on one side with a snake hiss.
The knight knew how to use sword and shield and Hal buckled under his attacks, while Sim growled, watching the men on the far side, trying to keep an eye on Hal, so that he could leap in if things went badly wrong.
The next blow tore wood and leather from Hal’s shield, bounced up and spanged off his helmet. Sweat stung his eyes and he could barely see, his breath loud and rasping in his ears. His limbs were made of melting wax and the sword seemed to have gained three times its old weight.
He knew he was done and the next blow ripped the sword from his grasp. He heard the knight cry out in triumph, thought of his father and gave a roar, hurling himself at the man like a battering ram. His head caught the man’s metal framed cheek and stars burst in his head; yet he heard the knight yell, high and thin with shock.
They went over in a crashing tangle of metal and grunts, Hal flailing his way past the knight’s shield, battering his bare face with quick, ugly stabs of his forehead, pounding the man with huge two-handed blows of his own shield.
He crashed the sharp end of it just below the man’s breastbone and heard the air drive out of the knight like a sick cow dying. He heard himself scream; his mouth was full of the salted metal taint of his own blood and his head throbbed with the thundering of his heart. He lost the shield, grabbed the knight’s bloody head and slammed it again and again into the timbers of the bridge, so that the bascinet turned slick with gore.
Then, suddenly, Hal was upright, weaving and staggering. The knight lay gasping, bloody, half-blind, dazed, astonished. This was not Tourney. Not even the worst of Melee was like this…
‘Sir Henry Sientcler,’ Hal yelled in French. ‘Do you yield?’
The fallen knight acknowledged it with a weak flap of one gauntlet.
‘Sir Richard Fitzralph,’ he replied in a weak voice, thick blood and mushed with the loss of teeth. ‘I am an Angel.’
‘If you do not yield,’ Hal bellowed, all courtly French lost, ‘ye will be singing with them, certes.’
‘I yield.’
Thank Christ, Hal thought and slumped, panting, to the slick planks of the brig.
‘My lord, where is Cressingham?’
Thweng turned as the rider came up, his face stiff with shock and bewilderment. The Main and Rear battles waited in serried ranks to cross, but fully a third of the army was gone and Thweng looked wearily up at him, then back across at the carnage.
‘Almost certainly dead,’ he said and the knight’s face paled, throwing his neatly clipped black beard into sharper focus ‘Taken, surely, my lord.’
Thweng turned to look at the maggot boil across the bridge, the howling, shrieking slaughter of it, then turned back into the knight’s shocked gaze and said nothing at all, which spoke loudly enough to turn the knight’s face paler still.
‘What should I do?’ the knight said uncertainly and Thweng pointed a weary flap of hand back to the eyrie perch of Stirling Castle, where he knew De Warenne watched.
‘Who are you?’ he asked and the knight, for all his shock, drew himself up a little. Proud, this one, Thweng
