It’s not just for the sake of their prisoner. Harry doesn’t dare imagine what will happen if someone gets close enough for the Scottish boy to grab them.
The boy remains silent, even when asked direct questions. He eats enough for two men.
Harry teasingly calls the boy Lord Death, or Your Majesty. He gets no response.
At night, they stay at inns. Harry sleeps in the back of the cart, guarding the prisoner. Johann sleeps in the stables’ hayloft with the other men-at-arms.
At an inn outside Shrewsbury, Harry’s worst fear comes true. Johann cadges his pay and then drinks it all in the company of a quartet of Suffolk longbowmen. They’re too drunk to realise that the lump of cloth in the front of the cart isn’t bags, but Harry, awakened by their noise. The bowmen pull the cover off the cage and throw night soil and kitchen slops at the boy, insulting him in the crudest English terms.
The boy growls at them then turns to glare at Harry. ‘Let me out,’ he hisses.
One of the bowmen pulls out a long knife. ‘He’s not under King’s guard. Fuck him,’ the man says in English, and stabs the knife through the bars of the cage. The boy lurches back as one of the other bowmen pokes his dagger in the space the boy moves into. The boy has to hop away, ungainly and off balance.
The two bowmen laugh, and the rest join in too, long knives clattering against cage bars, seeking pale, thin flesh. ‘Dance! Dance, you savage!’
The boy spins towards the slowest and drunkest of them and slices the ropes binding his arms on the man’s dagger. But it leaves him open for a moment, and a knife darts in, nicking him deep on his thigh.
Harry stands up, drawing his broadsword in one smooth motion as he throws off the cloak he was sleeping under. They’re drunk and he’s not, and it’s short work for him to knock some reticence into them with the flat of his sword. By the time three of them are on their arses in the gutter, Johann has vanished.
Harry turns to punish the fourth, just in time to see the boy grab the bowman’s wrist, yank the man against the cage so hard his nose fountains blood, and then wrench the man’s arm around until there is a sickening pop and a scream.
As the bowmen struggle to their feet and back away, Harry snarls, ‘I am Sir Harry Lyon. The boy is under my protection. The next person who so much as looks at him will swallow my steel.’ He sheaths his sword with what he hopes is a dramatic enough flourish. ‘Tell your friends,’ he says.
‘We weren’t gonna kill him,’ the least-drunk bowman whines. ‘We were just gonna rough ’im up a bit.’
Harry grins. ‘Well, he’s a starving, unarmed boy in a cage and he still bested you. I’m sure your friends in the tavern would love to hear that tale.’
The bowmen stutter their apologies to Harry – not to the boy, not to the actual person they harmed – and scuttle off into the night.
Harry sighs and sinks down onto the driver’s bench of the cart. It creaks slightly under his weight. He needs Johann to drive the cart, but they are going to have a very serious talk in the morning. He looks over at the boy, his face barely visible in the moonlight. ‘Are you well? Your leg—’
The boy grunts something noncommittal, and Harry can more hear than see him as he rustles in the straw, back underneath Harry’s spare cloak. He curls up into a ball in the middle of the cage, as far from all the bars as he can.
Harry settles himself back down, his head pillowed on his rolled-up mail and surcoat, his good cloak over his legs, and stares up at the clouds scuttling across the stars.
He’s almost asleep again when he hears a soft, rough whisper. ‘Harry. Why did you do that for me?’
Harry rolls onto his side. ‘Because I gave my word I’d take care of you.’ He snickers, because for some reason it’s funny. ‘Even if you are an absolute plague.’
The boy snorts, and then there’s silence. Harry thinks it’s the end of the discussion. But then, quietly, the boy says, ‘I’m still going to kill you one of these days.’
‘Well, until that day comes, sleep well, Lord Death,’ Harry whispers.
There’s a pause, and more rustling.
‘Seonaidh mac Maíl Coluim,’ the boy says, so softly it’s almost inaudible.
‘What?’ Harry says, sitting up.
‘My name,’ the boy says grudgingly.
‘Then, good night, Suh, uh, Shunay,’ Harry says, his tongue stumbling over the strange name.
The boy sighs. He’s lying on his back now, looking at the same stars as Harry. ‘Iain. I was called Iain by my family.’
‘Well. Good night, Iain,’ Harry says. ‘I’ll be taking that bowman’s dagger back off you in the morning.’
Harry goes to sleep full of a strange happiness, lulled into dream’s embrace by the sounds of soft, emphatic Gaelic cursing.
Johann shows up shortly after the bells of Prime looking like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards. Harry gives him a very stern talking-to, the effect of which is moderated by the man-at-arms not remembering much of the previous night. The next day’s travel is in unrelenting sunshine and by midday, Johann resembles nothing more than a very hungover beetroot.
Iain (and it’s strange and thrilling for Harry to think of him as Iain rather than the Scottish boy) is reluctantly convinced to surrender the stolen knife in exchange for a half-dozen honey cakes, a few early apples and a flask of small beer. Harry is amused beyond measure that Iain has a sweet tooth, and tries thenceforth to pick up something for him at each market they pass through.
The rest of the ride south passes uneventfully. Johann doesn’t drink his pay, and Harry doesn’t retie Iain’s hands, except at rivers and streams when they bring him out of
