The Red Knight

The other men with him in the vanguard loosened their swords in their scabbards. A few checked bows, and one took off his arming cap, replaced it, and went to his mule for his helmet.

‘Bad luck you boys are with me, this day, and not in the rear with the drag,’ Hector said. ‘None of us will be dining this evening, I fear.’

Ian Cowpat, a big man with a muddy brown face, gave him a grin. ‘Bah. Never met a loon I couldn’t kill.’

‘Outwallers,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll meet them in the woods where they can’t shoot us down. Make a fight of it as long as we can. When I sound the horn, every man to me, and we form a shield wall and make a song of it.’ He looked around. The duty changed every day, because working the back of the herds was so much worse than walking in front, and so he didn’t have the oldest or the youngest, or all the best fighters, or even all men he knew. He had a scattering of his own and the Keeper’s men; but they were well armed, fifty strong, and not a face betrayed the terror that every one of them must feel. Good men for making a song.

By which hillmen meant dying well.

He thought of his new bride, and hoped she had kindled with him because, while he had a few bastards, he didn’t have a son to avenge him. He caught the stirrup of his messenger.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Tell my wife that if she has a son he is to grow tall and strong, and when he is rich and well-loved, he is to take an army north and cut a bloody swath through the Outlanders. I’ll take five hundred corpses as my wergild. Tell him when he’s old enough. And tell her that her lips were the sweetest thing I ever knew, and I’ll die with the taste of them on my own.’

The young man was pale. He’d watched a boyhood friend die, and now he was being sent to ride a hundred leagues alone, quite possibly the only survivor of the drove.

‘I could stay with you,’ he said.

Hector grinned. ‘I’m sure you could, boyo. But you are my last message to my wife and kin. I need you to go.’

The messenger changed horses. A bull was lowing, and the cows were turning, the rear of the column was already moving north, away from the line of enemy that was out there somewhere.

Then he turned back to his men, most of whom were helmed and mailed and ready to fight. The lone priest, his half-brother, lifted his cross in the air and all the men knelt, and Paul Mac Lachlan prayed for their souls. When they all said amen, the priest put the cross back into his mail cote and put an arrow on his bow.

His cousin Ranald had a great axe – a beautiful thing, and he was cutting the air with it. He also had steel gauntlets; having served the king in the south he had fine gear like a knight.

‘Ranald takes command if I fall,’ Hector said. ‘We’ll go forward into the woods – the youngest ahead as skirmishers. Don’t get overrun. Shoot when you can and then retreat. When you hear my horn, retreat. We have to hold until the sun reaches noon, and then Donald will be away and we will have died for something.’

Ranald nodded. ‘Thanks, cousin. You do me honour.’

Hector shrugged. ‘You’re the best man for it.’

Ranald nodded. ‘I wish your other brother were here with us.’

Hector looked out into the trees. He could all but feel the oncoming enemy. Perhaps – perhaps they would wait in ambush too long, or balk at a close fight.

But there was too much movement out at the edge of the meadow. The Outwallers were coming.

‘Me, too,’ Hector said. He looked up and down the line. ‘Let’s go. Spread well out.’

They went forward into the woods, moving quickly. His greatest fear was that the enemy was already at the woods’ edge – but they weren’t, and he got his fifty into the deep woods where the irises bloomed like crosses in a graveyard.

He put two men at every tree, and his ten youngest and swiftest a spear’s throw in advance of his very open line, and then the bull roared again in the distance and suddenly the arrows began to fly.

Hector almost died in the first moments. An arrow hit his bassinet, spinning him, and a second arrow hit the nose guard of his helmet and bent it in – a finger’s width from an arrow in the eye and instant death.

His men did well, although the boys in front were overrun and killed – and it was his mistake. The Outwallers were faster, bolder, and more reckless than he had imagined – but they still took a fearful toll among the savages. When his loose line retreated, running from cover to cover in their heavy mail, the Outwallers hesitated for a moment too long before following them, allowing them a clean break and leaving another thin line of kicking, wounded and gutted corpses.

One lone Outwaller, painted red from head to toe, stood between two great trees and called, and then sprinted forward. He tackled Ian Cowpat, and Cowpat never rose again – but only a handful of the painted men followed the red one.

Thanks be to God, Hector thought.

His men had been forced back into the last cover before the meadow, and the sun was not yet halfway into the heavens.