Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  As Coll’s warbling rang clearer, Torquil grabbed my arm again and pulled me up onto the grassy bank. There were a few trees here, although not enough to hide us. We were at a bend in the river. In the middle of the bend hunched a small mound. We ran a short way along the river’s edge and dashed behind the earthen mound. On our bellies, we scrambled up the hillock and looked over.

  Pitching hard on the lead, Coll sprang over the rise on the opposite side of the water. An English soldier strained to hold him back, the leash jerking and snapping. Two other men trotted behind, scanning everything in view to catch sight of us as they trailed down toward the river and into it. Torquil and I dipped back behind the hillock. I motioned for him to follow me.

  Hearts hammering, we darted across a small, boggy meadow, the muck tugging at our wet feet, and into a narrow gully where a tiny brook trickled with the last rain. Barely waist-high at first, the gully soon deepened to just above our heads. The earth around us began to rise and fall in sweeping undulations. We squeezed around a huge slab of rock, which nearly blocked the gully, and stopped there. I unslung my bow, then plucked three arrows from the bag on my back. I must have lost the rest during our frantic escape.

  “I will handle the men, Torquil,” I said. My hands trembled. “You... must kill the dog. Understand?”

  He nodded and sank back behind the rock. My cut and bruised hands tenderly seeking handholds, I mounted the rock and stood, making myself as visible as possible. A gusting wind tossed my hair across my eyes. I swept it away and tucked two of the arrows into my belt. The third I fitted against the bow and pressed the familiar string between my calloused second and third fingers. The Englishmen debated tersely over whether to follow our trail into the narrow confines. The braver and more foolish of them won and Coll’s warble fell to a low whimper. He knew I was near. He was glad. I glanced down at Torquil. His spear was gripped tightly in his right hand, drawn back from his shoulder.

  The other Englishman popped over a low hill. He had taken the higher ground above the brook, meaning to serve as a pair of eyes. But I had him marked well before he saw me. He let out a yell, gripping his sword. I let the arrow fly. It pierced the base of his throat. His body sailed backward and impacted against a pile of stones. He drew his legs up in agony. His sword still in his right hand, he brought his other hand up to touch the bloody hole where the shaft stuck out. His feet kicked once more and he lay as dead as the stones beneath him.

  “John? Ho!” came his comrade’s voice. “What –”

  I had another arrow snug against my bowstave when the second man poked his head above the tufted bank. I released the arrow. But the wind caught it and the shaft veered sharply to the right and fell aimlessly behind him. His head snapped around. In a second he was up and over the lip of the bank and screaming toward me. I reached for the third and last arrow at my belt. As I lifted it, it slipped from my dry fingers and bounced over the stone until it teetered halfway off the rock’s edge. I lunged for it as his steps thundered closer. I grasped it by the feathers and slapped it against my bowstring.

  I didn’t even straighten to stand as I eyed the blur bearing down on me and stretched back the string simultaneously. He was less than ten feet from me, his axe arcing up above his head, when I put the arrow into his quaking belly. But he kept coming – the blood spurting from his open gut, the wind gone out of him. And still he kept on. I ducked as he heaved the shining axe head at me and felt the whoosh of air from its force. My balance off, I shoved him with bare hands. He tottered. His torso swayed and pitched. His foot slipped. Then he fell backward over the edge, his arms flailing wildly in the air.

  I dropped my bow, leapt forward and peered down into the shadows. The wounded man lay in a twitching, gurgling heap exactly where Torquil had been waiting. But Torquil was not there. Coll yelped as Torquil’s spear glanced off the dog’s shoulder. Just on the other side of the rock Torquil grappled hand to hand with the last soldier. I leapt all the way down, my feet stinging as I landed. Clutching both my sword and axe I went forward. Coll’s nose quivered. His head lifted. Ears perked. He bounded at me, his tail whipping with joy.

  I hesitated, wanting to open my arms and let him bound to me. He barked in glee. And then I heard... other voices. English ones.

  “My noble Coll... forgive,” I said, as I pulled back my arm.

  With all my strength I heaved the axe. It cleaved deep in Coll’s ribs. Into his heart. He lurched forward one step and, his jaw smacking the ground first, collapsed onto his belly. Dead.

  Torquil was on the ground, crawling backward, gravely wounded. I sprang at his aggressor, thrashing my sword. Again and again I struck, until the man fell lifeless into the shallow water and even then I stabbed my sword deep into his body, pulled it free and thrust it in again as the water ran over him. When my rage was spent, I stopped to survey the carnage. My knees wobbled. My shoulders and arms burned fiercely.

  Torquil’s fading voice came to me like a waking dream. “My... lord.”

  I went to him, dragging my feet through the bloody brook. His legs lay in the water, streams of red pouring from his wounds. I hooked my hands under his arms and pulled him onto dry earth. There was a curving cut that ran from the outside of his brow to just below his ear. It was deep – to the bone – and hard to look upon. I knelt and cradled him in my arms. His flesh was cold, deathly cold.

  “We will get you up on your feet, Torquil, and back to the rest. And if you can not walk I shall carry you on my own back and Gil will sew up your cheek there and then you and I will –”

  “No, I am done.” He bit back the pain and shivered violently all at once. “Go on. I heard them. More coming. I heard... them. More.”

  “I do not leave behind those who have given me so much. I won’t.”

  “A corpse is heavy.” He no longer shivered. A stiff grin flitted over bruised lips. He looked at something up above him, happy. “There – a gull.”

  I looked there, too, in the big, open sky full of nothing, and when I looked back down at him his eyes were empty of life. Whispering rapid prayers over his soul, I pressed his face against my chest. Then I lowered his head to the ground, stood on weak legs and searched around for a place to lay his body and rocks to cover him. But through the valley came the sounds of Englishmen, still following me. I heard the distant voices, thick with their crude accents, and the clop of hooves. Numbly, I gathered up my weapons, sword and axe.

  Once more, I glanced at Torquil... and at Coll. And I went – although I did not know to where.

  I could not feel the ground beneath my feet, nor did I see the miles pass. The echo of voices haunted me, all mingling in a discordant keening: Torquil’s, Alexander’s, Nigel’s... Elizabeth’s. I stumbled, staggered, sometimes crawled. But I went on and on, until darkness fell and I could go no more.

  My legs had stopped moving. My arms were cut and bruised. The earth chilly and damp against my face. I closed my eyes and breathed in. Somewhere a peat fire burned...

  The pungent smell of smoke grew stronger, nearer. Heat prickled my flesh. As I stretched, coarse wool brushed against my chest. Surely I was dead... or dreaming. Content, I lay like that a long time. My muscles were heavy. I slipped off to sleep again.

  A wooden spoon thunked against the inside of a pot. I smelled a stew. I was dreaming. Of home.

  “A long way in a short time,” said a croaking voice.

  I cracked my eyelids. It was dark, wherever I was. Shapes swam fuzzily around me. I could barely turn my head, my neck was so stiff. Smoke from a cooking fire curled lazily toward a small hole in the roof. I focused on the wavering, yellow-orange flames and rubbed sore eyes. My bed was no more than a plank and some straw. I was in a cramped shepherd’s hut – and it reeked of manure.

  “English, you think?” came a deeper voice. “Fine mail. Too fancy for a Scot.”

  I blinked at the voice. “No, I’m...”

  Too much effort to speak. I wanted to go back to sleep. I heard something slopp
ing, something scraping. A hand, bony and calloused, propped up my head. A steaming bowl was waved under my nose.

  “Eat,” said the man. “You’ll fetch more alive than dead.”

  Ill luck to have survived so much, only to be ransomed to the English. Death was now a certainty. What then would become of Elizabeth and Marjorie? And what of Scotland? There was so much that I had not yet done.

  I turned my head away, even though it hurt to do so. There before me stood an old woman, her gray hair hanging in sparse strings about a craggy, warty face and her spine crooked. Beside her was a man of middle years, his face dirty, but with shoulders hugely broad and splayed, rough hands that had seen hard work.

  “Who are you?” I asked forthright.

  “Nobody that matters,” said a second man, standing by the door. Similar in looks to the other, he had a black-faced lamb slung over his shoulders. It bleated incessantly, but he took no mind of it.

  A third stepped from the shadows, shorter, younger. “Aye, he’s the one they’re looking for. I wager they’ll be back.”

  “Eat,” urged the old woman once more.

  But I was too tired to be hungry. I closed my eyes and slept.

  Light. It was light now. I opened my eyes to the pale glow of morning. Quietly, slowly, I rolled over. The old lady and the younger man were asleep on the dirt floor. The lamb wandered about, nibbling at an empty sack of grain. It looked at me with its great black eyes, quivered its wet nose and went back to foraging through nothing.

  “They’ll be coming.”

  I gazed foggily across the empty table in the middle of the dank, smelly hut. The man who had been carrying the lamb yesterday sat cross-legged on the floor with his back against the door. He held a crook across his lap and was sopping up the last of the stew in his bowl with a hunk of bread. Calmly, I ignored him and looked about the room, searching for my weapons.

  “Know what you’re lookin’ for,” he said smugly. His mouth cracked in a slanted smile to reveal irregular gaps. He tipped his bowl up and drained the last of it. Belching, he dragged a hairy forearm across his chin.

  “They here, Murdoch?” said the younger, lifting his head from where he lay on the floor.

  “No’ yet. Back to sleep, McKie. We’ve a long trek later to round up th’orphans. We’ll leave soon as they get here and are gone again.”

  Did they know who I was? Should I claim to be someone else? Would they believe me if I did? No, I should keep silent. Slip away, if I could.

  Uneasy, I burrowed back beneath my blankets. They had removed my shirt and washed it. It hung from a peg on the wall next to the door. Beneath it sat my boots. My mail was slung haphazardly over the back of the only chair in the place. My squire Gerald would have boiled to a fury to see it so carelessly arranged. My sword and axe were nowhere to be seen. They could well have sold them to buy that meat in the pot. The lamb hobbled over to a pile of straw, folded his knobby knees and plopped down.

  Another hour went by. Murdoch did not budge from his vigil. Every time I glanced at him he was watching me intently, dark eyes tucked beneath a prominent brow, his broad face leathered by the sun. It was unnerving. Once I tried to sit up, but he swooped across the room and shoved me back down with one huge hand planted in the middle of my chest.

  “Rest yourself,” he ordered.

  And so I did. I was too weak to fight him barehanded. He was fresh, fed and several stones heavier than me. He stared at me still and I closed my eyes and thought that for awhile I slept again, although fitfully.

  Horses. I heard horses. I bolted upright and onto my feet. My knees folded. I barely caught myself by clinging to the edge of my bed. The old lady and other man, McKie, were gone.

  Murdoch leered at me, standing. “Going somewhere?”

  He swung the door open. Light poured in. A shadow moved across the brightness. I sank back against the wattle and daub wall at my back. A cold sweat washed over me. I was nothing without my weapons. I would rather have died out there in the wild, fighting bravely, as I had lived – not here, not in a dungeon and certainly not as a spectacle of mockery on the gallows.

  “Robert?”

  James stooped beneath the sagging lintel and into the hut. My heart nearly burst at the sight of him. He threw his arms open and pulled me in.

  “We eluded them easily,” he said. “You had a harder time of it, I see.”

  “Hard enough.” I clapped him on the shoulders, then stepped back. “But I’m alive, aye?”

  “Barely.”

  Murdoch flushed the lamb from its cozy bed and clutched up my sword and axe from underneath the golden straw. He thrust them awkwardly at me.

  “Yours, m’lord. Name’s Murdoch – at your service. My brothers McKie and MacLurg, as well... if you’ve need of us.”

  “That I shall.” I motioned for him to put them on the table as I sank to the chair, breathing in relief. “Torquil, did you –”

  Edward brushed in through the tight doorway, gave a single nod and stepped back outside without saying a word, as if nothing had happened. Murdoch followed him.

  “Aye.” James hung his head low. “We buried him and the dog on a hill above the river.”

  Teeth clenched, I closed my eyes. So many dead. Because I would not bow to an English king. But in the years to come, how many more would die if I did?

  James touched me on the shoulder. “Let’s get you dressed and fed. The rest are outside.”

  He took my shirt from the peg and handed it to me. I bunched it in my hands, digging my fingers into it as if I could wring the answers from a piece of cloth. “Next time, James, we will be ready. We will fight. And we will win.”

  Ch. 12

  Edward, Prince of Wales – Lanercrost, 1307

  Gilbert de Clare and I sat on our horses just outside the priory at Lanercost, where my less than divine sire had collapsed and taken to his sickbed. Although Lanercost was very close to Carlisle, with all its comforts and security, my sire instead preferred to convalesce among monks. It seemed he felt his soul in need of more redemption than his honor.

  The Bruce had again challenged that honor. Several weeks ago, reports had reached London of various skirmishes won by the Scots. The stripling scoundrel, James Douglas, had even sacked and burnt Douglas Castle, once his home, slaughtering the garrison and poisoning the well for added measure. More proof that they were naught but bloodthirsty heathens. And so the king, once more, had marched on his ruinous way to Scotland, intent on ending their rebellious ways for good. The levies were assembled and waiting in Carlisle. Today, he had ordered a litter to be prepared to carry him northward, since he had not the strength to ride. The king was going to lead us on. Or at least that was his delusion.

  Let him have it. He will not have it long. He cannot even rise from his bed. If Fate calls his name, he might never.

  “Pray tell, how did they manage it?” Gilbert, my nephew and dear friend, leaned forward in his saddle. A bothersome, hot July sun painted his sandy locks in hues of glittering gold. Reins draped across his lap, he uncorked his flask, washed the dust from his mouth with wine and spit it onto the ground. “How in God’s kingdom do three hundred shabby Scots send five-fold that many English knights running? Court has been a dreadful yawn of late. Too little amusement in watching an old man wither and rot. I should have liked to have been there at Glen Trool to watch.”

  I scowled at the images he had conjured: a band of half-clothed Scots rattling their spears and routing the flower of English chivalry.

  “A disgrace,” I muttered in contempt. “Not two days after the Earl of Pembroke put Bruce’s own hound on the trail after him, the Bruce decimated a detachment as they slept in a village by the River Dee. And at Glen Trool our haughty Pembroke sent a common woman as a spy into Bruce’s camp. Ah, my dear Gilbert, never entrust a woman with a task better suited to a man. The weaker sex has no resolve, scarce courage, and less than little loyalty. Is it any shock that the self-anointed king had but to appear before her
in all his wild glory and she swooned and told all – that Pembroke’s forces were hidden in the woods beyond? The Jezebel would have bore his child, had he imposed himself on her. Hah. Women are worthless for anything but.”

  “And may your soon-to-be, comely French bride bear you ten hale sons, my lord.”

  “One would be sufficient. Ten would make me tens times as mad.” It perturbed me that for one child, or however many times it took to produce a healthy son, I would have to stay hobbled to one woman until I died – or she died, whatever the case. I had heard from envoys to the French court so many times how beautiful this Isabella, the daughter of King Charles of France, was that I no longer believed them. It was as if they meant to convince me of it by repetition. The reminders only served to turn my thoughts to my beloved Perrot – Piers Gaveston. Eternity had already passed since I had last laid eyes on him. Sweet Mother Mary, how I wanted to be with him again. To gaze upon his Adonis face, to caress his sun-kissed cheek, feel the warmth of his skin next to mine…

  Curse my sire for sending him away. The day would come when I would flout his condemnation of Piers and do as I damn well pleased. Soon.

  I drummed my thumb against my thigh, impatient to get on with this blustering campaign. It was nearing noon. Half the day gone.

  “Bruce himself, I heard,” Gilbert began, “shot an arrow straight into one of Pembroke’s best knights as he led the charge on the Scots’ camp. Remember him at the tourneys? Best at lances, at swords… and an excellent marksman at the butts. Few could –”

  “You forget” – I shot him a warning glare – “your company. You’re a blathering sot, Gilbert. Quiet your tongue or I’ll have a sausage made of it.”