Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  The clack of spear hafts reverberated through the glen as they fractured into sparring groups. Bawdy taunts and the occasional thud of a body meeting the ground or the thwack of a weapon against a padded jerkin mingled and ebbed. A few dozen others had drifted toward a line of bundled grain stalks, cut down before its harvest time for use as makeshift archery butts, and were fitting their strings to their bows. Soon the hiss and twang of arrows filled the air and all feeling of fatigue dissolved. My spirit, lofted by the smallest spark of pride, had renewed me. The drills were a morning ritual I insisted on and usually took part in. It kept us from turning idle, although it was the cause of as many arguments as it prevented. The evenings were set aside for the care of weapons and the gathering of supplies and food. The greatest benefit, I discovered, was not so much that they had sharply honed weapons, fuller bellies, better skills or bigger muscles. For their friends, for their brothers, they would rain one more blow, rise up after being knocked down, aim more truly and win.

  Proudly, I watched them and thought of my grandfather, who had fought so hard to establish the Bruce claim to Scotland’s throne. I reached out my hand and looked down my chainmailed arm, past my outstretched fingers, already riddled with a dozen scars. I touched the horizon where the gray above met the golden brown on which I stood. Then I grabbed at the vision that lay beyond, turned my hand over and pulled an empty fist to my chest.

  Memories shattered as a cough crawled up my throat and ripped loose. I quickly unstopped the flask at my belt, tossed a swig of ale back and swallowed, but another cough forced itself out anyway. A full minute later I was still bent over, hacking uncontrollably, my eyes overflowing. When the mist finally cleared from my sight, there was James, the mountain goat, bounding effortlessly up the slope toward me.

  “My lord?” James drew up beside me on the crest of the hill and leaned forward. Fat, dark clouds crawled sluggishly overhead. They had threatened rain for days now, but delivered none. The fields were as dry as kindling. He rubbed his unshaven chin. “Are you well?”

  I cleared my throat and straightened, feigning a laugh. “What now? Are you my mother? Those whiskers say you’re not. Damnable weather, that’s all. Neither here nor there, but some irritating in between. Don’t dare offer me some concoction reeking of turnips and leeks and tell me it will cure my ills. I was spoon-fed that rubbish from my nursemaid since I was in the cradle and never once did it hold true. The only thing I ever got from it was a day spent in the garderobe expelling my innards.”

  Even in the prickling heat of impending battle James and I would jest with each other, but on this particular occasion he did not return the banter. On the road below, his men were pairing up for races. A favorite pastime of James’ that he encouraged in his own faction. James was fleeter of foot than any and with the litheness of a cat. I had given him command of nearly a third of our forces to cover the southwest.

  He shifted lightly on his feet and tipped his moppish head. His eyes narrowed to intense slits in the most severe countenance he could manage. “You’re tired. It’s plain in your face.”

  Ignoring his mothering, I started down the hillside. James came abreast of me in two strides.

  “For your own sake, don’t waste yourself, Robert. You can’t win a kingdom in a day.”

  I stopped. “Can’t? What kind of word is that? Poison to the mind. For certain I have never heard you breathe it. The day Pembroke was pummeled at Troon – we won. The day Longshanks died – we won. The day the Prince... King Edward dragged himself back over the border – we won. And when the day –”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “And when the day comes that he pricks his own finger and signs a document in blood that he will never step foot on Scottish soil again... the day my wife and daughter come home to me, then I will rest.”

  At the mention of them, James glanced away and nodded. He never spoke his heart, never coaxed me to reveal mine and on matters where we differed, he never confronted me outright. He would merely plant a seed and leave it to grow. He readjusted the manner in which his tattered cloak hung from his shoulders. Needle and thread were a rarity given our vagrant state. “What next? Where now?”

  “I hear Clifford is still hovering over that pile of rocks you once called home.”

  He looked at me sideways. “Aye. Dangled it before a knight called Thirlwall. Clifford told him he could have it and the hand of some forbidden maiden if he guarded it from me for a year. As if it was ever his to give away.” James spit with incredible accuracy at a beetle on a stone ten feet in front of him and planted his hands on his narrow waist. “I reckoned I would wait for them to graciously expend some effort repairing it. Then, I’ll knock the notion out of Thirlwall’s dense head and take it back.”

  “Good enough. I’ll be moving on shortly. For now, you hold the southwest. Aye? Take back what you can. Give nothing away.”

  His thin lips curled upward as he looked slyly at me. “Oh, I shall do better than that. A little sliver of faith, my liege?”

  “More than a little.” I put out my right hand in a clasp of farewell and placed the other hand between his neck and shoulder. “A whole world of faith. I’ve given you the hardest task I could conjure up. Do you think I would risk leaving Edward with such a duty? I would be back in a fortnight to clean up his mess.”

  He gripped my hand with a tenacity that contradicted his unimpressive, sinewy frame.

  “Godspeed, good James. May all the angels in heaven sit on your shoulder and the saints at your ear.”

  “If angels and saints can guide the aim of an arrow, I accept the company. England will think thrice before harassing a Douglas again.”

  “If they were wise that would hold, but count them for the damn fools they are. They’ll be back.”

  He began to turn away and looked back. As he did so that same stray curl of hair fell over his right eye. Those blue eyes, apologetic and kind, stared at me through black, disobedient strands. How could any man be so contrary? Deceptively polite and soft-spoken and yet entirely formidable in battle. Fire beneath a sheet of ice.

  “To my amusement,” he purred. “And when do we bid farewell?”

  “On the morrow. I wish to get where I’m going before the snow hinders.”

  Gil sprang from the fray, his sword wagging at his right side and his shield dangling from his other arm. “Hah! My lord! Come join. Boyd is pummeling the whole lot and deserves a lesson in humility.”

  “Some other time,” I begged. “For now, find Neil Campbell and bring him to me. He knows the land west of here. I need his counsel.”

  Gil swept his torso in a bow and wove off through the melee.

  “Going for Lorne?” James asked.

  “Aye, but there are more flies to swat down than just him. Mark me, Scotland will stand as one or not at all.”

  The list would be long. My Scottish foes were more of an imminent danger than those beyond the border. With the new King Edward gone from Scotland and needing to keep his own affairs in order, time was for the moment on my side.

  Slioch, 1307

  We left Galloway and shortly encountered our new adversary, the Earl of Richmond. As a knife through parchment, we tore through his lines and never looked back. We assaulted the Macdougalls of Lorne by land while Angus Og harried them at sea. It was not until we encircled Dunstaffnage Castle, that John of Lorne capitulated. I was beyond gracious when I offered a truce. Lorne’s oath, I knew, was a forced one, provisory upon his own strength and likely fortune. He would be watched. He would never be trusted.

  Like a strike of lightning felt before it is seen, we took Inverlochy and Urquhart, where I joined with the Bishop of Moray, then stormed on to topple Inverness and level Nairn. Brother Edward, dare I say, was the bravest of all. He twitched and lurched at the lure of battle and while my men may have walked wide of him otherwise, on the field they willingly followed the swath of his blade.

  As autumn gave way to winter, the sickness that h
ad crept upon me months before settled in my lungs and bones. The fever came and went. The cough plagued me. I complained to no one and denied my ailing whenever they fussed, but in time I began to notice them whispering, telling me less and taking more upon themselves. They conferred with Edward. That vexed me sorely.

  “Another log, Boyd... if you will.” I wrapped myself tight inside my cloak and sank down in front of the first fire of another of our makeshift camps. I shivered, even though my muscles burned. Above, the stars shone like firelight reaching through tiny moth holes in a black sheet. “How dreadful cold and only a fortnight past All Hallow’s Day. Has the world turned upside down?”

  “All Hallow’s?” Boyd shifted the log in his arms and set it at the fire’s edge. He settled on his haunches and shook his grizzly head at me. “You’ve lost time somewhere along the road. That was a month ago, sire. It’s three days to Christmas.”

  “Is it truly? Is that our Yule log, then?” My body quivered from my shoulders to my feet, even as the flames grew. A thick cloud of fog, or maybe it was smoke, billowed through my heavy head. My forehead drifted lower until it touched my drawn up knees. I yearned for sleep, but the cold and the pain in my joints screamed within me.

  I heard Boyd’s bearish grunt and the snapping of sparks as he added to the fire. Was vaguely aware of a woolen blanket alighting on my shoulders. Heard steps leading away. Voices – conspiring whispers, heckling laughter, weapons shifting in their scabbards, the hungry cracking of fire. Smoke scraping away at the inside of my nostrils. Saw Nairn burning. Ross upon bloodied knees, drawing back from me, clutching at his throat. Lorne smiling ghastly. Comyn lying dead as a stone at the altar. Darkness...

  It was not sleep that came upon me, but the hell of all my transgressions.

  I felt a chain go round my waist. Hard, cold links digging into my belly, tightening. My body lifted up. With all my strength, I forced my eyes open. Edward was beside me, holding me up. Snow fell lightly around him in the pale silver of morning. Had I slept indeed? He shifted the weight of my arm across his shoulders and was dragging me to my horse. As we stopped before it, Edward hoisted my dead weight into Boyd’s care and mounted his own horse. Around us, my men moved through a haze with their nearly empty packs slung over their shoulders, standing there waiting with hollow cheeks and pale lips in their rent jackets and rusted mail.

  “Where are...” I could not finish. The intense heat of my fever burned the breath from me.

  “The Earl of Buchan is on our heels,” Edward informed. His squire, a scrawny lad of fifteen or so who I had never heard speak a word, handed him his gauntlets, then scrambled back to secure his other belongings on his pack horse.

  I tried to free myself of Boyd’s grasp, but the struggle was a useless one. I could not have beaten a six-year old lass at wrestling just then, much less unleashed myself of Boyd’s bearish grip.

  I said, “We face him. Fight.”

  Edward scoffed at me. He thrust out his hand for me to take. “You can’t even sit your own horse, much less fight, brother. Look at yourself. I’ve seen specimens more fit for sparring in the loser’s lot after dogfights. We’re going to get you to the Bishop of Moray. He’ll put you in better comfort and rally your health back into being.”

  “But Aberdeen?” I protested.

  “Aberdeen? Forget Aberdeen,” Edward commanded flippantly, wagging his fingers for me to come up with him. “We’re all starving to death. We’re all sick of fighting. You are evidence yourself to that fact. We’re on to Strathbogie. Someplace away from Buchan and his men until we can muster more soldiers and find something to fill our hollow bellies to get us all up on our feet again. Bleeding Christ, what I wouldn’t give for a dry shank of mutton, a swig of third ale and a lumpy mattress.”

  As Boyd began to hoist me up to share the saddle with Edward, I slammed my elbow backward into him with such surprising force that he stumbled backward. I staggered sideways and flagged my trembling fist at Edward. Faces swaddled in hoods of woolen rag strips ogled me. Only my own breathing cut through the bitter silence.

  “We will not run!”

  And with that obstinate effort, my knees buckled beneath me.

  For three days we darted among the hills and hollows and staggered through the forests as Buchan’s army trailed us to exhaustion. Every day, we sighted them in the distance and with each sighting they came closer and closer until we could see the color of their hair and trim of their beards. We were more accustomed of late to being the hunted and not the hunters. It was a prickly, sickening feeling.

  Edward was right. I could not sit my horse. He held my limp, burning body to his chest as he sought to preserve me and gave me his cloak. I cannot say that I slept in such a precarious state, propped up in the saddle semi-conscious with naught but Edward’s cramping arms to save me the fall, but I remembered very little of our flight. When we forded a river and the frozen waters cut across my lower legs I was shocked into temporary mental acuity. But just as fast, my mind, echoing the failing strength in my body, dimmed to darkness. Water brought to my lips invoked endless retching. Food had not passed my lips for a week. I recognized the haunting whisper of Death’s specter as it breathed at my neck. I had seen the spirit’s impending visit on my grandfather’s ashen face in his fleeting days and I knew by others’ reactions that that was how I must have looked.

  By Christmas Day, I could not rise. My heart told me to listen to my dreams and live. My head told me to listen to my body and just let go.

  As the snow tumbled down and deep upon the earth, my men straggled uphill, numb and weary. Boyd carried me in his arms and laid me on a thick piling of furs beneath an outcrop of rock, so that the snow would not bury me. I turned my stiff, aching neck to look. There, far beyond a boggy stretch of turf lay a village, wasted and emptied – though whether our work or Buchan’s or perhaps even Pembroke’s I could not tell. Edward began to array our men on the hillside, archers to the fore. And there in the distance... the men of Buchan marching forward, straining to churn their legs through the impeding drifts, their horses snorting clouds of ice.

  Gil, who knew Latin better than any among us, sank to his knees at my side and began to utter, “... terra sicut in coelo... dimittenobis... nosinducas in tentationem...”

  He made the sign of the cross above me, glanced quickly over his shoulder, laid his hand on my chest and started again. “Pater noster qui –”

  I laid my trembling blue fingers over his. “When did you take vows, Gil? Do I look so near to death?”

  He feigned a smile, but it slipped away under the shadow of his beak-like nose. My brother-in-law Neil Campbell, his longsword dangling from one hairy-knuckled hand, hovered grimly over Gil’s shoulder.

  “Tomorrow will find you hale, my king,” Neil insisted. “For now – Buchan, he is across the way. Rumors were amuck that you were already dead. That is why they’ve waited so long to come after us. They dared not while they believed you among us. But now, we’ve nowhere left to run. Our legs refuse to carry us any further.”

  “Time to use your arms, Neil,” I told him hoarsely. “Time to fight.”

  “Aye.” Neil tightened one of the carrying straps of his studded round shield and stood.

  “Neil?”

  “Aye?”

  “For Mary.”

  The name touched on some strength deep and latent within him. He drew breath, raising his shoulders, and nodded. “And Elizabeth.”

  Before his sentimental side got the better of him, Neil took off scrambling sideways along the hill. I gestured to Gil to bend nearer to me.

  Our archers ran their calloused fingers over their strings for one last test, then jabbed their missiles into the packed snow at their feet. They were well practiced and my faith in them was unfailing. But Buchan had archers, too, and no matter how stray or true the aim on either side, Scots would die this day.

  “Edward – bring Edward,” I whispered into Gil’s scarlet-rimmed ear. I tried to raise my head, but
the downward pull was too great, my power too little. “Tell him... I have a wish.”

  Gil left me. It was only a moment and yet more than an eternity when Edward’s hulking shadow appeared above me. He studied me in his callous, cursory manner, half love, half hate, then knelt slowly beside me. There was not a thread of fear abiding in his conscience – only the cool glimmer of ambition at seeing his older sibling, that which stood between him and glory, heartbeats from death.

  He bowed his head and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Your wish?” he prompted.

  Of all of us this past year, he had fought the hardest and most dangerously, and yet he appeared unscathed, stronger, damn invincible.

  I looked him straight in the eye and raised two fingers. Then I lowered one and said, “First, if you must go on without me, that you will finish what I started.”

  “That goes without saying, Robert. And?”

  My hand began to shake and I let it fall to my chest. “Put me on my horse. Let me lead them one more time.”

  He scoffed at me. “And let you fall to an arrow? No.”

  “Edward, I am going to die here anyway. You know...”

  He abandoned me with a surly glance. Ever defiant. Tenfold more so toward me than the rest of humanity. And yet...

  I watched as Buchan’s archers scurried forth. The call went up:

  “Take aim!”

  For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Far, far silence resounding of mortality and snow all around, blinding to the sight.